Jenna Black: Girls' Night Out

“Only if I stay still and don’t have to hold it too long. I’d never be able to hold it long enough to get us downstairs in the shape I’m in.” She looked around.

“This is the attic we’re in, right?”

“Yeah. And we don’t just have Gary to get through now, we have his

house-mate, too.”

“I know,” she responded with a nod. “I came to for a bit when he was pawing me.” She shuddered.

“You won’t have to hold it for long,” I assured her. “Just sit tight and gather your strength.”

“I’m not going anywhere,” she said with an attempt at a rueful smile.

When I’d rummaged through the attic before in search of a weapon, I’d seen a rickety wooden chair in one corner. Walking carefully, trying not to make the floorboards creak, I picked my way through the darkening attic until I found the chair, then wedged it under the doorknob. It was way too flimsy a barrier to keep Gary and Tom out, but it might delay them a little. Then I groped my way over to where I’d found a half-empty can of paint and hoped it was heavy enough. I lugged it over to where Al was sitting and squatted beside her.

“What’s the plan?” she asked me, her voice still hoarse and raspy from puking.

I held up the can of paint. “I’m going to use this,” I said, “to break the window. Tom and Gary will come running. When they get the door open, they’re going to see the broken window and a couple of empty zip ties sitting on the floor, and they’re going to assume we got out somehow. But of course we’ll just be invisible. They’ll go running outside, and we’ll slip out while they’re looking for us.”

What we were going to do when we got out—assuming we actually

managed to pull this off—I didn’t know. In Al’s condition, we wouldn’t exactly be moving fast, and I wasn’t about to take the time to go looking for our cell phones—or Al’s money—before getting out of here. This probably wasn’t the safest neighborhood for a pair of teenage girls to go wandering around in after dark, but surely being out there was better than being in here.

“I don’t know if I can hold the spell long enough, even if you gather the magic for me,” Al said. “My head’s really spinning. It’s hard to concentrate.”

“Well, our lives depend on it, so you’d better hope you can keep it

together,” I said sharply. “Unless you can use your compulsion spell to make them let us go.”

She shook her head miserably. “That takes even more concentration.”

“All right, then. You’re making us invisible.”

“But they’re going to trade us for ransom, right?”

I swallowed hard and forced myself to hold on to my patience. Al had been unconscious for hours and was still all fuzzy-headed. She hadn’t had the time I’d had to work out just what was going on, and what the eventual conclusion would be.

“Think it through, Al. We know who they are. If they let us go, we’ll tell, and they’ll be arrested. They can’t let us go.”

“Gary wouldn’t hurt me!” she protested without an enormous amount of conviction.

I wanted to slap some sense into her—hello, the guy slipped you a roofie and is holding you for ransom!—but I had a better chance of making her see sense if I left Gary out of it. “Maybe Gary wouldn’t, but Tom would, and I’d bet on him to win any argument.”

A tear trickled down Al’s cheek. I had no idea what she could possibly have seen in a pathetic loser like Gary, but my lack of comprehension didn’t mean she wasn’t in pain at his betrayal.

“He wasn’t like this when we were dating,” she told me, but of course I didn’t believe her. “I knew he’d had a drug problem when he was younger, but he’d kicked it. He was clean, and he was a nice guy.”

Drugs and alcohol can do a lot of rotten things to a person, but I was pretty sure they didn’t turn nice guys into guys like Gary overnight. Maybe he’d done a better job of hiding his creepy side when he was clean—surely he must have had some redeeming qualities to attract Al—but he’d still been a creep, even if Al couldn’t see it. I kept my opinion to myself and started to stand up, ready to get this show on the road. Al grabbed my arm to stop me.

“Dana. I’m sorry. About everything. Especially about the compulsion. It was a shitty thing to do.”

I agreed wholeheartedly, and I wasn’t much moved by her apology. If Gary had been anything at all like the prince she’d imagined, she wouldn’t have been sorry about compelling me. Being sorry only because things had gone so horribly wrong didn’t buy her any brownie points.

“Let’s just get out of here, okay?”

Al sniffled delicately and dabbed at her eyes, but she nodded and let go of my arm. I took a deep breath and hefted the paint can, wishing it were full. Our plan would be doomed before it got started if I couldn’t break the glass out of the window.

“Here goes nothing,” I murmured to myself.

I crept across the attic floor, my heart pounding and my mouth dry. There were about a million things that could go wrong, but I couldn’t allow myself to think about them. This was our best shot at staying alive, and we had to take it.

Steadying myself, I put both hands on the handle of the paint can and swung it like a pendulum to work up some momentum. Then I slammed it into the window with all of my strength.

The window shattered, sending a spray of glass everywhere. I turned my face away and closed my eyes, but most of the glass shards went out instead of in.

Humming to gather the magic, I dropped the paint can and hurried back to where Al was sitting. I heard muffled cursing from downstairs, and then the pounding of footsteps on the stairs as I crouched beside Al and waited.

“Don’t cast until they’re at the door,” I warned her. “Save your strength.”

Sweat shone on her brow, and her eyes were too wide, but she nodded her agreement. Our captors reached the head of the stairs, and one of them tried the door, expecting it to open easily. He said something foul, and I recognized Tom’s voice. Luckily, he was making such a racket there was no way he could hear my nearly silent humming. I would keep gathering magic as long as there was enough noise to cover me, and then I’d have to hope the magic didn’t lose interest too soon. Tom pounded on the door with what sounded like his shoulder—he’d get more power with a kick, which I suspected he’d figure out soon enough.

Beside me, I saw Al go invisible right as the door burst open. I had to trust that she’d covered me with her spell, too, because I could still see myself.

The overhead light flipped on, and Tom looked frantically around the attic.

He was brandishing a wicked-looking knife, and I doubted he had any qualms about using it. He took in the discarded zip ties and duct tape, then hurried to the broken window and craned his head out. Gary entered the room and started poking around in the corners, though there wasn’t any nook big enough for the two of us to hide in.

“D’ya see ’em?” Gary called, and Tom withdrew his head.

“They ain’t splattered on the pavement,” Tom growled, his composure

shattered, his eyes wild-looking. “Come on!”

He headed for the door at a sprint, and Gary followed. Beside me, Al shuddered and dropped her spell.

Step one of our plan had succeeded, but we had plenty more steps to get through before we were safe. “Let’s go,” I said, putting my arm around Al’s waist and helping her to her feet. She staggered even with my support, and her dress was drenched with sweat.

“I can walk!” she insisted when I gave her a worried look. It takes a lot of strength to cast magic, and Al hadn’t had a whole lot of strength when we got started. I hoped like hell she wouldn’t run out anytime soon.