The Spider

32

Sebastian’s screams of rage chased after us, but I shut his loud, thunderous bellows out of my mind and concentrated on getting Charlotte as far away from him as I could. We ran down the hallway, and then I pulled her through a living room and out the other side. When I was sure that Sebastian wouldn’t catch up with us for at least a few minutes, I stopped in the middle of the hallway.

Charlotte gasped for breath, and she wasn’t the only one. All the bricks flying into my body had hurt, and I had at least one cracked rib, despite the protective silverstone shell of my vest. If not for it, though, my rib might have broken and punctured one of my lungs. Then I would have wheezed to death on the library floor.

Charlotte stood beside me, her trembling body pressed against mine, small sobs escaping her throat, tears streaking down her face like a waterfall of terror. I grabbed her head in my hands and forced her to look at me, trying to snap her out of her fear and panic and get her to focus. After a moment, her empty eyes cleared a bit, and she looked back at me.

“Is there someone here you can trust? A maid, a gardener, somebody, anybody?”

She nodded. “There’s . . . a driver,” she said in between sobs. “My driver . . . Xavier. I . . . like him.”

“Then you go downstairs, find Xavier, tell him to warn the rest of the staff, and get him to take you away from here,” I said, letting go of her. “Before Sebastian kills us all. He won’t stop now until I’m dead, and I don’t want you or anyone else getting hurt.”

Charlotte grabbed my hand in a tight, desperate grip, as though she didn’t want to leave my side. I gently untangled her fingers from mine and gave her a small push.

“Go,” I said. “Go on. Right now. And don’t look back no matter what—”

Stone spewed from the wall beside me.

I gave Charlotte another push, this one more forceful. “Go! Run! Now!”

She gave me one final terrified look, her eyes going wide at whatever she saw behind me. Then she turned and ran down the hallway as fast as she could.

Sebastian’s laughter floated toward me. “Running won’t save her—or you, Gin.”

I slowly turned around. Sebastian stood in the middle of the hallway, his hands held down and out by his sides, the amber flecks in his dark eyes glinting as he reached for more of his magic. The granite that comprised the walls slowly began to ripple, as though the entire hallway were made out of water instead of stone. The power Sebastian had—his control over it—took my breath away. He was quite possibly the strongest elemental I’d ever encountered, on par with the Fire elemental who’d murdered my family.

And now he was going to kill me.

I’d never been in an elemental duel before, and I had no desire to engage in one now, not when I knew how much stronger Sebastian was in his magic than I was. But I didn’t let Sebastian see my fear and uncertainty. I didn’t let him see the wheels of my mind churning and churning as I palmed a second knife and tried to figure out some way to get close enough to ram the blade into his heart.

Sebastian cocked his head to the side and let out another low laugh. “Still hoping to kill me with a knife? Pitiful, Gin. Truly pitiful.”

Apparently, my poker face wasn’t quite as good as I thought. Something to work on—if I lived through this.

I shrugged. “It’s what I do. In fact, killing people seems to be what I do best. I didn’t have any problems with your father. I don’t anticipate too many more with you.”

“My father was a fool!” Sebastian shouted. “Always playing the part of the good, upstanding citizen. He deserved exactly what he got.”

I shook my head. “No, he didn’t deserve it. Because he was trying to protect everyone from you. Dollars to doughnuts, he was going to turn you in for killing and hurting all those people. That’s why he had Coolidge investigating what happened.”

He let out a low, guttural snarl.

“Do you know how crazy you look right now, Sebastian? Better not let Mab see you like this. She might decide to kill you herself. She doesn’t like complications, remember? And you are a hot mess if ever I saw one.”

He laughed again. “Please.” He sneered. “I’ll put that Fire elemental bitch in her place soon enough. Just like I’m going to do with you—right now.”

Sebastian threw his hands out wide. With one thought, the granite ripped free from the walls and zoomed in my direction.

And all I could do was stand there and let it hit me.

There was no time to move or duck out of the way. Even if I’d managed to crouch down behind a table or some other piece of furniture, it would have only been a temporary respite, since the entire hallway from floor to walls to ceiling was made out of stone. Still, I hunkered down, protecting my head as best I could.

