“My cousin may not have anything to do with your ass,” Haru grumbled.
“Haru!”
“We got that shard along with another box of what feels like smaller shards,” Tyche reassured him. As he spoke, Shey pulled the flat case out of the bag and opened the lid a crack to peer inside. Tyche winced reflexively but was relieved to discover that the sharp magical stabbing he’d felt with the shard from the Isle of Stone Godstone wasn’t nearly as strong with these tiny slivers of green, purple, red, and gold.
All the same, he reached a hand toward Shey and waved at the box. “Shut that. You’re making me carsick.”
“I have a feeling that’s Adrian’s driving,” Shey teased, but he closed the lid anyway and stuffed the case into the bag. “It looks like you two grabbed a lot more than a tablet and the shards.”
“Really?” Adrian said, perking up.
“I found his phone. His laptop was already in the bag. Haru snatched up all the papers out of the safe where we found the shards.” Tyche peeked into the bag that Shey was digging through and lifted his gaze to Shey’s face. “We’ll find something helpful in all that, right?”
Shey paused in his sifting through the bag’s contents and glanced over at Tyche, a warm smile spreading across his lips. “I’m sure we will.”
His heart fluttered.
Tyche jerked back and whipped his head around to stare out the window without seeing a damn thing.
What the fuck was that?
When had his heart learned to do that? And forShey?
The human had grinned at him plenty of times—usually while teasing him—and his heart hadneverdone that.
That…that wasn’t anything. Indigestion. Stress. They’d killed people and burned down an enormous house. They were escaping.
Yes, they were escaping.
Those were excited, escaping heart flutters. They hadnothingto do with Shey’s amazing smile.
“Where are we going? To the hotel?” Adrian asked as he slowed at last for a red light.
“It should be safe.” Shey twisted in his seat and glanced behind them. “I don’t think anyone is following us, and there have been no police sirens.”
“That’s a little frightening that we could slaughter all those security guards and set the house on fire, but no one called the police,” Adrian mumbled.
“Did Ruben strike you as someone you’d want to save?” Tyche countered.
“Good point.”
They all seemed to release heavy sighs of relief as Adrian continued through the city at a more sedate pace, matching the flow of traffic as he wound them to the hotel. Tyche shifted in his seat, moving his head from left to right, trying to loosen muscles that were suddenly tense. A weird feeling was creeping across his skin. Not Shey’s electric charge or even the bundle of angry magic living in the godstone shards. This was something else.
He lifted a hand and rubbed his forehead. A dull throb had started in his head out of nowhere.
“Tyche? You okay?”
Tyche turned his head to gaze at Shey, who was watching him with a furrowed brow. His luminous blue eyes looked even sharper in the low light of the interior of the car.
“Yeah. Um…it’s nothing. I?—”
“What the—” Adrian shouted. The car jerked wildly to the left, slamming Tyche’s shoulder and head into the door hard. He looked up in time to see a woman in a business suit skip through the busy street, narrowly missing getting hit by another car, but she didn’t even blink at it. A wide grin filled her face, and her arms stretched over her head as she skipped and twirled as if she were moving through an empty meadow of wildflowers.
“Fuck! She came out of nowhere,” Adrian swore.
“Watch out!” Haru shouted, and Adrian stomped on the brakes. Tyche lunged forward, stopped only by his seat belt, and slammed back into his seat. Wincing, he peered about to see that all the other cars on the road had stopped. Some were at weird angles in their lanes, while others were smashed into theirneighbors or lampposts. People randomly wove between the cars, dancing and twirling while passengers climbed out of their vehicles to shout.
“What’s going on?” Adrian whispered. “It’s like they’re in a trance or sleepwalking.”
