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Pritkin stayed where he was. “Go? Where?”
“To find the Codex! I thought it might be nice to look for it without somebody shooting at us for a change.”
“An excellent sentiment. Except for the small matter of the Paris coven being one of the oldest in Europe. They may have abandoned this facility in our time, but in this era there are doubtless mages all over the place. Not to mention snares and traps. If we haven’t already tripped a protection ward, we soon will!”
“Do you have another suggestion?”
“Yes. Shift us out!” Even in complete darkness I was positive I could see his glare.
I sucked in a breath, more annoyed than I could remember—well, more annoyed than before John Pritkin, anyway. “Why didn’t I think of that?”
“You have shifted multiple times in a day before—”
“And it wiped me out before.”
“You never mentioned that.”
“You never asked.”
There was a brief pause. “Are you all right?”
“Yeah, peachy.” I really hated his suggestion, but I couldn’t think of a better one. “Let’s at least clear the corridor first,” I said in compromise. “Then I’ll try to set us back a little early, before the fireworks start.”
It took forever to get down that corridor, not because of the darkness but because Pritkin was certain someone or something was about to jump us. But the only problems were the usual—heat, bad air and the fun of trying not to fall on the uneven floor or scrape off a little more skin on the wall. We finally came to a branch in the path and Pritkin stopped. “Are you certain you’re up to this?”
“What’s your plan if I say no?”
“Wait here until you say yes.”
“Then I guess I’m up to it.” I don’t suffer from claustrophobia, but I was getting really tired of those tunnels. I gripped his hand tighter, focused on our era and shifted.
This time the world melted around us slowly, like paint dissolving in water, bleeding away in slow drips. I normally don’t feel the passing of years, just a weightless free fall that ends with me whenever I planned to be. I felt it this time. Reality rippled around us in a nauseating, frictionless, gravity-free waver. I was suddenly grateful I couldn’t see, because what I could feel was terrifying: For a long moment, I was a tearing stream of dislocated atoms, consciousness ripped apart, with a body that was so elongated it neither began nor ended.
Then I snapped back into myself, only to have the whole process start again. There were snatches of conversation, a few notes of music and what sounded like another explosion or cave-in, all in quick succession, like someone flipping a radio too fast. And I finally realized what was happening. This trip wasn’t one long jump, but a series of smaller hops, with us flashing in and out of other times as we slowly made our way back to our own.
I could feel time, and it was heavy, like swimming through molasses. Pushing through the centuries was like running a marathon. In the dark. With weights tied to my legs.
When we finally broke through, it felt like oxygen when drowning—shocking, unexpected, miraculous. I’d half expected to materialize underwater, but apparently we’d passed the flooded area, because I stumbled into a mostly dry wall. I sat down abruptly, tilting my head back, swallowing a relief so sharp it made me light-headed.
>
Pritkin crawled over to lean against the wall next to me. “Are you all right?”
“Stop asking me that,” I said, then had to go very still to deal with the nausea. It felt like my stomach had been a couple seconds behind the rest of me, and when it caught up it wasn’t happy to be there.
“I take it that’s a yes.”
I swallowed, still tasting dust, and told myself that throwing up would be very unprofessional. “Yeah. It’s just…the learning curve can be a little rough.”
After a few minutes of sitting quietly with my eyes closed, I managed to relax and start breathing evenly. “You don’t have to do this,” Pritkin said. “I could—”
“I couldn’t shift out of here right now if my life depended on it,” I said truthfully.
“Your power shouldn’t fluctuate this greatly,” he told me, and I could hear the puzzled frown in his voice.
“The power doesn’t fluctuate. My ability to channel it does. The more tired I am, the harder it gets.”
“But it shouldn’t be this difficult,” Pritkin repeated stubbornly. “My power doesn’t—”
