Page 209 of Victorious

XNOW. THEN.

DYING hurt.

But not as much as she expected.

Funny, to think she’d been afraid of it so long.

It hurt, but less than shedding her old life.

Less than hollowing herself.

Less than love, and less than loss.

Compared to those, it was a breeze.

A breeze, like the kind they had back home, that sometimes whipped into a gale, so strong you could lean back into the wind, trust the air itself to hold you up.

And if it didn’t, well, the ground was there to catch you.

June was going backward now, the wind dropping to a whisper as she fell.

But she never landed, because the ground, like the cold, like the pain, like everything—

Was gone.

XINOW. THEN.

JUNE toppled, lifeless, to the ice.

Sydney would have gone to her, but her hands were still pinned to Mitch’s body, cold locking up her bones as she fought to catch the thread.

“Sydney,” warned Serena, tapping the gun against her thigh impatiently. “Let him go.”

But just then she finally caught the thread of Mitch’s life, dancing beneath his skin, and pulled. A single, vicious jerk that hauled him back, out of the dark place and into this one. The cold retreated from her skin as she felt his heart begin to beat again beneath her palms.

The light came on in Mitch’s eyes.

“Hey, kiddo,” he said, reaching up to touch her cheek. The sound of his voice, low and soft and kind, made Sydney sob. He sat up, and she threw her arms around his neck.

Somewhere behind her, Serena growled in frustration.

“Don’t you get it?” she said, cocking the gun. “I’ll just kill him again.”

But as she raised the gun, a strange thing happened.

Mitch stayed exactly where he was.

But he also moved.

One second, there was only one of him—the one Sydney had her arms around—and the next, there were two. This new Mitch, a perfect double of the first, standing squarely between Serena and her sister.

Both Mitches looked as surprised as she was by this duplication.

Especially when Serena shot the second one.

He looked like flesh and blood, but when the bullet struck, he didn’t die, just melted into smoke. And just as quickly as he did, another one of him appeared. And another. As if the Mitch in her arms was multiplying. And they weren’t just phantoms. One Mitch caught Serena’s hand, forcing the gun up before it went off, the shot ringing out over the ice.

“Nice try,” Serena sneered, slicing a blade across his throat.