Someone was calling my name. Screaming it, actually. But I couldn’t open my eyes … or my mouth, for that matter. All the bones in my face felt like I’d run into a concrete wall nose first. Yeah, unfortunately, I knew what that felt like.
“Jade!”
Kandy … Kandy was screaming for me. She sounded terrified, and that just wasn’t right. My vibrant, brash best friend should never sound that way, especially not when calling my name.
I opened my eyes. I still couldn’t see anything. It felt like some sort of liquid was screening my sight.
Blood. My eyes were flooded with blood.
I lifted my arm to wipe my face. I could feel the bones knitting together as I moved. It hurt. Enough to wake me up a bit more.
My hand came away bloody, but at least I could see again.
“… not much longer,” Kandy screamed.
I lifted my head. I was lying on my side, so I rolled over onto my back. Kandy was standing over me. She appeared to be carrying a boulder large enough to obliterate the sky above her.
Sky … that didn’t make sense. Rock … the fortress ceiling had collapsed on me. Though the earthquake had apparently abated.
“Move your ass, dowser!” Kandy shrieked. She was shaking with the effort of holding the boulder off me.
My survival instincts kicked in. I rolled. The rock slammed down exactly where I’d been lying.
I sat up to see Kandy collapse. She fell, first to her knees, then all the way over onto her side and a craggy pile of massive chunks of granite.
“Sorry,” she whispered. “I couldn’t hold it.”
Then she stopped talking.
I crawled to her. My hands and arms were the only part of me that seemed to be working, so it was slow going. I left bloody handprints in my wake. I got halfway to her before the bones in my left leg had knit together enough that I thought they might be able to help. My right leg was still useless, though. The one the dragon kid kicked.
“Kandy?” I whispered. I could taste the werewolf’s magic, but it was as dim as it had ever been. Beyond that, I could taste only the magic of the braids that were still tied around my left wrist, and the magic of the cuffs that Kandy wore. No kid and no Warner, though I had the distinct impression that my magic was concentrating on healing bones and mending lacerations, not on dowsing. So they could both have been nearby.
I reached Kandy. I could see the slow, steady rise of her chest, so she wasn’t dead. Her arms were sprawled out to the side. I don’t think she’d even tried to stop her fall. Her palms looked like hunks of bloody, shredded meat.
I lifted her into my arms, somehow finding my feet despite the fact that my legs didn’t feel whole yet. She was too light. I’d carried her like this in London and she’d been epically heavy for someone so tiny. But then, a lot had happened since London, and my magic was different now. I’d been so badly hurt in Sienna’s final circle — had used so much of myself to contain her magic in my sword — that when my magic came back, it was as if it filled up all the empty spaces and burrowed even deeper into my flesh and bones.
“Why are you carrying me like a baby?” Kandy murmured.
“I didn’t like you lying on the ground,” I answered.
“That’s no excuse.”
“You dug me out.”
“What did you think the cuffs were for?” Kandy sneered, which was an impressive feat when she hadn’t actually opened her eyes yet. “Yoga?”
I coughed out a laugh, along with a mouthful of blood.
“Eww,” Kandy said, opening her blazing green eyes. “Did you just spit blood up on me? Put me down.”
I tried to prop Kandy up on her legs, but she was having some trouble taking any weight on them. “Umm,” she said. “Just put me over there for second. I don’t think I can stand up yet.” I set her down, half propped up on one of the large jutting slabs of the floor … or maybe it was a piece of ceiling. I couldn’t tell. The place was a dangerous freaking mess.
“Just because you can lift heavy things with the cuffs doesn’t mean your legs can take the weight,” I snarled, suddenly irrationally angry that Kandy was even in this situation.
“What are you, my mother?”
“You’re hurt, and —”
“And you feel bad, like usual. I thought I was a member of this team?”
“You are, but —”
“Get your shit together, dowser. Find the sentinel and get us out of here.”
I clenched my jaw and then my fists. Happily, they both seemed to be working just fine now. Counting to ten in my head, I looked around at the caved-in disaster area that was the fortress.
Yeah, look at me being all grown up again.
The dais and the altar were gone. I couldn’t even see where they’d once been.
“Did you see where he fell?” I asked Kandy.
