“Yeah, I don’t think so,” Dana said, adding, “Milo! Go!” as she let loose with the same kind of blast that had opened the front door—the same kind of blast I’d seen her use just a few months ago on that Alabama Destiny farm. She’d sent a sociopathic guard literally flying, saving the day in an incredible show of power and strength.
I was pretty certain that not only was this conversation over, but that Rochelle was now toast.
Milo sat up at Dana’s
go
, and I began to move, too. I knew his focus would be on Jilly—he wouldn’t leave without her. I had no idea how badly injured he was, so I shouted for Calvin and Garrett to come and help us,
now
.
Except Rochelle
didn’t
go sailing back across the playroom the way I’d expected. In fact, she barely moved more than a steadying step, and I skidded to a stop just a few feet away from her, with Cal and Garrett nearly crashing into my back.
They both retreated, ducking for cover more quickly than I did—probably because I was so stunned that Rochelle had the ability to absorb Dana’s blow. I just stood there stupidly staring at her.
“Is that really the best you can do?” Rochelle asked Dana as, with a flick of her finger, she used her own power to launch me up and into the air.
“Skylar!” I heard Milo shout over my own screaming as I fully expected to die. This was it. My life was over. But then I realized that Rochelle had only used her TK to fling me away from her—I was no longer under her power. If I had been, if she’d had abilities like Dana’s, she would have used the force to slam me against the ceiling—crushing my skull and breaking my neck and back. As it was, only my body weight and motion made me crash into one of the overhead fans and then hit the cathedral ceiling with a far less lethal crunch. I realized in those slo-mo nanoseconds while I flew through the air that this was the reason Milo was alive, too. Rochelle’s TK was limited. That was good to know.
But now I screamed again as I fell back toward the tile floor. That ceiling was more than two stories high, and my impending landing would probably break both my legs—if it didn’t flat-out kill me.
I was water, I was water
—I tried to find the H2O inside of me and float it above the ground the way I’d done first to the bubble and then to the flowing stream of water at Adventure City. And at first I thought it was working, because I slowed waaaay down. But then I realized that Dana was saving me with her powerful TK. She may not have been able to stop Rochelle, but she was definitely helping me.
And then, as I was still about seven feet in the air, looking down at Milo and Jilly—I could tell with just one glance that she was nearly bled dry—I realized that I alone had the right kind of G-T power to save the girl. Assuming, of course, that Rochelle didn’t kill me first.
“Don’t,” I called to Milo, who was again about to yank the IV needle from Jilly’s arm. Blood could flow in as well as out, and even though I didn’t have the exact right medical equipment to give Jilly a greatly needed transfusion, I had the two most important things. Her blood—and my unique ability to control liquids.
And yes, that ability was definitely temperamental, but I’d already reached out and felt the blood in that collection bag, so I started pushing it back up that tube and
into
her veins. It required precision and delicacy, which demanded way more effort and concentration than just flinging water around, like I’d done in Adventure City and at the warehouse. I had to do this carefully.
Gently
. Still thoughts,
still thoughts
… I could do this
. I could save this girl
…
Meanwhile, Dana shouted, “Fry her, Cal!” and Calvin let loose with a blue-tinged blast that surrounded Rochelle with jumping and crackling currents of electricity.
As my feet finally touched the tile, I immediately dove toward Milo and Jilly, not wanting to get hit with Cal’s erratic newbie superpowers. I was certain that upon Cal’s blast, Rochelle would drop to the floor where she would flail and thrash. Silly me.
Milo came toward me, grabbing my hands and pulling me closer to the wall where Jilly was huddled.
“Are you okay?” he asked even as I breathlessly asked him, “Are
you
okay?”
Our connection had snapped on, allowing me to
know
that he
was
okay—but that Rochelle’s bite had really freaked him out. It had been hard to play dead when she’d done that. No kidding. I flashed him a visual shorthand version of what I was trying to do to help Jilly, and he thought I was brilliant and he loved me madly, but he was also extra not thrilled that I was in danger.
Ditto on you and the danger, normie
, I shot back at him, and he laughed and kissed me—just a quick smack of his lips against mine—before turning back to Rochelle.
