I slipped out of the other side and back into my body as Austin picked his way over the fallen men and loosened the leather ties. As soon as I had a hand free, I helped him, and once I was loose, I grabbed his shirt and kissed him.
“Save that thought,” he said, his voice grim and low. “We still have to get out of here.”
“You didn’t have to kill them,” I said. “I didn’t want you to have to kill again.”
“I didn’t kill them,” Austin said drily, and then the sound of the men’s moans reached me. “Although neither of them will ever play football or run a mile again.” He helped me off the table; my legs buckled, and Austin wrapped an arm around my waist to help me stand. From somewhere nearby came the sound of more gunfire. “The others?”
“Keeping busy, I’m sure. This place is like Fort Knox. Where’s Kaden?”
I shook my head.
“Let’s get you out of here,” Austin said, taking in the cuts on my chest and the bruises on my face.
“No. We find Kaden first. Where—” I glanced around. “Where’d she go?”
“Who?”
“Lady Buckhardt. The woman who was in here.” She had vanished, and at first I thought this was another ability. Then I saw the second doorway hidden behind a cabinet full of medical supplies. The thought of chasing her, and of facing that shriveled nightmare hiding inside her flesh, made me pause. “It doesn’t matter. Kaden has to be here somewhere.”
So we proceeded down the hall. We hadn’t gotten more than a dozen feet when I slipped. My feet slid underneath me again, and I grabbed the wall for balance, but my glanced off the slick plaster. Then I noticed the frost riming the doorknobs and trickling down the walls. My breath misted in the air in front of me, and my soaked clothes stiffened as they froze, icy mud flaking away with each step I took. The thud-thud of heavy, practical shoes sounded ahead of us, and I squeezed Austin’s arm. I had asked him for two things. He had gotten the Glock; I hoped to God he had followed my other instructions.
“Get behind me,” I said.
“I’ve got the gun, babe. Maybe you should get behind me.”
Before I could answer, Mrs. Troutt stepped into view. She wore all white today: a jaunty white hat perched forward on her spiky gray hair, a white pea coat straining over her massive shoulders, sequined white gloves—as big as catcher’s mitts—on her enormous hands. As always, she wore the old-fashioned cameo brooch on the high, frilly collar of her blouse. Looking at the brooch’s design—a woman’s silhouette—I suddenly had an idea of who it represented.
Austin, next to me, shivered and blew out a steaming white cloud, but he held the Glock steady on Mrs. Troutt. “Get out of our way.”
She shook her head and lowered her weight, settling into something that looked like a wrestler’s stance. When she raised her hands, I saw the blood staining the palms of her gloves. “We’ve tried this a couple of times,” I said. “And it always ends badly for you. You can walk away.”
Troutt smiled. The temperature felt like it dropped another twenty degrees. It was cold, so cold that every breath felt like I was swallowing an icicle. The tips of my fingers tingled, and I was aware of how steam rose off my bare arms and legs—and how that steam was slowing, whisked away by arctic currents. Another minute of this and I’d be unconscious. Or dead.
A muffle click sounded beside me, and Austin swore. He tried again, then glanced at me. “Trigger’s frozen.”
Troutt’s familiar, shrill laugh filled the hallway. “I couldn’t believe it when they called me. I was so excited I took a half-day at work—I had to be here, I really just had to be here myself.” Then she pulled back a hand. Ice crystallized in her grip, forming a long, jagged lance. Planting my shoulder against Austin, I launched both of us to the side. As the frozen spear flashed by on one side, we hit the flimsy door and burst into the next room.
Together, we scrambled to keep our footing. The ice carpeting the floor raced after us, wrapping around our feet. We stood in long but narrow supply room, and I shoved Austin towards the back, past rows of bleach and ammonia and mops and paper towels and even a row of candles that were probably left over from when they first built this place. We put two racks of shelving between us and the door, but the frost kept coming. The freezing air chapped the inside of my mouth, and Austin’s lips had a bluish tinge.
Kicking off another layer of frost that was trying to bind my ankles, I said, “M-m-m-move your feet. D-d-d-don’t let her trap you in place.”