She shook her head but seemed more interested in breathing than in talking. Her berry-infused dark-chocolate magic intensified. I took that as a sign that she was going to be okay.
I hoisted myself up on the next section of jutted floor, careful to avoid falling into the chasm that looked as though it dropped into nowhere on the other side. Apparently the entire ceiling hadn’t collapsed — just the center section. I could see darkness above, but it didn’t feel like sky — no stars and no fresh air. I couldn’t see the entrance, if it even still existed.
No kid. No shadows.
And my freaking right leg still wasn’t functioning properly.
“Sentinel!” I yelled. Then I waited, but there was no answer. Not even an echo of my call. “Something’s coming,” I muttered. I didn’t like the stillness of the air, or the lack of magic. Though that wasn’t new, since it had felt stripped away since we stepped through the lighthouse doorway.
“You’ve ruined that pretty skirt.” Kandy shifted into a seated position behind me and then slowly rose to her feet.
I glanced down at my skirt. It was covered in blood — Kandy’s and mine, I guessed — and shredded in numerous places. I was also missing my flip-flops. Thankfully, I still seemed to have my satchel.
“At least the blood matches,” I said.
Kandy snorted. Then, painfully slowly, she climbed up onto the boulder opposite me to look toward where the entrance had been.
“Warner!” I shouted again.
A pile of rocks on the other side of where the altar had stood shifted. I clambered down the side of my perch, then leaped over a fissure between me and the shifting rocks. As soon as my feet touched down on the granite on the other side, I could taste Warner’s black-forest-cake magic. Further evidence that the entire fortress somehow absorbed magic, or dulled it, or something.
I could feel Kandy following, but she was still unsteady on her feet and moving slowly. I crushed the spike of fear I felt when glancing back at her. We’d get out of here and she’d heal. I’d take her to Qiuniu if necessary, though owing too many favors to the Brazilian guardian probably wasn’t a fantastic idea. I was fairly certain it wasn’t cupcakes he wanted in trade.
I reached Warner where he’d half-dug himself out of the rubble of the floor and ceiling. Though he was covered in rock dust, he didn’t appear to have a scratch on him. Of course.
I grabbed his arm and hauled him the rest of the way out. He groaned in pain but did most of the work on his own. I wasn’t sure I could have moved him any other way. He tried to stand, swayed, and then fell against the nearest pile of rubble.
“Legs broken,” he said. “Long fall … the climb up wasn’t short either.” Then he lifted his head as if hearing something.
I glanced around but I couldn’t hear anything. However, Kandy was perched on the far side of the fissure from us and was looking around as well. Beyond her, I could see where the entrance had once stood. It was blocked by a cave-in now.
“What’s that?” she called.
“Water,” Warner muttered. He straightened and, oddly, twined his fingers through those of my right hand.
“I might need that hand,” I joked.
“Is that … water?” Kandy called. She was looking back toward the blocked entrance.
I still couldn’t hear anything.
“We need an exit, wolf. Now,” Warner said. “Fresh air would be the best indication of one.”
Kandy lifted her head as green rolled over her eyes. Then she pointed toward a half-collapsed wall behind us, where I could see only rock piled on more rock. Kandy began climbing down the boulder she’d been perched on. The large fissure was still between her and us.
Then I heard the water. A rushing sound like a thundering tide.
“Not a tide …” I said, voicing my fear out loud. “A river.”
Rock and debris blew open the former entrance behind Kandy. Water flooded into the chamber.
“Kandy!” I screamed as I lunged forward. She was poised to leap the chasm before her, but I could tell she wasn’t going to make the jump. Warner held me back, so firmly that my right shoulder actually dislocated with a pop and a flash of pain.
The torrential flood — boiling with all the rock and debris it had gathered in its path — crashed into Kandy in midair.
Still fighting Warner, I lost sight of my friend. The water hit us at waist height, with more continuing to flood into the chamber.
I was still screaming and fighting when the sentinel picked me up, then threw me toward the back wall like I was a freaking football. I flew toward the opening that Kandy had scented, just as the water burst through three more sections of the ruined fortress and crashed into Warner.
I hit rock, cracked my head, and was swallowed by the flood.
I was dreaming. A floating, peaceful dream. I felt free, weightless, and warm. I was enveloped and held lovingly by a warm blanket of … water.
Water.
I was surrounded by water.
