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  Melissa whimpered, her eyes fixed on Brooke’s cast.

  He turned on her in a rage. “Goddamn it, Melissa, get your ass out there right now and bring Bryce in!”

  Without bothering to do up her shirt, Melissa tore the bedroom door open and fled, her feet pounding down the stairs.

  A Heller hunting expert. Brooke would have groaned if she could have.

  Oh, yeah. She was humped all right.

  Chapter 21

  Every Dark Bit of Her Being

  Maryanne

  Maryanne felt the heaviness of the late night. Nothing overwhelming, but she was starting to feel the press of it, from being out for so long. And the night wasn’t over yet. For any of them. They—she and Alex—were hovering up over the roof of the Walker house. Not sitting on it, of course. That would be impossible; they’d sink right through it if they tried. But still, they were quietly resting close to it. Beside her, Alex hovered quietly, lost in her own thoughts as they waited for Brooke.

  They’d followed her. At a distance, because neither she nor Alex had wanted Brooke to think she had the upper hand—that she could force them to tag along as she took off on her own. Poor Brooke. Maryanne shook her head. For such a lonely girl, she did everything she could to push the world away.

  But still, they had to watch over her. The dogs had scuttled into their doghouses inside the kennel at their approach. The girls—even Brooke—avoided the horse barn. None of them wanted to frighten those poor animals further. It might kill them. Besides, the barn was well lit tonight. Maryanne and Alex had watched as Brooke made a beeline for the Walker house. Watched as she slipped boldly inside Seth’s house, right through the front door.

  But what the heck was keeping her?

  As soon as Maryanne’s mind formed the question, it started forming potential answers. She imagined an assortment of scenarios, each involving Brooke wreaking havoc, and each more disturbing than the last. But, oh wow, not nearly as disturbing as they should have been! Not nearly as disturbing as the old pre-casting Maryanne would have found them, considering what revenge Brooke was capable of reaping. Or, as Maryanne had to admit, she herself was capable of reaping. Like running Mr. McKenzie off the road. But Alex’s warning from the gazebo was sticking in her mind, at least. And Alex was right. They had to keep this under control, and watch out for Brooke. They all had to cast with caution or else—The train of her thought derailed when the light snapped on below them, and a terrified scream cut into the night.

  It wasn’t a caster shout that only another caster could hear. Nor was it a primal scream that the world could hear and fear. This was a very high-pitched, frightened, human female scream coming from inside the house.

  “What the hell!” Alex straightened beside her.

  “That wasn’t Brooke!” Maryanne said, rising.

  Within seconds the yard light snapped on, and Maryanne saw the screamer all too clearly. A girl. She was screaming Bryce’s name now, her pale, bare feet nearly blurring as she beat it across the frozen lawn, long black hair streaming behind her.

  Melissa, she realized. Seth’s new girlfriend.

  Melissa’s open shirt fanned out behind her, and her arms pumped wildly as she raced toward the shed beside the horse barn as though the hounds of hell were on her heels. The fear on her face was unmistakable. She’d seen a Heller. Oh crap, she’d seen Brooke!

  “What’s Brooke done now?” Alex’s snapped.

  “More importantly, where is she now?” Even as Maryanne asked the question, Alex was already moving down toward the lone lit window. Maryanne followed. A second floor bedroom, she noted immediately. Seth’s bedroom, no doubt.

  Brooke should be out here. As soon as that light snapped on, she should have fled the house to rejoin the night.

  “We have to stay out of the light!” Alex warned.

  Maryanne nodded. “If we can.” They both stopped outside the window and peered in through the glass.

  Brooke! The fear that gripped Maryanne upon seeing Brooke trapped on the floor shocked her. Being out here had done nothing but dampen her emotions, stilling her fears and distancing her from her grief. But now, terror took hold. But not just terror. Seeing Brooke so helplessly entrapped by Seth, hurt and broken on the floor at his feet, cold rage began to burn in her chest.

  Back at Harvell House, her body broke into a cold sweat. She felt Brooke’s body struggle to move in that attic, just like Brooke’s cast struggled on Seth’s bedroom floor. But Brooke was helpless in both forms. Trapped with Seth Walker standing over her. The boy was trembling with his own fear, but he stood over Brooke nevertheless.

