“Ow,” she said, down on her hands and one bruised knee. She didn’t even know why she’d fallen, it had happened so fast.
Hartgrave leaned in. “Are you all right?”
She took a quick inventory. “Yes, fine,” she said, accepting his hand up. But when she tried to get the heck off the highway—
“Oh, God. I’mstuck.”
She’d managed to wedge her foot completely into a small pothole. Tugging only made her lose her balance.
“Hang on, hang on,” he said, clearly trying not to laugh at her predicament.
But the smile died on his lips when he couldn’t get her free, either.
The headlights no longer looked far away. They were getting bigger at a rate that suggested high speed—perhaps as fast as her heart was now pumping. Blood roared in her ears.
“Get the boot off, just get it off,” he barked. “No, not with those gloves on—I’llwork on the laces, just be ready to pull it off—damn it!Why did you make the knots so bloodytight?”
She could hardly hear him. The vehicle barreling toward them was a truck. A huge, jacked-up pickup truck.
“Magic!” she choked out. “Use magic!Hartgrave!”
He tried once more to undo the knot, something like anguish twisting his face, before jerking both hands back and aiming them at the pavement near her foot.“Don’t move.”
Brakes squealed. The driver must finally have noticed them. Thank God—
And just like that, the truck fishtailed violently, spinning, its entire length stretched across the highway. A dozen feet from impact. A yard. Inches.
It passed right through the space where she was standing, only she wasn’t standing there anymore. She was wrapped in Hartgrave’s arms, cheek pressed against his chest, feet dangling in the air at least thirty feet above the proceedings.
The vehicle stopped and disgorged the driver, a rattled-looking teenager. The boy stared back along the road, then turned his head both directions to scan the shoulders. He did not, of course, think to look up. Eventually he climbed back into the truck and drove off at a speed so slow it would have been amusing, if Emily were in any condition to be amused.
She wasn’t even in a condition to properly enjoy the flying.
“I think,” she said, voice sounding all wrong, “that I might pass out.”
“No!” Hartgrave maneuvered them onto the side of the road they’d been trying to reach. “Stay conscious—we have to get out of herenow. Fuck,” he added, whichseemed an odd thing to say, considering that he’d just saved them. “Fuck fuckfuck.”
“What’s—”
“Take off a glove and give me your hand,” he said, holding his out. “Quickly!”
Befuddled, she did.
“Gah!” she cried in tandem with his “bugger!” Ithurt. (It also cleared the about-to-faint feeling right out of her system.)
“Right, that settles that,” he said, not explaining what, exactly, settled what. “Can you walk?Can you run?”
“Yes,” she said instantly, because she knew she had to. Something was clearly wrong.
She tore off across the snow-covered patch of land beside the ramp, Hartgrave behind her only—she assumed—because he worried she might again lose her footing.
“Hurry,” he said, “hurry, hurry ...”
She couldn’t think what had happened to make him so agitated. They were alive. The driver was alive. And no one knew he’d managed it with an impressive bit of magic.
Almost directly in front of them, two women materialized out of thin air.
They wore long, pale coats and fierce expressions. If she’d had any doubt their appearance was what Hartgrave had feared, his sharp intake of breath would have erased it.
