43

Thank you, Patch, Ophelia thought as she slipped into the darkness, sheathing her knife and glancing back only once to catch the look of disappointment on Anna’s face. And may the saucers of cream be ever flowing.

She stayed low, following the sound of Kasarah’s voice, running as fast as her tired legs allowed, first through the long, cool grass that reached her knees, then down a slope spotted with trees and ivy toward a small woods that sat back behind the house. Up above her the silver moon struck through a wisp of dark clouds, a legion of stars grouped around it like sentries. So many wishes, but only one that counted.

As she ran, the trees seemed to whisper to Ophelia with their wind-rattled leaves.

Hurry, they said. Hurry before it’s too late.

Because she knew what the boy was up to. Why he’d stormed out of the house with only the one coin in his pocket. Why he’d come down to the creek.

Hurry.

Make it purple.

Don’t screw up.

“Shut up, all of you!” Ophelia hissed at the chorus of voices inside her head. She broke through a wall of white oaks and stumbled into a clearing, a grassy expanse that led farther downward toward the water’s edge. She came to an abrupt halt, a hand over her pounding heart.

There he stood, dressed again in his long green jacket, his feet at the edge of a creek swollen from spring rains, though he’d picked a shallower part strewn with rocks, where the water ran clear as glass. She could hear it babbling—like the laugh of a not-totally-insane fairy—and see it catch a glimmer of the moonlight from above. The large, rough-barked trees on the opposite bank stood like solemn giants, looking over the boy as he held up the nickel—Kasarah’s nickel, Ophelia’s nickel, certainly not his nickel—between finger and thumb.

The light from the wish was almost blinding now, and Ophelia sensed that this place, this particular spot, surrounded by reeds and mossy rock and old earth, was heavy with magic. Some places were like that. The Haven was like that. Places where the mystic energy hadn’t yet been buried under steel and concrete and asphalt. Where ancient trees grew and shed, fell and rotted, and were reborn. This was one of those places, and it made Ophelia wonder again about the boy, if he knew way more than he should. This boy who was about to ruin everything.

Ophelia unhooked her canister from her belt, her finger poised above the button. She would need to get closer to get a good shot. She didn’t bother to consider what would happen after that; she needed that nickel and she needed it now.

He didn’t see her coming.

He held the coin up to the moonlight.

The trees still seemed to be begging, Hurry, hurry, though suddenly Ophelia wasn’t so sure they were talking to her.

Gabe shut his eyes. Ophelia charged and pressed the button, and a blast of glittery spray shot out, forming a fine silvery mist that engulfed the boy’s head. He breathed it in and coughed, opened his eyes, and looked at her, just for a moment, through sparkling tears.

He blinked twice and his body went limp, collapsing in a heap by the water’s edge.

Falling, along with the coin—flipped from his fingers only a moment before.