Natural Mage (Magical Mayhem #2)(90)

“Let’s pick up the pace,” Emery whispered.

“Do you hear something?” a guy said, looking around.

Apparently the spell didn’t suppress sound as thoroughly as I had hoped.

A woman wearing an orange sash around her neck stood at the next corner, scanning the way. A cord dropped from her ear and into her shirt. They weren’t doing a great job of hiding what they were, let alone their rank.

Thinking on it, though, I’d only seen a couple of sashes. I wondered if that meant they’d hired out for most of their people.

Cold licked at my spine as I remembered Mary Bell at the bar earlier. How many others in Callie’s camp hung out at bars stuffed with Guild members? How many had accepted promises?

I turned, forgetting to tell Emery. Since he was way heavier, the spell yanked me back toward him and I bounced off him. “Sorry. I wanted to go that way.” I pointed.

“Where are we going?” Emery asked before jolting.

I felt it a second later. A searching-type spell had ballooned over the street before dropping on us like rain.

He swore and zipped off a spell, but it only blew a hole through a small part of the searching spell. The rest didn’t fizzle away, only curled back a little, landing on the edge of our bubble and burning bright red.

“What are the odds that they won’t see that?” I asked as a shock of fear coursed through me.

“Run, Penny! Run!”

With the soundtrack from Forrest Gump rolling through my head, we took off. The Guild woman slapped a hand to her ear and yelled something into her other wrist. People startled and pointed at the flare of red zipping at them, seemingly disconnected to anything else. Some hurried out of the way, and others watched with wide eyes until it washed over their bodies with a ghostlike zing of energy.

A busy street lay up ahead, two lanes of cars in each direction flying past. Beyond it was a green area with looming trees and wild bushes. An old cemetery, a tourist attraction, was down that way, leading into a rougher part of town.

It was probably safer than where we were.

“Hit that park. Let’s lose them in the night.” Emery didn’t turn left or right to look for a crosswalk. With a firm hold on my wrist, he stopped for a moment to survey the cars, then pulled me forward.

“Wha—eeiiii?” I let out a squeal, panic stealing my motor skills, and was half dragged across the pavement. A car zipped past our backs, swerving away from the splash of red on our bubble, which was now dying down. Another almost hit us in a head-on collision before Emery yanked me forward, pulling me onto the concrete divider in the middle of the street.

“Are you insane?” I asked through the fear chattering my teeth.

“That’s how you cross the street in a great many third-world countries,” he said without apology.

“They’re all on the same page in those countries. Cars can see you in those countries. You’re going to get us— No!”

He yanked me out again, stopping a little beyond the white line, somehow knowing the car would see the fading red light, swerve, and bump the curb before correcting too much and nearly catching us. The car in the other lane swerved the other way, reacting to the first car.

Before I could yell a profanity that was sorely deserved, he’d yanked us across and was running, towing me like a boat on a trailer.

“You’re out of your mind,” I said, barely keeping up with the adrenaline trying to lock my knees. “We’re in a fight right now. I know you’re just back, and this should be the honeymoon period or whatever, but we’re fighting.”

“Thanks for the warning.” He pulled us onto a wooded path and then into the trees as a spell streamed past us. It hit a bush and blasted outward in a rainbow of color, very pretty, given that it could have put a hole in our backs. “Hurry.”

Shouts sounded from all around us. I looked back to find more than a dozen people trying to get across the street, half of them running for the crosswalk. A stray brown dog had joined in the melee, scampering across the street with the first group of mages.

Honks drowned out the dog’s playful bark. Drivers yelled out their windows at the mages forcing their way across the street.

Bushes stole my view and I blinked in confusion.

My brain had gone offline.

“Okay. No biggie. We’re alive.” I wrestled past the fear and pushed forward, easing my tense grip on Emery’s arm.

Trap. Maim.

Someone was in the overgrown, wild park with us, waiting idly with a spell nearly at the ready. I’d felt the same thing in the Quarter. They used the ingredients to call the spell to life over and over again, letting it dissipate at the last moment. Ready to fling should they see us.

Why not just put the spells in casings?

Like I’d done in the Quarter, I pulled Emery away from the feeling, not even seeing the mage this time, but knowing they were somewhere in that mess of foliage off to the right.

After a short jog, he slowed and shook his head, pulling me a different direction. His breathing quickened as he slowed again, looking back the way we’d just come. “What was wrong back there?”

“A mage lying in wait,” I said.

I could barely see the troubled expression cross his face in the soft moonlight. “We can’t go these other ways,” he whispered. “They have something like wards set up. I don’t understand why we can’t fight through them—I just know we won’t. One of us, in each scenario, will die.” He shook his head. “I didn’t get any flashes the other way. Maybe that was because you steered us away, but we should try—”