Strange and Ever After (Something Strange and Deadly #3)(35)

His words were cut off by a single, long howl.

A hound’s howl.

My stomach punched into my lungs. I doubled over. And beside me, Oliver whispered, “God save us all. It’s the Hell Hounds.”

No one moved. A frantic glance to the front showed Daniel looking puzzled while Joseph had paled to near-deathly white.

“Hell Hounds?” Daniel asked. “You mean those creatures that killed Madame Marineaux?”

“Those are the ones!” Oliver answered, while I shrieked at Daniel: “Land the airship!”

“I’m trying.” Daniel twisted back to the wheel. “Everyone hold on!”

But no one had time to hold on. The storm rammed into us. The airship snapped sideways like a kite, and I reeled into the wall.

“Right lever!” Daniel yelled, spinning the wheel left as Joseph hurtled for the levers. “Now left lever, halfway!”

I staggered around to Oliver. “What do we do?”

“Figure out what they want,” he yelled back.

I lifted my right hand. That was how Marcus had set the Hounds on me before—by casting a spell on my amputated ghost hand. But the fingers were not glowing, and no pain coursed through me. “It isn’t me. Could it be you, Oliver?”

My demon wrenched out his locket—the necklace that kept him magically locked in the earthly realm. But the locket was not glowing either.

Lightning cracked, flashing over miles of farmland. Thunder rumbled through the metal. It was close—far too close.

“What’s happening?” Allison cried, running in from the hall and pushing past Oliver.

Behind me, Daniel kept bellowing commands at Joseph—“Middle lever, down!”—and spinning the wheel as hard as he could against the wind. But then he jolted back as if struck . . . and he began to shout.

“Oh shit, oh shit—get it off me! Get it off!” He yanked at something around his neck. Something that glowed bright blue.

I lunged for him. “What is that?”

His eyes met mine, wide with panic. “Monocle.”

“Oh God.” I snatched at the chain and tried to snap it off his neck. It held fast. “Oliver!” I screamed. “Help us!”

“Why is it stuck?” Daniel cried. “Why can’t I get it off?”

Oliver paled. “It must be bound to you. A spell.”

“But Madame Marineaux is dead!” I argued. “How can the spell still work?” Even as the words fell from my mouth, though, I knew the answer. The monocle might have come from Madame Marineaux and the Marquis, but just like Jie’s hair clasp, it must have been bewitched by Marcus. And now whatever spell it contained was calling the Hell Hounds to us.

Daniel gaped, first at Oliver. Then at me. “How do I get it off?”

Oliver shook his head. “You don’t. Only the spell caster can break a spell like this.”

“Will we die?” Allison screeched.

Jie clambered into the room. “Should we put on parachutes?”

“Yes.” Daniel stumbled toward the hall. “Everyone put on a parachute. Joseph, you take the wheel while I go back and pull the sandbags to the—”

Another gale hit the airship, and everyone went flying across the pilothouse. I hit the glass with a thud, and before I could scrabble back to my feet, my nose was filled with the stench of grave dirt.

Against my will I gagged. We were out of time. After all this, the Hounds were going to pluck us from the sky, and there was nothing we could do.

Daniel rounded back on Oliver. The chain clenched in his fingers, he yelled over the roaring hounds, “This is what they want?”

Oliver nodded.

“And they’ll rip through the airship trying to reach it?”

“Yes!”

“So if I’m not here—”

“Distraction!” I screamed. “We can distract you, and that would break the spell!”

“And then we might be able to get off the monocle,” Oliver finished, nodding faster.

I grabbed Daniel’s chin and made him look at me. “Sometimes you can stop a necromantic spell with distraction. Think of something else!”

“Like what?” His eyes were so wide, his pupils dilated fully.

“Anything! Just think of something that isn’t the Hell Hounds!”

“Hurry!” Allison shrieked. “They’re coming.” She pointed out the window. I dropped Daniel’s face as everything inside me went blank with fear. For there they were. Four curs galloped amid a gray squall, growing larger and closer each second.

Then a new sound filled the gondola—a blast of wind. The howls and the thunder were suddenly doubled in volume, and I knew before I even looked down the hall what I would find.

The hatch in the cargo hold was open, and Daniel stood on the edge. He glanced back only once, and his eyes met mine.

“No!” I launched myself after him. But I was too slow, too far away.

Daniel jumped.

And that was when I realized—in a half-formed thought that flitted through my mind before I’d gone two steps: he had no parachute.

And I could not let him die.

I skittered back, yanked a parachute off the hook, and then sprinted. Each kick of my legs brought me closer to the open hatch—and just before I reached it, I swung the parachute on.