Catherine sobbed. “No,” she whispered. “We can’t leave him. We can’t—”
“He’s gone,” I said, but even as I did, I knew she wouldn’t hear it. I tried to shift so I blocked her view, but she fought me, wriggling up until she could see over my shoulder.
Moab let off another shot, this one much closer. I heard a scream, then nothing. “Four,” Moab said, dead calm.
Bullets pinged around us. The air filled with smoke and powder, so thick it coated my tongue.
Scarlette worked faster, her hands flying over the jars and bones. The blue light grew, pulsed, then shivered. “If the circle breaks,” she shouted, “we die here. Not later. Now.”
Moab and I traded glances. I nodded at the left flank; he nodded back, then slipped away in the dark, ghosting from stone to stone.
Mama Celeste raised her arms, every muscle trembling. “Just a little longer,” she muttered, “hold it, hold it—”
A shadow fell over us. For a split second, I thought it was the moon, but it was a man—one of the soldiers, running full tilt, bayonet fixed. I braced for the hit, but Moab came from nowhere, musket reversed, and hammered the man in the throat. The soldier dropped with a wet, guttural gasp.
“Three,” Moab panted, not even winded.
The other soldiers were right behind, charging with no finesse, just rage. One tripped over a grave and lost his gun; the other aimed straight for the circle. Scarlette saw him coming, but she didn’t break the chant. She just lowered her head, gritted her teeth, and took the hit.
The soldier crashed into the circle, knocking Scarlette flat. The blue light flared, brighter than ever, and for a second I saw everything—the bones, the dried petals, the blood smeared everywhere. The soldier tried to stab Scarlette, but the blade hit the edge of the chalk and stopped, as if it was caught on invisible steel. Scarlette rolled away, grabbed a fistful of salt, and threw it in the man’s eyes. He screamed, hands to his face, and fell back over the edge of the circle.
Mama Celeste didn’t miss a beat. She sang louder, her voice breaking, the words cutting through the smoke. The blue shimmer turned violet, then white.
I felt it in my teeth—a pressure, a pull, like my skull was being yanked forward. The grass around the circle flattened, and the headstones rattled in their sockets. The world smelled of ozone and blood and scorched meat.
Hale raised his pistol again, aimed at the circle, at Catherine. I saw it in slow motion—his finger tightening, the hammer falling, the flash.
But there was no shot. Moab hit him from behind, knife deep in his shoulder. Hale spun, lashing out with the pistol, catching Moab on the brow. Moab went down, blood streaming from his face.
Catherine screamed, and I reached for her.
Hale ignored Moab, eyes locked on Catherine. He wrenched the knife free and started after her, murder in every line of his face.
I followed, lungs burning, ribs on fire. The edge of the circle shimmered, and as I crossed it, I felt the world tilt—like jumping off a cliff, that half-second of weightlessness before the crash.
Inside, the air was thick. Scarlette and Mama Celeste knelt together, hands joined, the blood on their arms slick and bright in the unnatural light. Catherine stood in the center, shaking, tears streaming down her face.
I grabbed her, held her close, and turned to face Hale.
He stepped to the edge, pistol up, bleeding from his arm and shoulder, but moving as if none of it mattered. He glared at us, then at the blue-white fire that now pulsed from the ground beneath us. “End it,” he hissed.
Scarlette spoke, voice just for Catherine and me. “Now. Both of you. Hands together, and don’t let go.”
We locked fingers, and for the first time, Catherine squeezed back. She was shaking, but her grip was iron.
Mama Celeste chanted, “Veil is open. Choose your path.”
When the world came apart, it did not shatter all at once. First, time stalled: the bullets hung in the air like seeds caught in a summer breeze, the soldiers' shouts stretched out and warped, Moab's wild charge a freeze-frame of rage and blood. The blue-white light from the circle grew teeth, gnawed at the edges of reality, until the stones, the grass, even the air itself peeled back in ribbons.
In the middle, Catherine clung to me as if her bones were hollow and needed my body to keep them from folding in. Scarlette and Mama Celeste knelt at her feet, one chanting, the other half-conscious, mouth pulled into a line so tight it looked drawn with ink. My own skin hummed, alive with the memory of every wound I’d ever taken, every pain the world had ever offered. But none of it mattered, not here, not with the old world dissolving under my knees.
Catherine tried to speak, but the words got caught in the crush of her ribs. Her face was a map of fear and wonder, every line etched deeper by the light. She looked at me, lips trembling, and for a second, I saw the woman I’d first loved—a girl with mud under her fingernails and a mind set like stone.
I dropped to my knees in front of her, hands shaking worse than they ever did in a fight. "Listen," I said, but my voice was ragged, ruined. "I crossed time itself for you. I burned my life to the ground for a shot at another day with you. I don’t care about anything else. Not the club, not the future, not the damn world. Just you."
Her eyes went wide, round as a child’s. She opened her mouth, but nothing came.
I risked a glance back. Hale was there, just outside the ring of fire, blood running down his face, lips twisted in pure hate. Heraised his pistol and aimed right at Catherine, but the air in the circle boiled, bent the bullet's path before it could reach us.