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So if Pritkin didn’t specifically forbid me from spatially shifting, I could easily stay ahead of him—and buy myself a free week in the process. After the way things had been going lately, a little time off would be heaven. But it would be a bad mistake to sound like it.
“We’ve been out here half the day already,” I complained. “I’m tired, I haven’t eaten since breakfast and I can’t feel my toes any—”
“I’ll throw in a picnic.”
My head came up. “What?”
“I hid a basket this morning. After the test, I’ll take you to it.”
“It’ll be cold by now.”
“I left it with a warmer,” he said drily. Because war mages ate their fried chicken frozen to the ground and they liked it.
God. Fried chicken, potato salad, baked beans, maybe some apple pie or cookies for dessert—yeah. I could so use a picnic right about now.
“All right,” I agreed, faster than I should have. But I really was hungry. “No time travel.”
“You’re sure? Because when I win—”
“If you win.”
“—you’ll stay until you’ve run the entire course. And you won’t whine about it.”
“I don’t whine!”
“Then we have a deal?”
“I guess so,” I said, trying to sound reluctant.
“Good,” he told me pleasantly.
And then he let go.
A couple of hours later, I staggered into the Vegas hotel suite I currently called home and face-planted onto the sofa. There was already someone sitting there, but I didn’t care. I was too tired to even open my eyelids and find out who it was.
Until someone pried one open for me with a finger the size of a hot dog. “Rough day?”
I rotated my eyeball—and, goddamnit, even that hurt—to see the leader of my bodyguards peering at me.
“No. I like being dropped from airplane height without a parachute.”
Marco patted me on the ass, which I guess was fair, since I was draped over his lap. “You seem all right to me.”
Marco, I reflected sourly, was getting awfully blasé where my health was concerned. He’d started out assuming that I was as squishy as most humans, and practically had a heart attack every time I got a hangnail. But after seeing me survive a few dozen attacks, he’d started to relax. These days, if I didn’t come in with a gaping wound or spewing blood, I didn’t get much sympathy.
“Because I managed to shift to the ground before I splattered on it!” I told him testily.
“Then what’s the problem?”
I turned over so I could scowl at him. “The problem is that I just ran a marathon in freezing weather with a maniac chasing me.”
“Why didn’t you just”—he waved the ham-sized hand that went with his bear-sized body—“you know. Poof.”
“You mean shift?”
“Yeah. Why didn’t you shift?”
“I did! But Pritkin expected that, and he borrowed Jonas’s necklace.”
