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The rumble of the engine had softened. Seth pulled over to the side of the road. “I’m not sure it’s safe to drive if they’re going to hit us like that.”
“I think it’s over now,” I said. “I pushed them back. They—”
It came again, a wave twice as forceful as before. Hard enough that my own ears rang with the impact. My hands whipped out, but Gabriel had already grunted in pain. Jin had stiffened in his seat. Fuck. No. I wasn’t going to let them hurt my guys any more than they already had.
I wove the protective spell thicker, stronger, and cast it out. Jin’s shoulders sagged. Someone in the middle seat exhaled in relief. Gabriel swiped his hand past his temple as if he’d been left with a residual headache, but when I gave him a questioning look he just shook his head.
I kept moving my arms and weaving with my fingers, spinning a few more layers of the spell so it could settle in place over them. My skin prickled with the sense that another rush of magic had flung itself against my shield, but the guys didn’t show any reaction other than a twitch of Gabriel’s jaw, which might have been just about anything.
“You’re all okay now?” I asked.
“If they’re still throwing stuff at us, I don’t feel anything,” Damon said.
“All good here,” Gabriel added.
“Okay.” I took a deep breath. “I’ll just have to keep working that magic as they wear it down—if they keep at us.”
Seth glanced back at me, his expression even more solemn than usual. “What are the chances they won’t?”
“Not very high,” I had to admit. I brought my hands to my face. “I don’t know how they even found us. There isn’t any spell I know that should reach that far and that accurately across that much distance.” Unless they’d done something to me or the guys back in the prison that I hadn’t realized? I had no idea. This illicit faction of the Assembly might have all kinds of magical strategies they kept to themselves for their malicious purposes.
“I vote we don’t hide out anywhere near here, anyway,” Ky said, somehow managing to sound cheerful even now.
I couldn’t stop a halting laugh from slipping out. “No, I guess not.”
“So, what do we do now?” Seth asked.
“Whatever you need us to do, we’re on it,” Damon said. “Just say the word, angel. You know that.”
I did. I pushed my hands back into my hair and then dropped them to my lap. What could they do? I didn’t even know whatIcould do. But like Jin had said before, we had to start someplace. One step at a time.
“We keep going,” I said. “Change up our route. Zigzag a little, maybe. Damon, any evasive techniques you’ve got, pass them on. And then…” I sucked my lower lip under my teeth. “If they’re going to come at us with magic I’ve never seen, then I guess I’m just going to have to get creative right back at them.”
Chapter Seven
Jin
The town we’d stopped in was large enough to have a big box store on the outskirts where Kyler found his charger and we all got a couple fresh changes of clothes—but small enough that I got a few stares as I ambled through the grocery store. I’d bet they didn’t see a whole lot of Korean guys with blue-streaked hair passing through here. I just smiled and grabbed the best non-perishables I could find to fuel our stomachs on this little road trip.
Maybe I’d open their minds a little. Or maybe they’d just mutter about that weirdo and his strange grocery shopping habits when I was gone. I was fine with it either way. I’d learned to let other people’s opinions roll off my back a long time ago, growing up in our much smaller town back home.
The cashier seemed totally unfazed, even when I dug out a wad of cash to pay for my stack of groceries. The Assembly people had confiscated our wallets, but Rose had done her magic on a bank machine a while back to get us into our accounts—and to increase our daily limits by a substantial amount. We’d taken out all the cash we had on hand, since we didn’t want to leave an electronic trail any farther than that. For all we knew her witchy enemies could shut those accounts down now that they knew we were on the run.
Rose was waiting by the SUV when Seth and I hauled the bags of groceries back there. She took a couple from me to help us arrange them in the trunk. As soon as my hands were free, I had to restrain myself from pulling her to me and getting lost in a kiss, just for a minute or two. We were trying not to drawtoomuch attention.
But it was hard not to want to touch her, to remind myself how real she was, when just yesterday I hadn’t known for sure whether I’d lost her forever. Whether any of us would see each other again, or anyone else, for that matter.
We were all here—here with her—and every now and then when I remembered that little white room and the chains and the pain in my head, that fact felt like a miracle.
I settled for taking her hand. “Where did the other guys get to?”
“Gabriel’s seeing if he can buy some extra gas so we can fill up on the road if we decide we don’t want to risk even going into a station,” she said. “Damon went with him to help carry. And Kyler spotted a pawn shop with some tech stuff in the window—he ducked in to take a quick look. They should be back in ten or so.”
“Do you think the Assembly’s ‘enforcers’ will be following us on the road as well as with their magic?” Seth asked.
“Probably,” Rose said. “It’ll be a lot harder for them to stop us from a distance. But I didn’t get much sense of them through their magical attack, so I don’t think they can be very close yet.”
My gaze settled on a craft shop farther down the main street. My fingers itched with the familiar urge for a paintbrush or a lump of clay. The impulse brought to mind another use I’d made of my art.
