So I held hands with my mortal enemy and watched as the frantic movements of her lips, nose, and eyes grew slower and slower, and weaker and weaker, until she finally died, frozen in place by the cold, hard fury of my Ice and Stone magic.

28

When I was sure that it was done, and that Madeline was dead, I drew in a breath and finally let go of what little magic was left in my spider rune.

It was harder than it should have been to pry my burned, blistered hands out of her cold, dead, frozen ones, almost as if she were still somehow desperately clinging to me, but I managed it, even though I left a fair amount of skin behind.

This time I stumbled back for real and fell to my knees in the center of the ballroom. All around me, pools of bright green acid smoked, bubbled, and burned, but they were slowly losing strength, their flames sputtering, as if their hot, caustic power had somehow been tied to Madeline’s life, her very existence. Maybe they had been. Either way, she was dead, and I wasn’t, and I didn’t care about what remained of her magic or how it corroded everything it touched.

“No!” an angry shout rose up behind me. “No! Impossible! She can’t be dead! She can’t be!”

Emery darted forward. I grimaced, ducked, and braced my hands on the floor, thinking that she was going to tackle me, but instead she hurried over to Madeline’s side, drew back her fists, and started pounding at the Ice that coated the acid elemental’s body. But I’d mixed my Stone magic in with all the cold, frosty layers, making the Ice hard and thick, and she couldn’t so much as chip the façade, despite all her giant strength.

“No!” Emery kept screaming. “No! No! No!”

While the giant kept trying to free Madeline, Jonah had a much smarter thought—he turned and sprinted for the terrace doors. He would have made it too, if Owen hadn’t stepped up, stuck his foot out, and tripped the lawyer.

Jonah stumbled forward and cracked his head against one of the glass doors, splintering a pane, before collapsing into an unconscious heap on the floor. Owen grinned and flashed me a thumbs-up. I managed to grin back at him.

But the rest of the crowd had an entirely different reaction. I thought that they might try to flee, along with McAllister, but instead, several loud cries ripped out.

“Let’s get them!”

“Yeah!”

“Now’s our chance!”

I wasn’t sure if they were talking about me and my friends or all the collective enemies who were gathered in the ballroom. Either way, a brawl erupted. Madeline hadn’t allowed anyone to bring weapons inside her mansion, but the shattered end of a champagne flute made for a good enough knife. Fire and Ice flashed, blood and bodies flew through the air, people tackled each other, and folks rolled around on the floor, kicking and clawing and stabbing and biting for all they were worth. By killing Madeline, I’d shattered the fragile peace among all the underworld bosses and their followers, all of whom were doing everything they could to stick it to all their enemies within arm’s reach.

Despite the fights rampaging through the ballroom, no one approached me, and none of the bodies even came close to hitting me. I supposed that they were all too afraid of me to openly attack me. Or perhaps they just didn’t want to navigate the pools of acid that were still burning and flaming on the marble floor all around me.

I looked at the crowd, too tired to do anything to break up the massive free-for-all. Maybe if I was lucky, they would all take each other out, and I could quit worrying about the whole troublesome lot of them.

One woman stumbled forward, clutching her stomach and bleeding out from the jagged wound in her belly. Sandra Smyth, a socialite who paid for her lavish lifestyle by dealing in prescription drugs. She fell to her knees, right onto one of the pools of acid that was still flaming, and she screamed and bucked violently before her body suddenly went slack. The flames crawled up into her hair and down the back of her dress, the acid burning a little brighter now that it had something new to chew on.

Her gruesome death was enough to snap me out of my daze, and I realized that if I didn’t stop this, no one would get out of here alive—including me and my friends. So I forced myself to get up onto my knees, although I wobbled back and forth, burned, bruised, and utterly exhausted from my duel with Madeline.

“Enough!” I yelled. “That’s enough!”

But the brawl continued, despite my friends’ firing their guns up into the air, and my hoarse voice was lost in the cacophony of snarls, shouts, shrieks, and screams. Since I was still closer to the floor than I was to standing, I leaned forward and laid my hands flat on the marble, or what was left of it, careful to keep my fingers out of the pools of acid.

I must have had a bit more power left than I’d realized because I was able to send out a strong enough blast of magic to make the entire ballroom floor ripple like water. That wasn’t enough to get everyone’s attention, so I let loose with another burst of magic, this time making the walls quiver and even the chandeliers above our heads tremble and shake.

Everyone froze, their hands clenched into fists, their fingers curled around their champagne-flute shivs, their thumbs digging into the windpipes of their enemies.

It took me a moment, but I managed to get up onto my feet, then straighten up to my full height.

“That is enough.” My voice was cold and dangerous. “Unless you want me to tear this entire mansion apart and bring the whole thing down on top of your idiotic heads.”

My threat was enough to get everyone to drop their fists and hands and shuffle away from me. I walked forward, and they pressed back even more, as though the air in the room were somehow propelling them toward the terrace doors, and they were about to pop right out through the glass. Or maybe that was just the cold chill blasting off my body.

I stopped and placed my hands on my hips. I knew that I looked a fright, my body bruised, my face battered, and my skin red, blistered, and burned from Madeline’s magic. But I was still standing, which is more than any of them could have said had they gone up against the acid elemental.

“Good,” I said. “Now that I have your attention, let me tell you how it’s going to be.”

At my words, everyone’s eyes sharpened, and their mouths flattened out into hard, knowing lines. No doubt they thought that I was going to give them the same exact speech Madeline had and announce that I was taking over the underworld. But I didn’t want that.