Page 7 of The Mechanics of Broomstick Racing

To avoid his storefront and still have a chance at beating her record, Zephyr adopted a few back-alley ways to zip around him. It worked until a delivery truck whipped into the one-way alley she was flying through. Though the driver was the one going in the wrong direction, Zephyr took all the damage. She twisted her broom, trying to turn around before—

The truck hit her and thankfully stopped quickly, brakes screaming. The force sent her tumbling to the ground, and her broom flew into the side of a building and dropped, magic sparking for a few moments before its glow dulled.

The truck paused a moment before backing wildly out of the alley, its out-of-state license plate vanishing from her blurry view as it fled the scene. She wished the magic barrier around Pumpkin Hollow also stopped distracted drivers from entering their witchy fortress, and not just mortals.

Zephyr lay there. She wanted to get up—she inwardly screamed at her body to move—,but the sky above her spun and spun until she felt she might be sick. Am I hurt? she wondered. The sun transformed into an overhead surgical light before her watery eyes.

A shadow finally shielded her from the illusion of her own making. Rain fell in small, consistent drops. Someone reached down and flipped up the visor on her helmet. She squinted to prevent rain from hitting her eyes.

“Does anything feel broken?”

Her reply was automatic, a habit from years of physical exams after races. “No.”

“Okay.”

Her helmet slipped off, rewarding her with fresh air. She inhaled deeply, keeping her eyes firmly shut until someone lifted her from the ground.

“It’s not safe lying in the street,” Neil scolded her as he carried her in his arms. He smelled a little harsh, like oil. But he was warm, and when Zephyr curled into him, the rain stopped.

She didn’t need to be coddled like this. It wasn’t her first injury, and nothing felt broken, and still, she stayed frozen, letting a man carry her like a stolen bride.

“My broom,” she muttered.

“I’ll go back for it,” he promised.

She believed him. When she looked at the sky now, the edges of an orange canyon clipped her vision. She blinked, reminding herself, it isn’t real. Her breathing grew faint until the ceiling of the Finnegans’ workshop cut out the sky.

“Here.” He placed her on an empty workbench, sitting her before him. He tapped her knee. “This needs to be cleaned.”

She stared down at the torn fabric of her leggings and the red flesh peeking out. “Gross.”

Neil ducked back outside while she examined her scrape. She’d had so, so much worse, but even that small strip of red brought back awful memories. When Neil returned with her broomstick, leaving it in a corner, she focused on looking inconvenienced and not shell-shocked.

Neil pulled a small medical kit from where it hung on the wall. He said, “We have some new delivery drivers. They drive like maniacs, and I brought it up at the last town hall, but Pumpkin Hollow is slow to recognize non-magical issues. We’re self-centered that way.” Neil stopped short of the bench. “Zephyr, what are you—”

She ignored him, pulling off her leggings with a wince. She wore a skirt over them, and she had never been exactly shy. Neil turned around until she kicked him with her uninjured leg.

“There’s no need for that. I’m sure you saw the calendar I did three years ago. Four years ago? The bikini one.”

He set the medical kit on the bench next to her and pinched his brow. He monotoned, “I must have missed that one.”

“Shame. I looked really good as July. I have extra copies if you want—”

“Are you sure you don’t have a concussion?” He leaned in close, and his eyes focused on her pupils. When she only blinked, Neil shook his head and grabbed a pair of tweezers from the kit. He began removing small pieces of gravel from her knee. “Go back to your old route. The alley is a death trap. Too many blind corners.”

She snarked, “I wouldn’t need to change my route if you had anything better to do in the morning.”

He wiped her rock-free knee with an antiseptic wipe, and she grimaced. Neil said, “I’m not the one who’s being unreasonable. You need to slow down. Mostly for your own sake.”

“My own sake?” she echoed. “Make that make sense.”

“Forget I said anything,” he backtracked.

“Oh, don’t be shy now, Finnegan. You already got my pants off.”

He huffed an annoyed breath as he pressed a bandage on her wound, smoothing down the edges until it stuck. “Why did you come back here, Zephyr?” he asked.

“To my home?”