“What? Why?”
“I have to get closer.”
“Closer? What do you mean, clos—” He looked up. And then back at me, his eyes going huge. “Are you insane?”
“You’re the one who told me to get crazy,” I reminded him, trying to gauge the distance.
“I take it back!”
“Just stay out of sight,” I said, a little harsher than necessary because the wagon was even higher than I’d thought. Gertie looked like a tiny doll, the horses like children’s toys, the floating contents of the cage hidden by curtains of rain and almost indistinct.
But shifting her to me—definitely my first choice—wasn’t going to work. Unlike shifting myself, that sort of thing wasn’t instantaneous. It had taken me several seconds to latch on to the hound; if it took me that long with Gertie, and she felt it—
I’d lose the element of surprise, and it was the only advantage I had.
I took a breath and shifted.
Spatial shifts are usually easy compared to time travel. Like walking up a few steps instead of thirty flights—or a couple hundred in the case of Wales. But they also aren’t usually done in almost pitch-darkness. Or aimed at a target that looked smaller than my palm. Or was wet and slippery and not entirely level.
Make that not level at all, I thought, rematerializing along with a burst of lightning on the rain-slick wagon top. The flash was all but blinding, and close enough to lift strands of my hair and make me jump. And to explain why Gertie didn’t immediately notice me.
Until I lost my footing and slid straight into her.
She fell, hitting down hard and sliding herself—into the hole she’d made in the roof to try to dart me. And it looked like I’d been right; she didn’t totally fit. But halfway was good enough, because she got stuck, which would have been perfect if the wagon hadn’t tipped and careened around from the shift in weight. And if I hadn’t been forced to grab an axle to hold on to. And if she hadn’t started slinging spells everywhere.
And if we hadn’t started to fall.
“Son of a bitch!” I yelled, feeling my time spell start to unravel.
Lightning flashed, this time close enough for a small branch to get stuck in the bubble of slow time. It spread weird, neon light around as we began to tumble head over heels—or wheels over cage. And the fact that we were moving at only a fraction of regular speed didn’t help, because that wouldn’t be true for long.
And then the axle I was clinging to burst into dust.
The spell Gertie had flung missed my head, but left me with nothing to hold on to, and we were about to go over again. So I threw myself at her, grabbing her around the neck, trying to keep her from cursing me out of existence. And because she was the only thing I could reach.
But she didn’t seem to like that, and a fist immediately started hitting the side of my head. “Get off me! Get off!”
But I couldn’t get off, frizzy purple hair in my mouth or not, budding concussion or not, cursing bitch or not. Because I still had to get the dart into her. And because we were Ferris-wheeling around again. And because Gertie’s butt wasn’t as big as I’d thought and was about to come out of the hole.
“Damn it!”
I grabbed her hair, pulled her head to the side, and slammed the dart into her neck less than gently—
And the next moment we were in free fall.
But not because my spell had completely unraveled, but because we’d fallen off the side that was in real time. And a few dozen stories go by really freaking fast in real time. I had a couple seconds to feel the wind, to smell the ozone, to see myself enveloped in glittering golden strands—
And then we were hitting down, Gertie cussing as the force of the drop sent my elbow into her stomach before wrenching us apart. I didn’t know where she went, but the bounce sent me flipping back into the air, like a kid on the world’s biggest trampoline. And left me staring around at a world gone mad, at a wildly skewing landscape, at streams of lighting and lashes of rain—
And at a hint of purple off to the left.
I didn’t even wait to land. I threw the last spell I had energy for, giving it everything I had, praying it connected. And, for once, the universe decided to throw me a bone. Because the next second I was coming down alone, tumbling into darkness more gently this time, the majority of the momentum having been used up by that first massive jump. But it was enough to send me through several smaller bounces, bounces of victory, I thought, grinning like an idiot in sheer relief.
Until I looked up.
And saw the huge wooden thing now speeding down at me.
“Shit!” I somehow shifted to Rosier, barely managing the tiny spatial move, because my power was flat-lined.