Chapter Seventy-Nine Know When to Pick Your Fright
Rain slaps me in the face. Whole sheets drench my clothes and my hair, making it impossible for me to think, especially when paired with winds that make every step total agony.
The temperature has dropped, so the sticky heat is gone. But the cold rain just makes it a million times more uncomfortable, which I didn’t think was possible.
All around me, people are gasping and swearing and fighting to keep going against winds that seem determined to knock us off our feet. I think about shifting into my manticore, just because it gives me more body mass, but now doesn’t seem like the time to complicate the situation.
So instead, I just hunch my shoulders and bend forward as I hope for the best.
Beside me, Ember—who is much shorter and slighter than I am—keeps getting pummeled by the wind. And while phoenixes have a lot of really cool things about them, physical strength isn’t one of them. So, for every two steps she takes, the wind sends her back until it feels like she’s walking in place.
“Stay behind me!” I shout, stepping forward to block the wind from her present version as much as possible, while her past and future continue to be blown to hell and back.
Jude adjusts himself as I do, and for the first time, I realize he’s been using his big body to do the exact same thing for me.
“Thank you!” I shout to be heard above the roaring wind and ocean. Ridiculously, my heart pitter-patters just a little bit as I wait for a response from him. But in the end, Jude doesn’t say anything. He just casts a long, unwavering look over his shoulder that somehow has the power to make me hot and cold and fluttery and steady all at the same time.
And just like that, another piece of the proverbial wall I’m trying so desperately to keep between us crumbles.
Except for that moment on the beach, we’ve had no time to talk since everything went haywire. And though jumping through a crumbling portal to save someone is about as serious as it gets—I have no idea what that means for our friendship or anything else.
But right now all that matters is getting somewhere safe before the next level of hell hits.
We finally make it to the fence, and as we’re waiting our turn to file through, Jude turns and stares at me with a look so intense I start to think reading minds is another one of his powers. Then he leans in so close that I can feel the heat of his breath against my ear and says, “I’ve got a bad feeling about this. Keep your eyes out for the Jean-Jerks.”
I can’t help laughing because he’s taken to calling them by my nickname, too, but also, I agree with him. “You think they’re going to do something gross, too?” I ask.
“I think they’re going to do something reprehensible,” he shoots back. And I can’t argue with him. That’s pretty much the definition of the three of them.
The next five minutes pass uneventfully. Though I stay vigilant, there’s no sign of the three fae, thankfully, and it isn’t long before it’s our turn to go through the fence. But we’ve barely made it a hundred yards from the gate when I hear a familiar noise.
My ears perk up as chills work their way through my body. Because there’s only one thing on Earth that I know of that makes that particular noise.
I turn to look around, only to find that Jude and Luis are doing the same thing. When our eyes meet, Luis grabs my arm and says, “I knew this was a bad idea.”
“You hear it, too?” I ask, the chill inside me getting worse as the sound gets louder. “Oh, shit.”
“Oh, shit is right,” he answers.
“What’s wrong?” For the first time since she killed Jean-Luc, Izzy actually sounds interested. “What’s hap—”
She breaks off in the middle of a word, her eyes going wide. Which…fuck.
And even though I tell myself it can’t be, that we need to stay the course, I can’t resist turning around to look at what she’s seeing.
Then really, really wish I hadn’t as hundreds of pissed-off chricklers come racing down the path straight at the whole group of us.
“What do we do?” Luis hisses as the rain continues to pour down on us.
“Freeze,” I tell him, because all our options are bad at the moment, but of all the bad ones, that is definitely the best one.
“Seriously? You want us to let them catch up?” he hisses.
“What I want is to give the rest of the students a chance to make it to the gym,” I answer. “So, yeah, I want to let them catch up.”
He rolls his eyes. “Picking the self-sacrificing best friend was so not the way to go,” he grumbles. But he moves to position himself directly in the middle of the center walkway.
The others are catching on to what’s happening now, too, and it only takes about thirty seconds for us to make a kind of blockade with our bodies. I really hope Danson appreciates the help this time, because if he gives me a hard time about not following him to the gym, I might break my own rules about my tail and deliberately sting him.
“What now?” Simon asks as he moves to my right.
“We wait,” Jude tells him grimly. “And something tells me it won’t be very long.”