Page 43 of That Ain’t Witchcraft

“I’m trying to believe that,” said Sam reluctantly. “I know … I know I’m being sort of stupid, and I know you’re not going to dump me for some guy just because he has the ability to wax his chest and have it stick. But this is all new to me, too.”

“I know,” I said, and kissed him again. “It’s okay. It’s okay. I’m in this for the long haul. You and me against the world, right?”

“The world won’t know what hit it,” said Sam, before kissing me in earnest. I leaned against him, enjoying a moment where nothing was wrong, and nothing needed me to fix it, and I was just a girl with her guy, sitting on the dock while the sun shone.

“That is disgusting,” said a familiar, British-accented voice. “Genuinely vile. Bestiality, Annie? Really? I knew you were dallying with filth, but this …”

I shoved away from Sam, hands going for the knives in my shirt. His tail was in the way, keeping me from getting to my weapons.

“Sam! Let go!” I shouted.

Leonard Cunningham was on the bank not fifteen feet away, a crossbow in his hands and a sneer on his face. He looked as revolted as he sounded.

Sam unwrapped his tail from around my wrist as Leonard raised the crossbow and prepared to fire. There wasn’t time to throw a knife, and even if there had been, I knew the consequences of me killing Leonard—heir apparent to the entire damn Covenant—would be much more extreme than the consequences of him killing either one of us. I could kick off a whole damn war. So I took a guess as to which of us he was about to shoot, and I shoved Sam off the dock as hard as I could.

The last thing I saw before Sam hit the water was his face, eyes wide, bafflement giving way to horrified understanding.

A sharp snapping sound and an accompanying pain pulled my attention back to Leo. I looked down. The crossbow bolt was sticking out of my left shoulder, just above the collarbone.

“Thought you weren’t going to start attacking me when you still thought you could recruit me,” I said, words made thin by shock.

“I was aiming for the monster,” he spat.

“Oh. Cool. Because so am I.” I smiled wanly and allowed myself to topple to the side, following Sam into the icy waters of the lake.

Twelve

“Nothing—nothing—is more important than making it home alive.”

–Evelyn Baker

In a lake, injured, sinking, because that’s a great way to spend an afternoon

THE WATER WAS COLD.

That doesn’t quite cover it. The water was fucking cold, the kind of cold that makes a girl think a supernova might be a good time. If there had been any question whatsoever of whether the crossroads had my magic, the plunge would have answered it once and for all, because there was no way I could have stopped myself from involuntarily setting the lake boiling.

The crossbow bolt was still in my shoulder. A numb ache spread out from the wound, one that had nothing to do with cold, and everything to do with whatever tranquilizing agent Leo had spread along the shaft. I wasn’t willing to consider the thought that it might have been poison. If it was poison, I was going to drown. Simple as that.

Well, no. Not simple as that. If I died here, there wouldn’t be anyone to stand between my friends and the Covenant, or to keep James from letting his hunger for revenge—however justified—lead him into a dead-end attack on a force so much bigger and older than he was that he’d wind up wishing for something as easy as a crossroads bargain. I fumbled for the bolt, hoping I could either pull it out or shove it through.

The water was dark and murky, and the amount of blood I was already losing, even with the bolt to slow it down, didn’t help. There was no telling how much bacteria and pollution was getting into the wound. If not for the spreading sleepiness, I would have left it were it was, one more thing to be dealt with later. Unfortunately, my air was running out, and if I wanted to be able to swim to safety, I needed both full range of motion in my arm, and not to pass out from some novel Covenant toxin.

I was still struggling with the bolt when something hit me from the side, shoving me away from the dock, out toward the middle of the lake. I didn’t pause to think or assess the situation. I just reacted, producing a knife from inside my shirt and stabbing wildly into the dark.

For a moment, the thing that was pushing me along fell back, grip faltering. Then it surged back, pushing me onward. I tried to stab again, to no avail. The cold and the numbness and the lack of air were getting to me, and the knife slipped from my fingers, to be lost forever among whatever forgotten things covered the lakebed.

I thrashed without breaking free. Another hot gush of blood escaped my shoulder. This was it, then; after everything, this was the way I died. Powerless and pinned and bleeding out from a Covenant crossbow in the middle of a lake in Maine. Would my friends get away? Cylia would. She might not be able to save the others, but her luck was good enough, and she was good enough at using it, that I had faith she would escape. She might even get Fern to safety.

Cylia knew where to find Elsie. Once she had Elsie, she could find the rest of my family. She could tell them what had happened. She could tell them not to go to war over me. She was no Aeslin mouse—God, I missed my mice—but she could still be my black box, and tell them everything that had happened.

I hoped she’d tell them I had finally managed to fall in love and mean it.

The lake was so cold. The water was so dark. I closed my eyes, breathing out, and let the water have me.

What came next came in flashes, separate and distinct, like pieces of a dissolving dream.

Sam, staggering out of the lake in human form, his clothes waterlogged and clinging to us both, me cradled in his arms like something out of The Creature from the Black Lagoon. I didn’t wake up, exactly, but I came close enough to consciousness to glimpse the light slanting through the branches overhead, to feel my frozen clothes sticking to my skin.