  Maryanne peered closer. Brooke’s black cast lay helpless beneath what appeared to be an old-fashioned poker. The depthless, empty blackness of her form didn’t detract from the helplessness of it. She could barely move beneath the fire-blackened object, not even to lift a hand or twitch a finger. But she did roll her head to the side to seemingly look to the window. Even through the glass, Maryanne could hear her weakening voice utter its desperate cry.

  Help me.

  Maryanne moved forward.

  “Don’t go through the glass!” Alex cried.

  Maryanne held up. “Why not?”

  “We don’t know what it’ll do to our casts!”

  With a roar that only the casters could hear, Alex flew in through the wall. She cried out in pain this time—a pain Maryanne couldn’t understand.

  Until she shot through the wall herself.

  It felt as if tiny knives ripped right through her and she cried out just as Alex had. Her original moaned back in the attic.

  What the hell just happened?

  Then she forgot to wonder, as Alex flew at Seth, menacingly close, then pulled back only to rush at him again. She paused out of Seth’s reach, pointing to him with a sharp, meaningful finger, then pointed to Brooke on the floor. Repeatedly.

  She was trying to scare him! Scare him into freeing Brooke. And he sure as hell looked scared!

  Well, while she did that, Maryanne would grab Brooke. She was reaching to knock the poker aside when Alex shouted at her.

  “Don’t touch the poker! It’s iron. You can’t move it. And it’ll weaken you, or hurt you.”

  Oh, crap! Alex knew about this? And she hadn’t shared it? Was that why she’d felt pain going through the old walls? Iron nails ripping through her cast? “More you haven’t told us, Alex!”

  “We don’t have time for that now!”

  Alex was right. They didn’t have time for it. But they’d damn well make time for it later. Right now—right freakin’ now—they had to get Brooke out of here before Bryce came in. While Maryanne and Alex might be able to fight off Seth if he suddenly attacked, bent on capturing more Hellers this night, their chances with Bryce here would be greatly diminished. Right now, with Seth alone in his terror, they had an advantage—they had a chance. But Alex’s gestures weren’t working. Seth was scared, looking at her with unblinking wide eyes and trembling as she soared and pointed. But he wasn’t moving. He wasn’t releasing Brooke. He was on edge—but not over the edge.

  Maryanne knew what she had to do. She felt what she had to do—the pure instinctive, beating, growing, living urge of it. The only thing she really could to save her sister, Brooke. Terrorize this boy some more. Bite at his sanity, shake him to his core. He was hurting her sister—she’d do what she had to do.

  She screamed. Maryanne screamed with every dark bit of her being. The walls shook with the sound of it, and so did Seth. He covered his ears with his hands. He closed his eyes tightly and fell to the floor and curled down toward his knees, as if to dampen the sound from every sense.

  Alex stood still now, directly across from Maryanne so the two were facing each other. She opened her mouth and unleashed her own unearthly cry. Maryanne looked at her as she did. And their eyes met.

  Their eyes!

  Maryanne could see Alex’s eyes! Though etched in gray against the black cast, she could see all her facial feat
ures in these moments as they vented their fiercest cries. But she could see more than Alex’s features. More than her dark eyes and her snake-bitten lip. She could see her pain. The all-consuming pain lined her face as she wailed with her deeply drawn-down mouth. Maryanne could see the depth of her hurt, somehow could see the loss, the anger, the fear on Alex’s dark cast face. Gray tears were etched deep into her cheeks. Oh she’s been so wronged! And her eyes... God, her eyes were staring straight at Maryanne’s own. And Maryanne had to wonder—she had to know—just what dark depths Alex must be seeing in her own eyes.

  Seth screamed. He reached out a hand toward Brooke—to free her—then withdrew it again. “No, dammit! I... I won’t do it! I won’t let a Heller go!”

  His words were frantic as he lay on his side on the floor. But he wasn’t freeing Brooke. Their cries—their two primal screams weren’t enough!

