What Gifts She Carried Page 18

  But when I could kind of see again, I found the hallway empty. She was prowling through the other halls then, with smoke curling out of every hole in her ex-news reporter face to smother the entire school the same color as her soul. Searching for me? Or playing a deadly game? Knowing her, probably a little of both.

  Every step forward felt grainy underneath because the normal shiny tiles had been dusted with piles of black ash. I stopped in front of the trophy case and Sarah’s prom queen picture. Her face had melted inside the frame, darkening her mouth and drooping her eyes, so she looked more like she did now. This was the exact spot where I’d first glared up into the face of she-devil Ica with a furry microphone pressed up against my mouth and a dead people question hanging in the air. I’d wanted to kill her then, too.

  The alarm ended so abruptly, I jumped in the sudden silence. I backed toward Sarah’s picture, turning my head to look in both directions, listening. The eerie silence in a place normally bustling with activity and spring fever ran a chill across my back. So did the moving shadows staining the hallway. I wished we could get this over with, whatever this was exactly. If she wanted me dead, why hadn’t she killed me already? And where were One and Two?

  Breaking glass sounded from farther down the hallway. Cold sweat beaded over my upper lip, so I swiped it away with a shaky hand. A familiar screeching noise, like the sound of scooting desks, followed by the low murmur of voices made me take a step forward.

  My phone buzzed in my pocket. I had to squint to read the screen. Five voice mails from Dad in the last two minutes and a text from Jo. Biology room, it read. The same direction as the broken glass.

  I hurried past the library and turned the corner into another hallway, but the biology room was locked. Jo’s ghostly pale face appeared in the window, making me leap in the air once more, and then she opened the door a crack.

  “You can’t be here,” I hissed as I barged inside. Relief swelled through my chest anyway, not just from seeing her again, but also from the rush of fresh air through the broken window.

  “I know.” A flame sparked from the lighter in her trembling hand, playing across the terror on her face. “We’re burning the school down.”

  “What?”

  “People keep wandering back inside because no one smells smoke, just dead things, and everyone’s looking for the fire. They don’t get what’s happening. But if Ica’s here, then no one else can be,” she said.

  Callum stood from his squat next to the cabinets lining the opposite wall and held up a Bunsen burner. He still wore his black cap and gown, and with the darkened walls behind him, he looked like nothing more than a floating face and hands.

  “The fire department’s on its way,” he said. “We’ll give them something to distract them and everyone else, at least for a little bit, so no one gets hurt.”

  People would get hurt if they were stupid enough to be wandering around the school with Ica here. Burning the school down was a tad extreme, but it could help keep people away.

  “Do it,” I told Callum. “Light it up, but try to keep the fire away from the main hallway. And if you see Ica or anything that’s dead-looking, run.”

  “We’ll light them just inside all the doors,” he said, bundling up as many burners as he could from the cupboard.

  Jo pocketed her lighter, trapping her bottom lip with her teeth. “Is there anything I can say that will make you climb out that window with us?”

  If only I could. I would give just about anything for the chance to run far away and never look back. “You know I can’t.”

  “I do.” She sandwiched my face between the palms of her hands and leaned in close enough for me to smell her vanilla chapstick. “But if you so much as think about dying, I will light your face on fire.”

  A clipped chuckle somehow slipped from my mouth, something only Jo could make me do at a time like this. “Well, don’t accidentally light yours on fire, okay?”

  Tears streaked down her face, burning out some of my own. “But then we could be burn buddies,” she said, circling her arms around me and pulling me into a hug.

  “I’ll be fine,” I whispered into her hair. The strength in my voice mismatched the twists of doubt squeezing my gut.

  Sirens wailed in the distance.

  “Weed, we need to go,” Callum said.

  Jo pushed me away and hurried toward the window. “You better be fine,” she said, or at least I thought that was what she said. Her sob muffled her words too much to tell.

  She hiked up her long, flowered skirt and climbed on top of the cupboards, her boots crunching on the broken glass. With a quick glance over her shoulder, she jumped out.

