As the giant bat and the panther disappeared from sight, Greyson dropped the wooden table leg and swept Dru into his arms. She let herself melt into his embrace. Unexpected tears burned at the corners of her eyes as all of the fear and desperation of the battle washed over her. As he held her, the fear slowly evaporated into the cool summer night, leaving her feeling jittery and weak.
He kissed her tenderly. “I shouldn’t have told you to run,” he whispered in her ear. “When I saw that black cat go after you—”
“It’s okay. I’m all right.” She pulled back enough to look up into his worried face. Only then did she notice the painful-looking gash that stretched from his temple to his jaw.
“Oh my gosh, you’re bleeding.” Dru dug the thick wad of paper napkins out of her purse and pressed it against the wound.
He pulled back at first, then let her help. “Some of us aren’t made out of metal.” He gave her a wry smile. “I’ll be fine.”
Dru nodded, trying not to think about how badly that fight could have gone.
In the parking lot far below, Opal rolled down her window and cupped her hands around her mouth. “Dru! What did you do?”
Dru just waved, too exhausted and shaky to yell back. She would explain later.
Opal nodded. “If you need anything, honey, I’ll be right down here.” Then she rolled the window back up. Hellbringer rocked slightly as she checked both doors to make sure they were locked.
Dru turned back to Greyson. “What happened to Rane? Is she all right?”
Greyson kept looking her over, as if he couldn’t quite convince himself that she was unharmed. “She’s fine. She cornered the snake.”
“Good. Now maybe we can get some answers.” Dru picked her spectrolite blade up off the floor and regarded the Harbingers’ book. So much trouble for a little handwritten journal. What secrets did it hold?
Probably best to keep it out of sight as much as possible, she figured. With some difficulty, she stuffed the book as far into her purse as it would go, then slung the purse under her shoulder and used her elbow to cover the part of the cover that stuck up out the top. As an afterthought, she hung the disco ball pendant around her neck. There was no telling when that might come in handy again, too.
All the way across the loft in the opposite corner, she finally found Rane, still in metal form, lying on her stomach. The woman stared intently into a bowling-ball-sized hole in the brick wall near the floor. Old wooden bookcases had been shoved aside to reveal it, leaving trails of cobwebs and dust.
Next to her, Salem stood with his hands behind his back, gripping his own wrist until his knuckles turned white. Still missing his top hat, his long hair stuck out in all directions, making him look even more insane than usual. “And how exactly can a snake that size just slip away?”
If Rane caught the exasperation in his voice, she didn’t show it. “Same way it got in, dude. Duh. Through this hole in the wall.”
“And why exactly is there a hole in my wall?”
“Huh. Beats me. . . . Oh wait, you remember that cannonball fight we had that one time? That was probably it.” Rane looked up from the floor. “What, now you’re mad about that? Look, are you just gonna stand there, or are you going to give me a light?”
Salem’s entire body went rigid. He looked ready to explode.
As unobtrusively as possible, Dru slipped past him and knelt down next to Rane. Spectrolite crystal in hand, Dru willed it to life. Rippling prismatic lights illuminated the hole, allowing them to see that it led to a gap between walls that dropped straight down into darkness.
Greyson squatted down behind Dru and peered into the hole. “If the snake went that way, it’s long gone. Could be anywhere by now.”
“Yes, thank you for that, Captain Obvious,” Salem snapped.
Dru straightened up, careful to keep the journal on the other side of her body from Salem, hoping he would forget about it long enough for her to get it out the door. “They’re targeting us,” she said to Salem. “You realize that, don’t you? These aren’t just random attacks. These protean sorcerers are working together as a team, trying to separate us. It’s the old divide-and-conquer strategy. There’s a reason it works. Do we even know how many of them there are?”
Salem’s eyes glittered. “Why don’t you ask your rosy-eyed boy toy here?”
Greyson straightened up, towering over Salem. “I didn’t have anything to do with this.”
“So says an honorary member of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse,” Salem shot back. “Who drives a demon car. Not the most trustworthy credentials.”
Dru laid a soothing hand on Greyson’s arm, causing him to bite off whatever he was going to say next. She took a deep breath and addressed Salem with her most calming voice, the one she reserved for difficult customers at the shop. “The only way we can survive this is if we work together. Can we agree on that, at least?”
