Astonishment bolted over the warlock’s expression. He opened his mouth and raised his hands. Molly didn’t give him time to cast another spell. Reaching deep into her core, she called up her vortex and let it take over.

It roared out.

She had called so much Power—from the elements, from the strength given to her by Josiah and Sarah, from her own well of magic—that she lost control. She was a holocaust, and she didn’t care. Opening her arms wide, she embraced the madness.

The whistle of Air rushing in sounded like a freight train.

The vial of Water she had poured over herself multiplied until it became a gushing flood that spun widdershins around her.

Earth rumbled underneath her feet, and the pavement cracked.

The foreign, racy car exploded, and a gigantic ball of Fire billowed up. It roiled in a massive red thundercloud overhead.

The warlock, she saw, was still standing. That was an offense.

She was the Spirit that united the other elements. She flung the vortex at him.

It picked him up and spun him high into the air. He screamed as his body was swallowed by the cloud of Fire. After a few moments, the screaming stopped.

<Jesus Christ,> she thought she heard Josiah say.

Suddenly, Sarah’s presence winked out.

The abrupt loss of so much Power unbalanced the maelstrom. Molly lost touch with Josiah. The cloud of Fire dissipated into black, billowing smoke. The ground underneath stopped shaking and grew firm again. The burned body of the warlock plummeted to earth, and the lightning left Molly’s vision as the vortex died.

Pushing to her feet, she looked at the destruction she had caused. A spiderweb of cracks ran through the pavement of the road, out from the epicenter where she stood. The witch’s car still burned, and an acrid, oily smell filled the air. The witch himself was no longer recognizable in the burned piece of meat sprawled on the pavement.

She had never killed anybody before. She stared at the body. His face was gone.

But he had tried to kill her first. Notching her chin to one side, she straightened her aching shoulders. She planned on living for a very long time. She would have the rest of her life to come to terms with how she’d killed him. Right now she was just glad she had survived.

And she needed her phone. Limping to the Volvo, she climbed into the ditch and searched the lopsided car until she found it underneath the steering wheel. As she thumbed the button, she looked around. The area was remote enough, there might not be a cell phone tower to connect to.

As soon as the phone powered on, it started ringing. Lauren’s name lit up the screen. Molly answered, and Lauren said, “We’re almost there.”