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  He stopped leaning on the door, stepping to the side and in front of her. “Hey,” he said, taking her lightly by the shoulders. “It’s okay, Staci. This is too much for just about anyone to have to shoulder. You’ve done better than I could have ever imagined; plenty of people would have cut and run way before now. I’ve seen it more times than I would care to admit. The fact that you care so much for your friends, and that you’re putting their well-being first…that says a hell of a lot about you. Your friends are good people, Staci. I’m going to do my best to make sure they don’t get hurt. I promise that, and that we’ll do what we can and together we will save the town. We’re almost there, if you’re willing to go the last mile with me.” He moved his hands from her shoulders to her face, cradling it firmly but softly at the same time. She felt like his hands were the whole world for a moment.

  Could she believe him? He might have kept some things from her, but… He’s never lied to me. And he’s been doing this for a long time. “If something happens to them, I’ll never forgive myself,” she said, looking up into his eyes. “It’s all my fault they’re involved.”

  “It’s your fault that they know what they’re facing now,” he corrected gently. “But they aren’t three-year-olds. You laid it all out for them, how dangerous it is. Despite what Seth said, they did have a choice. They could have chosen to ignore it, or to run and hide. Those choices wouldn’t have helped, but that doesn’t mean they couldn’t have gone those routes; most people do, when confronted with something like this. They’re involved out of their own free will, Staci. You can’t control them. You don’t control them, and you wouldn’t want to, would you?”

  She shook her head. He was right. She was—maybe—giving them the only shot they had at doing something about the steamroller that was definitely going to roll over her, them, and everyone in the town. Wasn’t going down fighting better than going down as a victim, if it came to that? But she couldn’t help crying anyway. Because it wasn’t any of it fair. “Okay,” she said, sniffling. “I guess you’re right.”

  “We’ll get through this, Staci. Together.” She looked up into his eyes, then. The warmth there, so unlike what was in Sean’s eyes, flooded into her. Dylan cared, had been fighting alone for so long…but now he had her help. With her help, they could survive, they could win.

  And now she was sure of it, as she had never entirely been sure of Sean without his magic working on her. Dylan cared about her. For her. Entirely outside of what she could do for him, she meant something to him, something important. Maybe she was the first person he had ever been able to care about in a long, long time.

  Still cradling her face in his hands, he wiped her tears away with his thumbs. His eyes became everything for her, right then. Slowly, but deliberately, he leaned in. Their lips met, and all of Staci’s fears and worries were forgotten, even if only for a moment. She felt as if she were preparing a spell, all of her emotion and energy rushing into the kiss, giving it a sense of urgency and strength. Dylan’s hands fell from her face, and his arms circled around her back. It was the most beautiful and tragic moment that Staci had ever experienced.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Staci didn’t sleep well that night, and woke up feeling anxious and groggy. She thought she had had nightmares; images of fire and screaming and crying all faded into mist as she clawed her way back to consciousness, leaving her with a general feeling of unease. She didn’t think it was any sort of spell; she’d been through that. Probably just stress and anxiety about what was going to happen crowding her subconscious.

  Once the gang had left, Staci and Dylan had some time to themselves. Remembering the kisses that they shared helped a little bit to calm her down; Dylan had been tender, and understanding, and had stayed with her for a few more hours. They didn’t talk much after the beginning; he seemed to have understood that she just needed to be held, more than anything, and did just that for her. She didn’t have a lot of time to reminisce, unfortunately; there was a long list of things she had to get ready before…

  Just say it. The Battle. The Showdown. The Gunfight at the OK Corral. The Big I-Hope-Me-And-My-Friends-Don’t-All-Die. This was going to be real, as real as those hitchhikers dying in front of her. It had to be done, everyone agreed on that—however reluctantly—but that didn’t change the awfulness of it all, the horror that she was going to have to fight against people that wanted to subjugate and kill her. She wasn’t a soldier; she didn’t have years of training or anything like that, just a few weeks of practicing magic and almost getting killed, and she had been scared to death through it all. Sometimes anger or something else cut through that fear, but that didn’t change the fact that it was there. Dylan had told her that brave people felt fear, and kept going despite it; if that was true, then she and her friends must have been crazy-stupid brave, with how she was feeling.

