Nicholas worked with a sense of urgency and purpose the fire demanded, appearing to ignore the snarky conversation around him. Blood dripped from his finger into Karen's ashes. Using the pointer finger of his uninjured hand, he stirred the two together into a thick paste. Drawing sigils on the floor, he whispered an incantation.
I looked to Lars, “What’s he saying? Can you hear him?”
He just shook his head, as clueless as I was as to what he was doing.
The fire died down. Everything in the office continued to burn, but the witch fire itself stopped raging. Nicholas wiped sweat from his brow, leaving a streak of muddy grey paste along his forehead. He hurled a chunk of wood that had been part of Winslow's desk through the window. Lars and I dropped down to the floor, pressing ourselves as flat as possible in anticipation of an explosive blast.
The flood of relief that swam through me would have been enough to douse the witch fire had it been measured in actual water. Nicholas kept a cool head, prevailing where Lars and I may have failed on our own. With the fire temporarily under control, he came over to help me get Lars out of the window.
"I don't know how long that spell will hold. We need to move now." Nicholas draped Lars's left arm around his neck and hoisted him up.
I climbed through the window first, waiting on the porch to help Nicholas get Lars up over the sill and outside. "Lars, you might want to lay off the glazed donuts for a while."
"Yeah, because I'm going to take nutritional advice from a girl who survives on candy bars and coffee." Lars's bulk had little to do with donuts and everything to do with his workout regimen.
It didn't make hauling his heavy ass around any easier.
Nicholas climbed out after us. "Okay, I know we're all a little worse for wear..." He paused, acknowledging my eye roll. "Understatement, I know, but we don't have time to triage. We need to get off this porch and the property. This place is going to be crawling with Mundanes any minute."
From his lips to the fire department’s ears. Sirens wailed in the distance while emergency lights illuminated the night sky.
"Ladies first." Lars pointed to the porch rail. Our only way out was down.
Swinging one leg and then the other over the railing, I balanced myself on the lip of the porch deck and tried to figure out my next move. Measuring in at five foot two, I never had a problem with my height apart from using the spice cabinet above the stove. Scaling down from a second-story porch, however, was just one of those things that would have been a lot easier with longer arms and legs. I squatted down until my ass rested on my heels. Holding on to the bottom of the balusters, I dangled a foot over the edge, searching for the rail of the main porch.
"Under normal circumstances, I'd say take your time..." Nicholas said politely.
“Hurry your ass up,” Lars said.
"Easy for you to say propped up against the side of the house. You're not helping." My sweaty palms weren't helping, either.
Nicholas's nerves, Lars's yelling, and the sound of the sirens getting closer kicked my system into overdrive. Holding on to the bottom rail for dear life, I let both my feet dangle and tried again to feel the main floor porch.
Once again, I came up with nothing but air. "Nicholas, I can't reach it."
He rushed into action, grabbing my wrists and yanking them off the balusters.
"Oh my Goddess, what are you doing?" I asked.
Nicholas lowered me down as far as he could before his upper arms got stuck between the balusters. It worked. My feet found purchase on the railing. He let one arm go as I balanced myself and gripped the lip of trim molding running along the ceiling of the main porch. When I was ready, he let go of my other hand, and I dropped down off the rail safely onto the porch.
"Okay, help Lars over,” I said. “I'll grab his feet and guide him down."
A rush of hot air followed by flames burst through the window behind me with a deafening roar.
"Lars! Nicholas!"
Glass rained down all around me. A second explosion rocked the house. The third blast rocked the foundation with enough force to send them airborne. I jumped off the porch, dodging debris as I ran across the lawn in search of them. Lars, knocked out and flat on his back, landed about fifty feet from Nicholas, who'd managed to roll to his side.
Fire and Rescue were fast approaching. Based on lights and sirens, we had less than a minute to vacate the property—which wasn't happening.
I threw up a quick and dirty glamour. Definitely not my best work, but I prayed to the Goddess it would hold long enough for me to get Lars and Nicholas off Winslow grounds and off the island.