  Callum tapped a finger on the window ledge, body poised to leap out too, but he aimed his gaze at me.

  “Oh, fuck it,” he muttered then stormed through the rows of desks toward me. They screeched and scraped out of his way until he stood in front of me. In his rush, his graduation cap flew off. He twined his fingers behind my neck, angled my head with his thumbs, and kissed me.

  The force of his mouth felt as though it would bend me over backward, so I pushed back with body, lips, and tongue to keep from tipping over. And to drink him in just as deep. His warm cinnamon taste rushed heat to every single part of my body. The feel of him pressed so close to me ignited that buzz touch I’d fought so hard lately to pretend I didn’t want.

  Because I did want it. I wanted to go on kissing him for hours, yet thoughts of Tram zipped through my head, and I felt like I was betraying him somehow. He’d died trying to protect me, and there I stood getting thoroughly kissed by a boy who played my emotions like a broken guitar. I pulled away, breathless.

  Callum leaned his forehead against mine, every pant whispering warmth over my lips. “Go kick her ass, Leigh. No one wants to live in a world without you in it. Most of all me.”

  Then he was speeding toward the window with his gown billowing behind him like some kind of cape.

  The sirens’ wails grew louder.

  I blinked after him until I found my voice again. “But...wait. What if you get caught starting the fire? What about college? What about your scholarship?”

  He perched on the windowsill and flashed me a grin. “There are more important things than baseball,” he said, and then he jumped out.

  I almost smiled as I watched him go, but I knew I would need a pincushion taped over it to make it stick. Yet something, maybe his kiss or what he’d said, stirred up a bundle of confidence hidden deep inside me. It lifted me up to the balls of my feet and cranked the volume on the pop of my knuckles.

  I could do this. I could capture Ica and put her smoking ass inside ten trees. And One and Two would wish they’d never made me their Three.

  But the empty room punctured some of that confidence and flattened my smile. I was alone again with only a fish tank beside the door with water inside that had thickened to a dark sludge. An upside down fish squished against the side stared at me with a single dead eye.

  My phone buzzed again, reminding me that Dad was probably ready to kill me himself. The text was from him:

  WHERE ARE YOU? PLEASE TELL ME YOU HAVE DARBY WITH YOU!

  Oh. My stomach dipped to my knees, taking the rest of me down with it. No. I clutched the phone to my mouth so every jagged breath could blow those words out of existence. Darby couldn’t be in here. Surely she’d followed Dad out with the rest of the crowd. Maybe she was just separated from him. Or maybe...

  I pushed the reply button. The phone shook so bad in my hands, I could barely type.

  shes here b ot son

  Hopefully that would keep him from coming inside. Please, Dad, you can’t come inside.

  Heart racing, I pushed open the door. “Darby!” My voice bounced up and down the black, empty hallway, making it seem like one of the echoes could be her answer with a rebounding call for my name. “Where are you?”

  She had to be here somewhere. She should’ve answered me, unless she couldn’t. Unless Ica had
her.

  I turned the corner and stared down the shadowy hallway where I was sure Ica would meet me. Movement swirled over the closed double doors past the library and trophy case.

  Every bit of rage I felt toward her gathered at the back of my throat and pitched out with my yell. “Ica! Give her back!”

  The double door at the end of the hallway crashed open. I jumped. More shadows tumbled onto the black tile and rose up the walls in waves, carrying the growing rotten stink with it and a rush of whispered gibberish.

  I scratched the palms of my hands while I stepped past the library to face the shadows head-on. Roots first to hold her down and make her tell me where Darby was. Then I would turn her into a tree again. Roots, Darby, tree. Roots. Darby. Tree. I repeated that over and over until the words patched themselves over the crater my heart had beat into my chest.

  More and more darkness writhed and twisted through the doors. And out of them emerged a skeletal shape, coming closer.