“No. Even you should be able to understand why not.” Salem pointed a long, pale finger at Greyson. “He is part of the doomsday plot. He’s dangerous. He’s demon tainted. Need I say more? Apparently, I do. Because once again, you’ve brought him into the thick of this, and now look what’s happened.”
The accusation was so ludicrous that Dru nearly laughed. But Rane beat her to it with a brassy guffaw.
“Oh, waah,” Rane said, climbing to her feet. “Somebody call the waa-mbulance, it’s an emergency.” With a metal scraping sound, she turned human again. Her tarnished bronze hair became bright blonde, her bronze arms and legs became soft tanned skin once more, and her towel once again became eye-searingly bright. Her face was flushed with exertion. “Dude, Greyson’s a stand-up guy. I like him. You see the way he grabbed the anaconda for me?”
Salem just shook his head and looked around theatrically, arms spread out to encompass the destruction that surrounded them. “So this is my life now. Surrounded by amateurs blind to the most obvious danger.”
“Hey, I am not an amateur,” Dru insisted.
Rane pointed at her. “She is totally not.”
Salem turned to Rane with a disbelieving stare. “She’s not exactly the queen of high security standards, either. The Amulet of Decimus the Accursed? And she just let it go. Two thousand years of ultimate power, gone.” Salem snapped his fingers. “Just like that.”
Rane shrugged. “Not like you were using it.”
Dru glanced at the door. The journal was an uncomfortably important weight in her purse. She needed to get it out of the building before Salem spotted it and used his magic to whisk it away. She stood on tiptoe to whisper in Rane’s ear. “We need to go. Right now.”
Rane nodded as if Dru had said something profound. “Let’s roll.” Without any preamble, she turned and headed for the door. Greyson had no problem matching her long strides, but Dru had to hustle to keep up.
Salem watched them go with a look that was part triumph, part confusion. “That’s it? You’re just going to leave?” When they kept walking, he called out, “You’re in a towel!”
“You want to get me to stay?” Rane called back over her shoulder. “Give me a good reason!”
Salem didn’t reply. Rane walked Dru and Greyson to the door but didn’t step outside herself. Her cheeks were still flushed, and her pupils were wide and dark. “Actually, I really want him to give me a reason to stay. After that fight, I’m all charged up. You know what I mean?”
“You mean . . . ? Oh.” Dru was already out the door, on the roof, but she was still standing uncomfortably close to Rane. She took a tentative step back. “So, um, we’re going to take off.”
“All righty. I’m going to go back in there and rip this towel off. See what kind of effect that has.”
Dru wasn’t sure exactly how to respond to that, so she just gave Rane a thumbs-up.
Rane grinned and shut the door.
With a flash of headlights and a roar of exhaust, Hellbringer flew down the night-darkened streets, spiriting them away from Salem’s place at highly illegal speeds. Dru sat in the passenger seat, hands clenched between her knees, not sure at all how she should feel. On the one hand, she was still shaky from the attack. But she was also strangely exhilarated. Despite everything, she now had the Harbingers’ journal in her possession. Now she had a chance to find out what it contained. Hopefully, she could use it to find Lucretia and stop her from triggering doomsday.
Opal leaned forward from the back seat, gently picking at Dru’s hair. “Honey, you are just covered in broken glass. You know that? Looks like you lost a fight in an aquarium factory.”
“I’m just glad there was only the one fight,” Greyson said through his teeth. “That Salem doesn’t seem to know who his friends are.”
Dru pulled away from Opal’s gentle hands, feeling angry and frustrated. She looked Greyson up and down. The nasty-looking gash that stretched from his temple to his jaw had already scabbed over. She reached out to him but stopped short when he pulled away. “Are you okay?”
“Fine.” The muscles in his jaw worked. “As long as I’m around Hellbringer, I tend to heal fast.”
He wasn’t exaggerating. The wound healed as Dru watched. The ugly gash knitted itself together, and the scab shrank until it was nothing more than a jagged pink line. Then it too vanished, and the skin smoothed over. Dru watched the entire process with a queasy fascination.
Opal huffed in the back seat. “You know, we used to have a rule. No getting involved in magic outside the shop. You remember that? It’s a good rule. We should go back to sticking to it.”
Dru shrugged. “Technically, this all started inside the shop, when Lucretia attacked us.”
“Uh-huh. But then she ran away. You could’ve let her go, and then there you go. Problem solved.” Opal leaned closer. “You know, things like this never used to happen to us. Crazy-ass shape-changing sorcerers creeping around in the middle of the night, smashing windshields, raising all kinds of hell. Whatever happened to the good old days of selling unicorn charms and potions that gave people fabulous hair?”
