“…Lu saw the car. We wouldn’t have landed in the ditch if there hadn’t been a car.”
“The car was real,” Lu’s voice hinged, tight. She was angry, worried. I should do something about both those things, but the pounding in my head was chewing up my attention.
“If itwasn’ta car,” Lawrence went on, “it could have been something else. Illusion? Trick of light?”
“Nightmare,” I mumbled.
“Power,” Hado said, or maybe said again.
“Same thing,” I said. “Magic. Power. Power. Magic.”
Hado grunted, which I took as a disagreement. Abbi made a small, wounded sound.
I pulled the compress off my eyes. Both Hado and Lawrence were working over the small bunny, checking her head and neck and legs.
She made more small, pitiful sounds.
“What does she need?” I asked. “What can we do?”
“We can drive faster,” Lawrence said.
The van lurched, and Lu drove faster.
Rain became a droning drizzle,just enough to make standing out in it for any length of time uncomfortable.
I didn’t like bringing a stranger to one of our storage units, but we needed the vehicle, and neither Lu nor I wanted to stop long enough to kick Lawrence out.
Abbi had been whining in pain for the last mile, and Hado had only become angrier and more protective.
I was worried he was going to pick her up and make a run for it, but Lawrence somehow managed to both change Abbi’s compress and keep Hado calm enough that the shadow hadn’t made a break for it yet.
Lu slowed the van, taking the speed bumps hard. I grunted at the spike of pain in my skull and spine, and swallowed to keep from getting sick all over the potted plants.
Lawrence’s hand rested on Abbi’s hip. Without looking my way, he offered me a sprig of something yellow. “Chew. It will help.”
The sweet peppery scent of ginger hit my nostrils. I took the root from him and bit down on it, holding it between my molars.
My stomach lurched with the van over the next two speed bumps, and then Lu put the van into park and pushed out the door, running into the cold and drizzle.
It had been years since we’d been here, at least a decade, but Lu never forgot codes or locks. Lu never lost keys.
She jogged back, got behind the wheel, and was driving before she’d even closed the door. We rumbled through the gate, past several squat, square metal buildings with formidable brown bay doors.
I smelled smoke a moment before Lu tapped the brakes. “Shit!” She threw the van into park and bolted out the door.
Our storage unit was at the end of a row of twenty other units.
It was also on fire.
CHAPTERSIX
The van door hammered against the stops and slapped back, clipping my shoulder as I shot out after Lula. My bad foot hit the concrete. I howled, but kept going.
Smoke, slow and thick, bellowed out of the storage unit. The bay door had lost a bracket and hung like a broken sail over the gap, fire licking across the frame. Beyond it was more smoke, more fire, and Lula running into the building.
“Lula! No.” I jogged through the door, my ankle screaming with pain. Hot, acid air burned my lungs and set off new layers of lightning-strike agony in my head, silver in the darkness of my brain, blinding.
I stopped, retched, hands on knees, my entire body shaking, before I pushed forward, stumbling. The right wall. I wouldn’t get lost if I followed the wall.
