Ordinarily, this would’ve been where I came in with some hilarious joke to lighten the mood, but I didn’t have one. The fog could have killed us at any moment. I’d read enough Stephen King to know what spooky mists could do to a chirpy band of barely surviving protagonists.
“Harley?” I couldn’t see her. I waved my arms around and hit something solid.
“That’d be me, kid.” O’Halloran’s voice boomed back. “I’ll save you the embarrassment of telling you where you’re touching.”
“Sorry.” I snatched my hand back. “Harley? Can you hear me?”
“Yeah, I hear you.” She sounded super panicked.
“You think you can get this beastie in order?”
“I don’t know…” She trailed off.
“Fancy giving it a try before it chokes us all to death?” I prompted.
“Obey me!” There was none of the usual weird, echoey voice that was kind of Harley, but kind of not. I guessed, without Chaos, she couldn’t control this thing. Even with it, she’d probably have struggled.
The beastie didn’t give her the slightest bit of notice. Instead, it started to slip out through the windows, like it was trying to get away from her. It’s making a run for it!
A few moments later, the cabin had emptied of any foggy remnants. We sprinted to the window. I’d expected the beast to get as far away from its proverbial mistress as possible, in case she tried that echoey thing again, so it was a bit of a surprise to see it slithering across the ground toward the nearby lake. There, it spread out again like weird, black butter until it was sitting on the surface of the lake and covering it entirely.
“Well, this is a load of crap, isn’t it?” I muttered.
“Which part?” Santana replied curtly. Why did I get the feeling this chiquita still didn’t like me too much? Did I have to prostate myself in front of her? It’s prostrate, Finch. Prostrate. Cheers, brain, saving the day again.
Having no magic had put me in one heck of a foul mood. It had been a long time since I’d been made to feel so defenseless and weak, so easy to kill. And, guess what—drumroll, please—it was Katherine leading the charge. She’d been the one to make me feel useless once before, for so many years, and here she was doing it again. Only this time, she was doing it from a distance. Coward.
“All of it.” I held Santana’s gaze until she looked away. I was going to call that one-nil in favor of me, although it was a pretty hollow victory. The fact remained: this was all crap. Harley talked a good game, but we were all benched right now, and I didn’t know if there was anything we could do, even if we could scrape together a band of misfit supernaturals. Worst of all, I had no clue how long I could actually live like this, without magic.
The anxiety wasn’t doing my noggin any favors, that was for sure.
“What’s it doing?” Captain Useless of the Clan Levi peered over my shoulder, getting a little too close for comfort.
“Personal space, Levi? Ever heard of it?” I shot him a warning look that made him take a step back.
“I don’t know, but it’s not moving,” Krieger replied. We were all crowded around the window, trying to figure this Purge beast out. It just seemed to be sitting there, spread out in a film where the lake should’ve been.
“Hey, at least it’s out of the house,” Dylan said.
“But what the heck kind of Purge beast is it?” Harley frowned at the inky black mass.
I shrugged. “You Purged it. You tell us.”
“I have no idea,” she replied quietly. “And believe me, I’d rather have had a Tobe-like being come out of me. At least then we’d be able to talk to it.”
“On the bright side, it’s not moving or shooting deadly laser beams at people,” Krieger added.
“Wait, there’s a bright side?” I gave a mock gasp.
Krieger chuckled tightly. “We have to look for one wherever we can.”
“Right,” I said. “We have to be comforted by the fact that it isn’t hurting anyone. It could’ve choked us all, or killed us all in one fell swoop, but it didn’t. That means it isn’t violent—unlike its mama.”
Harley gave a half-smile, which was all I wanted to see. Being the jester of the group had its benefits, and if it meant I could take Harley’s mind off what was going on, even for a second, then it was worth it.
“Well, not violent yet, anyway,” Garrett corrected.
Krieger nodded. “Exactly, so all we can do is monitor it as best we can, given the circumstances.”
“We can’t stay here much longer.” Santana cast a worried glance at the rest of us. “I know those charms are keeping us safe, but they won’t hold forever with no Chaos to draw from.”
“We can’t stay here even if we did have unlimited charms to protect us,” Harley replied. “We need to get the supernaturals together.”
“Yes! I’m glad we’re calling them that.” I smiled with satisfaction, even if nobody else seemed impressed.
“I just got a text from my parents.” Santana duly ignored me as she stared down at her phone. “They’re trying to figure out what’s going on, but we can’t use normal comms anymore. They’re saying we should break the phones we have, which means we’re going to need burners.”
To prove her point, she quickly took her phone apart and smashed the pieces with the heel of her boot.
“It’s that bad?” Levi’s voice trembled.
Keep up, dingus.
Santana nodded. “We already know that the cult’s power and influence has spread to the highest levels of magical society. The friggin’ president of the UCA was fighting on Katherine’s side, and those who are left and haven’t been brainwashed by the Queen of Evil are probably reeling after the stunt Katherine just pulled. If they’re anything like us, they’ll be panicking, which means they’re open to the cult’s persuasion. I mean, who’s not going to jump at the chance to get their magic back, even if it means surrendering to a crazed megalomaniac?”
“Us.” I smirked.
“Well, that was a given, Finch,” she retorted. “I’m talking about the people who aren’t in this room, the scared magicals who’ll be in total disarray right now. I can only imagine what’s going through their heads.”
“Probably the same thing that’s going through ours,” I replied, knowing I was walking a thin line between cheeky and impudent.
To my surprise, Santana nodded again. “Then we know how terrified everyone must be feeling. Fear makes people do stupid, stupid things. So, the point I’m trying to make is, we need to move fast before Katherine can rally all those frightened people to her cause. And everyone needs to get rid of their phones until we can get burners.”
Everyone dutifully whipped out their devices and started smashing them to pieces like toddlers mid-tantrum. I reluctantly took mine out and crushed it to smithereens. The only people who didn’t do anything were Harley and Jacob—Jacob for obvious reasons. He was too weak to crush a snowflake, let alone a phone. And Harley… well, I wasn’t sure about that one.
“You not getting smashy, Harley?” I asked.