  A flash of stringy red hair. Ghostly pale skin. Black smoke steamed out of the holes in her face and weaved through the air in a steady stream. Now Ica was what she always wanted to be—dead and ugly and just as powerful as One and Two. But instead of a three tattoo winding around one of the fleshy red holes where her eyes used to be, a single black mark stained her face. One. Ica was One.

  Before I could comprehend what that meant, her tattered gray scraps of clothes snapped in a blast of wind. The darkness inside her mouth sagged open further, and she hissed.

  My body flew backward down the hallway. I smashed into the floor, jolting the air from my lungs, and skidded to a stop at the end of the hallway near the door. Tainted black air dragged into my mouth, but I couldn’t get enough of it. I lay there, gasping and cringing at the pain shooting through my head and back.

  But I could feel Ica coming closer in the tremors shivering up my skin. I had to move. Now. So I curled my finger at the floor, opened my mouth, and screamed. It splintered through the silence enough to drown out the rumble in the ground. It ended in a ragged cry when a thick tree root ripped through the floor at the other end of the hallway behind Ica. Not where I wanted. Tiles buckled around it.

  Come, I ordered the roots.

  The root shot for Ica’s back, tearing up the floor in its rush. Tiles and cement sprayed out on either side like wings.

  But Ica was already reaching for me. An arctic hand wrenched me up by the neck. Her empty eyes gave off waves of frozen hate. My feet dangled underneath me to twirl on the floor on the tips of my boots. I snatched at the icy arm cuffing my neck.

  Behind her, the thick root towered over her shoulder and arched down on top of her, tackling her to the ground.

  I aimed an ash tree key down at her and matched every bit of rage in her face with my own. “Where is my sister?”

  A smile curled the corners of her blackened, drooping mouth. Only a continuous string of unintelligible whispered words came out.

  Make the dead bitch squeal.

  My root rolled up her chest to her neck and stretched over it, each crack and pop lifting her chin until it pointed straight up. I bent over her, her black smoke curling into my nostrils, and held the urge to punch her in my fist.

  “Where is she?” I asked. “Possess me if you want, just tell me.”

  A black cloud spewed out of her mouth and whisked past my shoulder.

  “Good idea,” a raspy voice said behind me.

  I whirled around.

  A girl stood several yards behind me in the rubble. With an I’d Rather Be Reading t-shirt. Bright eyes glowed blue behind her glasses. Sorceressi blue.

  “Darby?” I whispered. What I saw couldn’t be real. But no matter how much I wished it to be an illusion, she still stood there. Her hair had come undone from her ponytail so it hung in a tangle past her shoulders to hide some of her face. But not those eyes.

  A spasm gripped her entire body. She fell to her knees, threw back her head, and screamed. The sound felt like a slap to the face. It was real. That cold stone of realization dropped me to the floor with a high-pitched moan.

  “Oops. I missed.” Ica’s voice scraped out of Darby’s mouth. It sounded so unnatural to hear it come out of her, so wrong, that I wanted to cover my ears so I wouldn’t have to listen.

  An anger so bitter I could taste it filled my mouth. I let it out in a growl as I pounced on top of the root wrapped around Ica, fists raised. “Let her go!”

  As soon as my knuckles raced toward her face, she hissed. I flew up to the ceiling and smashed into it but didn’t come back down. An invisible force pressed against me to keep me there, away from Ica and Darby. Darby peered at me through the curtain of her hair while her entire body twitched. Invisible marionette strings pulled her to her feet again and tilted her head to the side, almost near the snapping point.

  “You don’t need her for anything,” I wheezed without taking my gaze off my sister. The force that sucked me into the ceiling squeezed over my chest so I could hardly get the words out. “Just...let...her go.”

  “I do need her though to help keep you in line.”

  “You don’t need her. You still have One and Two.”

  “I am One. Those two Sorceresses betrayed me and are too stupid and weak to be any help to me now. As long as they are below the Trammeler’s roots, they are meaningless to me.”

  A red sort of liquid oozed from between my roots holding Ica down, too stretchy and gauzy to be blood. It sizzled over the bark and somehow burned red streaks up my forearms, even though I was still pressed to the ceiling and nowhere near it.

