Face the Fire (32 page)

She didn’t know what charms Ripley and Nell had conjured up, but they were working like—well, charms. Whatever you wanted to call the thing that was hovering over the island, her girls were going to screw it to the wall.

Still, she felt better knowing Mia was back on-island, tucked into the cliff house, getting back to her routine. And though it had been a pill to swallow, she felt more at ease about Mia since she had Sam fretting over her.

The boy’d been an idiot, she decided as she drove through the village with the classic sounds of Pink Floyd blasting through the speakers. But he’d been young. She’d done plenty of stupid things when she was young.

Every one of them had led her here. She supposed, if she was going to be fair, everything Sam had done had led him right back to the Sisters, and Mia.

Not that she was finished giving him grief, but she would dispense it in smaller doses now.

Only one thing mattered, and that was Mia’s happiness.
If Sam Logan was the answer to that, then he was going to damn well come up to the mark.

If she had to kick him up to it.

The idea made her grin wickedly as she started up the cliff road. And was oblivious to the mist that rose and rolled behind her.

When the music turned to a hiss of static, she glanced down at the radio, slapped irritably at the little tape player installed under it.

“Damn it, you better not eat
The Wall
, you cheap bastard.”

The response, a long, deep howl through the speaker, had her hands jerking on the wheel. The car shuddered around her as the fog poured, cold as death, through her open windows.

Yelping, she hit the brakes first, an automatic response as her vision was obscured. Instead of stopping, the little car speeded up, its cheerful rubber band pinging now a machine gun’s
rat-a-tat
. Under her hands the wheel vibrated, iced, and began to spin on its own. Though it felt like a slick and frozen snake, she gripped it, hard, and yanked. The scream of the tires echoed her own as she caught a glimpse of the edge of the cliff.

In front of her the windshield became a starburst. Ice crackling over ice. Then the stars went black.

The spoon Mia was using to stir sauce for the pasta
she’d made for Lulu clattered out of her numb hand. As it bounced to the floor, the vision shrieked through her head, all sound and fury. Her throat tightened as if a hand had squeezed it as she whirled away from the stove and ran.

She flew out of the house, blind with panic, racing to the road on foot. From her hilltop view, she saw the filthy
mist spewing behind the little orange car on the road below, and was running, running when she saw the car spin out of control and toward the cliff.

“No, no, no!” Fear blanked her mind, rolled sick in her stomach. “Help me. Help me.” She chanted it over and over as she struggled to find her power through the sheer wall of terror.

All she had, everything she was, she gathered. And heaved the magic inside her toward the car as it crashed into the guardrail and flipped like a toy tossed by a child’s angry hand.

“Hold, hold.” Oh, God, she couldn’t
think
. “Blow air, come wind, a bridge to form. Hold her safe, keep her from harm. Please, please,” she chanted. “A net, a bridge, a steady wall, keep her from that terrible fall.”

Panting, her vision blurred with tears, she ran the last yards to where the car teetered on the broken guardrail, over the drop to the rocks below. “It will not have what’s dear to me. As I will, so mote it be.”

Her voice broke as she reached the rail. “Lulu!”

The car balanced precariously on its roof, seesawing on the crushed rail. The wind she’d conjured blew the hair back from her face as she climbed over the rail.

“Don’t touch it!”

Small rocks and clumps of earth spilled off the unstable edge when she spun around at the shout. Sam leaped out of his car.

“I don’t know how long it can hold. I feel it slipping, inside me.”

“You can hold it.” He pushed his way through the wind, climbed the rail until he, too, stood on the narrow edge. “Focus. You have to focus. I’ll get her out.”

“No. She’s mine.”

“That’s the point.” He spent a desperate moment to take Mia’s arms, shake her. The car could go at any minute, he
knew. And so could the edge where they stood. “Exactly. Hold it. You’re the only one strong enough to do it. Step over the rail.”

“I won’t lose her!” Mia shouted. “Or you.”

Her legs trembled as she climbed over the rail. Her hands shook as she lifted them. And she saw the fog begin to rise again. Saw the dark shape of the wolf forming from it.

Her body stilled. Fury spiked inside her and stabbed away the fear. “You won’t have her.” The hand she flung out was rock-steady now. She faced the wolf, bore the weight of the magic she called on her shoulders. “You may have me, that’s up to fate. But by all I am, all I have, you won’t take her.”

It snarled and started toward her. It could take her life now, she thought, and so be it. Her magic would hold. She risked a glance at Sam and saw, with inner horror, that he was easing a bleeding and unconscious Lulu out of the car. And the car tipped and swayed.

With a last push, she left herself open and defenseless, shoving everything toward the cliffs.

And the wolf bunched to leap.

As he charged, energy shot into her, out from her. It struck him like a lightning bolt. With a furious howl, he vanished into the fog.

“Didn’t count on my sisters, did you? You bastard.”

The wind sucked away the mist, and she saw both Ripley and Nell spring out of their cars before she turned to run toward Sam.

He had Lulu in his arms. The edge of the ground crumbled under his feet and sent him stumbling forward as a chunk of the ledge rained down to the sea. Mia reached out, grabbed him as the car overbalanced and tumbled over the cliffs. He was struggling back over the rail when the gas tank exploded.

