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“You’re at Five Points,” Ethan said, sinking into the chair next to Kierse’s bed. “You saved my life.”
Kierse’s eyes lifted to Ethan’s. He didn’t look like she’d saved his life. “I did?”
“Ethan was drugged,” Gen said softly. “You showed up and drew the drugs out of him with your . . . with your bare hands.”
Her bare hands? What were they even talking about? And then she felt it—the magic. “Oh god.”
She turned her head and vomited into a wastebasket next to the bed. She threw up the entire contents of her stomach. And then she threw up some more.
She hadn’t been this sick since the wish powder. Right. The memory of what she had done flooded back to her all at once. This was wish powder.
After she emptied her stomach, she flopped back in the bed and waited for the room to stop spinning. She was a wreck, but at the same time, everything about her awareness felt different. As if the world had settled a second layer over her consciousness. Now she didn’t understand how she had missed it. Would it always feel this overwhelming in its intensity? Or would it eventually feel normal? As if the world had never once been so dull?
“I remember,” she told her friends. “I remember everything.”
Gen and Ethan exchanged a look.
“You used . . . magic, right?” Gen said. “Did Graves teach you that?”
“Yes,” she said. Then also: “No. I mean, he tried to train me, but I only figured it out to save Ethan and the others.”
Gen blanched, and Ethan dropped his gaze to his hands. There was something they weren’t saying.
“The others,” Kierse whispered. “What happened to Cara and the other two wolves?”
Gen swallowed. “They . . . they didn’t make it.”
Kierse realized then that her other arm was bandaged. She remembered Cara slicing her claws into her as she tried to dredge the magic from the wolf. But Kierse hadn’t been strong enough. She hadn’t trained long enough, and she had broken the connection.
“I let them die,” she whispered in horror.
“This isn’t your fault,” Ethan said at once.
Kierse felt tears gather on her lashes. But it was, wasn’t it? The wish powder in the city was because of her thievery. The wish powder to Ethan was targeted at her. It all came back to Graves, but none of this would have happened if she hadn’t accepted that first job. If she had decided to back out because she didn’t have enough information. She was so focused on the score that she didn’t prepare enough. And now people were dead on her watch.
“It is,” she said hoarsely. “It is my fault.”
“You saved Ethan’s life,” Gen reminded her.
“I wasn’t strong enough to save the others.”
“It wasn’t your responsibility,” Ethan said, taking her hand gently. “You did what you could do, and I’m forever grateful.”
Kierse nodded, closing her eyes and holding the tears at bay. This was because of Imani. This was revenge. She would remember it, and she would get stronger.
No one would ever die on her watch again.
“Kierse,” Gen said. “When you drew the magic out of Ethan . . . I felt something, too.”
She pushed down all the guilt and pain and opened her eyes to look at her beautiful friend. “You felt your magic.”
“My magic,” she said in awe.
“And Ethan’s.”
Ethan balked. “I don’t have magic.”
“You do,” she told him. “I don’t know how, but you do.”
“I felt it, too,” Gen told him.
“I don’t know what either of you can do or what you are. I still don’t have any answers for myself, but we will find them out together,” she promised. “All I can say is that there’s a reason you can read tarot.” She shifted her gaze from Gen to Ethan. “There’s a reason you can grow plants in the winter.”
Ethan’s eyes flicked to the dozens of new plants he had growing all over the room. “That’s not magic.”
“It’s something,” she told him.
“And we’re all together in it,” Gen said.
“Yes,” Kierse said. “Like a thread that’s knotted between us.”
Gen looked hopeful. Ethan was skeptical. But she’d felt it, just as Gen said. Her friends weren’t as perfectly human any more than she was.
And there was only one way to get answers.
Her eyes widened in alarm. “Wait, how long was I out?”
“Three days,” Ethan told her.
Kierse reeled. “Three days?” She counted the days in her head. “Oh fuck, is it the solstice?”
“Day before,” Gen told her. “The night of the twentieth. The full moon is tomorrow. So the wolves are all on lockdown under the club. We were going to meet Maura as soon as you woke up.”
“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” she said, flinging the blankets off of her.
Three. Fucking. Days.
“I have to get to Graves.”
“You’re going back?” Ethan asked in disbelief.
“I have to,” she said, coming to her feet and wobbling. She felt woozy, but she needed to get to him as soon as possible.