  I bit back a scream. The skin on my arms bubbled and smoked just as the red liquid melted holes in my root. The pain sent terrible spasms through my body, but I couldn’t tear myself away from the grip of the ceiling. I could only look at Darby, at the glow of her blue eyes that hurt worse than anything else.

  “Please. What do you want?” I asked.

  “Release me from your tree roots.”

  “Release her first,” I shouted.

  Darby’s head bent to the side even more. Her eyes returned to normal just as she gave a sharp gasp that sounded like my name.

  My heart clenched. Leave, I commanded.

  The root uncoiled from around Ica, and she rose to stand beneath me.

  A rough laugh clawed out of Darby’s throat. “I already have everything I want. Almost, anyway. This much power is intoxicating.”

  “You don’t deserve anything else,” another voice echoed from down the hallway. A bright white arrow zoomed over Darby’s head and streaked toward Ica in a flaming blur. It sank into Ica’s chest with a sharp crackling sound.

  Before I could comprehend what just happened, the floor came up to meet my face. I was falling toward the mess of tiles and concrete broken up in sharp, jagged spikes. Just before I landed, something white skimmed past the tip of my nose and slid down to my chin and chest, stopping my fall within two inches of gouging my eye out on the pointed end of a smashed tile. My arms and legs smacked against the rubble anyway with the force of motion. But my head hadn’t exploded on impact. I looked down to see what had caught me. Another glowing arrow.

  Ms. Hansen leaned against an IV pole behind Darby while she aimed a third arrow at Ica. Bandages were wrapped around her beaten and swollen head. Straps of a hospital gown dragged over the wrecked floor.

  “Let them go, Ica,” she ordered.

  Tendrils of electric white light bloomed out of the arrow buried in Ica’s chest and over her dirty scraps of clothing. They spit out snaps with every new fork as they spread up her neck and out over her arms.

  Tentatively, I took the arrow that made a bar between my chin and torso and stood. It made popping sounds in my tight grip and felt warm to the touch.

  I could feel the roots underneath me, climbing closer to the surface, ready to spring into action. But I leaped first. I charged at Ica just as she pulled the arrow free from her chest. Hundreds of spiders scurried out of the wound, big and small, an
d swept down her legs to the floor. I recoiled for a split second before I charged ahead and smashed most of them on my way to the invisible target on her neck.

  Before I hit it, Ica let loose a hiss at Ms. Hansen. I plunged the arrow in my fist down and plunged it right below Ica’s jaw. At my command, roots shot out of the ground to engulf her.

  Glass shattered behind me. I turned in time to see the trophy case overturning on top of both Ms. Hansen and Darby. I sprinted forward, but there was no way I could get there in time. A garbled cry tore from my throat. Ms. Hansen threw her back against the tilting case and shoved at Darby. Darby tripped out of the way just as the case crashed down.

  “N—” I covered the rest of my cry with both hands.

  Ms. Hansen’s head and arms, still out in front of her with her last push, were the only parts of her body that weren’t buried underneath the enormous slab of wood on top of her. Her eyes filled with tears as she looked at me. “Leigh,” she croaked. “Are...are...?”

  My brain turned to sludge because it refused to comprehend the scene in front of me. Seeing Ms. Hansen like that...it turned me inside out.

  When I reached her, I sank to my knees and slipped both my hands into hers, my own tears splashing onto our clasped fingers. “Why did you come?” Somehow the words poured through the knot gripping the back of my throat.

  “I read...” she started, and a trickle of blood leaked from the corner of her mouth. “I read that it would happen...like this. My ending.” A frizzy strand of gray hair had worked its way loose of the bandages, and I knew exactly what she meant by that. “Sorry I couldn’t...couldn’t do more.”

  Pain fired over the burns on my arms again, but I gritted my teeth against it. I could feel Ica’s deadly cold presence creeping up on my back as she burned through the roots surrounding her. She could come at me all she wanted, but I couldn’t leave Ms. Hansen. Not like this.