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Heart kicking up into my throat, I shuffled two more inches, three more, four more. When at last my fingers met the handle, I dragged it to me and whipped into an upright position that sent my vision spinning. I shook away the black spirals, willing my eyes to focus on the car that kept swaying no matter how hard I tried to steady myself. Any second now, I would pass out, and I would die or lose my chance for good.

At the sound of the gun trigger cocking, the shadow in the car went still. A sitting duck, but a target I could reach so long as he was shielded by the twisted metal bits of the car. I didn’t know how many bullets I had left and couldn’t waste a single one on shattering windows or taking gambles.

With my words limned by rasping rage, I shrieked, “Get out here and face me, you bastard coward!”

“Rae!”

Relief flooded my system at the sound of Fox’s voice behind me. If he was well enough to run after me, then the house collapse hadn’t been bad enough to kill people.

My anger flagged, briefly soothed by my relief that I now tried to shove away. I clung to the white-hot rage and kept the gun resolutely trained on the car wreck.

Arthur flailed about inside, starting to make his escape out the back window. His black form slipped through the broken glass, sliding down into the woods beyond the guard rail.

“No!”

I fired off two shots wildly, my arm bucking and bones rattling.

Arms flew around me from the back, instantly putting me into a locked position. One squeeze, and the gun dropped from my hands as tears began to pour down my cheeks like twin rivers.

“No—Let me go! Let me go, Fox. I have to stop him. I have to kill him. I have to—”

He snapped the handcuffs off my wrist and bundled me into his chest. “It’s over, Rae.”

It wasn’t. It wasn’t even close to over. Arthur would be back as soon as he could to take my sister again, or me, or Fox, or someone else I loved.

Fox held me fast, but he trembled. Not from cold—his body ran too hot for that—but from fear of almost losing me.

How is he okay with this? How is he okay letting Arthur get away after his brother almost killed us all?

“You hit him. You hit him multiple times. That’s enough.”

“I did?” I croaked. I blinked to clear the smoke and shadows clouding my field of view, wondering if it was truly possible I could have hit my target so many times over and not even noticed.

Upon a second look at the wreck, I realized the movement I thought I saw was just the car teetering on the edge of a drop off where a tree and the mangled guard rail held it at bay. The shadow I thought had shifted and slipped out the back window could have been a body falling with gravity into a ravine below.

“The others will collect him.” Fox’s voice was cold and hard. He hefted me up into the air, cradled against his chest. “You... You saved us.”

For now, I mentally added. Fox had survived drownings and hypothermic rivers. Who was to say Arthur wouldn’t survive this?

I suddenly gripped the front of his shirt in a vice grip. “Everly—”

“Corbin pulled her out. She and Shira are fine.”

I settled, but another question surged like fire inside me. “So, now wh—”

Shira’s voice drifted on an icy breeze to me as soon as Fox rounded the corner back into the development. “...thanks, Riss. Yeah, we’ll be there in an hour.” Her eyes widened as soon as she locked her sights on me. “Actually, make that two or three hours. We need to stop at a care clinic.”

Riss’s voice was unintelligible, but I distinctly heard her fast-paced clamoring.

“Yeah,” Shira replied. “Rae’s back and okay. Just banged up. I know, yes. I promise, I will. Okay. You too.”

Fox set me down on the front porch step—the only thing left of the place—right beside my sister. Her arms were wrapped tightly around her legs, her eyes vacant, but when I appeared beside her, her distant look wavered.

Fox dropped to a crouch in front of me with a pained expression. Strands of hair hung messily over his forehead that I wanted to smooth back, but my hands wouldn’t respond. No part of me could respond anymore. I sat there and shivered, staring back at my good monster and wondering if he thought I was the scarier one now.

Words didn’t come until Shira pocketed her phone and told us all it was time to go. Fox bundled me into the back seat with my sister buckled in safely beside me, our friends within my sights in the front. He propped himself up beside me with an arm around my shoulders to keep me secure.

Corbin glanced at me in the rearview mirror, and I instantly began to shiver. His eyes—the Winter eyes—made my fingers twitch, but the gun was gone. Fox had taken and packed it away somewhere. There was no one to shoot in here anyways.