Chapter 40
40
Esther
S omeone knocked on the front door.
Muffled words carried through from the other side. “Are you kidding me, Uther? Look at the house.”
August and Uther had found them.
Esther tried to get up, but something pinned her in place. She called out, her voice a dry rasping sound that broke into a cough.
The door creaked open, and more dust and plaster fell around her.
“Esther.” The cloud settled, and there was Uther crouching over her, his face more serious than she ever recalled. His warm hands traced her cheeks. She hissed when his thumb brushed a cut. “You’re going to be all right, okay? I’ve got you. Everything is fine.”
For some reason, the shaky way he said “everything is fine” while scanning her body and avoiding eye contact made her think that everything was not, in fact, fine.
The last few moments ran through her head. Ashley covered in blood and being flung across the room by that reaper of a vampire. The sound of her body hitting the column not once but twice. That last image of Ashley grasping, nails raking the floor for the earring Esther had tossed before it all went dark.
“Ashley,” Esther said.
“Is she here? Do you know what happened?” Over Uther’s shoulder, August climbed through the rubble.
The ceiling was gone, leaving a giant chasm in the middle of the house. A rug hung precariously from one side, and on the other, water spurted from somewhere unseen and trailed in a waterfall to the floor below before disappearing in the litter of timber, plaster, and splintered furniture piled in a heap.
“Ashley!” August screamed her name and flung chair legs, then a whole bed frame, from the pile.
Esther focused on his movement. If she just concentrated on his actions, she could ignore the sinking feeling in her heart the longer they went without a reply.
Maybe Ashley had made it out. Or she got to the basement before the collapse. Maybe she finally turned into a bat and flew out a window.
“I’m going to move this off you.” Uther was talking to her.
She pried her attention from August flinging chunks of plaster to see what Uther was fussing over. A wooden beam pinned Esther’s thighs to the floor.
“When I lift it, can you slide out of there? Hey!” He called to someone outside the front door. “Come help me already.”
The pressure on Esther’s legs eased, and Uther pulled her out before it crashed back to the ground. Confused, Esther looked up at the newcomer in the doorway. Meg shoved her hands in her coat pockets, and behind her, Gwen fidgeted with the skirt of her dress as her gaze darted between August flinging furniture and the open space above them.
Esther wasn’t sure what to say, torn between, “Thanks,” “How dare you show your faces,” and “Go, help him!”
Meg nodded, as though she read all three options in Esther’s face, and walked to August, putting her hand on his arm so he’d pause. They exchanged a silent conversation that Esther couldn’t follow before August backed up and let her take over.
Esther had always been impressed by August’s little flashes of magic. The way he casually wove it into his every day. His magic was small: flicking the lights on or off, locking the door when they nearly forgot, opening a window when it got warm. Little things that required a bit of pressure, but the way he used them was natural and domestic. She’d sensed Meg and Gwen were stronger when she’d first met them—their magic originating in their bones and leaking from them like it was too big to keep in without constant vigilance—but nothing they’d done so far prepared her for when Meg bowed her head and held out her open palms.
The entire room of debris trembled. It was the same kind of magic August used, the manipulation of pressure, but instead of flicking on a light switch, her fingers contracted into claws and sweat formed on her forehead as she pulled everything—the plaster, the pillars, a tub, and several more chairs—up from the floor until the only thing left below, like a puppet with its strings snipped, lay Ashley.
Her body was coated in blood and plaster, and her gold hair was matted and covering her face, but it was her.
August stepped like he’d run to her, but Gwen grabbed his arm and pulled him away.
Meg dropped the still floating rubbish into the space he’d recently occupied. The floor vibrated beneath Esther’s fingers as it settled in its new place.
Esther needed to get up. She needed to see Ashley, to know if she was breathing. The pure volume of stuff Meg had pulled off her, not to mention the work August had done by hand, was beyond what any human could handle.
But Ashley was a vampire. Sure, she was dying from some faulty witches’ brew, but vampires couldn’t be crushed to death. Could they?
Esther went to stand, but her leg firmly refused to hold her weight. Her arms were intact, so she army-crawled her way across the floor, paying no mind to Uther, who fussed over her the entire way.
August was there by the time Esther made it and had brushed Ashley’s hair from her face, his hands now coated in blood and his wrist pressed to her lips. “Ashley, I’m so sorry. I was wrong and you were right, okay?” His shoulders shook and tears dripped down his face. “I overstepped, but you can’t…you can’t leave. Who’s going to threaten to drown me every time I’m a crappy friend?” He shoved his wrist at her face. “Drink, already.”
Uther dropped to the floor and wrapped his arms around August, gently pulling him back into his lap and cradling August’s head to Uther’s shoulder.
“Ashley.” Esther tucked two fingers under Ashley’s chin and checked for a pulse. She sighed with relief when she found one. “She’s not dead.”
August’s head shot up. “What do you mean she’s not dead?”
Her eyes watered with relief, clearing tracks down her chalky cheeks. “She still has a pulse.”
“A pulse?” His hand shot to Ashley’s neck, tracing around Esther’s fingers until he found the spot where a gentle but steady beat ticked under Ashley’s chin. “It worked?”
“What do you mean…” Realization dawned on her.
Ashley shouldn’t have a pulse. She was a vampire. Or she had been?
Esther took in the rest of Ashley’s body. Nothing seemed out of place, but a large shard of wood pierced the side of Ashley’s abdomen. Blood coursed from the wound and pooled around her middle.
Ashley was alive and bleeding out in front of them.
“Gwen!” called August. “Gwen, get over here.”
The witch pranced over, her green skirts flaring prettily as she dropped to the floor beside them.
“Help her,” August said.
Gwen shook her head, but her face showed remorse. “I don’t work with humans.”
“Your power is life. Just stop the bleeding. That’s all we need. Turn her into freaking Poison Ivy, and we’ll drop her off in the city to haunt Batman. I don’t even care. I just can’t let her die.”