I opened my eyes.
I was surrounded by endless blue. Blue … blue … salty water.
Peacefully slipping away in the deep, deep water.
And I couldn’t breathe.
I shouldn’t breathe.
I was drowning.
I was dying, actually.
I screamed, involuntarily thrashed my arms and legs, and instantly knew that was the wrong thing to do. I snapped my mouth closed in an attempt to preserve whatever oxygen still filled my lungs. Pain lanced through my chest as my body demanded more air.
I kicked out with my legs. I didn’t know where to go, what to do, but this couldn’t be it. This couldn’t be the end.
Then I remembered.
Just before the synapses of my brain fizzed out from oxygen deprivation, I remembered Chi Wen brushing by me in the nexus. I remembered the glimpse of the vision he’d shared with me. I remembered the instance of drowning.
I remembered breaking through into the sunshine.
I kicked again. I lifted my arms up and over my head and pulled myself through the water, having no idea if I was going in the correct direction.
I had to believe.
I had to trust.
If I was going to carry the yoke of destiny like a freaking albatross — if I was going to run scared from fate, even as I blindly stepped forward onto its path — then I was going to believe, going to trust the far seer. I was going to trust in magic. Trust in the spirit that flowed through us all, as Gran would say after too many chocolate chip cookies.
My fingers broke through into unresisting air, slapping down against the surface of the water as my head followed through into sunlight.
I breathed, gasping for air. Coughing and choking on the water I inhaled in my haste.
A hand grasped my left wrist. A shock of smoky dragon magic flashed through my senses.
Not dragon. Guardian.
“Pulou,” I gasped, looking up through the mop of wet curls that obscured my vision. The treasure keeper was hunched down, holding me from a portal that hovered about three feet above the water.
He was peering down at my wrist, but didn’t seem to be all that surprised to be holding me half out of the water in the middle of the Bahamas. “Are you wearing one of the three ways to kill a guardian — an ancient relic of grave importance — as a bracelet? A now soaking-wet bracelet?”
His proper English accent made his casually posed question seem like a scathing condemnation.
“Umm,” I said. “You didn’t actually mention the guardian killing part.”
Warner broke through the surface of the water beside me. Kandy was in his arms.
I wasn’t sure she was breathing.
Without even thinking about it, I wrenched my arm from Pulou’s grasp and threw my head back to scream into the golden magic of the portal.
“Qiuniu!”
Warner lifted Kandy up out of the water and Pulou knelt down to take her from him.
“Qiuniu!” I screamed again.
The treasure keeper stepped back into the golden magic of the portal as Warner somehow grabbed the edge of the portal like it was a physical object and hoisted himself out of the water. Kneeling, he spun to reach back for me. I grasped his hand and heaved myself up. My heart thumped wildly in my chest. I hadn’t quite caught my breath from drowning, and now I wasn’t sure I was ever going to be able to breathe naturally again.
Warner and I tumbled back into the dragon nexus in a tangle of limbs and slid across the floor.
“Kandy … Kandy … Kandy …” I realized I was repeating my friend’s name over and over in time with my heartbeat, so I clamped my mouth shut.
Qiuniu was already standing over Kandy, who was supine on the floor at the exact center of the nine nexus doors. Pulou stood to one side with his hands on his head as though he didn’t know what else to do.
I scrambled forward, not bothering to stand. Qiuniu lifted his beautiful brown eyes to me.
“She’s too far gone,” he said.
The words warped around in my head as I refused to actually hear them.
As if to confirm Qiuniu’s terminal diagnosis, the cuffs fell off Kandy’s wrists with two terribly audible clicks.
“No!” I shouted. “No!”
I shoved past the healer, gaining my feet as I did so. He fell to the side with a surprised grunt. I gathered the green-haired werewolf in my arms. “No! No! No!” I repeated the word over and over, forcing my denial of the possibility of Kandy’s demise into the ears of all the magical witnesses in the vicinity.
Kandy was a child of the magic that ran through us all. And that magic wasn’t ready to let this vessel go.
“Warrior’s daughter —” I could hear the attempt at reason in the healer’s voice.
“I can still taste her magic!” I snapped at him, not even remotely caring that one didn’t shove past guardians and then shriek demands in their faces.
Qiuniu shook his head sadly.