Otherwise, we were dead before we hit the water.
Chapter Twenty-Four
EVERY ONCE IN A WHILE, the Goddess was on my side. The in-resident staff and what remained of Winslow's security detail interacted with the emergency personnel, providing the distraction I needed. I thanked the Goddess profusely.
As if to say 'don't thank me yet' in response, a guard, who from the looks of him had been ejected from the house in the explosions, stumbled out of the hedges. While he wasn't moving in a straight line, he was headed right for us. I either had to drag Lars out of the way or risk the guard stumbling over him. Nicholas moaned as he rolled over to his stomach and began crawling toward me to help.
Shit! I didn't have the magical stores to produce a fully functioning Now You See Me, Now You Don't, which meant if someone were close enough, they'd hear us. The guard stopped walking and stared hard in the direction of my glamour.
For the love of all things magical, would you please help me? Just this once? I begged the Goddess. Something I'd never done. I wasn't big on ceremony. It hadn't served me well in the past, but I may have promised something big with all the ceremonial trimmings come Spring if she'd just help me help Lars and Nicholas. Apparently including my two counterparts in my cry for aid was enough to seal the deal.
The Goddess's reluctant reply came in the form of rumbling thunder and lightning that lit up the dark, smoke-filled sky. The crowd gathered around the Winslow estate cheered as the rain fell, drawing the attention of the guard away from us and back toward the house. With a new distraction and something to cover the sound of our movements, I dragged Lars over to Nicholas—with a mental note to make good on my promise come the Spring Equinox.
"Please tell me you have a way for us to get off this island," I said to Nicholas once I'd reached his side.
"Can you swim?"
His question wasn't the answer I'd been hoping for.
Lars came to in time to respond for me. "Across the Block Island Channel? Did you land on your head when you flew off the porch?" He winced and let out a small grunt of pain when I hugged him.
"Sorry." I gave an apologetic half smile. "I'm just relieved you're awake. There's no way I could have carried you down the bluffs."
"Oh, so that's why you're relieved?" Lars pinched my arm.
It was more than that, and we both knew it. He'd never know the depths of my despair over thinking he'd died, but he knew how much he meant to me and his place in my life.
"You're obviously feeling better." Nicholas sat up. After gingerly touching a spot on his head, his fingers came away red. "But I think healing charms are probably still in order. We need to get back to my place."
"Well, swimming is not our best mode of transportation." I eyed a police car sitting idle at the end of the driveway. "What about that?"
"You want to steal a cop car?" Bewildered, Nicholas just stared at me. "And when we reach the ferry and the Footmen my uncle no doubt stationed there to apprehend us?"
"What about a boat? Your uncle has a house on the water. He has to have a boat, right?" Lars shifted his weight, relying more on his own strength to sit up than mine. He wasn't dead. He’d started to heal his injuries.
And I felt like I could breathe for the first time since I'd lost him.
Nicholas scoffed as if the answer to Lars's question should have been obvious. "He's a Coun
cilman obsessed with power and status. Of course he has a boat. More than one, in fact, but it's safe to say that's how he and his security detail got off the island. If they took the raft from the boathouse, too, we'll have to swim around the point to the nearest property and borrow a boat from there."
"Borrow a boat?" I said.
Lars and I exchanged smiles. It wouldn’t have been the first time we'd "borrowed" something. There was the car incident when I was around fifteen. Grim refused to let me get my license for two years as a result.
I looked back at the police car one last time with longing. Why couldn’t it be easy? Just this once? "Well, at least we don't have to swim to Providence."
Lars tested my glamour, poking holes in my magic with his own. "We need to get moving. Del's illusion is going to drop any minute, and that guard has looked back in our direction twice already. Help me up."
Nicholas moved in, wedging his shoulder under Lars's armpit and hoisting him up. We walked as fast as our injuries would allow toward the old wooden stairs that led down to the beach at the bottom of the bluffs.