Austin tried to reply, but by then, he was shivering too hard. Shaking his head in frustration, he barreled forward, crashing into the closest row of shelves. It rocked forward, wobbled, and then toppled. When it struck the next rack, the metal frame screamed in protest, but it flopped forward too. With a cracking sound, the shelves struck the doorway at an angle, providing a temporary barrier.
“S-s-s-s-s—” I tried to speak, but my teeth kept trying to bite off my tongue, so I gave it up.
If Austin was going to reply, he didn’t have time. One bloody, sequined glove shot through the doorway, pawing the air until the fingers rested on the rack’s metal frame. Austin and I stumbled back until we were pressed against the wall. As the fingers closed over the rack of shelving, frost bloomed along the frame, racing to cover the exposed metal. So much for Austin’s idea, I thought, and the words felt slurred and dazed even inside my head. The only positive thing I could think of was that it no longer felt quite as cold. My fingertips were bluish-white when I glanced down, and despair hit me. No, it was still just as cold. I just wasn’t feeling it as much.
It was much harder than I had expected to wrap my fingers around Austin’s hand. My grip was clumsy, as though I were wearing thick gloves, and I felt no warmth in our touch. As I drew in another lungful of arctic air, the shelves shattered under the intense cold of Troutt’s grip, and tiny chunks of metal plinked to the frozen ground. With our improvised barrier now nothing more than a pile of boxes and twisted, broken steel, the sequined glove pushed the door the rest of the way open, and we were face to face with Troutt.
“I dislike children,” she said, rolling her massive shoulders so hard that the tiny white cap threatened to fall from its perch. She took a step into the storeroom, and in spite of her massive white snow boots, the step was dainty, the way another woman might pick her way across a muddy patch of lawn. Troutt’s frilly blouse fluttered as another gale of arctic air whipped through the room. This time, though I smelled something beyond the icy dustiness: a hint of smoke. Wood smoke, I thought. “I have no patience with children,” Troutt continued. Again, she lifted one size-fourteen snow boot and gingerly stepped across a frosty mound of paper towels. My eyes moved past her, focusing on the doorframe, where a bead of melt wobbled on the tip of an icicle. Jesus, I thought. Please, Jesus. Troutt focused on us, still speaking. “They are noisy and rude. They are insufferably smug. Teenagers, in particular, are always convinced they are right.” She flashed her teeth at us, and there was no way to mistake that expression for a smile. It was animalistic, feral, the way a coyote bares its teeth. “I rather like the looks on their faces when I show them they’re wrong. I—”
A hand wrapped in flames grabbed the side of her head and slammed her sideways. Troutt stumbled, her big feet catching in the jumble of fallen crates of cleaners and air fresheners and bleach wipes. She screamed; the skin on the side of her face was already blistering in the clear pattern of five fingers, and a chunk of hair smoldered, embers glowing in the irony-gray locks. Off balance, Troutt fell and crashed into the wall.
Mr. Spencer—Jim Spencer—stepped through the door. Fire licked him from head to toe, as though someone had doused him in gasoline and struck a match. His strawberry-blond hair was scrambled, and a bloody gash showed on one cheek. The flames ate at the edges of his clothes, charring and singeing at a steady pace. Soot streaked the bridge of his nose. It gave him a boyish, wayward look. The rest of his face, though, wasn’t boyish. It was murderous.
Troutt was already scrambling to her feet, and ice condensed around her, but Jim never gave her a chance. He took two running steps and hit her with a flying tackle. Ice flashed to steam, and flames sizzled at the sudden moisture, and then the two of them smashed through the plaster and carried their battle into the next room.
“C-c-c-come on,” I said through chattering teeth, dragging Austin towards the hall.
Both of us were stiff with the unnatural cold, but as we left Troutt and her power behind us, the ambient temperature hit us like a tropical wave. Behind us, Jim bellowed, and I couldn’t tell if the sound was pain or range. Steam hissed behind us again, and then a portion of the plaster exploded in a column of fire. This time, Troutt screamed, and even where we stood I felt the temperature drop as she retaliated.
“Mr. Spencer,” Austin said, glancing back.
“He’s on his own. We’ve got to find Kaden.”
