Lixue and I lock eyes through the open window as Jack ducks into the back seat of her car. I manage a few steps toward it before her car peels out. Dropping to my knees at the edge of the storm-beaten bridge, I clutch my side, watching her taillights shrink to the west.

“Stop,” I say, staggering off the tracks into the street. I shout to the sky, “Stop, stop. Stop!”

The silence of the wind is sudden and shocking.

Raindrops hang like crystals in the air, the sunrise brightening the sky behind them, silhouetting the trees. Their branches are frozen in place, bent by the storm. The churning creek is motionless under what’s left of the bridge, the white-capped waves still as stone.

Nothing moves but me.

I lumber through the rain, breathing through the crippling tightness in my chest. The more I use my magic, the worse it hurts. Every time I called on an element to fend off an attack, it only seemed to stoke a battle inside me. I glance inside a burn hole in my coat, wincing at the blistered flesh. My leg bleeds freely where a falling branch cut me, and there’s dirt in my eye, kicked up by the winds.

My insides feel battered as I walk toward Lixue’s car. I should have known. Should have sensed she’d already turned when she begged me to open the portals for the Seasons she’d led out of the Observatory.

Hissing with every step, I lean heavily on the staff. I don’t know how much longer I can hold time back.

If you were in control, the world wouldn’t be coming apart. . . . Admit it, you’re in over your head.

I shake myself as I approach Lixue’s car, determined to keep it together. I still have the staff. I still have the magic.

Jack’s face is a mask in the rear window. Lixue’s windshield wipers are frozen midstroke, the rain spraying up from her tires suspended in midair. I kick the side of her car, but my foot passes through it like a ghost.

I throw down my staff, pacing in front of her headlights and tearing at my hair.

I can freeze time, and for what? What good is the most powerful magic in the world if I feel powerless when I wield it?

I draw a heavy breath, surprised to find so many smells still hanging in the air: the exhaust from Lixue’s car, Verano’s cloying reek, the smoky moldering odor of his Autumn girlfriend . . . and something else . . . that brisk cold glimmer that had ridden the air at the clock.

It had come from Jack.

But how?

I close my eyes, tracking them by scent. Julio Verano is already a quarter mile away, headed west. Amber Chase isn’t far behind him.