‘I can’t!” she cried, wringing her hands. “I’m not ready.”

I sighed. That was the ironclad argument of every single person who’d ever done something bad and kept it a secret. I’m not ready. “When do you see yourself being ready, Runa? When he asks you to move in with him? When he proposes?”

The witch hung her head, suddenly silent. Dammit, Scarlett! Stop feeling sorry for this person, I thought. I couldn’t help it, though. I’m such a softie. I dropped back down onto the bench. “Could you…I don’t know, choose him somehow?” I asked gently. “Tell Kirsten you want to be with him?”

“If I went against Kirsten, I’d have to leave the society,” she said mournfully. “They’re, like, my home. Nobody leaves, once you’re in.”

I rolled my eyes at that particular Godfatheresque comment, but something about it made a little spark in my brain. Runa began to say something else, but I held up both hands like a traffic cop. “Wait. I may be having some kind of thought here.” Once you’re in…“I need to go,” I said suddenly. “I need to talk to your cousin.” I gritted my teeth. “About a couple of things.”

Before I could even step forward, my cell phone rang, the ordinary ring-ring sound again. I dug it out of my pocket, but it was already silent. Who calls and only lets it ring once? I checked the display.

Kevin.

“Oh, shit.” I broke into a sprint, Runa yelling a question behind me, but I hadn’t even made it around the corner of the house before I heard the screams.

Chapter 23

I had made it about six steps around the house when I pulled up short. Think it through, Scarlett. Jesse was out front; he would have heard the screaming. He was probably approaching the front of the house right now, gun in hand. If I burst into view, I was going to distract him, and if I wasn’t close enough to cancel out the witch’s magic right away, she’d have the perfect opportunity to hurt him. If she hadn’t done so already. Choking on my frustration, I reversed direction and raced back toward the sunroom door. If I could come up behind the witch, I could neutralize her, and Jesse could cover her with the gun. Simple.

As I raced toward the sunroom doors, witches were pouring out, and I had to shoulder them aside to push my way into the house. It wasn’t like the mob stampedes you see in the movies: some of the witches weren’t running with the others; they milled around asking questions, halfheartedly letting themselves be pulled toward the doors. Nervous laughter mixed in with shouts and screams. “What happened, though?” someone hollered. “Where are we all going?” It felt like I was pushing against water out of a fire hose. And then I heard another witch yell, “Vampire! It’s a vampire!”

Olivia. She was here.

Of course, there was the possibility that the whole supervillain team had shown up: Olivia, the witch, and the golem. That didn’t feel right, though. They’d worked separately this whole time, with Olivia doing most of the legwork, and if they really didn’t know I was here, this wasn’t their big endgame. No, it had to be Olivia alone. I knocked over one of the Narnia witches but didn’t slow down to apologize. I headed straight for the front of the house, desperately wishing I knew where Jesse was. The little fireplace room had emptied, as had the kitchen and the entryway—but the front door stood open, and a man lay sprawled half in, half out of the house. There. I skidded to a stop as I recognized Kevin, the bouncer witch—and saw the spreading pool of blood below him. I crouched to check his pulse, but I wasn’t very surprised when I felt none. His eyes already stared upward, his face completely blank. Too late, too late. I heard a crunch as I shifted my weight, and I looked down and saw bits of his cell phone under my boot. She had crushed it.

Instinctively, I rose and threw myself against the wall next to the front door, panting. I could hear shouts outside, but I couldn’t make out the words or voices—there was music playing somewhere in the house, and still plenty of screaming. I closed my eyes, took a few deep breaths, and concentrated on my radius. This was it, my first real test. I felt for the edges of my circle. It took longer than it had before, but eventually I was able to hold it all in my mind. I breathed in, breathed out, and thought expand.

And then all hell broke loose, because the first thing my circle found on the porch was Kirsten.

The second I felt her, I opened my eyes and dropped the expansion, but it was too late. I stepped awkwardly over Kevin’s body and burst onto the porch just as Jesse began firing at Olivia.

I took it all in in an instant. I’d made the wrong call. Olivia must have been on the porch when Kirsten came running out. The witch had managed to hold Olivia in place with a spell while Jesse advanced on her from the street, presumably to try to put handcuffs on her until I arrived. When I’d expanded my radius, I had killed Kirsten’s magic and cut the cord holding Olivia still. And the first thing the vampire had done was race farther away from me—and straight toward Jesse.

“The heart,” I screamed. “Shoot the heart!” Jesse’s face was frozen in concentration as he emptied his gun at the vampire—but she was too fast. She veered away from her direct course toward Jesse, and I saw bits of skin explode on her arms, her abdomen, her thigh. She had reached the line of cars when his gun clicked empty, and Olivia paused, a wicked smirk spreading across her face. Why was she pausing? Jesse moved to reload, and Kirsten started toward Olivia, probably trying to get far enough away from me to freeze Olivia again. I tensed to throw myself backward to get Kirsten out of my radius faster, but Olivia’s face changed again, and her hand moved into the nylon jacket she was wearing.