The fifth time, I feel something else. The difference upsets me.
It’s pain.
Is it Whitney’s?
Then moments later, there’s an attack. Earth, lightning, and fire, all at once. I pull and pull, honing in on their location, and then I yank all that power into myself, hoping it was fast enough that whatever attacked couldn’t harm her at all.
But then she’s gone. Again.
Someone’s doing this on purpose. I consider summoning my brothers, but I know they’re not involved. They heard my threat. They know that if I set my mind to it, I could end them. As my rage grows, I realize that it might be covering for something else. A feeling I dislike tremendously. A feeling I’ve never really experienced before. Something horrible. Something debilitating. Something grotesque.
Fear.
I follow her to another small human encampment, far, far from California now, and before I destroy everyone in it, I notice a small building that’s white on the bottom and red on the rounded roof. The sign says ‘White Manna Hamburgers.’ My breath catches, and my stomach growls at me.
I’m hungry—at least, this strange pull, like a demanding complaint from my belly, is exactly the way Whitney described the human sensation. I walk inside, and I order, surprised to find that I still have a stack of that paper humans like in my pocket. I plonk two of the hundred-dollar papers down, and the staff scramble to bring me the ten burgers I ordered.
I consume them all, but I don’t feel better.
I need to get Whitney back.
I won’t feel right until I do.
So I move again and again, until finally I realize that I’ve lost track of how many times I’ve chased her to a new place.
But then something happens that I haven’t yet felt. It’s like an explosion in the bond of sorts. She—I don’t know what happened. It hurts, even me, so I fear what may have happened to her. A backlash of light magic shoots down the bond, slapping into me hard.
This time, I jump to where she is fast, and when I arrive, I gasp.
She’s here.
I hope she’s not injured.
I need to find her fast, so I focus. I practically sprint around the corner from where I landed, and then I see it. There’s a small human home, set up on an otherwise barren hill. It’s not very cold here, so we must be somewhere southern. I race up the hill, and I rip the front door open, and there she is.
Tied and gagged.
Rage consumes me, mixed with just a little relief. I thought she’d run away. But if she was kidnapped, that means she didn’t want to leave me. I realize that a lot of my fear came from that concern, that she left me on purpose. What a stupid thing to fear—that she might not like me.
“Whitney. You’re alright?”
She nods, her eyes finding mine. Her expression is strange though, not like the way she usually looks at me.
A man steps out from a small doorway, and he presses a knife against her throat. “You have a choice to make, Xolotl. You’ll have to decide how much Whitney matters to you. You can either free her from your bond, or I’ll kill her right here, right now.”
I try to snatch his life-force away, but something blocks me. Baba Yaga steps out from behind him. “Ah, ah,” she says. “He’s mine. You can’t take him so easily.”
“Maybe not easily,” I say. “But I can take him.”
“Wrong answer,” the man says. “I suppose you don’t care whether she lives or dies after all.” And he plunges the knife into Whitney’s smooth, soft throat.
17
Whitney
It physically hurts for me to move away from Xolotl. I suppose that’s the point of the bond, since it binds me to him so I can serve properly, but I didn’t expect it to pain me emotionally.
I’m worried about him.
