Basically, it was more like him than her. He should probably just leave it there and make the last stone he sent to her something truly exceptional.

He fired off one more spell into the ruins. A scream rose before cutting off. Someone stood up from behind the rock wall forty feet in front of him. A jet of blue raced toward him.

He rolled, annoyed that he was nearly soaked now, and felt a surge from the power stone. If he were a betting man, he’d say the stone was desperate to be used.

Is this what Penny feels when she’s around the stones?

Pulling on it, he amped up the spell he was weaving, adding a touch more energy to the effort and spicing it up with a little extra nastiness. There was that lack of moral character he was talking about. Let Penny try to tell him he wasn’t evil now.

The spell plunged through the mage’s chest, then ballooned out, ripping his body apart. He barely had time to scream.

“I really should just leave you here,” Emery said to the power stone, still using the extra boost to form a spear to send through the air at the last mage he could see. She took a big step forward and shoved her hands in front of her, trying to use her body for an extra push or something. Emery hadn’t seen it done before. Maybe it worked, but it sure looked stupid.

He added an acidic component to his spell and sent it off before she could fire hers. Rather than watch the spell’s trajectory, he snatched the power stone off the ground in all its humdrum, dull glory, and turned in a circle, seeing if anyone else planned to pop up like a jack-in-the-box.

The mage near the ruins was working on something else, but she didn’t get a chance to fire it off. Emery’s spell had torn her initial spell apart without dissipating, and was carrying on toward her.

Smarter than the average bear, the mage turned to run. But too late.

Emery’s spell smacked into her back. The scream sailed across the green fields before ending in a ragged gurgle.

Back at his bike, Emery tucked his stone away, still looking for anyone hiding among the rocks. No one had made a move.

“I should’ve gone for a truck or something,” Emery said to the stone, then laughed. He was talking to rocks now. Penny had turned him into a weirdo like her.

His thoughts drifted back to her. He hadn’t had any communication with Darius for weeks. Last he’d heard, Penny was safe and sound, living and training with the Bankses, a mostly calm dual-mage pair with decades of experience.

She had the life she deserved. Balanced, just like she was.

7

“Mother trucker. Holy fudge sticks…butter frack…nickel turdswallop!” Sweat poured down my face. My hair clung to my cheeks. I’d been on the defense for about twenty minutes and couldn’t get out from under my attackers.

“Butter frack?” Reagan called out. “What are you even saying?”

She’d been taunting me the entire time. It was as bad as the newbie vampire continually dashing at me, only to jerk to a stop twenty feet away and stiffly back off.

I tore down the next spell, one I recognized, but when I went to retaliate…nothing. My mind went completely blank again. I just stood there, daft and blinking, waiting for whatever came next.

“Stop.” Reagan pushed forward from the wall. She looked as frustrated as I felt.

The mages stationed around the room lowered their hands, most of them hardly taxed. Callie palmed her helmet, and her bulldog expression said she had an I told you so headed Reagan’s way on my behalf. Dizzy gave me a supportive thumbs-up, and for some reason, that was the worst of all.

Last but certainly not least, the green monster dashed forward again.

I staggered backward. Darius flinched.

Time slowed down.

The mages hadn’t so much as reacted, but the vampires had already braced themselves to move. Their muscles flexed. They were two heartbeats away from surging forward to grab the newbie.

They would never make it in time.

As that thought ran through my head, I saw Reagan’s eyes widen. Her shoulders turned, as though she were about to fling out a hand.

I didn’t have time to look around in wonder.

The green vampire bore down on me, its magic vile and intense and boiling.

Its intentions were clear: Nourishment. Destruction.

It intended to kill me, and no one would get there in time to stop it.

The Mr. Happy-Go-Lucky stone pulsed out a shock wave of power. It hit me dead center, slicing through the film of the vampire’s acidic, rotting magic, giving me a boost and a push at the same time.

I needed to act.

Another heartbeat and the vampire was ten feet from me and launching into the air. His fangs dripped saliva. His claws clicked before spreading.

My temperamental third eye—my souped-up intuition—took over.

Survive.

I closed my eyes, feeling the currents around me. Bending the vampire’s magic into my own. Using the resources in my belt, yanking on the power in the stones littered across the floor, and stealing from the mages’ satchels.

Kill it or it will kill you, I thought, time running out. Kill it or it will kill you. The newbie seemed to hang suspended in the air, bearing down. The second his monster form landed on my body, I would be done.

Rage pushed at me from one of the stones, giving me another boost. Ice and fire rolled through my blood, carrying Reagan’s signature flare, and I felt a wave of primal protectiveness from one of the vampires—Darius. Energy flared around me and I sucked it all in.

My fingers danced to the beat of my will, pulling the various strands of magic together faster than I could think. Responding to the need of the moment. Using every resource and type of magic available to me.

The newbie was mere feet away.

Instinctively, I pulled back and slapped my palms together. My eyes blinked open.

Blaring white light exploded from my hands. It burst into an array of colors and then hardened into a shiny wall. The vampire’s face, one foot from my own, smashed into hard, colorful air. Bone cracked. Its body hit next, like smacking a force field.

The wall wrapped around the falling body, covering it from head to toe. It condensed, and bones popped like fireworks.

“Oh, ew.” I didn’t have time to retch.

Without warning, an unseen hand slapped me to the side and sent me sprawling. Swampy green limbs scooped me up and ripped me away as a flash of pasty white took up a post between me and what was left of my attacker.

“Gross, gross, gross. Marie, put me down.” I held my hands away from her strangely clammy skin.

She didn’t comment, instead dropping me by the wall and standing in front of me. I peered around her knobby knee.

Reagan stood with a transformed and naked Darius. The squeezed and definitely dead vampire lay mangled at their feet, oozing a black sort of goo.

“Gross,” I breathed, fire climbing up my esophagus. I was not cut out for all the death and mayhem of this new magical life. I’d had no time to gear up for the nasty things I now saw regularly.

Reagan and Darius’s gazes pointed in different directions, not landing on any one thing, as though they were trying to play it cool. Between their flat expressions and the mages’ antsy shifting, fear crept into me. Doing a spell like that in the Mages’ Guild, where I’d been surrounded by enemies, was one thing. Doing it in practice was entirely another. But then again, that vampire would’ve killed me.

Right?

My rocks started to release a pounding beat of magic, reacting to my anxiety. Magic drifted up and collected above my head, roiling in a cloud only visible to me.

Which meant I was the only one who knew I was not completely in control and, based on my current feelings, was quite possibly dangerous.

“You should probably hold my hands down,” I said to Marie.

Darius’s head snapped up and his eyes immediately found mine. His head ticked a fraction, and without his having said a word, Reagan came striding toward me, her expression still flat.

“I got her, Marie,” she said when she approached. “We’ll just go for a little walk.”

Marie, still in her ugly form, stepped aside.

“What, ah…” Reagan stopped short. She glanced upward before lifting her hands to feel my cloud. “What have you got brewing up there?” Her head tilted to the side. “That’s…” A smile spread across her face. “That is the stuff, right there. I mean, it’s terrifying, don’t get me wrong. Marie, you might want to run. But that is some interesting and complex spell working. Is it…” She squinted and looked up and to the left. “Is it actually a spell? I’m having a hard time figuring out…”