back with Sarah is the best way I can think of to calm them down.”
“What happened?” Elsie started the car again, driving more slowly now, like having flying cousins slam into the roof had been all she needed to snap her out of her maddened flight.
I focused on getting Sarah belted into the middle seat. Her skin was still too hot; touching her was like touching someone with a potentially fatal sunburn, half-cooked and in need of medical care. She didn’t react at all, just listed gently over until she was supported by my torso, her head hanging limp against my shoulder. I put an arm around her to hold her up, trying not to focus on the fact that I still couldn’t hear the hum of her presence.
The hum . . .
“We don’t have an extra anti-telepathy charm,” I said. “We don’t know whether she’s broadcasting.”
“True,” agreed Annie, even as she pulled a gun out of her waistband and flicked the safety off, keeping it below the level of the windshield as she watched the rearview mirror for signs that we were being followed.
“We need to cut her off.”
Annie’s eyes flicked to mine, our gaze connecting through the mirror. Then she smiled, the smallest twist of her mouth, there and gone in the beat of a heart.
“I made a deal with the crossroads to save Sam before I’d even admitted I was in love with him,” she said. “Grandma Alice must be so proud of her disgustingly dominant genes.”
“Shut up,” I said, voice sharp. “I’d do the same thing for you.”
“Sure you would,” she said. “Now expose yourself to the possibility of psychic attack so you can be sure she’s safe.”
Elsie laughed, high and sharp and bitter. I glared at the back of her neck.
Then I reached into my shirt and pulled the anti-telepathy charm over my head, dropping it to the seat between my legs, where it wouldn’t count as “in contact” and block me from Sarah’s mind.
The change in the car’s atmosphere was immediate and intense. The hum of Sarah’s psychic presence crashed against me like a wave against the shore, louder and more present than it had ever been before. I gasped, almost forgetting how to breathe in the face of its weight, which bore down on me, crushing me into the seat. I could still see the rest of the car. Sam was watching me with obvious concern; Annie and Elsie were sneaking glances at me in the rearview mirror as they tried not to get too distracted to stop their respective tasks. Both surveillance and driving take a certain amount of attention, after all, especially when you’re driving like you have special permission to ignore any rules of the road that you don’t like. The trees rushed by outside the car, dark and barely distinguished in the glow of our headlights, and none of that mattered, because it was all so far away. It was all beyond us.
Sarah’s skin was pressed against mine where I was holding her up. I had time to realize that might not be a good thing—to realize that even though it had been my intention to give her the anti-telepathy charm, to keep the other cuckoos from following the giant mental signal flare that was her mind right now, I wasn’t moving. I was just sitting there, the charm between my legs, not moving.
Move, I thought, and didn’t move.
Oh, crap, I thought, and the world went white.
Twenty
“No matter how much we study, train, and prepare, there will always be situations we weren’t ready for. That’s the nature of reality. It’s sort of neat, when it isn’t trying to chew your face off.”
—Kevin Price
Someplace that probably isn’t safe for incubi or other living things
EVERYTHING WAS WHITE.
I turned slowly, trying to get my bearings in the infinite brightness. There were no walls, no floor, no ceiling: only the featureless sterility of a blank page, waiting to be transformed into something comprehensible by the addition of basic physical forces.
I cupped my hands around my mouth. “Hello?” I shouted. There was no echo. My words barely seemed to travel past my lips, like even sound was being swallowed by this terrible new landscape.
Panic seemed like a good idea. Panic often seems like a good idea. Unfortunately, experience has shown that panic is virtually never a good idea, and if it is, it’s because you’re already about to die, so why waste time on staying calm? I forced myself to take a