Dru felt a pang of regret. She could only sigh. “I miss those days.”
“You should. I don’t know how you’re going to sleep at night anymore, knowing that Lucretia might come back to finish what she started. How much time did we spend setting up that grid of crystals around the shop? Planting magically charged crystals in every corner of every room. Every room. Even the bathroom. Even behind the ceiling tiles. You remember that? We were super careful about measuring and aligning it, too, and I know we did it right. That barrier should have protected us against any kind of spell, curse, evil influence, you name it. But does it stop Lucretia? No. She just breezes right on through.” Opal shuddered. “I don’t want to say it, but I don’t think the shop is safe anymore. Not after this.”
“It’s as safe as anything can be, these days.” Even Dru couldn’t muster up any confidence as she said it.
“Uh-huh.” Opal didn’t sound even remotely convinced.
Dru didn’t know what else to say. In a way, Opal was right. Lucretia had walked through the protective grid as easily as if it wasn’t there. She had unlocked Dru’s front door, found her hidden safe, and popped it open like a pan of Jiffy Pop. Then she had sped away into the night with the insanely powerful Amulet of Decimus the Accursed. Being a crystal sorceress of such immense strength, Lucretia apparently knew how to disarm any defenses or alarms Dru could set in place. That left Dru completely unprotected against a woman who clearly wished her harm. The thought was terrifying.
“The weird thing is that it felt so personal,” Dru said. “I didn’t even know there was another crystal sorceress out there. And now this. All of the weirdness we’ve ever fought was sort of just on principle. You know, when things go bump in the night, we bump back. I mean, think about all those evil spirits, monsters, demons. Even a lake deity that one time.”
“Evil garden gnomes,” Opal added with disgust.
“Yes. And evil garden gnomes. When things like that want to kill people and destroy things, we say no, right? We’re not going to let them get away with that. When evil hits, we hit back,” Dru said.
“Seems to be Rane who usually does the hitting,” Greyson pointed out.
“Well,” Dru said. “I hit the books, anyway. That counts.”
Opal shook her head in disbelief. “Rane. That girl will start a fight anywhere. I’ve got to tell you something. When I heard all the commotion going on tonight, first thing I did was get out of the car and come over to the fire escape. And you want to know what I realized?”
Greyson’s red eyes cut up to the rearview mirror. “That you can’t climb a ladder in those shoes?”
“Oh, so you think this is funny?” Opal said with a tone that clearly indicated she didn’t. “What was I supposed to do? How was I supposed to help? I don’t have any powers. I can’t jump in there. All I can do is tell you when you’re making a mistake.” She said that as if Dru were deliberately sabotaging her. “And I’m telling you now. You don’t want to mess with Salem. That man has killed people.”
Dru rolled her eyes. “He has not killed people.”
“You don’t know that. Maybe he has,” Opal insisted. “Just look at him. If there’s a sorcerer out there who would be voted most likely to kill people, it’s Salem. And now look what you’ve done. Now he’s on the warpath. I’m betting my money he’s going to come after you first, and then he’s going to come to my house and murder me. I can’t protect myself against that. All my amulets are gone or torn up. Where does that leave me?”
Dru turned around in the seat, her heart going out to Opal. She didn’t believe for a moment that Salem would actually murder anyone, but all the same, Opal’s fear was plain to see. “Don’t worry. I won’t let Salem do anything. Why don’t you come stay at the shop? We’ll order some Kung Pao chicken and dumplings, do some research. It could be fun.”
Opal’s eyes grew big. “I won’t be safe at the shop. Look what happened to my car!”
“Well, okay, but when we get back to the shop—”
“Nuh-uh. No way. You just take me on home. Greyson? You hear me?”
He nodded once, then cast a questioning glance at Dru.
Dru tried to put on a reassuring smile. “Opal, come on. We need to stick together.”
“No. You need to stick together. I need to get out of harm’s way. I’m done with this. I’m not doing it anymore.”
“Tonight? Or . . . ever?” Dru asked. Opal’s words had cut Dru to the core, but it was hard to tell how much she really meant it. Dru was almost afraid to ask. “Opal?”
Opal turned to look out the window, and her curly black hair hid her face. “I don’t want to talk about this anymore. Just take me home.”