by Norah Wilson
“Let’s go!” Brooke cried, but Alex didn’t need any urging. She’d already started off across the frozen yard at a turtle’s pace. Brooke joined her, and with the two of them bearing Maryanne’s weight, they were able to move marginally faster. But shit, not fast enough!
Brooke looked over her shoulder to see the shed’s door wrench open. Then Bryce was standing in the doorway. Swaying on his feet, he jacked the shotgun up and shot at them.
Blam!
Thank God! He’d missed! And that was both barrels empty.
“I’ll get you!” he screamed after them. “I’ll kill you bitches if it’s the last thing I do!”
The two casters pushed on with their burden, though much closer to the ground than they’d have liked to be. Maryanne was just too heavy. They weren’t likely to be able to soar very high or very fast until they got the lead out.
Or the iron, as it were.
Oh, God, they were going to have to dig the iron out, Brooke realized. And not just so they could travel faster and higher.
They needed to get the iron out of Maryanne’s cast before she could travel back through the stained glass window. Before she fused with her original.
Dammit all to hell.
Chapter 25
Silent Panic; Screaming Pain
Maryanne
Maryanne’s head lolled sideways in the snow as Alex and Brooke set her down. With a chest full of iron pellets, she didn’t sink into the ground.
The three were in the woods by the Walker Farm, far enough away, for now at least, to be safe as they rested. She hoped.
She couldn’t feel the cold of the snow. Could barely feel the others girls’ hands on her. She could feel the iron, though. It burned in her shoulder and chest.
Unable to move even her head, all she could do was scan the snow at her side.
I’m looking for blood, she realized. There was none, of course, but her panic grew anyway. She couldn’t talk, couldn’t scream. She was completely paralyzed, and that scared her beyond belief.
In the attic her original’s heart—which had been pounding hard since Bryce had sprung out from behind that door—started hammering harder. Tears welled in her eyes, and one rolled down the side of her face. Then one more rolled down the other side as she heard the siren’s faint wail.
Bryce! Was he okay?
And what had happened to the gentle man who’d sworn he’d never hurt her? Had he surrendered completely to the hunter?
Her original shuddered as she remembered what he’d shouted after them. “I’ll get you. I’ll kill you bitches if it’s the last thing I do!”
She glanced up at Alex and Brooke. After their heroic effort to lift her iron-shot body and push her out the window, then carry her here, she knew they were exhausted. It had taken every bit of their strength to get her this far, but they’d never get her home. They knew it too.
“We’ve got to get those pellets out!” Alex was as close to losing it as Maryanne had ever seen her. Brooke wasn’t far behind. “If we don’t—”
“I know! We can’t carry her. Not while we’re casting.”
“Jesus, Brooke! We can’t leave her here while we race back to Harvell and—”
“I know that!”
Brooke’s hands went to her head, as if a thought had just hit her. “What if…what if she’s already dead? What if that bastard killed her?”
Alex lowered her head. “I…I don’t know.”
Oh God, no! Not this way! Maryanne couldn’t cry out—not with the lead in her cast. She couldn’t even moan to let them know she was alive. Her mind was racing in circles of dread, but her body was helpless to do anything. At least her caster body was.
Her original! As always, she was lying so close to the others on the floor back there. Maybe she could use her original to tell the girls she was still alive. Back in the attic, she summoned all her resources, concentrating on flinging her arm out to the side. What she managed was a weak flip of her right hand, but it brushed against Alex.
Alex’s head shot up; she stared down at Maryanne.
“What is it?” Brooke asked.
“She swatted me. Back in the attic.”
“That doesn’t mean she’s alive here. Oh God, what if her body is alive but her cast is—”
Before Brooke could finish the terrifying thought, Maryanne flipped her left foot with all her might. It tapped Brooke, only slightly. But it was enough.
“Oh shit! She hears us!”
