QUESTION: Pierce and her friends fight against evil forces at the end of the book. How do you think you would act in their shoes?
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John gave the man who’d been holding the pruning shear a jab in the jaw that sent him spinning. Across the way, I heard Reed whoop admiringly. “Dead boy can punch!”
John turned to give a little bow of acknowledgement in Reed’s direction. Reed saluted, then sent the butt end of his harpoon gun into the sizable stomach of a nearby Fury.
I was still trying to puzzle out the intricacies of male camaraderie when felt a hand on my arm and spun around, my whip flying, only to see Henry’s face peering up at me.
“Miss,” he cried, ducking beneath my lash. “It’s only me, miss.”
“Henry,” I said, relieved. “Don’t do that. You shouldn’t be here, it isn’t safe.” My point was illustrated as my bicycle went flying past us both, hurled by an outraged Fury. “What is it?”
“My slingshot,” he said. “The one I made you. Do you still have it? You should use it. Put your diamond in it, and shoot it at them, and then once they’re hit, they won’t be Furies anymore.”
Again with the slingshot
“Henry,” I said, pulling him to the side of a nearby crypt, out of the range of flying bicycles, since Mr. Liu had picked up the shattered remains of mine, and was hurling it back at the original thrower. “Your slingshot is in my tote bag, which I left over there—”
I pointed across the blossom strewn path, to where Mr. Smith was engaged in what looked like a fight to the death with my grandmother, something I’d only just noticed.
“Oh, no,” I said, my heart sinking.
“I’ll get it,” Henry cried, misunderstanding my disappointment, and darted towards the bag.
“Henry, don’t!” I raced to stop him, nearly colliding with a woman who seemed to come from out of nowhere, swinging a pickaxe at the little boy. I kneed her in the stomach, then struck her hard on the back of the neck with the butt of my whip. As I did so, the diamond at the end of my necklace brushed her skin. A puff of smoke trickled up from the small burn.
I didn’t have time to stick around to watch what happened next. Mr. Smith—and Henry—needed me.
Besides, no sooner had the woman collapsed than she was replaced by a man who came running up with a machete. They just kept coming, and coming, and coming. Every time one of us managed to disarm or knock a Fury down, another one seemed to rise up in his or her place, while overhead, ravens screamed so raucously, my ears had begun to ring.
