She thought of her parents and rushed him, unable to look anywhere but down the barrel pointed at her. Suddenly the air between them blurred, Kincaid’s gun wavered and the barrel folded in on itself—melting shut.
She caught a hint of Hartgrave’s aftershave as she skidded to a halt.
Kincaid goggled. “What the—”
A glance over her shoulder—“Hartgrave” still standing with his back to the action—confirmed it: The clever man made an illusory decoy and turned himself invisible.
Kincaid figured it out, too, aiming a spell at the shimmering outline that marked where the actual Hartgrave stood, barely missing him as Hartgrave dodged.
She lunged at Kincaid, but the wizard dematerialized before she could touch him, reappearing on the other side of Hartgrave and hemming him in with a prison spell.
“Stop!Stop!”
Crawford. Emily whipped around and saw her, free once more, on her knees beside the prone and motionless Shaw.
“You shot her.” Crawford stared at Kincaid. “Youkilledher.”
“A very unfortunate accident,” he said. “Alexander disrupted my aim.”
Crawford jumped to her feet. “You left her to die! I’d always thought if something happened to us, you’d make an effort to help!”
“This is not the time—”
“And Alex, whoshouldhave killed me, spared my life.” Crawford sprinted for them. “I think I’m on the wrong fucking side.”
Crawford enveloped her fists in glowing magic and landed a punch on Kincaid’s jaw. It seemed to hurt her more than him—perhaps she’d never tested his armor before—but the distraction offered an opportunity to take that protection out. Right after freeing Hartgrave.
He was almost back to normal, the invisibility spell worn off to the point that he just looked faded, but the prison around him showed no sign of giving way under his attack. She ran at it, put her anti-magic to work and turned, trying to brace herself for Kincaid, to flush out fear with anger. Heroic, time to be heroic.
The next moment, Crawford flew across the room, thrown backward with explosive force. She hit the ground and didn’t move, her neck at a horrible, fatal angle.
“Gwen!” Hartgrave yelled.
Emily, too shocked to scream, stared at the woman who’d been alive seconds before. Then—what else could she do?—she leapt on Kincaid’s back and grabbed his neck, heart pumping so fast that she had to shut her eyesto keep the room from spinning around her.Let this work. Please let this be over.
The magic protecting him tingled. It did not give way.
He shrugged her off and grabbed her above the elbows, preventing her from getting bare skin on him. (Why didn’t she take her shirt off when she had the chance, for pity’s sake?)
“I think you’ll find my protections a bit more functional than my associates’ were,” he said—and if he didn’t sound exactly calm, he was still far too close to it for someone who had just killed both those associates, the latter on purpose.
Hartgrave ran at them, a murderous look in his eyes.
“Goodbye, Alexander,” Kincaid said.
She realized with horror what he meant before he did it, but only just. On came the familiar sensation of magical transport, that indescribable feeling of ceasing to fully exist. Then, nothing. A new sort of nothing.
She had just enough consciousness for a stream of disjointed thoughts(stuck,oh God,infinite, always, forever)and enough time to come up with the silver lining(parents safe, Hartgrave safe, autodidacts safe)before she realized their molecules had merely been moving at a snail’s pace.
The proof of this was the nothingness coming to an abrupt end as she and Kincaid rebounded, bodies re-forming in the room he thought he’d escaped.
He hit the ground first, partially cushioning her fall, but she could see now why Crawford had been so keen to avoid a blocked jump. Every inch of her body ached,including the roughly one-quarter that hadn’t already been hurt.
“But ... but the teleportation barrier is gone,” Kincaid muttered, a plaintive, confused tinge to the words.
Now or never.
She rolled over, pressed her knees to his sides and wrapped her hands around his neck.Stillnothing. But the spell he shot off point-blank did nothing toher, and neither did the next one or the one after that. It was like being invincible.