Relief washed over Maryanne. Short-lived, of course. They still had to get her out of there. She was still in the woods with a body weighed down and paralyzed by iron. The siren had ceased its wailing, and Maryanne imagined EMTs were probably attending to Bryce right now. Though that didn’t mean they were out of danger from that determined hunter. Far from it.
Alex straightened. Quickly, she moved a few feet away and grabbed the bag with the makeshift instruments she’d dropped in the snow. “We have to get the iron out,” she said grimly.
“Are you freakin’ kidding me?” Brooke said. “You’re going to operate?”
Whether it was the words or the effect of so much iron in her body, a wave of dizziness hit Maryanne.
“You see another choice?” Alex snapped back at Brooke. She held up a hand. “Look! We can’t take her anywhere like this. Let alone back through the stained glass window.”
“Oh, crap. You’re right. Those pellets won’t go through the glass without breaking it. Just like my hand smacked back that time I tried to cast back in with the copper bracelet on.”
“Exactly,” Alex said.
“And then we’re stuck out here—the three of us. Maybe forever.”
“Yeah,” Alex whispered. “We have no choice.”
Oh J-bug, help me!
Maryanne was surprised by her spontaneous prayer to the brother who haunted her. Back in the attic, a tear fell again. What part of her had called that up, that plea to the one she’d wronged?
Alex produced the tongs they’d improvised from copper pipes and elastic bands. The sheer size of them sent another surge of panic through Maryanne.
“What the hell?” said Brooke. “Aren’t they a little large for digging out tiny pellets? Wouldn’t the small lock picks work better?”
“The lock picks aren’t made of copper,” Alex replied. “We just wrapped copper wire around their handles so we could grip them. If I were to use one of them and it turns out there’s iron in it, we could do her even more harm.”
“Shit.”
Alex bent over Maryanne, and Maryanne’s original flinched in horror as the blunt pipes neared her.
Brooke reached across and grabbed Alex’s hand. “Wait! Copper won’t go through her unless you force it through her. What will that do to her original?”
Maryanne felt her original wilt with relief when Alex sat back.
“Shit, you’re right. Even though copper isn’t debilitating like iron, it might still leave wounds on her body back in the attic.”
“That’d be my guess,” Brooke said. “Surgery is basically an assault on the body, even if the intent is to fix things.”
“Dammit, what do we do?” Alex said. “We’re running out of time!”
Both girls were silent for a moment.
“What if we used something that will move through her, but not through the pellets?” Brooke suggested. “Maybe it would sort of, you know, brush the pellets out when it makes contact with them.”
“That’s brilliant!” Alex said. “And I see just what we need.”
Copper tongs in hand, Alex zoomed out of sight and Maryanne was helpless to turn her head to track her. A few seconds later, the sound of the tongs banging something solid rang out.
“Perfect!” As though realizing Maryanne had no idea what was going on, Brooke put a caster hand on Maryanne’s arm, sending that strange electric tingle through her. “She’s beating a branch off a fir tree.”
Then Alex was back, a smallish evergreen branch gripped betwe
en the makeshift tongs.
“Okay, let’s give this a try,” she said. “Maryanne, if you need me to stop…if the pain is too much, nudge me. In the attic.”
Mentally, Maryanne braced herself, and Alex swished the densely needled branch through her shoulder area. There was no pain as it moved through, just the sensation of merging with the branch, knowing the branch. Until it nudged iron. Lots of iron. Then it was no longer painless. It was like Alex had hit a raw nerve.
Back in the attic, Maryanne flipped her foot, but so weakly it didn’t make contact with Alex’s. Alex seemed to know she’d hit pay dirt, though.
“I hit something,” Alex said. “I can feel the resistance.”
“Does it hurt, Maryanne?”
Maryanne just gritted her teeth and waited mutely. Whether it hurt or not, Alex had to do this. It was the only way they could get home. She braced herself.
Having obviously reached the same conclusion, Alex swept the branch all the way through Maryanne’s cast until the snow beneath her stopped it. It felt a lot like the ripping of nails through their casts when they moved through a wall. Back in the attic, Maryanne felt the tears stream down her face.