I could have used my own Stone magic to harden my skin, but I decided not to. I’d used my Ice power in front of him a few times, mostly to make cubes for whatever we’d been drinking at the time, but I’d never told Sebastian about my Stone magic. Maybe there was still a chance—however small—that I could surprise him with it and use it to get the upper hand. Besides, I didn’t think that he’d kill me right away. No, he wanted to play with me first.

The stone battered me from all sides, spinning me first one way, then the other, as I tried to avoid the projectiles. Wave after wave of rocks splintered from the walls and zoomed in my direction, one after another, faster and faster, as though I were standing in the middle of a tornado that was picking up speed.

And through the whole thing, I could hear Sebastian laughing with delight at my suffering, at the beating my body was taking, at how the stones pummeled me again and again simply because he wanted them to. And I realized that Sebastian wasn’t going to give me a chance to get close to him. He wasn’t going to make that mistake, and he wasn’t going to stop this time until I was dead.

So I retreated.

At least, I tried to. The whirling dervish of rocks made it difficult to tell which way was which. Or maybe that was just all the blows to the head that I was taking. All I really did was spin around and around in a circle, going nowhere fast.

Finally, Sebastian got tired of battering me with the stone. I felt another surge of his magic, and this time, pieces of varying sizes erupted from the walls, and I started ducking and darting through them, almost like I was playing a game of dodgeball. In a way, I was, and if I got hit again, especially in the head, then I was dead.

Still, the bigger pieces of stone gave me a slightly clearer field of vision, and inch by inch, foot by foot, I retreated down the hallway toward a set of stairs that led down to the second floor. But even if I managed to reach them, it wouldn’t do me any good. They were made of marble, and Sebastian could easily use his magic to make them crack right out from under me, have me fall in between them, then bring the two halves together to crush me to death. I couldn’t help the shudder that rippled through my body at the thought.

And even if by some miracle I did manage to get down the stairs, I still had another level to go before I could get out of the mansion—a mansion made entirely of stone. Sebastian was in his element here, and the entire building was a death trap for me. But I couldn’t figure out another way to get out. So I’d just have to try to be quicker than he was, even though I could feel his magic pulsing through the walls, pulsing through this level of the mansion—

Crack!

A vivid streak of lightning shot down from the sky, and the window at the end of the hallway gleamed from the white electrical charge, shining like a diamond, even as the rain batted at it from the outside and drowned out the brightness. The storm had finally arrived, and it was a doozy, judging from the roars of thunder that boomed and banged and the lightning that I could see flickering outside through the window—

My head snapped back in that direction, even as I ducked another rock coming my way.

A window.

I needed a quick way out of the mansion, and here was the opening I needed—literally. Sure, I was three stories up, but I could use my own Stone magic to soften the landing. It was the only chance I had.

Now all I had to do was get to the glass.

I stood in the center of a place where two hallways met. One corridor continued toward the stairs, while the window lay at the opposite end of the other hallway, about fifty feet away from my position. I started calculating distances and angles.

Sebastian let the rocks die down long enough to sneer at me again. “Getting tired yet, Gin? Because I can do this all night long.”

I ignored his self-congratulatory rant and sprinted toward the window.

Sebastian’s mocking laughter once again chased after me. “Oh, Gin. You won’t get away that easily. That hallway is nothing but a dead end. You’re trapped. Do you hear me? Trapped!”

But apparently, he wasn’t quite as confident as he claimed to be, because he sent out another burst of magic, one that rolled through the floor. It began to ripple the same way the walls had. I risked a glance behind me to see the granite rising higher and higher, like an ocean wave about to crash down on top of my head and drown me. Really, that’s what it was. Sebastian would drop the granite on top of my skull, cracking it open like an egg, and that would be the end of me.

So I sucked down another breath and forced my legs to move even faster and my arms to pump even harder. Behind me, I could hear the granite muttering with dark delight as it chased me down. The floor shifted under my feet, trying to throw me off balance, but I darted forward, put my hands up over my face, and reached for my Stone magic.

With one final surge, I threw myself out the window.