Page 208 of Victorious

IXNOW. THEN.

MAYBE if Sydney hadn’t looked, Serena wouldn’t have either.

Wouldn’t have turned in time to see not only June, but the knife glinting in her hand. Wouldn’t have reached up and caught the blade—

But she did.

“Nice try,” said Serena, as ice shot out from her fingers, and up June’s wrist, over her arm. She tore free, dancing backward. The ice beneath her cracked, and caught June’s heel, and she would have stumbled if Serena hadn’t reached out and steadied her, drawn her in, and driven the knife between her ribs.

Serena smiled, because she’d never met June.

She didn’t know what she was, what she could do.

Instead of crying out in pain, June looked down at what should have been a killing blow and sighed. “I really liked this one.”

She stepped backward, dragging her body off the knife, and as she did, she changed, shrugging out of one shell, and donning another in the time it took Serena’s amusement to die on her face.

June drew her gun. “My turn.”

“Is it?” Serena tipped her head, and the weapon changed, became a wilted tulip.

But June’s mouth quirked into a crooked line. “Cute,” she said, “but here’s the thing: I don’t care what it looks like, as long as it still works.” Her fingers twitched, and the tulip stem snapped, with a deafening BANG.

Serena twisted, just in time, annoyance flashing in her eyes, lightning matching in the sky, the wind whipping up around them.

On the ground, Mitch’s chest hitched under Sydney’s hands.

And then, he finally went still.

His warm brown eyes stayed open, fixed on nothing, and Sydney stifled the panic climbing up her throat.

“It’s okay,” she said, to him, and to herself. “I can fix it now.”

Her fingers splayed on Mitch’s chest as she reached, through his body, past it, for the thread. Cold shot across her skin, and under it, the sudden biting chill spreading up her hands, but she kept reaching.

“Everything will be okay.” She said the words, as if she could will them into being. And she could. The thread was right there. It brushed against her fingers. Sydney tried to catch it, but it danced away.

She clenched her teeth and fought to focus as June tried to fire a second shot but lost her balance when the ice broke suddenly beneath her feet.

She leapt out of the way, or tried, but this was Serena’s world. Her dream. And every inch of it was under her control. She flicked her wrist, and instead of giving way, the ice shot up in sharpened spikes.

Frozen spears, tips all driving toward June.

Plunging through her.

The spikes drove through her arms and legs, pierced her stomach, shoulders, ribs, held her still long enough for Serena to shoot her in the head.

It wasn’t really her, of course, but as the body sloughed away, June stayed pinned by the ice, no longer wearing a soldier, but a girl. A young woman Syd had never seen before.

One with auburn hair and fair, freckled skin, sharp green eyes in a heart-shaped face.

Syd’s first thought was that the features suited her. They matched her manner and her voice. And then June gasped in pain, and Sydney realized it wasn’t a shell at all. Sydney was seeing the EO as she had been once, back when she was human.

As she still was, behind the borrowed bodies, stolen faces.

In that same moment, Serena whipped her knife through the air.

And buried it in June’s real heart.