But not sadly enough for me.
“Portland,” I said. I stood, still unsteady on my feet but buoyed by my anger. Epically angry and determined.
“Where?” Pulou asked, his question gentle.
“Desmond … the Alpha’s home.”
“I don’t know where that is …” Pulou said.
Ignoring him, I turned toward the native-carved door.
“Jade,” Qiuniu said behind me.
“She needs the magic of the pack! Portland!”
Pulou stepped up behind me and wrapped his hand around my upper left arm. The door to North America blew open before me. “Show me,” the treasure keeper said as we stepped together into the golden magic of the portal.
I could feel Qiuniu and Warner following us. And I momentarily panicked. I was dragging all of us into magic I couldn’t actually control. What happened if we got lost in here?
Pulou squeezed my arm. It hurt. “Focus, Jade Godfrey.” I heard him in my head rather than with my ears. “Take us to the pack.”
I visualized Desmond’s living room. The massive stone fireplace, the large trestle dining room table, the perfect chef’s kitchen … I wondered if he’d fixed the granite island that he’d broken when I’d come to read Rochelle’s oracle magic last January …
Pulou grunted, satisfied.
And we tumbled out of the golden magic into Desmond Charles Llewelyn’s living room.
I knew we were going to scare the shit out of any member of the West Coast North American Pack in the house at the time. But Kandy’s life was worth potentially getting torn limb from limb by the teeth and claws of her pack mates.
Even with Pulou’s hand at my back, I landed on Desmond’s square glass coffee table on my knees, shattering it. You’d think Desmond would have replaced it with something sturdier after it had gotten smashed in January, during Kandy and Audrey’s dominance fight.
Pulou dragged me to my feet by the back of my still-soaking-wet tank top. It hurt like hell, mostly because my right leg was still acting like it was shattered beyond repair. I kept hold of Kandy and tried desperately to ignore the fact that she wasn’t breathing.
Pulou drew a nasty-looking blade with a gigantic emerald embedded in the center of its guard — the magic of which momentarily warped my eyesight. He slid one leg through the shattered glass in front of me as a seven-foot-tall monster with double fangs burst into the room from the west wing of the house.
McGrowly had arrived.
He chucked the couch out of his way as he barreled toward us. It crashed through two of the huge living room windows.
A just-as-tall werewolf in half-beast form appeared behind him. Her pelt was dark gray, her eyes blazing green. Her canines were almost as long as McGrowly’s, and just as sharp.
Hello, Audrey.
McGrowly — stupidly — attacked Pulou, who backhanded him almost nonchalantly across the face. He flew past where the couch had been and slammed into the wooden trestle table in the open dining room. As massive as the table was, it cracked in half underneath McGrowly’s weight.
Audrey snarled fiercely, but stopped a few feet back to assess the situation. She always was a quick learner.
Warner and Qiuniu stepped out of the portal behind us and it snapped shut.
Only seconds had passed.
A snarl from McGrowly rippled through the room as he pulled himself off the ruins of his dining room table.
Heedless of his aggression, I stepped forward with Kandy in my arms. Audrey moved to intercept me.
“Open your eyes, wolf,” I snapped.
She backed off. McGrowly stepped forward, his magic rolling up and around him as he transformed into his human visage. His T-shirt was seriously stretched to hell, but nothing mattered now except Kandy.
“Please,” I said. I begged. “Please.” Faced with the fierce scowl etched across Desmond’s granite-like features, I couldn’t manage to articulate anything else.
He took Kandy from me without a word, turning to lay her on the granite kitchen island in a fluid motion. Without her weight to hold me — to give me purpose — I fell to my knees.
Audrey stepped around me, transforming into her human self as she joined Desmond.
“Call the pack,” he barked at her. He ran his hand over Kandy’s forehead, down the sides of her face, and to her shoulders. He rested his hand against her chest above her heart … her agonizingly still heart.
Audrey threw her head back and howled inhumanly. The undulating noise entered my ears and rattled my brain.
The front door burst open, and two people I didn’t recognize barreled through. Three more joined the group in the kitchen from deeper inside the house, including Lara of the bee-stung lips. I assumed the shifters were already in position, waiting in reserve against the attack Desmond and Audrey thought they’d been facing. I barely saw or felt them, though. I could only see Kandy’s profile. Her wet green hair was slicked to her forehead. Her eyes were closed, perhaps forever.
