I whipped around, putting my back to the Victorian’s wood siding, and slid lower. Brayden did the same, pulling his phone from the pocket of his jeans.
“Nine-one-one,” a woman’s voice came faintly over the speaker.
“This is Brayden Duarte. I’m at 2406 Wintery Creek Road. A woman is threatening two people inside with a gun.”
I expanded my aura again, trying to see. But the shapes were blurry. I focused on Hayleigh.
Determination. Cold and clear.
My blood turned to ice. She’d do it. She’d shoot them. The police wouldn’t get here in time.
And if Riga died, so did our chances of changing the magic in Doyle. Oh, we’d figure it out eventually. She’d set us on a path, and I didn’t doubt we’d reach the end.
But how long would that take? How many people would die along the way? And meanwhile, the Black Lodges would keep sending their minions...
I darted to the front door.
“Jayce!” Brayden whisper-shouted, one hand over the phone, and launched himself at me.
I stopped, my finger hovering over the bell. My hand dropped.
He gripped my shoulder. “Jayce, no. The police will be here in ten minutes.”
“They don’t have ten minutes.”
His jawline firmed. “Wait around the corner. I’ll stall.”
“I can’t.”
Brayden’s gaze met mine, and in that moment I saw everything—our past, our future, everything we had to lose. But we always had something to lose. He could have a heart attack. I could wreck my truck. We were always living on a knife’s edge and were in denial about that fact. And I couldn’t lose him.
“Are you sure?” he asked.
I didn’t—couldn’t—respond. Because he wasn’t asking if I was sure about the timing, or sure about the threat to the people inside that house. Brayden was asking if I was willing. I nodded, hesitant.
He rang the bell.
“Are you sure?” Brayden repeated. A cowlick of dark hair stuck out by his ear. I remembered the last haircut I’d given him in our jumbled kitchen, his insistence that I cut it shorter, that he didn’t like his curls going off on their own.
I couldn’t risk him.
But he wasn’t mine to risk. He couldn’t respect himself otherwise. And neither could I, even if the risk hurt like hell. “Brayden,” I whispered.
The door opened.
Oonagh peered through the narrow gap. “Yes?”
Yes. I’d have to do something now. Apologize for the intrusion and walk away, or step forward.
Brayden nodded to me.
Forward then. “We know Hayleigh has a gun,” I said with my outdoor voice, so Hayleigh would hear. “And we know she killed Mac.”
Oonagh looked over her shoulder.
“Better let them in, then,” Hayleigh said.
Oonagh’s mouth trembled. “I’m sorry,” she whispered and stepped backward, opening the door wider. Oonagh shrank against one dusky blue wall.
Hayleigh stood in the hallway, beside the entry to the living room. In one quick movement she could shoot us or into the other room. I hated her efficiency.
Riga was out of sight, and I sensed she was still in the living room. I also sensed she was mad as hell. And I guessed it was mainly at herself.
Brayden stepped between me and Hayleigh, and I went rigid. Dammit.
“Hayleigh,” he said. “We’ve called the police. They know everything. There’s no sense to this. Put down the gun.”
“You don’t know anything,” she hissed.
“We know Mac was going to sell his part of the magazine,” I said shakily, “and that meant you’d be out.”
“He had no right. That magazine was my life too.”
“Why didn’t you just buy him out?” I asked.
“How were we supposed to get the money for that?” Hayleigh snapped.
Riga had been right. The murder had been about not taking the hard path, the right path. Hayleigh hadn’t wanted to face an uncertain future. Killing Mac had been easier.
“So he left you at the magazine office that morning,” I said. “Then you went home, grabbed your hunting rifle, and waited. You were a hunter, and a good shot. You knew he’d come down Main Street—everyone always does. You waited on a rooftop, and you shot him.”
“I was careful,” Hayleigh said. “I didn’t want to hurt anyone else, and I didn’t hurt anyone else.”
I edged to Brayden’s side. He flung out a muscular arm, blocking me.
“What I don’t understand is why you killed Aries Smith,” I said.
“Blackmail.” Riga’s disembodied voice floated from the living room. “He’d stolen Mac’s computer. He knew what Mac was planning, maybe he even saw something he shouldn’t have. And so he tried to blackmail Hayleigh.”