  She couldn’t dwell on it. She had to get her own gear ready; Dylan had showed her how to don the armor and adjusted it to fit last night, but she still had to practice getting it off in a hurry. The metal didn’t completely negate her magic like it would for Dylan or any other full-blooded elf, but it still severely weakened what she could do. In the beginning of the fight, the hope was that it would keep her a bit more hidden and protected from the Blackthornes, while she and Dylan tried for the Gate. It moved well with her, but it was very heavy, and she wasn’t used to wearing it or doffing it. You kind of had to bend over and let its own weight slide it off you because there was no way you could pull it off over your head like a T-shirt. Seconds would likely count when things got hot and heavy. She also had to check in on the others, and make sure everything was going okay with them. The water guns and their special caffeine powder and cola mixture needed to be modified and prepared, which would take time. Plus, the entire group was going to practice using sword, shield, and daggers with Dylan. The absurdity of how they all would probably look struck Staci. Like a scene out of Monster Squad or something.

  But finally, she had done all the prep she could, and there were still hours to go before the group would meet to practice here. And she couldn’t put it off any longer. She had to go tell Tim.

  Because if everything blew up, she figured he at least deserved a shot at getting out of town before the Blackthornes turned the plague loose. Cutting and running is probably his speed anyway, she thought a little bitterly.

  She locked the door behind herself—but rather than taking her bike, she decided to walk to the bookstore, trying to work out exactly what she was going to tell him. He was a mage, apparently an experienced one; he could help them, maybe. He’d already helped the gang with his bookstore; the protections and magic there had kept them safe—relatively—and helped her to break some of the spell that she had been under. Maybe, if nothing else, they could use the bookstore as a fallback retreat; if they couldn’t close the Gate, they could run there and regroup, figure out what to do or how to get as many people as possible out of town. She knew Tim had been hurt, badly; was still hurting. But sometimes there were more important things than what was going on with any one person. She hoped that she could make him see that.

  Staci was so immersed in her own thoughts that she almost ran into Wanda just on the other side of the diner. They both yelped in surprise, catching themselves after a moment.

  “You scared the hell out of me. I almost peed,” said Wanda, holding a hand to the middle of her chest.

  “Sorry! I didn’t mean to. I guess tonight has all of us on edge.” Beth was inside the diner, working; Staci caught her eye and waved to her, the waitress waving back before getting yelled at by her boss. There were actually a good number of customers inside; a shift must have finished at the cannery or something like that. Gotta remember to get some word to Beth, in case things don’t go well tonight. She’s one of the good ones.

  “What are you doing down in town?”

  Staci looked back to Wanda, then debated with herself for half a moment on telling her. Maybe she could help, sin
ce Wanda had known Tim and been coming into his bookstore longer.

  “I was going to talk with Tim. Try and see if he would help us with what’s going on tonight.”

  A police cruiser rolled down the road, the officer in the driver’s seat eyeing the teens. Both of them looked away, clamming up. Ears really are everywhere in this town, for the Blackthornes. Once it was clear that the cop wasn’t going to circle back and give them trouble, Staci met Wanda’s eyes and the questioning look on her face again.

  “Why do you think he could help? I mean, Tim’s cool and all, and I’m sure he’d care, but—”

  “But he’s a mage. He can do magic. His store is protected because of it, even from the bad juju that the Blackthornes can put on people.”

  “What?”

  It took a couple of minutes, but Staci explained everything that she knew about Tim, the talk that she had with him at the bookstore that one night, and how she had been bespelled and the way she had shaken it off. Wanda listened with rapt attention, asking very few questions. When it was over, she only had one final thing to ask.

