Strange and Ever After (Something Strange and Deadly #3)(66)

I straightened. Magic rolled up my spine, and the wind kicked harder.

A shout came from behind me; I ignored it. The balloon was fading too fast.

My hands reached out; my fingers flexed. I would throw everything I had at that balloon. I would rip it from the sky. I would beat down Allison.

And I would destroy Marcus.

“Eleanor!” Oliver’s voice snaked into my ears. “Stop!”

I did not stop. I narrowed my eyes to slits, focusing everything I had—everything I was—on that distant balloon. I had no spell in mind, but I did not need one. Death and power were close cousins—and I had plenty of power. More than I’d ever had inside me before. It surged in from the world. It breathed and squirmed like a living thing, and I gulped it in as if I were drowning.

“El!” Oliver’s voice again, nagging like an insect. “You’re hurting us—stop!” Hands grabbed my shoulders. “STOP!”

The command shuddered through me, reverberated in my skull. The demon I controlled was telling me what to do. His desperation poured through our bond—but with it came magic. I latched on to it like a lamprey.

And then his power gushed into me. Where his hands squeezed my shoulders, the skin boiled. Where his breath laced over my neck, the hair stood on end. He was so powerful—even weakened as he was, Oliver was made of soul.

And I would take it. I would take and I would crush Marcus—

Stop. Oliver’s voice pierced my brain. You will kill yourself.

“I don’t care,” I tried to say, but the voice that came out was not my own. This voice was layered and charged like the rumble of heat lightning. “I would rather die,” I went on, “than let him get away.”

But what about me? he pressed, and there was an undercurrent of panic. It chafed against my skull. You will kill me too if you do not stop. You will kill Joseph and Jie. You will kill Daniel. You will push us away forever. Stop, Eleanor. Stop and come back to us.

“Marcus will get away.”

And we will go after him, but you cannot stop him like this. I will not let you.

I almost laughed at that, for there was nothing Oliver could do to me—not when I was this strong. Not when I had his power coursing into me. “How will you stop me?”

Like this. He slid his arms around my waist, rested his cheek against the back of my head, and opened himself up.

My legs turned to water. My body collapsed beneath the tide of his magic.

But it was not only magic that weighed me down. It was him, and in a roar of sound and light, I crumbled beneath his being.

I am in a world of darkness and stars. It is a resting place before the final afterlife. I exist when moments before I did not—and this puzzles me. But I soon forget, for as I watch the stars drift by, I realize they are actually other beings. Some are pinpricks of light that swirl with power too intense to look upon. Some are weaker, like me. And floating amid us are wispy, fragile things.

The souls of the Dead.

For a century I watch, until one day I feel a tug inside me. It is like a pronged arrow in my gut, and it yanks me along. I fight, but it is stronger than me. Quicker and quicker it pulls, until the stars fade into a cloudy sky. Until an ancient, slatted dock rushes beneath me and a distant, golden door appears ahead. I try to gain purchase on the dock, try to slow this hurtling speed . . . but to no avail. The door zooms closer and closer. . . .

I am through, and I am in a world I never knew existed. I have a body—it wraps my soul around bones and traps it within skin. I do not like it, and though years will pass, I will never learn to like it.

Yet I am able to forget for a time, for the boy who called me through is fascinating. His laugh, his jokes, his mind—they are alive, and it captivates me.

I revere him. Even when he starts to shut me out, I love him. He is all I have, and though he commands me away, I cannot stop what I feel.

But then I meet her. She confuses me. Her laugh is just like his. Her wit and her heart—like his, except brighter. She tells me my love is dead, and I hate her for it . . .

Until I do not hate her anymore. One day I awaken in a city of lights and magic to find that she is no longer my bane but my beacon. Where I had thought myself neutral and indifferent, I have fallen onto a side. Her side.

And perhaps this is the worst part about being alive and trapped in a human form.

I do not know what I want, much less how to get it. There is something writhing inside me—something that aches for fulfillment.

I had thought it was the Old Man—I had thought fulfilling that command would solve everything. Make this hunger go away.

It didn’t.

Now she is all I have, and that knowledge crushes me . . . yet also keeps me from drowning.

But I do not belong in this earthly realm, Eleanor, and if you die now, then I can never go home. Please, I will not let you do this to me or to yourself.

Come back to me, El. Come back to me.

I snapped into myself. Me—only me. No Oliver, no magic. It was my brain and my body . . . and it was shrieking at me to breathe.

Because I couldn’t. I had pulled in so much magic, there was no space for my lungs to expand. My ribs were bowing beneath the pressure in my chest. I had no feeling in my skin—no sense of sand, no touch of wind.

“Give it to me,” Oliver murmured. His words brushed through my hair, and he hugged me tighter to his chest. “Cast it into me, El, like any other spell.”