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gun at his head. “Jimmy, don’t do anything stupid.”
    “There’s a guy here with a gun,” someone, I assumed Jimmy, said from inside the office. “What do we do? What? No, don’t. Don’t do that. We’re sorry. We can fix this. Shit!”
    The guy in the hallway turned slightly toward the door. “What’s he doing?”
    Ciaran chose that moment to sprint forward and then duck aside, behind a large oriental cabinet. Panicking, the guy with the gun started shooting into the dark shop as he swung around toward Alek.
    I dove for the floor as well as something hot hit my hip. I felt as much as heard my phone shatter and then lightning pain shot through my side and down my leg. I crawled with zero dignity under the table.
    From my agonizing but safe-ish position, I saw Alek jumped by another man, this one shorter and bulkier than the first. They grappled and the first guy ran right at me, though I wasn’t sure he could see me. In a brilliantly thought-out move, I shoved the wadded up blanket next to me out in front of him and he sprawled into the table, knocking down the universe knows what around us.
    The pain in my leg nearly blacked out my vision but I grabbed at the guy. He knew what had been done to Rose. He was the key; I couldn’t let Harper down just because of a stupid wound.
    “No. You. Don’t,” I hissed.
    He stopped fighting me so suddenly I actually lost my grip. For a moment he froze and then he ripped at his neck, pulling out a medallion on a chain. I couldn’t make out the details in the dim light but nausea hit me and I felt the same kind of weird magic that had trapped Rose at work.
    “No no no nononono,” the man’s voice became a litany as the medallion started to glow a sickly green.
    In pain, bleeding, and out of options, I reached for my power almost on instinct, throwing my power into a giant silver circle around us both, trying to lock out the foreign magic. Whatever that thing was doing, it didn’t seem good.
    The other gunman was screaming and I dimly heard Alek cursing. Then it stopped, the sickly green light winking out as though I’d imagined it. The man in front of me lay still, his chest slowly rising and falling, but for all appearances he wasn’t conscious.
    “Jade!” Harper’s voice.
    Ciaran threw on the lights and I winced, blinking rapidly to try to adjust. Harper came up, kicking the gun further from the man’s hand. Boy, really, now that I had a look at him. I doubted he was over twenty-one.
    “It’s a trap,” I said, waving at Harper to back off. “Get an axe.”
    “Trick, not trap. Geez.” She poked him with her shoe.
    Misquoting Army of Darkness . I really was hurt. I crawled forward, trying to keep my weight off my injured hip. I felt the bullet inside me, my body reacting to the unknown object and trying to heal it out. I needed to get out of here before I did fully heal or there would be some truly uncomfortable questions.
    But I wanted the boy’s medallion. I yanked it off his neck as I pretended to feel for a pulse and slid it into my bra as I curled my body to keep the bleeding side out of Harper’s vision.
    I failed.
    “Did you get shot? You’re bleeding,” Harper yanked off her tee-shirt and bent over me, trying to press it to my hip.
    “My phone broke when I dove under the table,” I said, taking her shirt and covering the bloody patch as best I could. I didn’t want to look yet. If it looked anything like it felt, my side was disaster. “Just cuts, I’ll be fine.”
    “We called Sheriff Lee, she’s on her way,” Ezee said. “Bloody hell, did you get shot?”
    I had to get out there. Like, now.
    “No, just cuts. I’m going to my place to clean up. This guy needs a medic or something, I don’t know what happened.” I tried to stand and regretted my life.
    “This one is dead. I’m not sure how.” Alek’s voice.
    Dead? Oh, that was bad. It was getting harder to think. I decided to worry about one thing at a time. Step one was