  “Can I come with you? Help talk to him? He’s a good guy…I can’t see him leaving us to the sharks.” Wanda looked both eager and determined, and it occurred to Staci that she had been “with” the Bookstore Gang for a lot longer than Staci had. Maybe Tim would listen to her when he wouldn’t listen to Staci.

  “It sure can’t hurt,” she replied. “Safety in numbers or something.”

  “Or something,” Wanda agreed, and fell into step with her.

  The bookstore had no customers when they got there. Tim was at his usual spot on a stool behind the cash register, exactly as if there wasn’t Impending Doom hanging over the entire town. He seemed utterly immersed in his book, but looked up quickly when the bell over the door jingled.

  Wanda reached behind herself and flipped the lock. Then flipped the sign to CLOSED without asking permission. Tim’s only reaction was arching an eyebrow after he looked up, putting down the book he was reading and closing it.

  “We gotta talk, Tim. Serious stuff. Well, Staci’s gotta talk to you.” She looked over to Staci, thrusting her chin at her. “Batter up.”

  Staci took a deep breath, then blew it out in one long gust. “Okay.” She spilled it all to Tim; the plan that the Blackthornes had, what she had seen in the warehouse, what she, Dylan, and the gang were planning on doing about it. Then she got to her pitch.

  “I need your help. No, we need your help. This isn’t like before; this is worse, this is urgent. We know what they’re up to, now. And it’s not something that we can hide from. Hell, we don’t think that it’s possible to run from this; at least not in the long term, when they start doing this same thing franchise-style.” Finally, now, she looked at him, really looked at him. He was doing his best statue impression. But there was something there, just under the surface…She wished there was some magic spell she could do to figure out what he was really thinking; maybe there was, but she just didn’t know it yet. Something was…roiling inside of him. She seized upon that faint hint of emotion beneath the stony facade. “None of us know what we’re doing, besides Dylan. Not really. A day of swinging swords around, a few weeks of practicing baby-elf spells…this is life and death, and it might be enough.” She didn’t want to dispirit Wanda, but at the same time she wanted to drive home the point that they were in over their heads. “With you helping us out…” Staci left the words hanging there.

  With you helping us out, maybe we won’t be slaughtered. Maybe the town and everyone in it won’t die.

  Everyone was quiet for a moment. Staci could see Tim working his jaw, as if he was grinding his teeth, the muscles standing out in turn. Finally, he looked at her. She saw that his eyes were shrink-wrapped in tears that wouldn’t fall, and that he was gripping the leather-bound book so hard that the cover warped underneath his fingertips. No. Oh, no, please no…

  “You had to drag them into this, didn’t you?” It was an accusation, and it was made all the worse by the fact that he never took his eyes off of hers. He was barely in control, now; all the pain, all the shame and rage that she had felt and seen in him before; it was right under the surface, and the slightest thing would bring it bursting forth. This was not how she wanted things to go. “This isn’t going to solve anything. Don’t you understand that? What you’re going to try to do…it’ll keep happening, and happening, and then what? Who wins? It’s not us. The elves play their games and…we’re…goddamned game pieces!” The indents in the cover of the book had grown deeper, his fingers burrowing in. Tim was shaking, as if there was something inside of him that had lost a bearing and was vibrating out of synch with the rest of the machine. It looked like he was going to shake himself apart. Then, without another word or outward indication, he regained control. The shaking stopped, he released his grip on the book, and sighed heavily.

  “Tim…” Wanda said, reaching out for a second and then thinking better of it. He was back, but this was still dangerous. Neither of them had ever seen him like this.

  “It’s for nothing. One way, the other. It’s nothing. None of you can see that, because you haven’t lived it yet. And you shouldn’t. No one should. Damn that elf for ever coming here. Damn him for ever talking to any of you. He’s just as culpable as his cousins, the entire god-awful lot of them.”