  But then there was another primal scream, joining in the black cast chorus.

  It started from outside, but like lightening, shrieked into the Walker house, through Seth’s bedroom wall.

  Maryanne and Alex were startled into silence as they watched. The dark cast flew in and hovered directly over Seth and for the moment, they couldn’t see its face. The strange cast hovered there—arms outstretched as if to grasp his body, her hands locked in ready claws as if to steal his soul.

  Seth looked up. He screamed into the shrieking face before him. The cast turned toward Maryanne and Alex, and Maryanne knew immediately what she had to do. Alex did also, and now simultaneously the three dark casts raged their gut-wrenching screams into the night.

  Maryanne was transfixed by the gray-lined cast face before her, revealed with the stranger’s cries. As clearly as she’d seen pain and loss and everything else on Alex’s cast, she saw the features just that clearly in this strange cast before her. There was a madness. A wildness. An anger struck so deep.

  Crying now, Seth moved. He crawled the short distance at the feet of the three shrieking casters to reach Brooke, and he pushed the poker aside. Then he curled into a fetal position and closed into himself again. “Leave me... leave me alone.”

  “Get up, Brooke,” Alex hissed as the casts relinquished their screaming.

  A door slammed below them—Bryce was on the way.

  “I... I can’t,” Brooke replied weakly.

  Immediately, the strange cast was at her side, wedging herself behind her right shoulder, Maryanne went to the left. Awkwardly, Alex grabbed her legs. There was no weight to Brooke’s cast, but the heaviness was somehow deeper. Weary. Draining.

  “Hurry!” Maryanne cried. There was thumping on the hallway outside now—Bryce was running toward the room.

  The three carried Brooke toward the wall by which they’d entered. They’d almost made their escape when Bryce Walker burst into the room, shoving the already open door wider. The mysterious new caster shrieked and darted toward him. She was going to attack! Maryanne knew as sure as anything. But as the door banged against the wall and back again with the force of the hand behind it, the caster stopped.

  “I... Ira?” Her cast voice croaked and trembled as her head bent, looking down at the iron manacles locked in Bryce’s hand.

  The cast zoomed hastily away as Bryce swung the handcuffs, then further back as he swung his left fist. And it was Alex’s hand on the strange caster’s shoulder that finally pulled her from the room, through the wall, and into the pitch-black night.

  Maryanne and Alex braced themselves for the pain of the exit, but Brooke cried out with it.

  Every light in the Walker house came on as the four casters made their way to the woods. Struggling with Brooke and led by the strange caster, they stopped there just within the cover of tall, dark pines, close to the needle covered ground. They could hear Bryce’s shouts as he banged out of the house, Melissa’s frightened whispers. Seth was in the yard now, too, and he was still crying.

  “We’re... we’re safe?” Brooke whispered. Guilt rode through her question. She leaned back on Maryanne.

  “Not until we get home,” Maryanne said. And oh, God, what a journey that was going to be. Between them, she and Alex were going to have to carry Brooke’s strangely heavy cast, because she seemed unable to soar on her own. It was as though she’d been drained completely by her ordeal with the iron poker, turning her into dead weight. And Maryanne wasn’t feeling so good herself. They’d been tired to start with, having been out longer than usual. Then that round trip through the wall with all those old iron nails and the spurt of speed they’d put on to get away had pretty much taken the rest of Maryanne energy. But at least they had a fighting chance, thanks to this the stranger. “Thank you,” she said. “Thank you for helping us free our friend. But... who are you?”

  The question hung, unanswered.

  As Maryanne studied the stranger, the shock of it finally hit home. There was another like them! Another with the power to cast! Another possessed of the secret knowledge they shared.

  “Go now,” the stranger said in a rusty voice, then started soaring off.

  “Wait,” Alex called. “Can’t you help us? Brooke can’t fly by herself and—”

  The strange caster paused and turned back. “I know. I’ll bring help.”

  Help? What kind of help? Were there still more like them?

  “Come on,” Alex said. “We need to haul ass.”