Qiuniu stepped up behind me and brushed his fingers through my curls. His healing magic — accompanied by the sweet music that always followed him — flooded through me.
My anger returned in a savage rush to shock me out of my premature mourning. “Not me,” I snapped as I slapped the healer’s hand away.
Warner moaned as if I might have just signed my own death warrant. And maybe I had. But for Kandy, I’d walk through hell with no way back. She’d done the same for me, more than once.
I swallowed my anger, nearly choking on it, as I felt the pack magic that Desmond commanded rise in a swirl around Kandy. I spun, still partially kneeling in the shattered glass of Desmond’s coffee table, and took Qiuniu’s hand — the one I’d just slapped.
“Healer.” I pressed my lips to the back of that hand. “Anything. Anything you can do to aid the pack. Please.”
“Life is a gift,” he said. “And I’m no god.”
“She is strong, so strong,” I whispered into his warm skin. “She was injured in service to the guardian nine.”
“A service of utmost consequence,” Pulou said behind me. His tone was even, as if he was simply verifying information and not trying to influence the outcome.
“She … I can still taste her magic,” I continued. “She’s still here. Please. I would do anything. I would trade my life for hers if I could. Please.”
“Thankfully that isn’t an option, Jade Godfrey.” Qiuniu sounded angry, but he shook off my hold and stepped around me to approach the gathering of shapeshifters at the kitchen island.
Soft melodic music rose to dance among the pack magic whirling around Kandy. Qiuniu’s toasted-coffee-and-Brazilian-chocolate magic joined the healing magic I’d seen Desmond call from the pack to heal Lara more than a year ago.
Warner stepped up beside me. I hadn’t risen from my knees, though Qiuniu had healed my leg with his brief touch. “You make deals with guardians that you can only hope to uphold,” he said. He didn’t sound accusatory. Just matter-of-fact.
“Thankfully, all we ask in return is her very best,” Pulou said.
I didn’t take my eyes off Kandy on the kitchen island. More shapeshifters had arrived, filtering one at a time in through the front door without a single glance at the strangers in the living room. They’d linked hands and formed a circle around the island, encircling Kandy between Desmond and Qiuniu. The healer stood with his eyes closed and one of his hands on the crown of Kandy’s head. He’d placed his second hand over Desmond’s, both of them touching Kandy’s chest over her heart.
“How long …” I murmured. “How long can the brain be oxygen deprived?”
Magic undulated around Kandy in a whirl of gold and green. It settled down over her like a gossamer blanket.
She opened her eyes and screamed, “Jade!”
Then she began to convulse.
Desmond snarled and rolled her over onto her side.
I started crying, not realizing that I hadn’t been before. Loud, ragged sobs tore through me and out of my throat.
Qiuniu lifted his gaze to meet mine. He still looked angry, but then he smiled tightly. With a nod, he stepped away from the shapeshifters. The circle closed behind him.
Desmond was crooning to Kandy, whispering, “Come, little wolf. Change for me. Come, wolf.”
Kandy continued to convulse.
I rose. Brushing shoulders with Qiuniu as I passed, I stepped up to the island and reached through the swaying shapeshifters to place my hand on Kandy’s back. She was still in the midst of some sort of seizure. Her muscles were taut with what felt like unbearable tension.
“Kandy,” I said. My voice cracked, and I was suddenly afraid I wouldn’t get the words out through the sobs that still lurked in my throat. Words that I needed to say. “Kandy,” I repeated. “You saved me. Me and Warner. Mission accomplished. We got the treasure. Come back, my friend. Come back to me.”
Kandy stilled. Then her blazing green, berry-infused dark-chocolate shapeshifter magic rolled over her. She transformed into a gray wolf.
I backed away.
Her metamorphosis looked painful. Even Desmond lifted his hands away from her as she transformed.
Desmond looked at me, then. The first time he’d acknowledged my presence at all. Green flecks of his magic still whirled in his topaz-brown eyes. “Go now, Jade,” he whispered. “I can’t look at you.”
Then he gathered Kandy into his arms and walked out of the kitchen, surrounded by his pack.