The next door in the hallway was locked. I slammed into it with my shoulder, but I was exhausted, and the door barely creaked under my weight. Austin, giving me an affectionate shake of his head, tugged me out of his path and drove the heel of his foot into the wood just below the lock. A chunk of wood the size of my hand split from the frame, and the door tottered open.
“Jesus,” I said.
Kaden lay on a bare mattress on the floor. His eyes were closed, and he had curled inwards, as though still trying to protect himself. The room had the stink of a long-closed space and of flop-sweat. Austin reached Kaden before me; I never had a chance. By the time I got to them, Austin had rolled Kaden onto his back and was patting Kaden’s cheeks.
“Kaden, buddy. You’ve got to open your eyes. You’ve got to get up.”
Kaden whimpered, drawing his knees up and turning away his head.
“What did they do to him?”
“I don’t know.” Kaden’s gym clothes, although muddy and wet, had not been cut the way mine had. I could see no visible injuries, but I remembered the way I had felt when Lady Buckhardt had touched me: a feverish heat like a pot of illness set to boil. An explosion sounded from somewhere nearby, and then came a long groan from the building itself. “We’ve got to go. They’re going to tear this place down.”
“I’m not leaving Kaden.”
“God, Austin. Give me some credit. I’ll take the gun. Can you carry him?”
Austin nodded. After handing me the gun, he scooped up Kaden and slung him over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry. With a grunt, Austin got to his feet, adjusted Kaden’s weight, and nodded for me to lead the way.
I snorted as I turned away. “And you thought I’d leave him.”
“I’ll make it up to you,” Austin said, giving me a soft kick in the rear to get moving. “But later.”
“If we have any luck,” I said, “Makayla won’t have gotten here yet. She can cancel my powers; she might be able to cancel anyone’s, and that would be a death sentence.”
“I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but she’s close. She might even be here by now. She tried to force us off the road while we were driving up here, but we were in Emmett’s Range Rover, and her little Acura couldn’t do much.”
“So what happened?”
“Temple Mae ripped off one of the Acura’s tires. It sent Makayla into a bad spin, but that was only a few miles away.”
“Damn,” I said, knocking open the door at the end of the hall. The room beyond was empty, but through an archway I could see the polished, high-end area that was meant for customers. Men and women ran, screaming, as they tried to escape the chaos of the building. It was only luck that, so far, none of them had tried to come this way. “How’d you find us?”
“It was Becca’s idea,” Austin said, grunting as he adjusted Kaden’s weight again and stumbled after me. “Emmett was trying to squeeze something out of his dad, but it wasn’t going anywhere. Becca realized that if Fred Fort brought you here in his official car—”
“That it would be LoJacked. Smart.”
“Well, she is the brains of this operation. We weren’t sure if the sheriff was in on it, but we decided to take a risk.”
“He’s not in on it,” I said, jogging to the next door. We had to be getting close to an exit, but I could only guess. Based on the direction the screaming customers were headed, I thought I was going in a safe direction. “But he’s almost as dangerous as they are. He pressured Kaden into doing what they said as part of his own plan to expose the corrupt officers.”
“That’s messed up.”
“We can deal with it when we get out of here.” I peered down the next hall; still empty. “Too bad that car wreck didn’t kill Makayla.”
“Uh, about that.”
As we hurried forward, I said, “That makes me worried.”
“Well, I think we overlooked something.”
“Fuck. Not something else.” The door at the end of this hall was outlined by natural light. I could hear gunshots now coming from outside, and the rumbling crashes of Jim’s and Troutt’s colliding powers continued behind us. A scream of twisting metal came from deeper in the building. Whatever was happening, Belshazzar’s Feast was about to collapse. “What was it this time?”
Huffing for breath, Austin said, “Dude, she pulled herself out of that car wreck like she was the fucking Terminator. She must have protected Makayla too. I know we were driving away, but I’d swear to God there wasn’t a mark on her.”
“Who?”
The door in front of me slammed open, and two small hands picked me up easily, even though I must have weighed twice as much as their owner. Hailey Van Hoyt, thin enough to count her ribs and probably about as heavy as a waterlogged issue of Cosmo, held me in the air for a moment and gave me a blank look.
“Hello, Vie,” she said, and then she tossed me so hard that I hit the wall, shattered plaster and laths, and tumbled into the next room.