He’d just sped up.
Moving at what seemed to him to be no more than a brisk walk, Conleth headed back to the central square. He dodged around staff members, leaving a slow churn of disturbance in his wake as people looked around with sloth-like reflexes. When he was moving this fast, even shifter senses could only register him as a brief blur, gone too quickly to process.
He found Leonie in the dining hall, frozen in conversation with some of the other staff members. Conleth plucked the head counselor’s ever-present clipboard from her unresisting hands. He skimmed through the pages, searching for what he needed.
There.
Taking a pen from his pocket, he made a few quick, precise corrections. As Leonie’s expression gradually shifted to stretched, open-mouthed surprise, he added a note in the margin:
CODE M.
OFFICE, 10 MIN.
PLAY ALONG
Conleth didn’t bother wasting time signing it. Leonie was well aware of his power. Her eyebrows were drawing down, and her lips were definitely halfway through the first syllable of his name.
He inserted the clipboard into her still-outstretched fingers, though this was possibly unwise. He was fairly sure she was going to beat him over the head with it at the first opportunity.
No time to worry about that now. Even he couldn’t keep up this rate of speed for long, and there was going to be absolute hell to pay when he reached the end of his strength. He had to keep moving.
Out of the dining hall, and across to the office. Fortunately, Zephyr wasn’t there at the moment. It would have been awkward to have to unceremoniously pitch the camp director out of a window.
Zephyr’s substantial oak desk occupied the prime position in the room. He glanced at his own smaller, note-covered work station, and cursed under his breath. Repressing a twinge of regret, he swept the whole chaotic mass of documents and memos into the trash. He’d just have to hope he remembered to sort them out later.
He transferred his laptop to Zephyr’s desk, flipping the screen open. Bringing up the camp employment records, he entered a search query.
“Come on, come on,” he muttered, fingers tapping impatiently against the desk. At his current rate of speed, even his cutting-edge computer seemed agonizingly slow. “Comeon.”
At last the screen refreshed, displaying the information he needed. His fingers flew over the keyboard, making edits. He could feel himself starting to slow, his pegasus’s strength flagging.
There.
Slamming the laptop shut, Conleth dashed back across the camp. Archie had rounded the corner of the cabin by now, and was starting to sniff around in slow-motion confusion. Time to get back in position.
He was coming to the very limit of his strength, but he spent a few precious subjective moments to run a hand through his hair and straighten his jacket. He took a deep breath, steeling himself for the crash?—
And, too late, realized his plan had a single, significant flaw.
“Oh,bollocks,” he said out loud.
Time snapped back to normal. The world hit him like a brick to the back of his head. Everything was abruptly too bright, too loud, too much?—
And he was face-to-face with a very,veryangry bear.
CHAPTER 5
Panting, Paige rounded a cabin, and her heart almost stopped.
Given how easily Conleth had been staying ahead of Archie—while runningbackward, no less—Paige hadn’t expected her brother to actually manage to catch him. Yet there was the camp manager, flat on his back, arms full of struggling, snarling bear.
“Archie,no!” she yelled. She lunged for her brother, dragging him off by the scruff of his neck. “Conleth, are you okay?”
“I’m fine.” Conleth pushed himself up, wincing. “Just made a small miscalculation. I really should have thought that through. Is Archie all right?”
“No, Archie is in deep trouble.” Paige released her brother, jabbing a finger at the ground. “Stay there. I mean it.”
Even in his current semi-feral state, Archie knew he’d crossed a line. The bear flattened into a furry puddle, like a very contrite rug.
