ducked into the tunnel of brush, there was no sign of her now. I felt down the pack bonds and the bond I shared with Adam. Though I could tell they were somewhere, I got no sense of where they were in relation to me. The connection was foggy, as if they were a lot farther away than an hour’s walk.
“You pick,” I said, as we hit the bottom of the hill—and he jerked my hand and pulled me to the right.
I made the mistake of looking up the hill and caught sight of one of the tibicenas cresting the top—the female. She saw us and bayed twice before plunging down the hillside after us. I quit looking back and concentrated on running—and on hoping that she didn’t give that cry we’d heard before, the one that had frozen me in my tracks.
“Isn’t that walking stick supposed to take you home?” Gary asked. “Why don’t you say the magic words? ‘There’s no place like home. There’s no place like home.’”
Where did he get enough breath to be sarcastic? If he wasn’t being sarcastic, then he didn’t know fae artifacts as well as I did.
“They aren’t Dorothy’s ruby slippers,” I said. “Fae artifacts have a mind of their own, and this one is particularly contrary.”
I’d turned my head to glance at him, and I noticed that there was a house in the distance—the first house I’d seen all night.
“Look, Gar—” I ran full tilt into something solid planted right in front of me. I lost my balance, and my feet skidded sideways to tangle with Gary’s. Everyone fell, tumbling and rolling on a gravel driveway because Gary and I had been running really fast. And the solid thing hadn’t been a tree, like I thought, it had been Adam.
“Hi,” I said, panting, sprawled out on top of my husband, who’d done the chivalrous thing and taken the brunt of the fall. “A funny thing happened when I went to get a glass of water.” He smelled so good, warm and safe and Adam.
Coyote had dumped Gary and me right in front of Honey’s house, at the exact spot where my husband stood … had been standing until I hit him running full out when he wasn’t expecting an attack from the ether.
Still lying flat on his back, Adam looked over at the walking stick that had missed clocking him in the head by an inch, maybe less. Coyote hadn’t fixed the walking stick entirely, or possibly at all, because I got the distinct impression that the walking stick had tried to hurt Adam but hadn’t quite managed it. I tightened my hand on the old wood, and the impression faded until it was only a stick in my hand. The effect Adam had on me was such that it was only then I remembered that I should be afraid.
I lifted my head and listened as hard as I could. But I couldn’t hear them.
“Are they still following us?” I asked urgently.
“We’re not dead,” said Gary, who hadn’t moved from his prone position on the ground. “I’d guess that we lost them when we got dumped back here. It’s too much to say that we’re safe, not when Himself is about—but safe for now.”
“I take it you met with Coyote?” Adam said politely as he sat up so I was sitting on him instead of lying on him and glanced at Gary. “Both of you?”
Gary got up and started pulling goathead thorns out of his arm. “I hate Coyote,” he said without aiming the remark at anyone.
I ignored Gary and answered Adam. “Was it the walking stick that gave it away?” I asked with mock interest that would have worked better if I weren’t still trying to catch my breath. My heart was beating so hard that the force of my pulse almost hurt.
“No, I figured it out earlier, when your scent trail disappeared into nothing. Mostly. The walking stick just meant my suspicions were correct.” Adam closed his fingers on my shoulder, not quite hard enough to hurt. “Don’t do that again,” he said. “My heart can’t take it.”
“I didn’t intend to do it the first time,” I half whined. I would have all-the-way whined, but it was suddenly too difficult to whine. Why was it that I could run and run—but a minute or so after I stopped, I couldn’t breathe anymore?
I could happily have stayed safe in Adam’s arms all night if it weren’t for the fact that I