“He knew what I’d done.” Hayleigh’s face contorted. “He saw me coming down from the roof. He said he’d give me the evidence on Mac’s laptop for a price.”
“But he didn’t bring the computer,” Riga said. “And you killed him.”
Hayleigh’s nostrils flared. “I had to know who Mac was selling to. How else was I going to stop the sale?”
Good God. She’d planned to kill the buyer as well?
“But Oonagh knew Mac was planning on selling, too.” Riga’s voice was hard. “She just didn’t know who his buyer was. But he’d reach out to her, sooner or later.”
“All you had to do was wait,” Hayleigh snarled at her daughter-in-law. “Just wait for us to find a new partner. You have no reason to cash out, not when that magazine’s paying you a monthly income.”
“It was paying Mac five-hundred-dollars a month,” Oonagh said. “The money was nice, but not even Mac thought it was worth it. Every check reminded him of this place. And it would remind me of— It’s not worth it.”
Hayleigh’s gun swiveled toward Oonagh.
“And you tried to drop a gargoyle on me,” I said quickly. My voice trembled. Brayden, move. “You overheard me talking to Stetson, and you panicked. You tried to scare me off earlier, too, splashing red paint on our door.”
“I knew some idiot would talk to you eventually. Everyone talks to you. The sweet barista,” Hayleigh said, her voice thick with sarcasm.
A siren wailed, faint and too far away.
I thought of Mac, lying on Ground’s floor. She’d killed the boy she’d helped raise. She’d do this.
Brayden edged past Oonagh, and a new kind of terror seized me, cold and hard and distant. I knew in that moment I was no better than Riga, that I could kill. I would do anything to keep Brayden from Mac’s fate.
He extended his hand. “The police are on their way. It’s over.”
I channeled my emotions. I didn’t know what I was doing, I just knew emotions were my power. I let them boil, focusing them into a hot spear of energy.
“No.” Hayleigh’s face mottled. “It’s not. You’re not in control here. I’m in control.” She aimed the gun at Brayden. Her finger squeezed.
I released the energetic spear. It blasted toward Hayleigh.
There was a dark blur. A shot rattled the hallway, deafening. Light and heat exploded, shaking the house, and Hayleigh vanished.
Brayden staggered backward.
“Brayden,” I rasped and grabbed him, his bulk driving me against a wall. A picture frame crashed to the floor.
No. Not Brayden. I’d been too late. Black dots swam in front of my eyes. My legs wobbled beneath his weight. If we hadn’t come inside—
Brayden lurched forward and turned, patting his chest. “Where’d the bullet go?”
I stood frozen, my arms extended stupidly toward him. He was okay? “Are you—?”
“I’m fine,” he said. “I just tripped.”
“Where did Hayleigh go?” Oonagh croaked. The hallway was empty, except for the three of us. The wall at the end of the hallway smoked, a circle of blackened wallpaper peeling into ash.
The sirens grew louder.
I stared. I’d done it. I’d killed her, and something tore inside me.
“In here,” Riga shouted.
Brayden strode forward, my hand in his, dragging me along. I slowed at the entrance to the living room. It was empty. I’d killed Hayleigh. I’d used my magic to kill, and I couldn’t go back.
Brayden kept tugging me forward. He stopped in an entryway on the other side of the hallway. “Damn.”
I looked past him into a sleek, modern kitchen. Hayleigh lay face down on the wood-tile floor. Riga knelt beside her, one knee in the small of Hayleigh’s back. Hayleigh’s arm stuck upward at an awkward angle pinned between Riga’s thighs. The gun lay on the granite countertop.
My legs weakened. Hayleigh was alive. Alive. I hadn’t killed her. How was this possible?
“But… there was a shot,” Brayden said.
Riga nodded toward a cupboard, and a small, round hole in its door. “We’re okay in here.”
How had Riga gotten into the kitchen? Could she teleport? “How…?” Hayleigh was alive, and giddy warmth rushed into my chest. Riga had saved Hayleigh, and Brayden, and she didn’t know it, but she’d saved me too. “How did you do that?”
“I’ve got a few tricks,” Riga said.
Okay, I needed her to teach me how to do that.