I couldn’t smell his magic, but I felt a prickling sensation run across my skin as the spell was cast, causing the small hairs on my arms and the back of my neck to stand on end. Quentin lowered his hands. I looked at him. He nodded.
“All right,” I said. “See you there.”
Then I turned, and sprinted for the end of the block, still in the middle of the street.
Hide-and-seek spells primarily depend on one thing: the person you’re trying to hide from losing sight of you. We hadn’t exactly been subtle as we stood on Valencia Street and argued about our next move, but we also hadn’t been moving. It was my sincere hope that our sudden action would be confusing enough to give us a few seconds’ head start. That, and I really, really hoped the Queen hadn’t sent any Centaurs. I’m pretty good at running for my life—I’ve had a lot of practice, when you get right down to it—but there’s no way I could outrun someone with four legs and lungs sized to sustain most of a horse’s body. A Silene, maybe. A Centaur, no way.
As I ran, I dug my phone out of my pocket and started scrolling through my contacts with my thumb. Why did I have to know so many people? It was like having a cell phone made people you hadn’t talked to in years come out of the woodwork, demanding you care enough to keep their information handy. I decided I’d delete them all as soon as this was over, and pressed “call” as the list finally reached the name I’d been looking for.
There were cars on the block up ahead. I veered back onto the sidewalk, listening to the phone ringing in my ear. “Come on, pick up,” I gasped, already too winded to do much else. “Come on, come on . . .”
“Hello?”
“May!” I swerved to avoid running into a fire hydrant. “Is Jazz there?”
“Toby? Are you running or something? You sound like you can’t breathe.”
“That’s because I’m running! Is Jazz there?”
“Yeah, she’s—”
“Tell her I need her, and the flock, to mob at Valencia and 16th Street. Now.”
“Toby, what—”
“I’m being chased by an unknown number of people,” I swerved to avoid a bike chained to a bike rack, with no owner in sight, “and I’m not sure how long I can keep running. I need a mob.”
“On it,” said May, and hung up.
That would have to be good enough. Hoping Jazz could actually rouse the rest of the city’s Raven-maids and Raven-men before I had passed the intersection, I put the phone back in my pocket, put my head down, and ran.
This is how it is with me and exercise: I have to exert myself, I get winded, I complain about getting winded, I swear I’m going to get into shape, I get distracted, and it never happens. Developing a supernaturally-enhanced healing talent didn’t help, since it meant I no longer had to worry as much about outrunning gunshots. So I wasn’t in the best shape, endurance-wise, before the goblin fruit caused my body to shift me most of the way back toward human. I was moving on momentum and terror, plain and simple, and as soon as one of them gave out, I was going to be in a world of trouble.
It was a good thing I was semi-invisible at the moment, since I knew how strange I would have looked to anyone who could see me: just a woman, running pell-mell down the empty sidewalk, with no one visibly in pursuit. I wanted to stop. My lungs were burning, and my knees had started to ache—a pain from my more mortal days that I’d been more than happy to forget about. The landscape was on my side for the moment, presenting me with a gentle downward slope, but once I crossed 16th, that would stop. If Jazz and the Ravens didn’t meet me there, I’d be running uphill.
Come on, Jazz, I prayed, as I dug deep for one more burst of short-lived speed. I know you can do this. I believe you can do this. So come on, and prove me right. Please.
My next stride hit the sidewalk just a little bit wrong, and I lost my balance, going head over heels before landing in a painful heap against the base of a nearby wall. Spots danced in front of my eyes. I tried to roll to the side, and found myself looking at a series of koi silhouettes that someone had painted on the sidewalk and building. I laughed, and then groaned as it made my head ache even more.
For the first time, I heard footsteps behind me. I tried squinting in their direction, but there was nothing there, and I realized that the feeling of feather-light feet dancing over my collarbone was gone. I raised a hand and touched my chest, confirming what I already partially knew: the firefly was gone. Either the flight or the fall had dislodged it.
“Then there were seven,” I muttered, pulling myself inch by aching inch to my feet. The knees of my jeans were ripped out, and the smell of blood was thick in the air. Good. I raised one scraped palm to my mouth and ran my tongue across it, borrowing what strength I could from my own blood before I snapped, “Well? What are you assholes waiting for? Come on!”
The Queen’s guards stepped out of thin air.
There were five of them, all dressed in the Queen’s livery, all armed. They had to be allowing me to see them through some sort of selective don’t-look-here; those weapons weren’t street-legal, and it wasn’t like I had the power to see through illusions on my own. The figure at the center of the group was a Gwragen, eyes closed and mouth moving in some silent litany as she maintained the spell that was keeping them concealed and keeping the mortal population at bay.
“You’re going to have one hell of a headache in the morning,” I wheezed, and licked my hand again. Despite the bits of gravel and dirt embedded in the skin, the blood tasted good.
“October Daye, you are under arrest—” began one of the guards, a broad-shouldered Satyr with holes cut in his helmet to allow his horns to curl through.
“Sir,” I said, interrupting him.
He stopped, frowning at me. “What?”
“Sir,” I repeated. “If you’re going to arrest me, you’re going to use my proper title. Can’t you people remember your own procedures? I mean, come on.”
He stiffened, lips drawing into a scowl. I wasn’t making any friends with my attitude. But I never do, where the Queen’s men are concerned, and all I needed was enough time for Danny and Quentin to get away from whoever might have followed them. Once they were safe, I could get arrested as much as I wanted to.
“Sir October Daye,” he began, “you are under arrest—”
A vast flock of black-winged birds descended from the sky, talons clawing and wings beating wildly as they mobbed the Queen’s guards. In a matter of seconds, inky feathers had obscured them from my view.
I wasn’t up for running—my running had been used up somewhere between 18th Street and taking a header into the sidewalk—but I was fully equipped to limp laboriously away. The beauty of the hide-and-seek is that you don’t have to go all that far. I stopped on the opposite corner, watching with some satisfaction as Jazz and her flock did their best to recreate The Birds with the Queen’s guard. As for the guards, they held their positions for almost a minute, which is longer than I could have done. Then they turned and ran, with the ravens in hot pursuit.
One large raven stayed behind, fluttering down to land in the street. It picked its way through the fallen feathers, head bobbing. It cawed, an inquisitive sound. I smiled a little. The raven was Jazz, more than likely, and it—she—couldn’t see me. The hide-and-seek was holding.
“Open roads,” I whispered, too softly to be heard, before I pulled the flask out of my jacket and freed another firefly, setting this one on my neck, where it would be hidden by my hair. Once that was done and the flask was put away again, I turned and began limping back up the street toward Borderlands. The fading sound of wings and shouting told me I was moving away from the Queen’s guards. That was good. I really didn’t have a second encounter in me.