I watched, dumbstruck for a moment before I realized whose body was plummeting toward a grisly death. I started running toward the front of the hotel. I wasn’t clear on just what I planned to do if I got there before Jessie hit, but I was taking things one step at a time. Even while I ran, I kept an eye turned up, which was how I saw something unfathomable. Even as she fell, Jessie was still at work, hurling death toward the broken window in the form of fire and lightning and black blobs I couldn’t even identify. I did the math and realized she was probably going to hit before I could get in place to do any good. Then I did the math again and came up with a different answer. I felt it start again, a draw of magical energies so potent that it reached clear down to me from seven or eight stories up. I also realized Jessie wasn’t in free fall anymore. She’d managed to get herself positioned like a skydiver, parallel with the earth below, using her own body to create some drag. It got hard to look at her then. She did something that strained reality so much that it created a lensing effect. I reflexively did the math again and figured out that she was slowing herself down. I wasn’t sure if she was fighting gravity, thickening the air, or doing it with pure will, but she was slowing down. She was still falling fast, but it wasn’t certain death speeds anymore.
I realized that I’d stopped moving at some point and started running again. Even if she somehow managed to survive the fall, she’d probably still be hurt enough to need help. I had enough time to get in the general vicinity she was going to hit, but the closer I got, the worse I felt. Whatever she was doing was taxing nature to its limit. Just being that close made me feel like my stomach was going to get jerked out of my body through my nostril. My head pounded and the magical feedback felt like talons tearing across my soul. I stared up, but the lensing made her falling body invisible amid all the visual distortion. I backed off a little. I couldn’t help her if she landed on me. There was a blur of motion and a dull thud that made me want to scream.
A wave of distorted reality washed over my body and made me retch a few times. I pushed the nauseated feeling down and looked to where I’d heard that awful thud. Jessie lay face down on the concrete. She was still, so very still, but there was no splattered blood or obvious signs of compound fractures. I stumbled over to her and pressed a couple of fingers to her neck. She still had a pulse, but her heart was beating so fast it was a miracle it hadn’t given out. It might have been the strain of the impossible thing she’d just done, or the fear from falling that far, or both. I hesitated. I was afraid to touch her more than I already had. That she was alive at all was nothing short of a freaking miracle. If she had internal injuries, and that seemed all too probable, I could kill her by moving her the wrong way. She made the decision for me. Her eyes fluttered open. She managed to move her head enough to look at me.
She gasped out a hoarse whisper. “Need to go.”
“It could kill you,” I said.
“He’s coming,” she said, spitting a little blood. “We have to run.”
I looked up at the hotel, the cracked windows, and tried to imagine the kinds of forces they’d thrown at each other to cause that kind of damage. It was staggering, almost beyond my comprehension. I was not ready for this man. I might never be ready for him. I placed one of my hands flat against Jessie’s back and lifted my other hand overhead, palm toward the sky. I reached out for the magic and gathered it to me. I let it fill me up until there was nothing left but me and the forces of creation. The power coursed through me, through the sky, and through Jessie. It rose up from below, from the secret places, the deep places, and it knew me. It called me by my true name, a name that no living soul had ever guessed at or ever would, and then I spoke a word. That word struck the world like a hammer. The magic poured through me, out of me, shaping things the way I wanted them to be shaped. I wrapped Jessie and me in a whirlwind of forgetfulness. That wind would scour away the traces of our passage in the minds of those we met and in the world we moved through. Pierce Carter would not be able to see us. At least, not until we were far from his reach. We were running away because it was the only sane thing we could do in the face of his strength.
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I turned Jessie over and lifted her off the ground with a grunt. She hadn’t lied. She was no featherweight. As I carried her toward the car, I felt the ungodly might of Pierce Carter’s will and magic slamming against the magic I’d worked in our defense. I felt my magic strain and bend beneath the onslaught, but it didn’t buckle. I’d done my work well. I put Jessie in the back seat of the car as gently as I could and drove away from the hotel as fast as I dared. I took the dark sedan back to the rental agency we’d gotten it from and handed over the keys. The guy at the desk stared at me in a daze and I knew that, hours later, he’d wonder when the car had been dropped off. The magic would wipe us from the video cameras, from computer servers, from anything that might be used to trace us. I managed to rouse Jessie enough that she stumbled to the other rental car with my help. I called that car’s rental agency, and the magic bounced from cell tower to cell tower and off satellites for all I knew. It hit the woman on the other end of the line as hard as it had hit the guy at the counter.
“I’ve decided to drive home. I’ll drop it off there.”
She asked for some salient details that would vanish immediately and told me I was all set. I managed to get us out of the city with only a dozen or so wrong turns. Then, we were on the highway and heading to the only place I knew to go, somewhere that made sense to me. I was going home to where some kid's abusive stepdad was my idea of a problem and Jessie could get some help. At least, she could if she lived long enough for me to get us there. As the miles rolled by and night swallowed us, I tried not to think about what I’d have to do if Jessie died. I looked over at her. She was still breathing, but she hadn’t so much as stirred since I’d gotten her into the passenger seat. I slammed my fist against the steering wheel. I felt helpless. If I knew how to reach Jessie’s sister, Annie, she would be able to help. But I didn’t know where she lived or how to reach her. There were some things I’d heard about, ways of sending messages via spirits or through dreamwalks, but I’d never done those things before. I wasn’t sure I’d be able to piece together how to do them, even if I dared to try.
I hit the steering wheel again. I’d been trained, really well trained, but only for a very specific function. Jessie had been right about that too. There were huge holes in my knowledge and, in hindsight, no good reason for those holes. Those holes might cost Jessie her life. I could stop somewhere, maybe at a hospital, but there would be a lot of questions I couldn’t answer about how she got hurt. If the staff was suspicious enough, the cops would get involved. If that happened, by the time they were done satisfying themselves I wasn’t a bad guy, the magic I’d cast would have long since dissipated. Jessie would be stuck in a hospital bed and an easy target for Carter. That’d be as good as signing her death warrant. I had to get her somewhere where I could see threats coming if it came down to it. I owed her.
Maybe she’d volunteered to come along, but she hadn’t volunteered for whatever had gone down inside that hotel. She damn sure hadn’t volunteered to get thrown out of a hotel from the top story. She hadn’t volunteered to die on my stupid little quest. I’d vetoed the lethal option. I’d done it without consideration. I hadn’t understood the full depth of the threat Carter posed. I wouldn’t make that mistake again. I swore to myself that if I got the chance to kill Pierce Carter, be it with magic or a damned sniper rifle, I was going to take that chance without a second thought. I dialed a number and waited. It rang once.
“Lad,” said Gran, sounding relieved.
“I’m coming home,” I said and, even to my own ears, I sounded like a stranger.
“What happened?”
“Not now,” I said, too emotionally fatigued to go through it. “I’m bringing someone with me. She’s hurt and it’s my fault. We need to help her.”
Gran was quiet for a moment. “I’ll make up the extra room.”
