Page 4 of Until the Stars Fall

“I’m so glad you made it,” she said. “I was so worried you wouldn’t. I missed you so much.”

I pulled her into a tight hug. “I missed you too.”

Summer’s voice cut into the room. “Zola, Beck wants you in the med bay.”

“He’s probably looking for a ‘get out of jail free’ card.” Zola laughed, wiping her own tears away. “If you need anything, Gemma, I’ll usually be in the med bay on B1.”

Before Zola had taken more than two steps, an alarm blared, and red emergency lights flashed on the walls. Summer’s panicked voice thundered over the intercoms.

“Everybody to the sigil on Level 1, stat! We’ve got interference with the supercritical oxygen storage system!”

My heart went to my feet as I grabbed Hannah’s arm. “The supercritical oxygen storage system that keeps the ship pressurized?”

CHAPTER TWO

“I don’t know!” Hannah cried. “I didn’t help with that spell!”

Zola was already at a door beside the elevator. “I’ve got it, Hannah! Go help Summer on the bridge!”

As Hannah ran into the elevator, I ran after Zola. If something needed fixing, that’s what I was here for. I tore open the door she’d just gone through and went up the stairs inside as fast as my heels would let me, my chest searing from the exertion and the terror. At Level 1, I burst out of the stairwell door and looked both ways down an empty hall.

Raised voices on the right. I ran toward an open guest room door. Panting at the threshold, I gripped the frame with both hands while I took in the scene.

Emergency lights also flashed in this room, and a pressure alarm blared. Zola stood on the outside of a circle painted on the wooden floor, holding a lighter to a smoking bundle of leaves tied with string. She blew them into a smolder and walked around the perimeter of the circle, step after slow, careful step. Burning rosemary sharpened the air.

On a folding table across the room, a cauldron bubbled on a hot plate. Beside it, a curvy woman in a short black dress over torn fishnets furiously ground a mortar and pestle, her long hair shimmering like the blue-black-purple of a raven’s wing against her ultra-pale skin.

A tall, muscular man in a white T-shirt and jeans—Beck?—walked out of the kitchenette to the table and stood with his back to me.

“How many bay leaves?” he asked in the same, deep voice from the intercom earlier. He plucked leaves from a stem cluster and dropped them on the table.

“Three,” the raven-haired witch said decisively. “No! Five.”

“Remember we settled on four when the fifth leaf blew out a window,” Zola sing-songed, her face placid as she paced around the circle, eddies of smoke following her.

Along the outer wall, an external window was boarded over.

“Four it is,” Beck said. He turned toward me, and electricity shot through my body. He was obscenely beautiful, with dark, messy hair to his shoulders, muscular, tattooed arms—one bandaged—and a scruffy beard.

He picked a leaf up by its stem, brought it before his lips, and blew on it. It fluttered in his exhalation, and orange flames licked across it.

Power raced through my veins, my magic queuing up inside like a dog whose owner made the mistake of grabbing the leash. I balled my hands into fists, tightened all my muscles in a practiced tamping-down of my magic. Closed my eyes, imagined the fascia network under my skin choking off the power before it escaped its bonds. I didn’t want to see magic, didn’t want to feel magic, would never again do magic on purpose, not after what happened to my parents.

I opened my eyes again. Beck dropped a second burning leaf into the frothing cauldron and picked up another. He pursed his lips and lit it, then his head turned toward me. His light eyes locked on mine and widened. He took a quick breath, and we watched each other as the leaf was consumed by the flame.

He cussed and dropped the burning leaf to the floor, sticking the tip of his finger in his mouth while he stamped the fire out.

“Don’t waste my leaves!” the raven-haired witch fussed.

He didn’t reply, didn’t look at me again, just lit another.

Zola chanted words in a language I couldn’t match to any continent on Earth while the smoke trails of her ministrations whirled around the circle, picking up speed. A horrible whooshing noise rose to a low roar in the room. My head pounded like it was trapped in a tightening vice, and my magic surged again from my core, itching the inside of my skin, clawing to be let out. Please, not now, I begged it. A drinking glass on the table popped into shards.

Hannah’s panicked voice came over the intercom. “Pressure’s building!”

Beck looked up at Zola. “Shit. I think we did it counterclockwise.” The roaring intensified, and he pressed his hands to his head. “Counterclockwise!” he yelled over the noise filling my ears.

“Where’s the box of spells?” the raven-haired witch shouted.

---