Within These Wicked Walls(67)

I took a few deep breaths and flinted my pen. The screams had stopped. All that was left was the rush of wind, the hum of my flame, and the periodic slam on the door of the hyena trying to come for me, too.





CHAPTER 26


All at once, the slamming and scraping stopped. I froze, my ears ringing from the lack of noise, my pen poised over the silver. The hyena couldn’t have gone dormant already.

But of course it had … it had taken a victim, even if Peggy wasn’t the original target.

I squinted at the amulet, but really there was no point. If it was finished and had done its job, I would’ve felt the presence of the Evil Eye contained … but I couldn’t feel it at all. And the amulet wasn’t nearly finished.

I let out a yell of frustration, but checked myself before throwing my half-finished work on the ground, opting instead to place it in my satchel. And then I ran to my room to get an oil lamp, lighting it with my pen as I hurried back.

I hesitated in approaching the closet as blood seeped out from underneath the door.

I opened the door, slowly, holding my amulet out in front of me … and choked out a gasp. Peggy’s torn body was almost unrecognizable, cold and white and covered in tattered wool, lying in the corner. The ground and everything on it was saturated with sticky, wet blood. And in the middle sat Magnus, his face buried in his knees, his trembling arms wrapped around his legs … completely naked. His body was smudged with blood that wasn’t his, his hair matted with it, his nails caked.

“I killed Peggy, didn’t I,” he said, his voice wet and trembling.

My stomach lurched just at the mention of it. “You’re all right. Just don’t look behind you.”

Words crumbled on my lips as I tried to speak again. I felt frozen, down to my marrow. None of this was supposed to happen. The plan should’ve worked.

“Magnus,” I barely gasped, and he looked up at me. Oh God. I wish he hadn’t.

His eyes were red from tears, but his mouth was smeared red with something more sinister. He coughed, gagged, and suddenly more blood leaked from his mouth, and it was enough to send bile up my throat.

“Kill me,” he gasped back.

I took a step back, shaking my head.

“Please, Andi.”

“I can’t.” Or at least I think I said that. It sounded more like a sob.

“You have to kill me,” he said, shifting to his knees, his hands slipping in the thick blood on the floor. “It’s the only way.”

I couldn’t answer him. All I could do was run.

I leapt down the stairs two at a time. Saba skidded into view at the bottom of them, distressed.

“I have to go,” I told her, even though she could clearly see what I was doing.

She grabbed my arms, leaning down to level our faces, as if to reason with me. I don’t know why something as rational as that broke me, but God, it did.

“I’m not going back there,” I screamed, my entire body leaning forward, every muscle tight with the strain of it, as if it had never let out so much pain and fear at once before.

Maybe it hadn’t.

And it disturbed me enough to put this all behind me.

I rushed out into the desert, but I heard soft, sandy steps behind me and Saba put herself in front of me, a pleading look on her tearstained face.

“Please, don’t try to stop me, Saba. I can’t stay here.”

I tried to get around, but she cut me off again. She gestured, but it was too dark out to tell what she was doing. Even if the moon had been brighter, my mind was so chaotic I couldn’t process anything. All I knew was that I was panicking, a leveled panic full of adrenaline, familiar as the back alleys back home. I had learned to perfect that panic, because my survival depended on it. It turned friends into enemies, and my empathy was gone faster than one of Magnus’s chocolates could melt in my mouth.

Fight or flight, Andi?

Saba was pushing me toward fight.

“If you try to keep me here by force,” I warned, taking a few steps back as I touched the knife in my pocket, “your limbs will have to drag themselves across the desert to get to you.”

Saba gestured again, but it involved pointing toward the castle. That was enough of an indicator.

Fight.

But before I could do anything, Saba scooped me up over her shoulder.

“No!” I cried, and immediately started kicking.

“Scream your lungs out,” Jember had always said. “Don’t make it easy for them. If they get you where they want you, you’re as good as dead.”

So I screamed, wordlessly, trying to aim the sound at her ear, and kicked. She had no hair to pull, no flesh to dig my nails into, but I managed to get my knife from my pocket and stab her in the back. I felt the break of pottery, my knife easily piercing through. I cocked back my knife to stab again, but my body went backward instead as Saba dropped me onto my back in the sand. I think Saba had learned from our last fight, because she quickly shoved me onto my stomach and pinned my arms to my sides. This time when she picked me up she held me out at arm’s length, facing away from her.

And then she kept walking. My kick couldn’t reach her effectively this way, but I kept kicking. Kept screaming. Kept throwing my weight in different directions, forcing her to grip me tighter. My scream was cut off by a sob. God help me. Any tighter and she’d break my bones.