  Each with an arm under Brooke, they started toward home. Every yard they covered was an excruciating effort of will. Maryanne wanted to talk to Alex, get her impressions about the stranger—God, the caster—but couldn’t spare the energy. She could barely think let alone talk. Not if they were going to keep moving forward.

  Then the stranger was there again, moving up on Alex’s right.

  They stopped.

  “Here,” the stranger said, holding out her hand. “For her.”

  A jolt of shock zinged through Maryanne when she realized the significance of that outstretched hand. Holy crap, she held an object! Whatever it was, it didn’t pass through her dark fingers. How was that possible? Unless... No, it couldn’t be iron. It wasn’t debilitating her.

  “What... what is it?” Brooke asked.

  “Take it, Brooke,” Alex urged. “It’s safe.”

  The strange caster nodded, and Maryanne found herself joining in the encouragement. Whoever this stranger was, she was like them. One of them who’d come to their aid. She was a caster in the night. She knew their secrets. Knew of this power. And as sure as Maryanne had seen the pain in the others, this caster had seen the pain on their faces—she knew they suffered as she had.

  Brooke reached out a trembling hand, but instead of slipping the thin circle into her palm, the caster slipped it around Brooke’s wrist.

  Brooke levitated under her own power. Not immediately, not with a snap as if shot with adrenaline. But slowly, and definitely, she regained her own strength. Part of it anyway. Maryanne felt her pull away, no longer needing their support.

  “Copper,” the strange caster croaked in that rusty voice. “Copper... help.”

  Her voice was childlike. No, not her voice. Her speech. It was as if her words were unpracticed, shy almost. But her size was comparable to their own. This wasn’t the cast of a child. And hadn’t this one known more than they how to fight Seth? How to truly terrorize as she raised her voice in a scream? And hadn’t she called out a strange name to Bryce? No, not a strange name! One Maryanne had heard before.

  Ira, she’d said. That had to be Ira Walker. When she’d looked into Bryce’s eyes, she’d thought she’d seen his grandfather, the Heller hunter.

  “Hello, Connie,” Alex suddenly said.

  The dark cast whirled her head around. “You... you know me?”

  “I know you.” Alex answered quietly. “I know everything.”

  Maryanne raised her hands to her head. It couldn’t be! Connie Harvell was dead! Connie Harvell was murdered! Connie was... here amongst them, in the Mansbridge night.

  Bright light
s moved through the trees, past them. Instinctively the four casters held very still to blend in with the shadows as the truck lights swept by.

  “Bryce,” Brooke said, her voice regaining its strength. “He’ll be pissed. If he finds us—”

  “Can you make it home now?” Maryanne asked her.

  Brooke raised a hand to rub the copper around her wrist. “Yeah,” she said. “Yeah, I think I can now.”

  “Copper... helps,” the strange caster—er, Connie—repeated. And she produced two more circular twists of thin metal. She handed a small wire circle to Alex, and then one to Maryanne. The girls slipped them around their wrist. “Copper... makes you stronger. Takes the pain... away.”

  The truck lights swept the woods again before the vehicle stopped and a car door slammed. Bryce was coming; thrashing through the woods.

  “We have to go right now!” Brooke said, clearly not looking for another challenge this night.

  Alex turned to Connie’s cast. “Come with us!”

  “No.” She shook her head as she rose, and began moving through the trees. “I’ll... see you all again.”

  Maryanne believed her with every dark bit of her being, as the three of them turned and soared off toward Harvell House.

  Chapter 22

  Hard Landing

  Alex

  “Dammit!” Brooke yelled, then proceeded to turn the air blue with a few more pungent curses.

  The old Alex would have laughed out loud.

  Hell, if she wasn’t so tired, the new Alex might have laughed, too.

  Brooke had just tried to re-enter the attic through the stained glass window, but her outstretched hand had bounced right back, causing her to smack herself in the forehead.

  “Apparently copper bracelets do not travel through glass,” Alex observed.

  “Thank you for that news flash,” Brooke fumed.

  Brooke had been first to the window, anxious to rejoin her body after the terrifying events of the night. Alex couldn’t blame her. But after tormenting Seth Walker again, maybe she deserved that smack upside the head—a wake-up call from the Madonna.