–into an ambush.

I couldn’t make out any identifying features. They were all in black and wore black ski masks. I think they were just expecting me because only one reached for Eddie, and the guy’s eyes went wide when Eddie not only eluded him but also grabbed and threw him across the room, into someone else.

“Sydney, run!” Eddie yelled.

My immediate instinct was that I couldn’t leave Eddie, but as he shoved me out the door, I realized he was coming with me. We tore out into the parking lot, only to see two more figures in black getting out of the van, cutting us off from my car. Eddie grabbed my hand and steered me in the opposite direction, behind the building and into a dark, sandy field that stretched as far as I could see.

I was a good runner, but I knew Eddie had to slow down for me. I also knew any attempts to tell him to go off without me would be foolish. The grass in the field was scraggly and scant, and there was only a handful of trees. For long moments, there was no sound except the thud of our feet and our heavy breathing. Then, from behind us, I heard shouts . . . and a gunshot.

Eddie managed to glance over his shoulder without breaking stride. “They’re coming,” he said. “About seven of them. With flashlights. And apparently guns.”

“Look,” I gasped out. In front of us, I could see two more flashlights approaching from the direction we were headed.

He said nothing and then suddenly jerked me to our right and down to the ground, into a ditch his superior eyes had seen. He threw me to my stomach and hovered protectively over me. The way the ditch was carved out offered partial coverage, and a thin, sad tree clinging to the side offered a little more. My heart was pounding, and I tried to calm down, lest my breathing give us away. Above me, Eddie was perfectly still, every muscle tense and ready to pounce if needed.

The shouts grew closer, mostly our attackers calling directions to one another and speculating over where Eddie and I were. As I lay there, hoping they’d walk by us, I wondered frantically who they were. Not Marcus and his Merry Men, obviously. But it was someone who cared enough about seizing us–or, well, me–to have set up a very organized trap, and there was only one group of people I could think of that fit that description.

The Alchemists.

It was what I’d lived in fear of so long; I just hadn’t expected it to go down like this. A million questions raced through my head. How long had the Alchemists been here? Had they caught Adrian and Marcus too?

“Sydney!”

The familiar voice made my breath catch. My dad.

“Sydney, I know you’re here somewhere. If you have any common sense or decency left, come out and surrender.”

A skilled negotiator might have delivered that speech in a kind, beseeching way. Not my dad. He was as harsh and unfeeling as usual, managing to make every word sound like an insult.

“It’ll be a lot easier on you if you do,” my dad continued. “And as for that that . . . boy. We don’t need him. He can just go if you come with us.” In a lower voice, I heard him ask, “Is that him?”

A young female voice answered. “No, he’s not the one.”

I could tell from a slight stiffening in Eddie’s posture that he recognized Zoe’s voice too.

“This is for your own good,” my dad growled, not sounding altruistic in the least. “It’s for your soul. For your humanity. We know everything. We found the phone. Come with us so that we can save you from further damnation and defilement.”

The phone. Adrian’s missing phone. I’d been so afraid it would come back to haunt us, despite Adrian’s flippant comment that it would mean nothing unless someone knew it was his. He was right because apparently, someone had  known. Someone had known it wasn’t a lovesick random stranger’s phone. How? Had someone followed him at school and stolen it there? It was a mystery I had no time to ponder.

Silence fell as they all waited for me to give myself up. Eddie and I barely breathed. Suddenly, a light shone into our hideout. Eddie sprang up before the guy could even shout for help. Eddie punched him with a force that knocked him to the ground, and then seized hold of me without a moment’s hesitation. Another guy was right there and actually managed to land a hit on Eddie’s face. Eddie knocked him aside and kept going with almost no delay, dragging my stumbling self along. He must have assessed the least surrounded route because I saw no lights ahead of us. A gun went off again, and I heard my dad yell, “Hold on, or you might shoot her! Don’t fire unless you have a clear shot on him.”

My eyes weren’t much use out here, and I had to trust in Eddie’s. “I think this area just gives way to foothills and more wilderness,” he said. “We’ll lose them and hide out there as long as we need to.” For Eddie, surviving off the land for a few days was probably easy work. “Then we’ll go home and figure out something.”

Figure out something.  What exactly would that be? An attempt to negotiate with people trying to abduct me and kill Eddie? He made an abrupt turn left, and I understood why when I caught sight of a light in the direction we’d been headed. There was no telling how far their net extended. The next gunshot we heard was closer, far closer than I would have expected. It meant that someone had gotten a sight on Eddie and was catching up to us. That was remarkable, since it wasn’t easy overtaking a dhampir on foot.

No, not a dhampir. Me. Eddie wasn’t running at his normal pace. He was going at mine. Maybe on his own, he could have eluded them and run off to the wilderness, but not while I was with him. I was human, and one of my feet still ached from my ungraceful landing in the alley last night.

Eddie won’t leave me, I thought frantically. He’ll never leave me. They want me, but they don’t care about him. He can live or die, and it won’t matter to them. But if he’s what’s keeping them away, they’ll shoot him and destroy his body.

“Eddie,” I said, panting. “We need to split up.”

“Never.”

That answer wasn’t a surprise. What was a surprise was that out of all the things rattling around in my mind, Abe Mazur’s words popped up in the forefront:. Don’t think for an instant that I wouldn’t do terrible, unspeakable things if it could save someone I love.  Because it was Abe, I’d naturally assumed he was talking about doing terrible, unspeakable things to other people. But as Eddie and I held on to each other, the words took on a whole different meaning. In that moment, I knew I would do anything to save Eddie–my friend–whom I loved.

Even if it meant doing something terrible and unspeakable to myself.

I could hear shouts and feet pounding on the earth. They were getting closer. So were the guns. And even in the throes of terror, with my heart ready to explode in my chest, I managed an effortless Alchemist lie.

“You saw what I did with the fire? I can do another spell like that. Not the same but just as good. I have an object–a charm–but it has to be used from a distance. If we split up and I distract them, you can cast it. It’s a sleep spell. It’ll knock everyone out, except me because I’m protected.”

“I can’t cast a spell,” he said. “Why don’t you do it, and I’ll distract them?”

“Because it’d knock you out too if you’re in its path. You can  do it. The magic’s in the artifact. You just say the words to make it work.”

With my free hand, I managed to fumble in my purse while still running. I pulled out Hopper, in inert form, and handed him to Eddie, along with my keys. “Take the keys since you can start the car faster when we escape. For the spell, hold up the dragon,” I panted. “And say centrum permanebit.”

“Cen–what?”

“ Centrum permanebit,” I said firmly. “Say it three times, and face toward us, but make sure you’ve got some distance. If someone catches you and interrupts, the spell will backfire.”