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I extricated myself from the backseat and stumbled out onto the pavement. Everything was a big, pale blur, and since I’d never shifted anything that large before—hadn’t even known it was possible—I had no way of knowing how long it would be before the exhaustion would subside enough for me to get us out of here. But Jesse was in the limo that was fast disappearing into traffic, and if I didn’t at least try to get him back, I didn’t know how I’d ever face Tami again.
“Stop them!” I told Alfred.
“How?”
“The tires!” He nodded and sent a narrow-eyed look the limo’s way. For a moment, nothing happened, and then both of the back tires blew simultaneously. The already smoking rear end of the car hit the ground, dragging a river of sparks behind it for a few seconds before veering off the road and slamming into a light pole. It bounced off, did a 180 and ended up back in the middle of traffic.
“Get back to Dante’s,” I told Francoise while digging around in my purse for the gun. “Help the kids.”
“And who will ’elp you?”
“I can take care of myself.” It might have sounded more convincing if I could have completely focused my eyes. She didn’t say anything, just stood there with crossed arms. “Francoise! Please!”
“I can get us back,” Alfred offered.
“’E probably drives bettair zan me,” Francoise agreed.
I glanced from the limo, which was now rocking slightly side to side, to Alfred, who stared back placidly. The kid had to be on Prozac or something. “Stay on the main drag. Don’t break any traffic laws or do anything to draw attention to yourselves.” Other than the fact that the SUV’s doors were all stubbornly open. “And, uh, tell Tami I’ll explain when I get back.”
Francoise and I darted into traffic and Alfred pulled out behind us. Neither was as dangerous as it sounds, because thanks to the big black barrier in the road, nobody was going anywhere. The horns were deafening, and even worse, a few people were starting to get out of their cars. The police couldn’t be far behind.
Alfred did a highly illegal U-turn over the fake grass in the median and was out of there before Francoise and I even reached the limo. I wrenched open the nearest door, which in Alice’s absence had stayed properly closed, and leapt inside. “Cassie!” I heard Jesse’s voice but couldn’t respond because I had a mage on top of me and another was trying to wrestle me for my gun. There was also a lot of kicking going on.
I kneed the mage somewhere painful and came up for air. “Jesse, grab my hand!” I had only one free, but one was all I needed. I waved it wildly in the air.
“What about the others?” he demanded.
“I have the others!”
“You found the other car?”
I stared down the length of the limo at him over the top of the mage’s head. He’d given up on magic in favor of trying to choke me to death. “Other car?” I croaked. Oh, shit. I’d forgotten there were supposed to be two limos.
“They separated us so they’d outnumber us! Tell me you already found the other one!”
He looked eerily like his mother all of a sudden. I was distracted by a couple of guns zeroing in on my cranium, but Francoise said something that sent them flying. Then the driver somehow lurched the limo forward a foot or two, sending us all tumbling backward.
I slipped out from under the would-be choker, crawled behind a mage who had wrestled Francoise to the floor, and hit him on the head with the butt of my pistol. Unfortunately, that works better in the movies, because all it did was make him mad. But he did let Francoise go in favor of lunging at me, giving her a chance to clock him with a still-intact bottle of Pernod.
Shields were difficult to use in such a tight space, as there was little enough room to move as it was, but that didn’t stop the mages from waving lethal weapons around. One of them leveled a gun on me at the same moment I turned mine on him. We froze, both of us looking at the o
ther.
“Well. This is awkward,” I said as Caleb glowered at me.
“I don’t want to kill you,” he said, and it actually sounded sincere.
“Ditto.” I swallowed. “Only, see, you have someone I kind of want back.”
He ignored that. “The warrants for you don’t specify that you have to be brought in alive, but it would certainly be my preference.”
“It wouldn’t be mine,” I told him truthfully. A quick death by spell or gunshot was probably a lot more pleasant than what the Circle would do if they got their hands on me with no witnesses.
He frowned. “You’d receive a fair trial. If the charges against you are in error—”
“The charges against me are a bunch of crap,” I said with feeling.
“Cassie!” Jesse sidled up next to me. “We have to go!”