I'd taken point and reached the pier before the others. Both the door to the boathouse from the slip and the large automatic doors that allowed access for the boats themselves were left open. Winslow and his men had cleared out. What they didn't use for their own escape, they’d destroyed. The Kodiak raft had been slashed and the canoe smashed.
"I guess we're borrowing a boat from one of Winslow's neighbors." Leaning against the outside of the boathouse, I peered at the cold Atlantic waters. "After you."
"Ladies first. I insist." Lars stood on his own two feet as his strength continued to increase.
"Who says chivalry is dead?" I stepped to the edge of the pier, gathering the nerve to jump into the ocean. The knowledge that it was both freezing and salt laden didn't help. After one last deep breath, I pinched my nose closed and took the plunge.
It was time to sink or swim. Literally.
The instant my body submerged in the salty waters, the glamour dropped. Shouts from Winslow's property echoed down the bluffs. The guard. He’d sensed our presence more than once back in the yard. It sounded as if he’d shared his suspicions with whoever was left on the scene and convinced them to join him in the search.
Nicholas and Lars didn't waste time joining me in the water. They both sat on the dock and slipped in feet first to minimize ripples and splashing. We clung to the crossbeams under the pier as the guards reached the bluff and descended the wooden stairs. Their boots pounded against the pier's planks. Beams of light danced across the water's surface as they swung their flashlights back and forth searching for us.
Some of the guards were more enthusiastic than others. "I told you this was a waste of time. There's nobody here, Carl." One flashlight switched direction, pointing back toward the stairs and the orange glow of the fire still ravaging the Winslow property. "It's too cold for this shit."
"Yeah, Carl. Mr. Winslow said to check for bodies in the rubble. He wants to confirm they're dead. He didn't say anything about searching for survivors on the beach. You want to know why? Because the fire was too hot and the water's too cold. They're dead either way." One set of boots stomped off.
"If we don't find them in the ashes, the current will drag their bodies down shore. They should wash up by the Carlton's place. Just like that witch bitch from last year." Another set of boots walked away, but paused at the end of the pier. "Come on, Carl. Let's go. They're not down here, and we got a lot of work left back up at the house."
Carl, the guard who’d sensed us, admitted defeat and gave in. He clicked off his flashlight and walked over to join the other man and head back up to the house. He should have trusted his instincts.
Adrenaline kept hypothermia at bay long enough for us to remain hidden under the pier until the last of the footsteps faded away and we were sure no one, not even Carl, remained on the pier. Once we hit the open waters, the cold set in like tiny knives stabbing through muscle and bone. My teeth chattered, and I swallowed enough saltwater to induce vomiting.
In other words, things were going swimmingly.
Lars and Nicholas didn't fare much better, but their long arms and legs gave them an advantage and put them several strokes ahead. They reached the boathouse on the neighboring long before I did. Lars held on to the side of the building, floating in the frigid water until he was able to grab ahold of me and pull me in, while Nicholas dipped underwater and swam into the boathouse.
"Water, water everywhere, and not a drop to drink. The ocean tastes like shit." Exhausted, I held on to one of the pilings like my life depended on it. Unfortunately, that wasn't far from the truth as muscle cramps and nausea battled for first place in the competition to see what would make me drown first.
"Let's get you out of the water and warmed up." Lars helped me swim to shallow water where we could both stand and hoisted me up onto the dock. With the ease of a well-trained gymnast, he pulled himself up onto the pier beside me.
After wringing out my clothes and shaking the water out of my hair like a wet dog, I tried to ignite a small ball of witch fire—enough to avoid going hypothermic but not draw attention. I managed a few sparks, like a lighter out of fluid, before my magic sputtered out.
"I should have known it wouldn't work." I rubbed my arms and legs to generate body heat. "Grim tried to teach me to overpower the salt, but I never could."
Lars opened his hand. Under normal circumstances, a perfectly shaped ball of witch fire would have hovered above his palm. "There's so much salt in your body your blood is basically brine at this point." Soaked to the bone, all he managed were a few sparks. Two more tries and a tiny ball of fire flickered into existence.
