They would need it, she thought, as she felt something cold shiver along her skin. In response to it, she stretched out her arm and, across Ripley, clasped Nell’s hand.

“We are the Three,” she said clearly. “And two guard the one. While we are joined, no harm can be done.” As warmth seeped back, she nodded to Mac.

“You’re safe here, Ripley. Nothing can harm you here.”

“It’s close,” she said with a shudder. “It’s cold, and tired of waiting.” Her eyes opened, stared blindly into Mac’s. “It knows you. Watched you and waited. You share the blood. You’ll die through me, that’s what it wants. Death to power, and power to destruction. Through my hand.”

Grief ground down to her bones. “Stop me.”

Her head fell back, her eyes rolled back white. “I am Earth.”

She changed, even as they watched, her hair springing into curls, her features subtly rounding. “My sin must be atoned, and the time grows short. Sister to sister, and love to love. The storm is coming, and with it the dark. I am powerless. I am lost.”

Great tears spilled down her cheeks.

“Sister.” Mia laid her free hand on Ripley’s shoulder, and felt the cold again. “What can we do?”

The eyes that focused on Mia weren’t Ripley’s. They seemed ancient, and unbearably sad. “What you will. What you know. What you believe. Trust is one, justice makes two, and love, without boundaries, makes three. You are the Three. Be stronger than what made you or all is for nothing. Should you live, your heart will break again. Will you face that?”

“I’ll live, and guard my heart.”

“She thought the same. I loved her, loved them both. Too much or not enough, I’ve yet to see. May your circle be stronger and hold.”

“Tell us how to hold.”

“I cannot. If the answers live inside you, the questions won’t matter.” She turned to Nell then. “You found yours, so there is hope. Blessed be.”

Ripley gasped again, and came back. “In the storm,” she said as the first flash of lightning burst blue light into the room.

A lamp crashed to the floor. A vase of Nell’s flowers spun into the air to hurl itself against the wall. The sofa upended itself, then shot across the room.

Even as Zack whirled toward Nell, a table tumbled into his path. He leaped it, cursing, and gripping her, used his body to shield hers.

“Stop.” Mia called into the wind that had gushed into the room. “Nell, stay with me.” She tightened her hold on Nell’s hand, used her other to take Ripley’s limp one. “Still the power and quiet the air. Challenge this circle, he who dares. Here we stand, we are the Three. As we will, so mote it be.”

Will pressed against will. Magic thrummed against magic. Then as abruptly as it had begun, the wind died. Books that had been spinning in the air fell to the floor with a thud.

“Ripley.” Mac’s voice remained utterly calm, in direct opposition to his speeding heart. “I’m going to count back from ten. You’re going to wake up when I reach one. Slowly.”

He leaned close to her, brushed his lips over her cheeks, and whispered the magic he’d read in the journal.

“You’ll remember that,” he promised her, hoping it would stay in her mind when she needed it most.

“You’ll hear that. You’ll know that.”

She felt herself rising as he brought her back, as if waking from a hill of feathers. The closer she came to the top, the more she began to feel the cold. And the dread.

When her eyes were open, and her vision clear, she saw the blood on Mac’s face. It trickled down his forehead, down his cheek.

“God! My God!”

“It’s nothing.” He hadn’t realized he was cut until she touched her hand to his face and brought it back smeared with blood. “Some flying glass. It’s nothing,” he repeated. “A couple of scratches.”

“Your blood.” She fisted her hand over it, felt the guilt, the power. The hunger and the fear.

“I’ve done worse shaving. Look at me. Relax. Nell, maybe you could get Ripley a glass of water. We’ll take a little break here before we talk about all this.”

“No.” Ripley snapped as she rose. “I’ll get it. I need a minute.” She touched his face lightly. “I’m sorry. I

couldn’t control it. I’m sorry.”

“It’s all right.”

She nodded as though she agreed with him, but she knew as she walked back toward the kitchen that it wasn’t. Wouldn’t be. Couldn’t be.

She knew what she had to do. What had to be done. His blood was already cool on her fingers as she walked out the back door and into the rising storm.

Twenty

S he stepped out into the wind with only one clear purpose. She would get Harding and herself off the island. Away from Mac. Away from Nell and Mia and her brother. After that, she would do whatever came next. But the most immediate danger to those she loved was inside her, and linked to whatever was inside Harding.

She had shed Mac’s blood.

She curled her fingers, still damp with it, into a fist again. Blood was power, one of its most elemental sources. The darker magics used it as a conduit, or fed on it.

Everything she was and believed rejected that. Refused it. Refuted it. Do no harm, she thought. She would try to do no harm. But first, she would see to it, she would ensure, that no harm could or would be done to those she loved.

The murdered innocents.

It was a whisper in her ear, so clear, so urgent, she spun around expecting to see someone standing behind her.

But there was nothing but the night—the dark, and the bright and brutal force of the storm. The farther she got from the house, the more violent the storm raged, and the more her anger grew. It would use her to hurt Mac, to get to Nell, to destroy Mia.

She would die first, and take it with her.

When she reached the beach, she quickened her pace, then whirled around at the sound behind her. Lucy bolted out of the dark, ears alert. She nearly sent the dog back home with one abrupt command. But Ripley lowered the arm she had lifted to point and hissed out a breath.

“All right, then, come along. Might as well have a goofy dog as a familiar as none at all.” She rested her hand on Lucy’s head. “Protect what’s mine.”

Her hair flew in the wind as she and the dog jogged across the sand. The surf pounded, a wall of black water that slammed relentlessly against the shore.