Alex repeated the motion, moving down lower, sweeping the branch through Maryanne’s torso again and again. The second swipe was just as painful, but after that, it became easier to endure. And the paralysis was lifting with each bit of iron that came out.
Maryanne sighed as she lay there in the snow. Barely, but enough to be heard.
“Maryanne?” Brooke asked. “Was that you?”
Through her strength was growing, she didn’t think she had the strength to make that sound again.
“Squeeze my hand,” Brooke said. “If you’re okay.”
Maryanne squeezed Brooke’s hand, managing only the tiniest bit of pressure. Again, it was just enough.
“She’s okay!”
“Can you move?” Alex asked. “Once for yes and two for no.”
She squeezed Brooke’s hand three times.
“Three times? What the hell does that mean?”
Understanding, Alex bent again to Maryanne. “It means ‘not yet’.” She resumed brushing the fir branch through Maryanne’s cast. More iron came out, bit by bit. As it did, Maryanne could feel her mobility returning, the sharp pain lessening. She was far from strong, yet she could whisper.
“Get me off these pellets,” she said.
“Oh, crap. Of course,” Brooke said. She locked onto Maryanne’s arms and Alex put down both the tongs and the fir branch to take her arms. Together, they shifted her. Immediately, she began to sink into the ground.
“Well, that’s encouraging,” Alex said. “She wouldn’t sink if she were still full of iron.”
“Maryanne, are you okay?” Brooke brushed a hand over her forehead.
“Better. There’s still some iron in there.” Maryanne had never been so glad to hear her own voice.
“Can you soar?” Alex asked. “Can we get you closer to home before we take the rest of the iron out?”
The answer came not from Maryanne, but from the thrashing in the woods nearby. Bryce? Or maybe Howard Walker, fueled by his Jack Daniels? Whatever the source of the sound, it meant they had to move.
Now.
“Here.” Brooke took the thin band of copper off her arm and slid it around Maryanne’s wrist.
“Great idea,” Alex said. She did the same with her own thin bracelet.
Immediately, Maryanne could feel the boost in her energy. Not that she was up for any marathon flights, but she could probably go on now, with Alex and Brooke supporting her. If not all the way to Harvell House, at least out of range of their pursuers.
Brooke began tucking the copper tools back in the bag Maryanne had hidden in the shed so much earlier in the evening. “Toss those tongs in here and let’s motor before one of us gets shot again,” she said to Alex.
“The branch first,” Alex said. “Save us from having to waste time on hacking off another one.”
Brooke held the bag open by its copper-wrapped handles while Alex hastily crammed the branch into it, and then the tongs.
They rose straight up through the branches of the snow-covered trees. Maryanne felt a single tug at her chest as a thin branch brushed through her cast and knocked out a shard of iron still lodged inside. She grunted with the pain, but none of them even thought about stopping.
“Still a pitch-black night.” Brooke said, and Maryanne knew it was for all their encouragement that she pointed out the cloudless sky. That, at least, was to their benefit. They’d fly as high as they could against that dark backdrop.
Maryanne pushed herself to the limit, but still she knew she was the weak one in the arm-linked trio as they claimed the Mansbridge sky. They soared above the 560, past the few houses with yard lights reflecting on the snow. They came to the strip of road where Maryanne had once forced her teacher’s car into the ditch. Nearby was where they’d chased the coyotes. Clearest of all, though, was the field where the three of them had ridden the Walker horses. They had terrified those animals. The cruel things they’d done continued to plague her as they left the 560 to follow the Trans-Canada. Scaring Melissa Kosnick, for instance. Some said she was never the same after that night she’d seen the Hellers.
It seemed like forever before they were able to veer off and soar over Camden Road. Then they were crossing Main Street and finally—finally—they were home. Simultaneously the girls dropped. They were home, but they weren’t safe yet.
“How much iron is left in you?” Alex asked.
“A little,” Maryanne said.
“But any amount will break that window.” Brooke said.