This is bad
.
I turned to see that Rochelle was neither flailing nor on the floor—this was not only bad, it was also getting very,
very
old.
She stood there as if absorbing or maybe even feeding off Cal’s electrical current, moaning and groaning as she jolted and jerked. It sounded like she was having the best sex of her life, which was just too disgusting to think about.
“The power! The power!” she cried in that freak-show triple voice. “I love the power! Give me more! Give me more!”
Dana was flinging everything she could find at Rochelle—using her TK to pummel the joker with the books from the shelves, the fan blades I’d broken, the easy chairs, and an end table.
But Rochelle shattered it all into pieces before it could hit her and knock her down—pieces she sent sailing back at Dana, forcing the G-T to bob and weave.
The remaining ceiling fans were spinning and even smoking, and the roar from Calvin’s power was nearly deafening. I saw Dana gesturing to Calvin, telling him to keep going—but the effort was surely making him burn through the Destiny in his own system. I wasn’t sure how much longer he could keep this up.
Let’s get Jilly out of here
, I told Milo, who agreed. I added,
Take her and go—
He cut me off.
Yeah, I’m not leaving you here.
Milo looked around for… “Garrett!”
I was looking at Rochelle, and even though Milo’s voice could barely be heard over the din, her eyes flashed open and she looked right at us as Garrett scrambled over to help. He was terrified. I didn’t blame him—I was terrified, too.
I’d never been gazed at with such molten hatred before, and I wondered if Rochelle somehow knew that Milo had played her and stood her up the way he had because he was my boyfriend.
“I know about that and other things, too,” she said, and I realized she wasn’t moving her mouth. Not only had she read my mind, but her thoughts were being projected and vocalized without her having to speak them aloud.
“
That
is extra freaky!” Calvin shouted as he kept up his assault.
Dana sent one of the heavy wooden bookshelves launching at Rochelle.
“She’s telepathic!” I warned them, instantly realizing
oh God oh God oh God. Don’t think about Jilly, don’t think about Jilly.
I didn’t want her to know that I was putting the blood back into the girl’s body instead of draining it out, except…
“I already know,” Rochelle intoned as she demolished the bookshelf. “I know everything about all of you!”
Milo had put the girl into Garrett’s arms, but Garrett was hesitating, clearly aware that the jokering woman was watching us and not at all convinced that the current Calvin was hitting her with would keep her from coming after him. I wasn’t convinced of that, either.
“It can’t stop me. It won’t stop me,” she intoned. “Don’t you dare move!”
“Get her out of here, now! Get her into the car and drive!” I shouted at Garrett, and he finally scrambled for the door with Jilly in his arms.
“
Stop
!” The triple voice was so loud then, I thought my eardrums would burst.
And Garrett froze.
“
Don’t stop!
” Milo and I both shouted at him. “
Keep going! Go, go, go!
”
“
I can’t!
” he shouted back, his voice almost as high as Rochelle’s highest octave. “
I can’t move! I can’t move!
”
And then—holy crap—
I
couldn’t move. And then Milo couldn’t either. And—double crap—he’d let go of me for a moment to help Garrett with Jilly, so we weren’t touching and now we couldn’t communicate with just our thoughts, which probably didn’t matter since Rochelle knew what we were thinking anyway. But still, I didn’t want to die like this, all alone, and dear Lord, for the first time I realized that we were all probably going to. Die. Here. Now.
“But your glorious blood will live on in me,” Rochelle intoned.
“She’s got some kind of super-telekinetic powers,” Milo shouted to Cal and Dana, who were both still moving. Dana sent the second of the bookshelves at Rochelle, who blasted it into splinters. “She’s holding Sky and Garrett and Jilly and me. We’re frozen in place!”
It was remarkable—the amount of power that a jokering D-addict could access. Dana had a similar ability—to encompass another person in a telekinetic straitjacket, so to speak. But she couldn’t use it to control more than one person at a time. She certainly couldn’t lock down four of us like this.
