“First things first.” I passed the picks over to Deah. “Here. Open my lock.”

“What? Why can’t you do it?” she asked.

I held up my shackled hand. “Because the angle’s all wrong, and I can’t pick it one-handed. So you’re going to have to do it for me. Have you ever picked a lock before?”

She shook her head, making her blond ponytail slap back and forth.

“Then good thing for you and me, it’s not that hard.”

Deah took the lock picks from me, bent over my shackle, and got to work. I tried to talk her through it, but the picks kept slipping out of the padlock, and she just wasn’t getting the hang of it.

“It’s no use,” she growled. “I can’t do it.”

“You have to, or we’re both dead.”

Deah sighed and went back to work with the lock picks, but she gave up a minute later, when the picks slipped out of the lock again. “I’m sorry. I can’t do it. You stay here. I’ll go get help.”

“And I’ll be dead by the time you get back with it.”

“But I can’t do it. I don’t know how, and like you said, I don’t have any strength magic that would let me break the shackle.”

I tilted my head to the side, thinking about her words—and the magic that she did have. “What about your mimic power?”

She frowned. “What about it?”

“Well, you can do more than just fight with it, right? I mean, you can mimic the way someone moves, walks, talks, everything.”

“Yeah, so what?” Deah asked.

“Then you could mimic me picking a lock, right?”

“I suppose so,” she said in a doubtful voice. “I’ve never tried to do anything like that with my power before, though.”

“Well, it’s always good to learn new things,” I snarked. “Now watch me and do exactly what I do.”

I imagined that I was bending over an invisible padlock, holding the lock picks in my hands. Then I drew in a breath, slid my imaginary picks into my imaginary padlock, and went to work. I pretended as though I were moving the picks around and around, feeling for the tumblers, and trying to get them to slip into place so the padlock would pop open.

I felt stupider than I ever had in my entire life, but I kept right on working. Deah watched me the whole time, her dark blue eyes narrowed, her lips pressed tight in thought. After several seconds of concentration, she slid the picks into the real lock on my shackle again. It was awkward, with her standing right next to me, trying to work on my shackle while I was moving my hand around, but she managed it. Slowly, Deah began to mimic my movements, holding the lock picks just so and sliding them around and around inside the padlock in the patterns that I was showing her.

Seconds ticked by, then turned into a minute, then two. But we kept working together the whole time. The air was hot and stuffy. Sweat dripped down my face, hers too, given how hard the two of us were concentrating, and the only sounds were our ragged breaths mixing together in the absolute stillness of the boathouse—

Click.

And just like that, my padlock popped open.

Deah stared down at the lock, still holding the picks inside it, as though she couldn’t believe what had just happened. “I did it. I actually did it!”

“And you can be very proud about that later. Now help me get it off,” I said. “Hurry!”

She passed me the lock picks, which I closed and slid into one of my pockets, while she unhooked the padlock from my shackle. The second it was off my wrist, I grabbed the chain and lowered it to the floor.

“Come on,” I whispered. “Let’s get out of here before she comes back—”

The door to the boathouse slammed open again, and Katia strolled inside, this time holding a dagger in either hand.

“I’m back,” Katia called out in a singsong voice.

She stopped short, realizing that we were free. For a second, the three of us looked at each other.

Then Katia laughed. She just laughed and laughed, as though our being halfway to escaping was the funniest thing ever.

Deah and I looked at each other. We both drew our swords and stepped together, forming a united front.

“Oh, how adorable,” Katia sneered. “Two enemies teaming up together to try to save themselves from a fate worse than death. Too bad you’re both still going to lose—everything.”

“I doubt that,” Deah snapped back at her. “I’ve beaten you before. I can do it again. And so can Lila.”

“You’d better believe it,” I chimed in.

Katia took a step forward. Deah and I both snapped up our swords, but Katia didn’t attack us. Instead, she raised the two daggers in her hands—both of which were glowing a familiar, sickening, midnight black.

“Oh, I doubt that,” she purred. “Considering that I have more magic in these two black blades than the two of you have in your entire bodies.”

I eyed the gleaming weapons. “What kind of magic?”

“Strength from the copper crusher and speed, courtesy of another tree troll in one of my traps,” Katia said, admiring first one blade, then the other. “I hate to use it all up killing the two of you, but easy come, easy go. That’s the only problem with monster magic. It gives you a boost for a little while, but then it burns out of your system. It’s not like human magic, like Vance’s magic. His speed and strength are mine now forever. And soon, your powers will be too.”

Katia grinned and twirled the daggers around in her hands. Deah and I both tensed, ready to throw ourselves out of the way should she decide to hurl the weapons at us, but that wasn’t her plan at all.

Instead, Katia raised the daggers high, then stabbed herself in the heart with them.

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

I gasped in shock, and so did Deah.

Katia stabbed herself with both daggers. For a moment, a midnight pulse of blackness flashed, casting the entire boathouse in darkness, despite the bulbs burning overhead. Then the blackness faded and the light returned, but what it revealed was equally terrible.

Blood spurted out of the wounds, coating Katia’s hands and the blades still stuck in her chest a dark, glossy crimson. But as soon as her blood touched the daggers, the blades soaked it right back up again, still glowing that eerie, midnight black.