The banshee’s wailing dug into my core and gnawed on my bones. Its magic blanketed out from it, soft and pleasant and deadly. It would be a lovely song to hear on one’s deathbed, and that was what scared me most—part of me wanted to let her carry me out of my body and this world.

I was in serious danger.

Defend yourself, you flugging moron!

I stopped randomly, no longer totally in control, and turned. The thing was forty feet from me and closing the distance between us fast. I wouldn’t have made it to Reagan, if she was even in the same area. I dropped the stone, and the weave flowered in my fingers before I even properly willed it, springing to life and spiraling out. A wall to stop the thing. A cage to contain it. A lullaby to still it and, above all, forgiveness.

I didn’t know why that last bit was so crucial, but I felt it. I knew it. It would root both the spell and the beast.

After that, I’d wait for someone to do whatever they would with it. I didn’t want to be responsible for its demise. That felt wrong, to me. Unnatural.

The irony didn’t fail to register, but the notion was too firm to shake.

Twenty feet and bearing down. Fifteen.

I unleashed my spell, pushing my hands forward to help throw it. Tighter than any weave I’d yet done, and sparkling like a disco ball, it smacked into the creature. Tight, sparkling bands wrapped around it, stopping its progress. Caging it.

Look at me with the bedazzled spells.

The creature howled and dodged right, but my magic was there, barring the way. Another wall went up, then another. The cage shrank, smaller and smaller until the creature was shaking, fighting my magic.

Pounding feet came up behind me. “Hurry,” Reagan said, but her words were drowned out as jets of magic fired from my left and right. Weak spells, poorly constructed, they had a weird, stale quality that made me wrinkle my nose.

A moment later, I saw why. The small group we’d left behind had darted in, cracking casings as they approached. These were bought spells, used on the fly.

“They need a better distributor,” I murmured, catching a few of the intents but not all, as the magic covered the banshee. It wasn’t good news for the creature.

She shrieked and wailed, held in place and now writhing. Death’s chariot would be awaiting her on the other side, and I knew she wouldn’t come back. That was the price a magical person paid for breaking the rules.

“Got her!” Garret ran in, cracking one more spell to seal the deal.

The creature shrieked one last time before sizzling out before our eyes. A dark fuzz accompanied my dissipating spell.

“We did it.” Garret smiled from ear to ear, his walk becoming a strut. “I knew we could do it. Mine was the killing spell. That goes in the books.”

“You didn’t do squat, you weasel,” Reagan yelled, stalking forward. Her cool from dealing with the banshee was completely gone. “That was all Penny. She lured that thing, trapped it, and was just about to disband it when you morons tramped through. She didn’t need you.”

“It was chasing her all over the grass!” Garret said as the captain stalked into the area. “We saw it.”

“I wasn’t going to kill it,” I said, fatigue washing over me. I’d poured too much power into the spell. Then again, maybe it had been needed. “It felt wrong.”

“See?” Garret pointed at me.

“That didn’t mean she needed you, moron,” Reagan said. “She could’ve kept it there all night.”

“It was chasing her!” Garret jabbed a finger at me again in renewed intensity.

“Until she trapped it. I know you’re dumb, Garret, but at least try to communicate with smarter beings.”

“I didn’t see any spell.” Garret crossed his arms over his chest. The other peacekeepers, as Reagan had called them, gathered around to watch the spectacle, most of them out of breath from running in. Even the captain stood by placidly, watching. I got the distinct impression that this wasn’t the first showdown between Garret and Reagan.

“She’s a natural. You can’t see what she does. But did you see that thing stop in midair, didn’t you?”

All the peacekeepers looked around at each other. The captain said, “We were running in, readying our spells. Last I saw, it was chasing her. Then my people showed up with their spells.”

Reagan’s movements slowed down and she braced her hands on her hips. My small hairs stood on end and I edged away. This was a bad sign. It meant heads were about to be kicked in.

“Captain, why do you think I was hanging out back there?” She gestured behind her.

“Because you’re a coward,” Garret said.

“Shut up, Garret, or you’ll walk away with another broken nose,” the captain said.

“Because she had it. She was in the zone. She’s new, so sure, she needed to run off the jitters, but when she did, she locked it down. I mean”—Reagan threw out her hand at the spot where the banshee had been—“since when do banshees stand idle, waiting for mages to throw spells at them?”

The captain shifted and looked around at his crew. “Is that true?”

“Why does it matter?” I asked, ready to go home. “I trapped it; they killed it. Justice served.”

“Your role remains to be proved,” Garret said.

“Well?” the captain pushed.

The woman with fuzzy hair and the man in his forties both shrugged. The others shifted and looked at their feet. With all the commotion, adrenaline and (I guessed) no small amount of fear, their brains had been in overdrive. No one had noticed.

“It’s fine, let’s—”

“It’s hers,” Reagan said, cutting me off. “It’s hers.”

The captain started nodding until Garret said, “No way. She’s not even a legit part of this operation.”

The captain stilled before nodding again. “He’s right. This goes down as a group win.”

“What?” Reagan said, incredulously. “You couldn’t get it done either time you tried before, but suddenly it went easy on you, and you don’t think it had anything to do with Penny?”

The captain shrugged, looking at the place the banshee had stood. “You were hired. She was not, something I made clear before we started out. Had you bagged it, you would’ve gotten the tag. As it is, it was a group win. Sorry, Penny. Next time, get on the books.”

“I got the kill shot,” Garret said, wiggling his pointer finger like the captain had a book out and was writing in it. “Did you hear me, captain?”

“Explode him, Penny. He’s earned it,” Reagan said, shaking her head and turning toward the cars.

Garret flinched and jogged backward, his wide eyes on me.

The guy was extremely annoying, no doubt about it, but my dog wasn’t in this fight.

I turned and hurried up to Reagan. “You intentionally didn’t engage? When that thing was chasing me?”

“Well, I would’ve engaged at first, but you ran away from me. I figured that meant you wanted a little more time. So I gave you a little more time. Then I thought it would overtake you, but I would have needed to get closer to use my magic. By then, you were running away from me again. Honestly, if you need help, running away from your partner isn’t the best idea.”

“Hindsight.”

She scoffed. “Well, anyway, by the time I was thinking about helping again, you were facing it. Great work, by the way. Why didn’t you kill it, though? That would’ve been easier than trapping it. And we wouldn’t have had to deal with this nonsense.”

“It didn’t feel right.”

“Then why not just banish it and let the other side of the veil sort it out?”

“What?”

She turned to me with a confused expression before a look of understanding crossed her face. “Ah. Right. You didn’t know that bit. My bad.”

28

“Is this why you don’t have partners? Because you only give them enough information to get themselves killed?” I asked, amazingly calm in the car on the ride back to Reagan’s house.

Reagan hadn’t even waited to give the others a proper farewell. She’d walked straight to the car, gotten in, and taken off.