Mary staggered to her feet.
I could see the fear on the girl’s face as she remained within her small circle, arms tight against her side, chin raised.
Mary stalked around them.
Raised her knife, ready to stab, but didn’t swing.
The girl reached into her pocket, careful not to let her elbow move beyond the boundary of the circle. She unrolled a small scroll. “I hereby bespell you, Blake Thorburn, by the-”
I snapped my fingers and pointed.
Evan flew.
The circles didn’t stop him.
Gav’s chain did move in his passage.
Gav stumbled back, his fear visible even with the sunglasses hiding his eyes.
The door swung shut.
He didn’t know that Mary only attacked women.
The girl’s fear was palpable. She shrieked as Evan flew by again, and the scroll tumbled to the ground.
“My uncle-”
“-can come,” Rose said. “We’re dealing with him anyway.”
Evan flew by a third time. She kicked the chain to make it a rough circle again, and she managed to hit him with her knee.
Enough bullshit.
I strode forward.
I saw her expression as she realized what I was doing.
“No,” she said.
I pushed her to one side on my way to the door. I kicked the chain under the nearest stall.
Mary swung her knife.
“Scare, no permanent damage,” Rose ordered, stressing permanent.
Which was probably scary enough when you were disarmed and had a knife-wielding Other on you.
Mary seemed to listen, all the same. The cut across the backs of the girl’s forearms were as shallow as cuts could be.
The Other hung back as the girl retreated into a corner. Staring, bristling with latent hostility.
I snapped my fingers and pointed at the window.
“Mary,” Rose’s whisper was barely audible over the shrieks and screams, “Come back.”
I was dimly aware of the Other making her way to safety.
I headed out the door, leaving them.
“Officer!” I shouted at the nearest cop, before the other Behaims could ambush me.
The officer turned my way.
“There’s a girl in there with slashed wrists,” I told him.
His reaction was immediate, calling for help, shoving his way inside. More officers came running, and the area was chaotic.
Blocking the young Behaims from their sister or cousin.
I used the chaos to my advantage to leave them behind. I was dimly aware of one running up the staircase that was warded against passage.
As I passed the pictures mounted on the wall, Rose walked in step with me, and the Bloody Mary walked in step with her.
6.11
I’d faced more than a few situations that left me bewildered, scrabbling for mental footing before I could be killed or caught in a trap.
This situation, as it turned out, was more bewildering than most, the imminent death or trap a little more questionable.
The Behaim kids had caught me, I realized. They’d surrounded me.
That wasn’t so hard to understand.
But I was in the spirit world, where I’d been in the real world not so long ago.
A touch more concerning.
I was also in a foreign place. The far end of the spirit world version of the police station’s parking lot. Everything was fenced in, except for the dilapidated gate at the end, where an old Father Time figure was lurking, bearded, old, and robed, with golden chains draped over the ground around him like a squid’s limp tentacles.
Three on the side of me closest to the building, sunglasses and Father time on the other side.
Their expressions were stern, distorted by the influences of the spirit world and the fact that my vision was out of focus.
I just dealt with you.
The girl who Mary had sliced was there, cut arts covered by her sleeves. Either the situation had had a particularly fast resolution or… or what?
I’d seen the Behaim ritual and the aftermath of accelerated time around the house, I’d seen Duncan turn back time, and now this.
Had they rewound themselves? How did that explain my being here? Had they stopped time and moved things in the interim?
I didn’t have my backpack or the hammer that was engraved with the rune, but my pockets were still full.
Evan fluttered, landing on my shoulder.
“Hey, kid,” I said, murmuring.
“Heya.”
The Behaims were staring at me but not moving. That damn little kid with his pad of sticky notes was riffing through the pad with his thumb.
“Are you as confused as I am?” I muttered.
“We’re not where we’re supposed to be,” Evan commented.
“Yeah,” I said.
The Behaim guy with the sunglasses might have heard, because he smiled a little.
“Where’s Rose?” Evan asked.
I looked around. My eye traveled over the back windows of the cars.
No sign of our resident girl in the mirror or her knife wielding Other.
“Good question,” I said.