“I know.”
Alex opened the bag beside her and extracted the tongs. Clumsily, she snagged the branch by its end and dragged it out. “Can you direct me?”
Maryanne nodded. “Right shoulder.”
Alex brushed the branch through her, and they all saw two pellets fall to the ground.
Now that she could move, Maryanne flinched against the pain. Bryce had done this to her—that hurt too. It nearly broke her heart.
He hadn’t known it was her. But would that have stopped him—if he’d known Maryanne was the caster in his shed? Or would it have spurred the hunter on? Knowing she’d tricked him? Used him?
“Any more?” Alex asked.
“Couple more sweeps,” Maryanne managed to say.
Alex gave the same area several more sweeps and one more pellet fell out.
“I think that’s it,” Maryanne said. “If there’s any more, I can’t feel it.”
Alex released the branch, which fell to the ground, then put the tongs back in the canvas bag. Maryanne slipped the three bracelets off. Brooke held out her hand for them. When Maryanne turned them over, Brooke soared to the tree. First she stashed the bag of tools in the snow, then she rose up and deposited the bracelets in their usual resting place on one of the oak tree’s branches. She rejoined them quickly.
“Ready to go in?” Alex asked.
“You two first.” If she still had pebbles in her—too small to detect in her battered and tired body—and the window broke after all, she didn’t want the others locked out in the night with her. Maybe forever.
“Why?” Alex asked.
It was Brooke who understood. It was Brooke who answered. “No way! We’re in this together. Always. The three of us. Soaring sisters. If one gets locked out—”
“Then we all get locked out.” Alex said.
Maryanne looked at Brooke’s black cast. Brooke had changed so much! Before, she’d have been the first one to shoot through that window. But they were all changing. Casting was changing them.
They linked arms once again and rose up to the stained glass window. Maryanne could see their originals on the floor and her originals could see them—dual consciousness. She longed like never before to fuse once more with that body.
“Ready?” Alex asked the two of them.
“Re
ady as I’ll ever be,” Brooke said, shakily.
And it was on Maryanne’s count of three that they tapped, tapped, tapped on the glass. They chanted simultaneously “I want in, I want in, I want in.” And they pulled in what had to be a simultaneous breath of relief when they were.
Then Maryanne cried out with burning pain so intense, she passed out from it.
Chapter 26
Jiggity Jig
Alex
Alex was never so glad to see those caster-wide eyes in her life as she was when Maryanne’s fluttered open.
When they’d cast back in, Maryanne had passed out. It was Brooke who’d retrieved the cold, wet washcloth from the bathroom downstairs then raced back up to the attic to put it on her forehead. That wasn’t all she’d brought back with her. Now that Maryanne was awake, grimacing with pain, but not blacking out with it, Brooke was handing something else over.
“Here,” she said. In the darkness of the attic, two little white pills stood out against her palm.
“What is it?” Maryanne asked. With their help, she was leaning up. Not quite sitting up, but resting with her head supported in Alex’s lap.
“Pain killers. Extra strength. Don’t worry, they’re over-the-counter.”
Maryanne didn’t hesitate for a second. She opened her mouth for the pills. Brooke held her water bottle up to her lips and tilted it gently for Maryanne to drink. Maryanne had no lecture about the ecologically-irresponsible plastic bottles this time. She was just glad to have something to wash those pills down.
Maryanne dribbled water, just a bit, down the side of her chin as she drank. She grimaced as she reached to wipe it away. Or rather as she tried to. “I can barely move my right arm,” she said. “My shoulder…my chest…they’re killing me.”
Alex reached for her and wiped the bit of water away.
“Thank you,” Maryanne said.
Alex chewed her lip. She knew firsthand what trauma could do to a mind. How much, if anything, did Maryanne remember? Well, no time like the present to find out. “Do you remember what happened?”
Brooke snapped out the answer before Maryanne could reply. “Bryce Walker shot you, that’s what happened! He would have killed you—killed us all—if he had the chance.”