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“I want to find her,” I said savagely.
“Then let’s go find her.”
Two streets over, we came to another alley that looked a lot like the first, except that the light spilling in the end of this passage was a dim, hazy gold. The sun hadn’t suddenly come up, so I assumed that the light was man-made. It went with the sound of horses’ hooves on cobblestone, the rattle of wheels, and the shouts of people hawking something nearby.
I didn’t see my mother, but I kind of thought she might have been by.
“What is that?” Mircea demanded, staring at a mage loping along in the shadows beside us.
His arms were pumping, his legs were working, and his long coat was flapping out behind him as if caught in a stiff breeze. Only he wasn’t going anywhere. He also wasn’t paying any attention to us, which wasn’t surprising.
As far as he was concerned, we weren’t there yet.
Mircea frowned and reached out a hand, as if to give him a push. Until my fingers tightened over his wrist. “Don’t do that.”
He looked a question.
“Time loop,” I told him shortly, moving closer to the mouth of the alley. I was cautious, staying well inside the shadows provided by some stacked crates. I didn’t think my mother could manage another wave like that so soon—if she could, the man behind us likely wouldn’t be alive. But I wasn’t sure. And that little demonstration earlier wasn’t something you just forgot.
I kept telling myself that it hadn’t been her, that she hadn’t chosen to kill him like that, that she hadn’t known. But it still sent chills rippling over my flesh. God, what a horrible way to—
“Time loop?” Mircea asked, putting a hand on my shoulder.
I jumped and almost screamed.
He lifted an eyebrow at me, cool as always. Like he regularly saw people disintegrate into puddles of flesh. I licked my lips and told myself to get a grip.
“He’s stuck on repeat,” I explained, glancing back at the mage running his personal marathon.
“And that means?”
“That he’ll keep reliving the same few seconds over and over until the bubble fades or he breaks out of it.”
“H
e’s encased in a time bubble?”
“Yes.”
“Then why can’t I sense it?” Mircea asked, wrinkling his nose, as if he expected to be able to smell it or something.
I thought that unlikely. All I could smell was pee. The alley must serve as the local latrine.
“Did you sense the other one?” I asked.
“Not . . . precisely. But I saw something, like a current in the air—”
“Probably caused by the different weather patterns that piece of air was shifting through,” I told him, figuring it out as I spoke. “Rain, sleet, snow—on fast forward, they’re going to make it look a little weird.”
“Then you’re saying I didn’t actually see anything.”
“You can’t see time, just what it does.”
His fingers tightened. “Then your mother could throw a bubble over us and we would never see it coming?”
“Something like that,” I said grimly.
Mircea abruptly pulled me behind him.