“Oh, fuck!” Dana said, and I saw with a sinking heart that Rochelle had frozen her now, too. She was unable to dodge the spray of wood and dust that the joker sent back at her, and the force knocked her down and pushed her back until she hit the wall. And this time she didn’t get up. “Damn it! I can’t move! Cal!”
“I got this!” We were down to Cal. Our last best hope was a D-addict himself, and for once I was grateful that he was wearing his scary face, head tilted down so that he gazed at Rochelle from beneath furrowed brows, his teeth barred in a snarl.
But Rochelle just laughed, and that, too, was so loud it hurt my ears. “You think you’re so dangerous,” she intoned. “But you are
nothing
!”
And with that, she somehow turned Cal’s power back on him, zapping him with his own electrical current. Just like with Dana, the force sent him backward until he hit the wall. He slid down so that he was sitting several feet from her. Now he couldn’t move either.
Without Cal’s electrical current buzzing, the fans spinning overhead were creaking noisily, and Rochelle looked up and exploded first one and then the other. After the dust finished raining down onto the tile floor, the silence was deafening.
Milo spoke up. “What now?” he said. “Sky? Dana?”
“Now? There is nothing you can do to escape,” Rochelle said as she moved toward Garrett, who was still holding Jilly.
I expected her to kill us. All of us. Right there, the way she’d killed Ashley, but Rochelle turned to me and said, “What, and miss the fun?” And I knew instantly that this joker was one of those who, as Dana put it,
enjoyed playing with her food.
She was going to kill us, but she was going to do it slowly.
That was both good and bad. Good because it gave us some time, and time was definitely on our side. Bad because of the whole killing-us thing.
Meanwhile Dana ignored Rochelle and answered Milo’s
What now?
“I don’t know. I’m working on it.”
I knew she was doing the same thing that I was—going down my entire list of G-T abilities to see if I had anything in my pocket that could help us here. I could run really fast, but not while in this TK body hold. I could still move liquids, maybe burst the pipes or create a giant wave to crash into the house, but I’d have to stop saving Jilly’s life to do it—I couldn’t do both at the same time. I didn’t have that kind of power or control. Also? If I flooded this place with water while none of us could move, it was far more likely that we’d drown long before Rochelle.
All of my other powers—my ability to home in on a person I’d met, my ability to smell evil, my psychic-ish dreams and visions, my eidetic memory, my self-healing skills—were useless to us now.
Except…my super-memory meant that I remembered everything that Morgan had told me about D-addicts and the detox process—the idea that stopping Cal’s heart would make the Destiny in his system burn itself out…
“We need to get her to burn through the D in her bloodstream, so she’ll go into withdrawal and, you know…” I called out to my friends, even as I strained against the hold Rochelle had on me. I didn’t want to say the word
die
and piss her off. “This can’t be easy—holding six of us in place like this. We need to figure out a way to make it even harder. Maybe if we all struggle? Maybe one of us can get free!”
Rochelle was looking hard at Jilly, at the bag that was emptying instead of filling. She turned and looked directly at me with her crazy eyes. “Stop doing that,” she ordered. “I want her blood!”
“Let’s all talk,” Calvin suggested. “Maybe she’ll overload if she tries to gag us, too.”
“Absolutely, let’s try it,” Dana said as Cal began reciting the alphabet, and Milo said, “I love you, Sky, you know that, right? And we’re gonna get out of this, I know we are. And then I’m going to let you see my entire childhood, in real time if you want to…”
“I wanna go home, I wanna go home,” Garrett chanted as I alternated between telling Milo, “I love you, too,” and saying, “Everyone push back on three. One…two…
three
! One…two…
three
!”
Rochelle spun to glare at each of us in turn as we spoke, and I could tell she was trying to use her powers to shut us up, but she couldn’t. Of course, that didn’t mean she wouldn’t develop the ability to gag us eventually. A jokering D-addict’s powers often got stronger and stronger, just continuing to grow—until the joker’s head exploded. Often literally. Please dear Lord, make her head explode soon…
“
Silence!
”
We didn’t shut up, and she started to scream, a wordless, plaintive wail that got our complete attention. And when we shut up and she finally stopped, she glared again at me. And pointed to Jilly. “Stop! That!”