  Tim looked surly, and beaten down. Like he had lost a final battle, and didn’t have the strength to do anything but spit at his enemies. He didn’t meet their eyes. Until he did, and he locked his eyes on Staci’s. “They could have been safe. For a little while longer, at least. But you brought them into this. You didn’t have a choice. You were in it because of that…fae. But you brought them in, too. And now they’re right there with you, because of it. No choice, anymore.” Every word was spat out like it was acid, cutting to Staci’s core. She felt shame, and anger, and a deep want to explain, to exonerate herself.

  Wanda tried to do it for her.

  “Tim! You don’t understand! Staci, she—she tried to tell us off, get us out of it! Yeah, sure, she told us about the whole mess first. She showed us magic,” Tim sneered at that, baring his teeth and shaking his head in disgust, but Wanda plowed on. “It was the only way she could get us to see, get us to believe. This is a whole shit sandwich, and even if we didn’t know about it, we’d have to take a bite. Surely you can see that, right?”

  Tim was silent. He dropped his eyes to the counter, and seemed to be doing his level best to chew the inside of his lips off in consternation.

  “Tim…” Staci stepped forward; it was risky, but she felt that she had to, had to break through to him somehow. “Please. We need your help.”

  He didn’t look up to them when he replied. “Sign on the door says that the store is closed. You two should leave. Now.”

  * * *

  “Well…do we practice with the armor, or without it?” Staci asked. She had tried to put the confrontation with Tim out of her mind. It was hard…but it wouldn’t do any good to dwell on it and, well, that bridge was burned. At least now he knew enough to get himself out of town, and maybe anyone else he could persuade into his car.

  The gang had arrived, and now they all stood looking at the pile of heavy, heavy boxes behind the couch.

  “With. You’ll move differently with it on; best to get as much time in it as possible, get used to it before the main event,” Dylan said. After the disastrous meeting with Tim, Staci and Wanda had both retreated back to Staci’s house. The rest of the gang showed up a couple of hours later; Jake and Seth had managed to rig up two large water guns, and also brought along enough water pistols—modified to put out a stream at higher pressure, like the big ones—for everyone.

  “Okay then,” Staci said. “I guess the chainmail is one-size fits most…” She had already picked hers out, and it seemed to be all right. The shirts had shortish sleeves. Hers came to just a little past the elbow. “It’s just going to be easier if we unpack the stuff here and take our ow
n down into the basement.” They’d all agreed the basement was the place to practice. No chance of being spotted, the ceiling was high enough to swing a sword. Her mother, despite usually keeping the rest of the house in disarray, seemed to have left the basement vaguely organized; what few boxes were in it were stacked neatly along the walls. Probably doesn’t come down here much at all; no wonder it’s semi-clean.

  Once everyone had finished moving all of the equipment—except for the jacks—downstairs, Dylan started them on drills. Practicing how to properly hold and position their swords, angle their cuts so that they wouldn’t be hitting with the flat of the blade (even though, since the swords were steel, any hit would still do a number on elves), and use their bucklers for defense as well as offense. Since they were going to be paired up—Jake and Riley, Wanda and Seth, Dylan and Staci—Jake had the idea that Wanda and Riley ought to be carrying the large water guns. That way, each team would have a good ranged option besides the throwing knives, while whichever team member wasn’t carrying one of the larger water guns could help defend their “shooter.” Seth must have had a real brainstorm when he’d been working on the guns; each one came with a huge “backpack” that looked like a scuba diver’s rig and must have held a total of five or six gallons of his potent caffeine mix.

  “My own personal concoction: a pound of concentrated caffeine powder, a bunch of cola, and an energy drink that normally is banned here in the States.” At the last he just shrugged his shoulders. “Gaming marathons, man; gotta haves me spinach to keep going.” Whatever it was, the smell of it was enough to make Staci dizzy; Dylan kept his distance while they were working with the potent witch’s brew of anti-elf juice.