Chapter Twenty-Seven
Sweat beaded Katherine’s brow as the temperature in the room climbed. She covered her mouth with her sleeve and tried to blink the sting of the smoke out of her eyes as Silas fiddled with the door.
“Just pull it,” Katherine said. Silas turned away from the handle, leveling her with a quick glare.
“I tried that. It’s not working.”
She stepped in front of him, taking the covering off her mouth to pull at the handle herself and getting the same result of absolutely fucking nothing. She let out a frustrated huff, which turned into a hacking cough as unfettered smoke filled her lungs.
“Spelled shut,” Silas said. He pulled his caster out of his pocket, a rune lighting up as he pressed his hand against the door, but nothing happened.
Katherine did the same, her palm glowing purple as she tried the Class 4 universal unlocking spell she kept loaded at all times.
It was meant to open any lock, but it did nothing against the door.
She cursed—that spell was a one-and-done, and she couldn’t think of anything else in her arsenal that would help.
Silas, though, had options at his fingertips. He rifled through his small spellbook, gold lighting up on his palm as he absorbed the powerful spells within. That has to be enough to save us, she thought. What type of magic was so strong that even Noctis’ best spells couldn’t undo it?
This, apparently. Silas threw three different spells from the book at the door, and none of them did a thing. By the time he was done, the room was so gray with smoke that Katherine could hardly see in front of her.
“Fuck,” Silas said. “Fuck, fuck, fuck.”
“We have to—” Katherine started, but then she was thrown back, Silas’ body landing heavily on top of hers on the bed. She pushed herself up to see what he’d saved her from—a lick of flame that had come through under the door and was now burning a line down the carpet. Right toward them.
Katherine pushed Silas off, grabbing the bedspread and throwing it over the flames. It doused the line, but there were more coming, funneling directly at them.
They needed to get the hell out of this room.
“The window,” she said. Silas nodded as he grabbed a sheet off the bed and wrapped it around his fist, then smashed through the glass.
Katherine enjoyed a brief moment of relief that the window, at least, hadn’t been spelled shut, but her relief was cut off by a cough as more smoke choked her lungs.
“You first.”
It took her a moment to process what Silas meant. Her first. Out the window. On the sixty-sixth floor.
Large hands hot on her hips, and all of the sudden, she was up, out of the window, her feet barely gripping onto—
A ledge that was thin enough to hold half her sneaker, if that.
And that was about a million fucking feet above the ground.
All thoughts eddied out of Katherine’s brain at once. Some distant part of her saw Silas climb out next to her. Felt the heat and smoke pour out of the window behind them. Heard him tell her that they had to move.
She tried to send that signal to her body, and failed. Miserably.
She was going to fall off this building. She was going to fall down, and down, and down, and then she was going to plummet onto the sidewalk and feel each of her bones break individually underneath her.
Distantly, she heard Silas saying something, but the noise was muffled by wind. Calm. She needed to stay calm. She could freak the fuck out once her feet were back on solid ground.
She forced the panic down as she took in the situation. Very tall building, check. No fire escapes or ladders anywhere in sight, check. A well-meaning man next to her repeating over and over again that they were going to be okay, check.
“You’re being very enthusiastic right now,” she said, her voice shaky.
Silas clenched his jaw. “I won’t let you fall.”
Katherine loosed a low chuckle. “Right,” she said. “Got any secret flying spells over there at Noctis?”
“No. But I can maybe find a way to make the ground softer…”
“So your big plan to make sure we don’t fall to our certain deaths is for us to jump to our very probable deaths instead?”
“We’re not exactly swimming in options here!”
“Oh my god.” Katherine dared another peek down, sucking in another breath. “I can’t die. Especially not downtown.”
Silas huffed. “I’m sorry the location of this life-threatening fire isn’t up to your standards.”
“A cute Airbnb in Los Feliz. A bungalow on the beach. Hell, even a shitty motel in Hollywood. There are about a zillion options that would have left us way fucking closer to the ground.”
“Sounds wonderful, let me just hop in my time machine real quick.”
She ground her teeth. “Stop talking.”
Katherine looked away from the pavement below to Silas, who was glaring at her, eyes blazing. “I won’t let anything happen to you. If you have to land on top of me, then that’s what we’ll do.”
