Summoning the Night (Arcadia Bell #2)(40)

Bob’s convulsions picked up speed as Lon gripped his own thigh, gritting his teeth and squinting into the harsh glare of the flashlight. In the distance, I could feel the rumble of thunder outside. The storm—I wondered if it was close enough for me to pull down lightning.

All I could do was try.

I began sketching the Silentium seal on the floor in front of me, holding the flashlight in my other hand, but before I could even form a small circle, the chalk broke. I was bearing down too hard. I scrambled to retrieve a nub, but one of the bugs dove out of the darkness and lunged for my fingers. I beat it back with the flashlight. As metal collided with cockroach, its glossy brown body cracked . . . and so did the glass lens. The flashlight bulb broke with a pop, and the precious cone of white light sizzled out.

Darkness blanketed the room. Anxious shouting broke out around me. Bob was going to die. Lon was groaning in pain. Hajo was fighting for his life.

Scritch, scritch, scritch, scritch, scritch.

I opened myself up and reached for any current—battery, electricity, lightning. Come on, come on, I thought. As I strained to ferret out a source of energy, something dark stirred inside me. The air shifted. The sounds in the room slipped away, replaced by an unearthly hum. A cold power poured from me into the darkness. The familiar blue pinpoint of light.

My Moonchild ability.

The one bred into me by my psychotic parents. The one I hadn’t used since that horrible night in San Diego weeks ago. The one that tempted me the other night with Hajo. No, no, no! My body shuddered as I desperately tried to shove it back down. But it was like trying to abstain from sneezing. No matter how hard I tried, no matter how much I wanted to reign it in, I just couldn’t. It was too strong.

Death by magical roaches or use the Moonchild power? Wait, why was I fighting it? I couldn’t remember. It didn’t matter, because I wasn’t going to be eaten alive by creepy brown bugs the size of rats. I stopped pushing the power away and let it come.

The pinpoint of light grew into a flat blue disk, begging to be used. The Silentium seal crowded my thoughts, then the sigils and lines transferred from my mind to the blue light in front of me. Negative space fell away and the seal glowed in the darkness.

It felt . . . good. Heka was being funneled from me in a small stream. I could feel it leaving, but where was it going? Was my body using it to kindle moon energy? I couldn’t grasp how it worked, but I sure as hell felt it when it rushed back through me like fire and overflowed into the blue seal, charging it. On instinct, I pushed the silver seal with my mind, slamming it down to the floor while shouting the arcane words to complete the Silentium spell.

A spark blossomed into an explosion. For a lingering moment, the entire room was alive with white light. Bob’s convulsions halted; Lon and Hajo craned their necks upward. The silver seal bounced off the floor, expanded around all of us into a glittering cloud, then imploded.

Darkness dropped from the ceiling. The room fell silent. No more tickity-tick, scritchity-scratch of tiny feet. No more squishy crackles. No more buzzing wings.

“Are they gone? Are they?” Hajo said.

It took me several moments to get my balance. I braced for post-magick nausea, but it never came.

“Cady?” Lon’s voice broke with emotion.

I reached out for him, our hands colliding as Bob moaned.

“You okay?” I asked.

“Pain’s gone,” Lon answered as he wound his fingers around the back of my neck and pulled me close. “You used it?” he whispered.

“Not on purpose,” I whispered back.

Quick and rough, he kissed the side of my head. “I thought . . . Never mind.” He kissed me again, then released me.

I bent down to inspect Bob, my fingers still wary of colliding with bug exoskeleton, but all I felt was warm skin. Bob whimpered in relief and clamped his sweaty hands around mine as Hajo mumbled exclamations behind us between labored breaths.

Metal scraped over cement. After two flicks, a soft, orange glow ballooned from the Zippo, which Lon now held. He moved it over Bob’s skin, then his own leg. The black rings were gone. Bite marks too. Even the holes burned in my jeans by the blood had disappeared. He inspected the floor around us. No trace of the magical cockroaches remained. No smear of bug pudding, no twitching legs. Nothing. Only the wildly scattered bones of Bishop’s skeleton and the monumental crack running the length of the room remained as witnesses.

Lon crawled to the shattered skeleton and reached for the skull, grabbing the object that Hajo had first spotted, the one that started this whole damn mess. He inspected it under the Zippo flame, then handed it to me.

It was a rolled-up Polaroid photo. The backing was peeling away, the image was dark and indiscernible. I shoved it into my pocket and hoarsely said, “Let’s get the hell out of here.”

No one disagreed.

It took us half an hour to get to the Village. I shook the entire way. Prickling terror still lingered under my skin, and my muscles twitched with the memory of the blue-eyed bugs. In the moments when I was able to push away images of the abhorrent bugs and the realization of just how enormously powerful that old magick had been—We could have died!—I mused on the Moonchild ability and how good it had felt. I didn’t have any regrets. I thought I might, but I didn’t. At least not right now.

After we made back to the Singing Bean and watched Bob and Hajo walk to their vehicles, Lon and I sat alone in his car till the rain tapered off a little.