I tightened my grip on my knife and headed for Sebastian, who was still standing in front of his father’s desk.
Instead of backing away, he gave an airy, almost nonchalant wave of his hand, as though he weren’t concerned at all by the fact that Porter was dead. I wondered what he thought he was doing, as if I was going to stop at a simple wave of his hand when I was five seconds away from finally killing him—
The bricks in the fireplace exploded in my face.
One second, I was heading toward Sebastian with every intention of driving my knife through his heart. The next, I was being slammed by bricks from all sides.
Thump.
Thump.
Thump-thump-thump.
The bricks rattled me this way and that, like I was the silver piece in a pinball machine. And it didn’t stop after the bricks flew at me from the fireplace, thudded off my body, and fell to the colorful carpets.
No, Sebastian waved his hand, and more bricks erupted out of the fireplace, hitting me and making me scream. I’d always wondered what it would be liked to be Stoned to death, especially in an elemental duel, and now I was finding out. Not to mention the fact that the sharp, broken edges of the bricks sliced through my clothes and into my skin, making blood pour out of a dozen shallow cuts.
Through it all, I could hear Sebastian laughing—laughing at how he was slowly going to kill me. My hand tightened on my knife. Fuck that.
The mass of swirling bricks stopped, although Sebastian waved his hand again, gearing up for another attack. Charlotte pressed herself up against one of the bookcases along the wall, sobs escaping from her lips. She knew that if she moved, Sebastian could easily turn his wrath on her.
I waited until Sebastian’s attention flickered from me to the bricks that he was controlling, and then I threw my knife at him.
Being bludgeoned by bricks had wreaked havoc with my balance and equilibrium, so the blade didn’t sink into his throat like I wanted it to, but the knife slammed into his shoulder, making him stagger back and hiss with pain. More important, it made him lose his grip on his magic for a few precious seconds. Sebastian stared down in disbelief at the knife sticking out of his shoulder. He hesitated, then lifted his hand and yanked the blade free. He stared at his own blood on the blade, his eyes wide, as if he’d never seen such a sight before.
“You bitch!” he screamed, throwing the knife in my direction. “You’re going to pay for that!”
I didn’t pay any attention to his tirade. I was already ducking the blade, moving forward, grabbing Charlotte’s arm, and pulling her away from the bookcase and away from her murderous psychopath of a brother.
I took hold of Charlotte’s hand, and together, we sprinted out of the library.
32
Sebastian’s screams of rage chased after us, but I shut his loud, thunderous bellows out of my mind and concentrated on getting Charlotte as far away from him as I could. We ran down the hallway, and then I pulled her through a living room and out the other side. When I was sure that Sebastian wouldn’t catch up with us for at least a few minutes, I stopped in the middle of the hallway.
Charlotte gasped for breath, and she wasn’t the only one. All the bricks flying into my body had hurt, and I had at least one cracked rib, despite the protective silverstone shell of my vest. If not for it, though, my rib might have broken and punctured one of my lungs. Then I would have wheezed to death on the library floor.
Charlotte stood beside me, her trembling body pressed against mine, small sobs escaping her throat, tears streaking down her face like a waterfall of terror. I grabbed her head in my hands and forced her to look at me, trying to snap her out of her fear and panic and get her to focus. After a moment, her empty eyes cleared a bit, and she looked back at me.
“Is there someone here you can trust? A maid, a gardener, somebody, anybody?”
She nodded. “There’s . . . a driver,” she said in between sobs. “My driver . . . Xavier. I . . . like him.”
“Then you go downstairs, find Xavier, tell him to warn the rest of the staff, and get him to take you away from here,” I said, letting go of her. “Before Sebastian kills us all. He won’t stop now until I’m dead, and I don’t want you or anyone else getting hurt.”
Charlotte grabbed my hand in a tight, desperate grip, as though she didn’t want to leave my side. I gently untangled her fingers from mine and gave her a small push.
“Go,” I said. “Go on. Right now. And don’t look back no matter what—”
Stone spewed from the wall beside me.
I gave Charlotte another push, this one more forceful. “Go! Run! Now!”
She gave me one final terrified look, her eyes going wide at whatever she saw behind me. Then she turned and ran down the hallway as fast as she could.
Sebastian’s laughter floated toward me. “Running won’t save her—or you, Gin.”
I slowly turned around. Sebastian stood in the middle of the hallway, his hands held down and out by his sides, the amber flecks in his dark eyes glinting as he reached for more of his magic. The granite that comprised the walls slowly began to ripple, as though the entire hallway were made out of water instead of stone. The power Sebastian had—his control over it—took my breath away. He was quite possibly the strongest elemental I’d ever encountered, on par with the Fire elemental who’d murdered my family.
And now he was going to kill me.
I’d never been in an elemental duel before, and I had no desire to engage in one now, not when I knew how much stronger Sebastian was in his magic than I was. But I didn’t let Sebastian see my fear and uncertainty. I didn’t let him see the wheels of my mind churning and churning as I palmed a second knife and tried to figure out some way to get close enough to ram the blade into his heart.
Sebastian cocked his head to the side and let out another low laugh. “Still hoping to kill me with a knife? Pitiful, Gin. Truly pitiful.”
Apparently, my poker face wasn’t quite as good as I thought. Something to work on—if I lived through this.
I shrugged. “It’s what I do. In fact, killing people seems to be what I do best. I didn’t have any problems with your father. I don’t anticipate too many more with you.”
“My father was a fool!” Sebastian shouted. “Always playing the part of the good, upstanding citizen. He deserved exactly what he got.”
I shook my head. “No, he didn’t deserve it. Because he was trying to protect everyone from you. Dollars to doughnuts, he was going to turn you in for killing and hurting all those people. That’s why he had Coolidge investigating what happened.”