She covered the flutter in her chest at the conviction in Silas’ words with an exaggerated eye roll.
It was a ridiculous plan. There was a 100 percent chance it would end with both of them dead.
And yet there was some part of Katherine that really believed that this man who hardly knew her would sacrifice his life to save her.
They were just words—who knew what he’d actually do, if that time came—but no one had ever given her even that much before.
She didn’t want to die, but she didn’t want Silas to die either. And considering that his plan would likely end with two matching blood splatters on the pavement, she needed to come up with something better.
“I have an idea,” Katherine said. “A bad idea, but not quite as bad as yours. Hopefully.” Katherine shifted her hips. “Can you reach into my back pocket and get my caster for me?”
“What are you going to do?”
“A spell, rather than just standing here talking.”
“I suggested spells!”
“Silas. Just do it.”
“Can we just for one second—” A lick of flame came out the window, a few feet away from Silas. “Okay. Fine. Yes.”
Silas moved closer to her, then reached his hand carefully toward the bulge of her caster.
She shivered at the light brush of his fingers over her ass—something, she reminded herself, that she shouldn’t be noticing right now.
Then, his touch was gone, the caster safely in his grip.
He flicked it open for her, and she inched her hand over to grab it, knife edge down.
She pressed her hand against the wall, pushing the blade into her palm.
“Adhere,” she whispered. She didn’t need to say the word out loud to bring up the spell, but her brain was incapable of focusing right now, and saying it helped bring up the rune she needed.
“Seriously?” Silas asked. “That’s for when you want to hang up a poster or something. How’s it going to help here?”
Katherine ignored him, repeating the spell again, while jamming her hand harder into the blade. The pain shook her, but she kept going, repeating the motion and the words again and again and again, until she felt it.
She wasn’t gripping the wall anymore. She was sticking to it.
Against her better judgment, she took her right hand off the wall, the motion making a loud squelch. She stuck it back down and her skin was sucked flush to the wall of the building again. The connection felt solid enough to hold her weight.
“You made yourself into tape.”
Katherine grinned at Silas as he stared at her in awe. “Your turn. Use more blood and more magic, and focus your intention heavily on your own body.”
Silas pulled out his caster, following the same motions Katherine had. She noticed, with some satisfaction, that it took him a good thirty seconds longer than it had taken her. Suck on that, fancy Noctis training.
Eventually, though, the tang of magic overtook the smell of smoke in the air and the spell took hold.
Silas instantly began to test his newfound stickiness, turning his body around so that his chest was facing the building and he was leaning back, his weight on his hands.
“I’m Spider-Man,” he said, and it was such a ridiculous thing to say in this situation that she was able to use it to distract herself for long enough to accomplish the terrifying task of repeating his motion.
“I don’t think Spider-Man wears suit pants,” she said, trying to keep her voice steady against her fear as she leaned back slightly, testing her hands’ hold.
“He would if he worked a nine-to-five.”
“Poor guy doesn’t have the temperament for that.”
A gust of wind blew by them. Katherine’s eyes slammed shut as her body rocked with the breeze, waiting for her hands to be ripped off the wall—but the spell stuck.
“Do you want me to go first?” Silas asked.
Katherine didn’t bother fronting, instead nodding her thankfulness.
She chanced a glance toward Silas as he started to move, climbing down the building like it was a ladder.
Katherine gave herself only a second to steel her nerves before she followed—she had no idea how long this spell would last, and she really wanted to be on the ground before she found out.
It was terrifying. She couldn’t look down if she wanted to maintain her thin grip on sanity, but that meant her eyes were instead locked to the building, to the fire burning behind every window they passed.
It was midafternoon on a weekday at a business hotel, and the rooms seemed to be empty.
She breathed a sigh of relief, happy that at least they had been given that boon. Maybe this would all be okay—
She slipped.
She screamed as her body tilted to the side, held entirely by her left hand. The pendulum motion of her swing pulled at the connection point too, and her fingers started to dislodge. She made a mad grab for the wall again, missed—
A strong hand on top of hers, pushing her back into the wall, letting that adhesive she’d turned herself into regrip the concrete.
Her eyes stayed closed, her head pressed to the wall in front of her until she could recover her breath. “Thank you,” she whispered.