"I feel like a Mundane." I hovered around Lars's miniature fire like the proverbial moth to a flame.
Nicholas reemerged from underneath the boathouse, a small red rubber bundle in his wake. "The locks are enchanted. I managed to work through the first two layers, but even without the salt impairment, I'm not sure I could break the third." He pulled a cord and, as I feared, an emergency raft slowly inflated. The cold temperatures of both the air and water made the whole thing pretty anticlimactic. "I forgot the oars." He wrapped a cord around one of the pilings and disappeared beneath the water again only to reappear moments later with the two paddles.
Lars closed his hand, extinguishing the small witch fire. "He must have seal DNA or something. Come on, Del." He got into the small craft while Nicholas held it steady.
"Sorry." I shook my head in disbelief as I lowered myself down into the raft. "I'm just trying to process the part where we row ten miles across Block Island Sound to Narraganset."
After the two of us helped Nicholas aboard, he pulled a few small plastic squares out of his pockets. "Hand warmers. Mundanes use them." He bent the sides in toward each other, all but cracking them in half, and tossed them to us.
"Those of us not living on campus spend as much time in the non-magical world as we do out of it. We've seen hand warmers before, Nicholas." With a playful smile and wink to let him know I was teasing, I shoved two of the packets in my socks and kept my hands wrapped around the other two.
"You never miss an opportunity to give someone a hard time, do you?" Nicholas grabbed an oar and positioned himself to start rowing.
"Very rarely." I shrugged. "It comes naturally." I glanced back over my shoulder at Lars who sat behind me with an oar in his hand. He'd insisted on taking his turn first. I tried to argue he was hurt more than I was, but he wouldn't listen.
"Growing up with just me and Grim at home and in a male dominated industry didn't help in the feminine charm department." Lars dipped his paddle in the water and rocked back with his first stroke.
"Oh my Goddess, I think you have permanent brain damage." I turned around and punched Lars in his thigh. Injured or not, that comment did not get a pass. "We're in a dingy, floating over the ocean. You're in a weakened state. Now is probably not the best time to debate the negative
impacts of not having a mother figure on my femininity."
Lars laughed. "Touchy."
"Keep it up and you'll see just how touchy I can be."
Lars and I easily fell into our old routine of ribbing each other. It made the days go faster at Something To 'Ink About and helped pass the time crossing the ocean.
A ping of sadness hit my heart thinking about the shop and how much we'd lost, but I pushed that aside until it was my turn to row and I had somewhere to channel the negative energy. Fortunately, I didn't have to wait long. With our endurance shot to hell, none of us could row for very long. Each time we rotated, my turn at the oar felt shorter and shorter.
Six physically agonizing hours passed in similar fashion, joking and teasing to kill time and distract ourselves from the aches and pains riddling our bodies. By the time we found a barren stretch of sand to beach the raft on, we were starving, dehydrated, and in need of a multitude of different health charms.
"Does anyone remember where we parked the car?" Sprawled out on the sand like a starfish, I picked a piece of seaweed off my arm.
Lars raised a hand. "Level G, row four."
Out of the three of us, Nicholas had fared the best at the hands of his uncle and sustained the least amount of injuries. The beating he had taken paled in comparison to the one Lars received and was easier for his body to heal than my lead poisoning. With his physical and magical strength returning, he set about casting a navigation charm.
"I don't know how we did it, but we're pretty close." The piece of sea glass he'd chosen for a navigational beacon emanated a soft green glow as he held it in his hand.
"Great. I'll just wait here while you bring the car around." But as much as I would have liked to lie on the beach waiting for Nicholas to come back and pick me up, it wasn't an option. I got up, brushed the sand from my body, and followed him and Lars to the spot where we'd hidden my car.
The sun crested the horizon long before we reached shore and already hung heavy in the sky. Far from a morning person, its presence was an unwelcome reminder of my serious coffee depravation and the challenges the new day presented.
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