Hattie and her henchmen circled around us. Eric stayed on the ground.

“What the hell?” I yelled at Hattie. “Just because he got away?”

“You need to learn to read the stars, little girl,” Hattie cackled at me. “And think twice the next time you trust what you see on your phone. A little spell that spread to all your devices, and you thought it was earlier than it was. You can thank the smith for that.”

The only person who’d been near my phone besides me . . . was Crash. When he’d held me tight, he’d have been able to put a spell on the phone before I got into the car. I swallowed hard. Feish’s sadness when I’d said we’d have tea rolled back to me. Because she thought I’d be dead.

And it would be because she’d not been able to warn me about what was going to happen with Hattie. She couldn’t warn me what her master was going to do. But why would Crash put the spell on me? What did he gain?

There was no time for me to wonder too much. I still had a job to do. I just didn’t know how much time we had.

“Eric, any idea how long we have to hold them off?”

Hattie circled, and I moved with her while I waited for his answer.

“Thirty minutes by the line of the moon.” He let out a whimper.

So be it.

Maybe everything hurt, maybe I was older and slower than the others in the Hollows, but they weren’t here, and I was. “I’m not going to hold back, Hattie.”

Her eyes narrowed. “You’d hurt an old lady?”

I barked a laugh at her. “You’d hurt a child you used to babysit?”

“Take the bigfoot,” she said to her men. “Do your best not to kill her.”

That was when I said a line I’d waited my whole life to say. I crouched into a fighting stance and pulled out my knives.

“You’ll have to go through me first.”

The two men came at me so fast that all I could do was stumble back out of their way. As long as I kept them busy, they couldn’t complete their ceremony. All I had to do was stop one of them.

“Eric, go!” I yelled as I took a swipe at the henchman with the midnight dark skin. A slash of red opened across his cheek and he let out a low hiss and bared his teeth at me. Teeth that were not human, but narrow like needles, as if his teeth had been filed down.