East.
She’s somewhere to the east.
That’s all I know. I can feel that much through the link, the thin strand of energy holding both our lives together, pulling me back toward her.
It’s a distant pull, but it’s there.
And I’m too damn weak.
The miles between us must be vast, because with every passing second, I get weaker and weaker.
At this rate, I’ll die before morning. Fizzle out, just like that. Like a spark in the wind, an ember fading, an infinite existence gone. As if I never even existed.
What a way for someone as powerful as me to go.
The modern world is too fast, too complicated. I’d rather go back to the time before I was locked away, back before all these speeding boxes they call cars.
It’s so late it’s probably early, and this damn city is still alive, those damn cars blocking up all the good places meant for walking.
I stumble up out of the bar—and a car honks, peeling out as I push off its passenger window and teeter away.
I probably look drunk.
I thought it was the drink, but that’s not it. Can’t be.
It’s gotta be the distance between us.
My thoughts are all over the damn place, and I can barely keep together where I’m supposed to be going, what I’m supposed to be doing.
I need to find her.
I need—
Crunch.
Under my boot is a very familiar purse.
Well, damn it all.
It’shers. My human’s purse.
I knew something bad had happened to her. She wouldn’t justgowithout me. Not as far as she must be.
But now I’m sure it’s even worse than I’d realized.
I’m coming, human.Just hold on.
I don’t know if she can hear me. I’m sure she can’t.
But I sling her purse over one shoulder anyway, stumbling toward the highway. I’m walking in a haze, weaker than a weak human.
I’ll never get to her in time at this rate.
I’ll have to improvise.
Maybe I can use one of these damn cars to my advantage.
Summoning the last of my magic, I wait until one of those cars with the long, empty open sections in back goes by—a pickup truck—and leap into the bed on a gust of wind.
