style="font-size:15px;"> “I got the same spell in my leaves this morning, Hadley. And I suspect I’m the only one of us who bothered to see how this might end.”
I raise my hand. “Don’t.”
He zips his fingers across his lips. “I won’t. But I’m going with you.”
CHAPTER 3
We trek into the woods on the outskirts of town beyond the warehouses. I have maybe thirty minutes left to find the vampires and turn myself in to save Iris.
I'm trying to avoid thinking of my best friend—really, the only friend I have—because I can't afford to lose focus. And yet, images from our shared past keep flashing through my mind. We've been friends forever—we were in the same daycare together, and have been inseparable ever since.
As I stare blankly at the worn trail ahead, Finn takes my hand and gives it a gentle squeeze, bringing me back to the present. Something about having him around makes me feel a little better. And I can’t argue with fate. If what he said back in Esme’s shop was true, then lie’s meant to be here, too.
There’s a brief moment where I wish wre had more time. Not because I’m mega-stressed about not getting to
Iris before the vampires do something I can’t save her from, but also because there’s something about being around him that causes a sense of peace to settle over me.
Maybe it’s that whole bit about truth setting you free. I feel like I can tell him anything, and not merely because he could find it out anyway if he wanted to.
“Close your eyes,” he says.
I do as he’s asked. “I never imagined I’d be doing this with a stranger.”
His palm sparks against my own, sending tingles up my arm that reverberate in my elbow and shoulder.
“Never?”
At that word, I get a sort of deja vu feeling. But it’s gone before I can place it.
“Imagine freedom,” he says. “Imagine you have wings and that you’re soaring. Believe that the possibility is as real as the sky above you. A sky you haven’t touched, but that is undoubtedly there.”
I feel lighter just listening to him. But that light feeling soon turns to pain. An agony like nothing I have ever before experienced. Every muscle in my body seizes up. All my bones feel uncomfortably dislodged. In that instant, I'm certain my skull's on fire and my joints have all broken.
I do not exist outside of pain.
I am pain. It has become me.
There’s a moment—a precipice—where I begin to fall away from the pain. Where it’s hit its worst and starts to ease. Where my body starts to mend. And then it’s gone completely. The pain that felt so impossibly intense I was certain it would never end is gone.
Am I dead?
No, comes a voice in my mind. Finn’s voice. Open your eyes.
When I open my eyes, I’m staring at a raven, and in that moment, I realize I am small, because this bird is right at eye level with me.
It takes a moment for body to respond to my mind’s request to look down at myself, but it happens. And when it does, I see my bird feet and my own black feathers. I glance up again at the other raven—one I know to be Finn.
Finn tilts his head. Are you okay?
I nod, as much as a raven can. Or at least I think I’ve nodded. As okay as possible.
The words don’t leave my mouth. Or rather, my beak. But I hear them, and when Finn responds, I know lie’s heard them, too.
Because we perfoi'ined the spell together, were connected. We can communicate, even in animal form.
I spread my wings and try fluttering them to see if I get any lift. I don’t. Across from me, Finn seems to be ha\ing better luck.
You’re still acting from your human mind, he tells me with his voice in my head again. You have to be know you are the bird. Do not think of how to fly. Just fly.
I struggle for couple more minutes that I really don’t have to waste on learning to be a bird. I have to do this, though. If I don’t, Iris will die. I refuse to attend her funeral as the person who couldn’t pull it together to save her life. What kind of person can’t figure out how to fly when her best friend’s life is at stake?
Apparently, this one. Because it’s still not working.
Finn charges at me, a god-awful cawing sound coming
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