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Cadence yells my name, shocking me out of stasis. I reach for the threads of dreams and get ready to slice me some Mara.
But my hands flail through empty air without snagging on anything. Strange, in this crowd, where hope and desperation are usually thick as incense, but it’s fine—I can use my own threads.
The hand I swipe across my chest comes up empty. I try again, scrabbling at the front of my shirt for the moonlight glow of all that I am, and want, and need to be.
Nothing catches under my fingers but ordinary, useless cloth. I stare at my horrifyingly empty hands and then up at the shadowy forms of the Mara circling.
“Oh, crap,” says Cadence. “I have no idea—”
I shoulder in front of Sam as the circle tightens.
If it were just me, maybe I could run. Maybe. But with Sam here, there’s no choice.
My first swing seems to blow right through the murky fog of monsters. They flee from my fist—A cheer snags in my throat.
The shreds of fog swirl and coalesce, forming sneering mouths. The amorphous mass of the Mara darts in, luring me to strike, then pulls back, leaving me teetering off balance, committed to a blow that has no hope of landing.
A cry rings out behind me. I spin in time to see Sam’s knees crunch into the floor. Three long tears down his back well with blood. I reach for him. A ribbon of pain lashes across my side. The Mara lick my blood off one dagger-sharp claw and roll far too many eyes with taunting pleasure.
“Watch out—” Cadence cries.
There’s a blur of motion. I know even as I turn I’m too late, too slow, too weak—why am I so weak?—but I strike out at it anyway.
Better to go down fighting.
This time, the nightmares form claws, catching my fists. Their grip tightens, slowly, so I have long, excruciating moments to realize just how much more force they have at their disposal.
The small bones in my hands grind together. The monsters’ claws dig in—first pinpricks, then burning spikes drilling through my flesh. Something snaps.
The pain is blinding, paralyzing. There’s screaming, not all of it my own. Strange faces, wracked with anguish, flicker behind my eyes. Tormented voices fill the space inside my head, battering at its edges.
I don’t know what will kill me first—the monsters’ powerful, if ephemeral claws, taking my body apart by inches, or the unseen onslaught.
And then the voices go silent. The faces fade, and the crushing grip slackens. I stagger in its absence. I can barely see, barely focus through the pain as the diseased fog of the Mara disintegrates—swept into nothingness by silver light.
Ash seems to fall out of thin air. He collapses to his knees beside me, then slumps to the floor. He rolls over onto his back, panting. “Don’t do that. Ever. Again.”
“Yeah, way to go, Cole,” Cadence says unfairly. “You just about got us killed.”
“You just . . . ” I slide to the ground. Ash’s shoulder is warm against my knee. Too warm. Feverish. “W-where did you come from? What happened?”
His lashes flutter. He goes limp, head lolling. I nudge him, panic rising at touch of his unresponsive weight.
“Ange is on her way,” Cadence says, seemingly unconcerned. Which makes no sense, so it’s probably an act. Or a distraction technique. “You better come up with a good explanation for this before she gets here.”
“What happened to ‘we’?”
“Wasn’t my powers that failed to show up for the fight.”
My head spins. I think I’m going to be sick.
The floor beside Ash looks cool and inviting. I don’t know what just happened, and I’m not sure I want to know.
Except I do. The old me would have given up and waited for someone else to solve her problems. The new me is here to fight and win. I can’t let a little near-death trauma stop me now.
“Look, just tell me what happened. Why didn’t it work?” I sweep my hands through the air to illustrate its emptiness. “No threads. I can’t see theirs, or mine. What changed? Cadence? Hey!”
“I don’t know, okay? It’s not my fault.”
“Well, it’s not like I did anything differently.”
She doesn’t answer.
Sam crawls over, his face tight with pain. I’d forgotten about him. He shakes Ash’s shoulder, then looks at me reproachfully. “You said it was safe here.”
I stare past him at Ravel, standing on the edge of the crowd. Why are they all still here? They should have run when it became clear I was losing.
“Go away.” My voice is stronger than I expected. Yay me.
Ravel’s lips part, ashen and haggard under layers of streaked paint and glitter. He spreads his hands in helpless appeal, nails chipped and ragged.
I close my eyes and wait for him to leave. When I open them, he has.
Good. At least one of us is learning.
I stare numbly out across the crowd. I’m still sitting, so the view is mostly ripped stockings and short skirts and navel piercings. Some of the dancers are doing what they do best: ignoring the rest of the world. Sinking into self-absorbed fantasies. But more than a few pause at the spectacle we present.
I don’t need to know what their expressions look like, rigid with shock, horror, or numb disbelief under those bright, lying masks. Which is why my first sight of her is a pair of sturdy boots striding purposefully in our direction.
“I can’t carry both of you, you know,” Ange yells over the music, hands on her hips. “I can’t even carry one of you. What were you thinking? And what did you do to your hands?”
Ravel stands beside her, shifting his weight and twitching in his attempts to avoid my glare. I close my eyes. Open them. Think about closing them again.
“Did you at least win?” Ange demands.
Ravel winces.
Cadence snorts. “One of us did. I mean, do you see any bodies?”
I jut my chin at Ash’s prone form.
“He’ll be fine,” Cadence says, still trying for matter-of-fact. But a softer note creeps in.
I shake my head. No. We did not win.
“Great,” Ange huffs. “Well, come on, get up. You’ll have to help me haul him. Again.”
She has to pull me to my feet, grasping my forearm when she sees what’s become of my hands. Sam scrambles up to join us.
Ange eyes him suspiciously. “Who’s this?”
I look at him. Open my mouth. Think better of it. Shrug, and then wince as my latest wounds shriek louder than the lingering aches of the last crop. At least I actually won the battle I earned those in. “He’s coming with us.”
Ange’s lips thin.
“I’m Sam.” He peers at her. “You—you must be Amy’s sister?”
Ange gives me one piercing look before turning her back on the both of us. She pries Ash up off the floor, batting away Sam and my efforts to help, but lets Ravel direct two strangers to her side to help with the burden.
By the time we’re near the end of his territory and what I’ve come to think of as the beginning of Ange’s, Ash is semiconscious and can more or less keep himself upright with just Ange’s help. The strangers from Freedom peel off at a nod from Ravel. He seems to think he can follow us all the way back to Ange’s headquarters. That is, until she turns the full force of her formidable glare on him.
“Ange,” he whines. Then he turns to me, foolishly hopeful. “Flame . . .”
But I slump against the wall, hang my head, and ignore him until she sends him away.
Ange steers all of us back to her infirmary and our beds, grumbling all the way. She makes Amy take Lily out of the room first.
I won’t get to see their grand reunion with Sam. Kind of unfair, since I’m the reason he’s here—but since I nearly got him killed, it’s not like I’m in any position to complain.
This is not how I saw tonight ending.
The last thing I do before I pass out is promise myself I’ll do whatever it takes to get my magic back.