“She’s alive,” he managed.

“I know.” She kissed Lulu’s white cheek, laid a hand on her heart. “We’ll take her to the clinic.”

Outside the emergency clinic, where the air was
quiet and the breeze balmy, Nell tended the cuts on Mia’s feet.

“Got six million pair of shoes,” Ripley stated while she paced, restless as a cat. “And you run barefoot over broken glass.”

“Yes. Silly, isn’t it?” She hadn’t felt the glass slice into her feet when she’d run to the wrecked car. Under Nell’s gentle healing, she felt no pain now.

“You can fall apart.” Ripley’s tone gentled, and she laid a hand on Mia’s shoulder. “You’re entitled.”

“I don’t need to, but thanks. She’s going to be all right.” Mia did close her eyes for a moment, waited until she felt steadier. “I looked at her injuries. She’ll be unhappy and very pissed off about her car, but she’ll be all right. I never considered, never thought she could be harmed this way. Used this way.”

“Harm her, harm you,” Ripley said. “That’s what Mac . . .” She trailed off. Winced.

“Mac? What do you mean?” Despite Nell’s protest, Mia got to her feet. She caught a glimmer, turned white as a sheet. “Something happened before. The beach.” Furious, she grabbed Ripley’s arms. “What happened?”

“Don’t blame her. Blame all of us.” Nell rose, ranged herself with Ripley. “She didn’t want you to know, and we agreed.”

“Know what?” Sam asked as he walked up with a tray of takeout coffee.

“How dare you keep anything to do with Lulu from me.” She swung around to him, ready to bite.

“He didn’t know,” Nell interrupted. “We didn’t tell him either.”

Ripley told them now, said it all fast. And watched Mia’s pale cheeks bloom with ripe temper. “She might’ve been killed. I left her! I left her and went to the mainland. Do you think I’d have done that if I’d known she was a target? You had no right, no right to exclude me from this.”

“I’m sorry.” Nell lifted her hands, let them fall. “We did what we thought was best. We were wrong.”

“Not so wrong. You’re going to have to deal with it, Mia,” Sam added when she turned to him. “You nearly lost on the cliff road tonight because you divided your energy. Divided hell. You dumped it out and all but left yourself empty.”

“Do you think I’d give less than my life to protect her, or anyone I loved?”

“No, I don’t.” He touched her cheek, and when she jerked away he simply moved in and took her face firmly in his hands. “And neither does she. Isn’t she entitled to think of you?”

“I can’t talk about this now. I need to be with her.” She stepped away, walked to the door. But stopped when she opened it. “Thank you for what you did,” she said to Sam. “I’ll never forget it.”

Later, while Mia sat beside Lulu’s hospital bed,
Ripley and Nell slipped into the room. For a time, there was nothing but silence.

“They want to keep her until tomorrow,” Mia said at length. “Because of the concussion. She wasn’t happy about it, but she’s weak enough that she couldn’t put up
much of a fight. The arm . . .” She had to take a moment to steady her voice. “It’s a clean break. She’ll be in a cast a few weeks, but it’ll be fine.”

“Mia,” Nell began. “We’re so sorry.”

“No.” Mia shook her head, kept her eyes on Lulu’s bruised face. “I’m calmer now, and I’ve thought it through. I understand what you did, and why. I don’t agree. We’re a circle, and we must value and respect that—and each other. But I also know how stubborn and persuasive she is.”

Lulu’s eyelids fluttered, and her voice was thin and raspy. “Don’t talk about me like I’m not here.”

“Just be quiet,” Mia ordered. “I’m not speaking to you.” But she took the hand Lulu held out. “Thank God you’ll have to buy a new car. That mini monstrosity is finally dead.”

“I’m gonna find me another one just like it.”

“There couldn’t be another one like it.” But if there was, Mia thought, she would find it for her.

“Don’t give these girls or their guys a hard time,” Lulu mumbled. She opened one of her blackened eyes, closed it again because her vision was blurry. “Did what I told them to do. Respected their elders.”

“I’m not angry with them. Just you.” Mia pressed her lips to the back of Lulu’s hand. “Go on home,” she said to her sisters. “Tell your husbands I won’t be turning them into toads anytime in the near future.”

“We’ll come back in the morning.” Nell moved to the bed, laid a kiss on Lulu’s forehead. “I love you.”

“Don’t get sloppy. Just a few bumps.”

“Too bad.” Her voice a bit thick, Ripley leaned over the bedrail and kissed Lulu’s cheek. “Because I love you, too, even though you’re really short and ugly.”

With a weak cackle, Lulu freed her good hand from
Nell’s grasp and waved them off. “Go away. Buncha chattering females.”

When they’d gone, Lulu shifted in her bed.

“Pain?” Mia asked.

“Can’t get comfortable.”

“Here.” Rising, Mia trailed her fingers over Lulu’s face, down her casted arm. She murmured softly as she stroked, until Lulu sighed.

“Better’n drugs. Feel floaty now. Brings back memories.”

Relieved, Mia sat again. “Go to sleep now, Lu.”

“Will. You go home. No point you sitting here watching me snore.”

“Yes, as soon as you sleep.”

But she sat while Lulu slept, kept watch in the dim light.