“Stay,” Audrey murmured as she passed by me to follow him. “Kandy will want to see you. She’ll need to see you in order to concentrate on her own healing. Desmond will sleep soon enough.”
She walked away without another glance. Behind her, Lara wrapped her arms around me in a crushing hug before jogging off to join the rest of her pack.
Then I was alone in Desmond’s thoroughly trashed living room with the dragons.
“Was it worth it, then?” Qiuniu asked quietly, but he wasn’t speaking to me. He sounded weary. I’m not sure I’d ever heard a guardian sound even slightly diminished before.
Pulou nodded. “The warrior’s daughter has completed her first task.”
“First?” I asked. “What the hell were all the other retrievals?” I felt lightheaded — epically empty. So much so that my voice sounded disembodied to my own ears.
“First of three. If the myths hold true,” Pulou answered. He looked at Warner. The sentinel shook his head wearily, as if he didn’t know anything anymore. “The other retrievals were training.”
“I’m not sure anything qualifies as training for what we just did. Without Kandy, I’d be trapped underneath thousands of pounds of rock. Then I would have drowned. Without Warner, Kandy would be dead.”
Pulou inclined his head without answering. Then he held a golden diamond-encrusted box toward me. Its lid was hinged open and ready.
I stepped forward, loosening the knot of the ribbons I’d tied around my wrist as I did so. I lifted the five-colored silk braids before me, the three of them still twisted together into one. With them held aloft, I could taste their sorcerer-alchemist magic much more intensely. That magic thrummed contentedly with its joyful, deadly power, despite almost being lost at sea.
Qiuniu hissed and recoiled. “I didn’t feel that before.”
Pulou and Warner gritted their teeth.
“The alchemist’s magic acts like a shield. A buffer,” Pulou said, as if this talent was common knowledge and not something I’d just figured out with the map and the shadow demons myself.
I dropped the tangled braids into the golden box and Pulou snapped its lid shut with a shudder.
“Then the warrior’s daughter is the only one who could wield such a weapon without our knowledge,” Qiuniu said.
“If that were so, then the guardians would be at no risk,” Pulou responded.
Qiuniu nodded. He hadn’t stopped staring at me since I’d turned to face them in the living room. Though I couldn’t read his exact expression, it held no hint of his usual flirty admiration.
“Thank you, healer,” I said. “I’m indebted to you.”
“It is the wolf who holds that burden now,” he said mildly.
I lifted my chin defiantly. “Then I accept the debt, twofold.” Some kind of dragon-scented magic shifted between us as if held at the ready, but it didn’t settle.
Warner sighed.
Pulou laughed. “The warrior’s daughter is not an easy protection duty, sentinel. Are you still on task?”
“Always,” Warner answered.
Portal magic bloomed and grew behind Pulou. Qiuniu turned without another word and walked into its golden wash. The magic that had risen between us stretched as he did so, thinning to almost nothing as the portal magic swallowed the healer. He hadn’t accepted the debt I’d claimed, but I wondered if he could call upon it at whim now.
Pulou reached into his pockets and pulled out Kandy’s cuffs. “These belong to the wolf. She’s more than earned them today.”
“She’s done her duty.”
“These were a gift from the far seer,” Pulou said. “And not for you to return.”
I took the cuffs from him.
Pulou turned and walked into the golden magic of the portal. “Let that be the wolf’s choice, Jade.” His voice once again sounded in my head, not my ears. The magic of the portal obviously facilitated a level of telepathy among the dragons … and me, I guessed.
The portal swallowed the treasure keeper from my sight.
“I’ll let you see to your friend,” Warner said. His tone was formal, as was his slight bow.
“Yeah,” I answered. “Okay.”
He touched my cheek so lightly that I probably wouldn’t have felt it, except for the taste of black forest cake that came with it. The tense knot in my chest eased a bit. I looked up to meet his green eyes and he smiled at me. “Kandy is blessed to have you as a friend.”
“This isn’t the first time I’ve almost gotten her killed.”
“And she chooses to remain by your side. She wouldn’t do so unless she wanted to be there. Dangerous beauty, tasty magic, and all. As the wolf would say.”
Then he turned and walked into the portal.
The magic snapped closed behind him. I felt bereft without its warm glow to comfort me.
I felt alone.
And, no matter how childish it probably was, I felt like I deserved to be alone.