Dude flipped the knife around showily.
“Like that’s so original!” Plum snipped, angry at him for enjoying it, angry at herself for being trapped.
Dude shrugged.
Plum was furious. She was going to go out with a fight, no matter what he thought was going to happen. The words jumped into her mouth before she thought.
“Woooo!” she screamed at the top of her lungs. “Killing it, dude!” she mocked him. “Look at you! Coming at an innocent girl! WOOO, really STICKING IT TO THE INFLUENCERS!”
A cloud passed over Dude’s face. Then he shook his head. “Don’t act like you’re any better,” he said dismissively. “It’s over for you, no matter who you are.”
Plum screamed again, aiming her cry at the house behind them.
Dude laughed. “None of them are going to hear you, kid.” He pouted in a fake expression of sorrow.
No one from the house, maybe.
But behind Dude, the black-and-white billy goat was watching them with a gimlet, creepy eye.
Plum screamed again, as high and shrill as she could make it. She hoped it sounded defiant and not bloodcurdling.
“You’re not too bright, are you?” Dude mocked. “No. One. Can. Hear. You.”
He slashed the knife over the air. Then he tensed his head, rolling his neck and shoulders like a fighter warming up.
He rolled his shoulders once more, then gave a few more swipes at the air with the knife.
Plum edged another step back.
The wind at her back snatched at her hair, almost like the wind itself was warning her: NOT ONE MORE STEP.
“Easy!” Dude called out, his face a sudden mask of concern. “Wouldn’t want you to fall!” He grabbed a hand at her, as if he would truly yank her back from the brink of death. “Wouldn’t be as fun that way,” he said. A cruel smile twisted his mouth.
Plum took a tremendous breath. She tensed herself on the balls of her feet. If she had to, she’d put her shoulder into him. She’d duck the whistling arc of the knife. She’d fight.
Plum let out the highest, loudest, most defiant shriek of all. It felt like a war cry. Like she was a Viking shield-maid or a warrior princess with an ax. Not a high school senior with a cut shoulder and no weapon.
Well, she had one weapon.
Plum finished screaming when her breath ran out. She panted.
Dude cocked an eyebrow at her. “Done?” he asked.
Plum’s head felt light. She took a deep breath. Behind Dude, she couldn’t see the billy goat anymore.
She opened her mouth to scream again. Dude ran at her, knife outstretched.
Plum’s scream merged with another.
Time slowed down, and in that moment between one breath and the next, and as the knife arced toward her, Plum had all the time in the world to notice several things at once.
Dude looked surprised.
He lunged at her, finally, flying at her in a tackle.
But the large goat was running in the same direction as Dude. And in a moment the goat was right under him, its impressive curled horns boosting Dude’s legs into the air.
Plum dropped and rolled to the side, away from both the edge of the cliff and Dude.
Propelled by the goat, Dude flailed in the air, and then landed on one shoulder at the cliff’s edge, the knife skittering out of his hands and over the sheer drop.
But Dude’s momentum didn’t stop. He kept falling, pulled by the weight of his own legs dangling into the open air. His scrabbling hands couldn’t stop his fall off the cliff.
His scream as he fell was hideous. Mercifully, it didn’t last long.
Plum lay on her stomach.
Shock swirled in her head, the jangled nerves of her body twitching, urging her to run, to move, to fight, unable to process that the killer with the knife was gone, had met his own end, that she’d done it.
She’d saved herself.
She’d saved everyone else.
The billy goat turned its furious yellow eyes to her. Two white-stockinged forelegs stomped the ground.
“MEH!” the goat screamed at her.
Okay. So she probably hadn’t saved herself. At least she’d saved everyone else.
How hard would it hurt if the goat headbutted her now? A lot. Plum bet it would hurt a lot.
She squeezed her eyes closed and nested her arms over her head. It would be worth it. A headbutted-to-death death. It was all worth it if she’d saved her friends.
Kissing noises carried over the moaning wind at the cliff’s edge.
A high, sweet, and somewhat annoyingly singsong yet altogether precious and familiar voice called out gently. “Here, goaty. Here, goaty-woat. Who’s a lovely little goaty?”
Plum sobbed in relief as the billy goat turned like a child hearing an enchanted piper dressed in harlequin colors.
Plum’s eyes followed the goat’s movement. Sofia was limping forward, supported by a clearly terrified yet determined Marlowe. A drooping bundle of scrawny clover tempted the billy goat.
Sofia let go of Marlowe, hobbled one more step on her own. Then Sofia sat on the ground, wincing at her foot. But she held out the offering to the goat.
The goat’s ears lifted.
He trotted forward and nuzzled at the greens like they were the finest of delicacies.
Her friends had saved her right back.