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“That does sound like me, to be fair. But to be even fairer, stop trying to distract me in the hopes of getting a clear shot,” he says, and I have to laugh at that. He’s as good at this dance as I am—always drawing the eye with one part of the magic trick, while the other hand does the dirty work.

I bet he’s about to launch himself at my face.

But it’s fine, because I am already way ahead of him.

“Oh, fuckface. You should know by now I already have one,” I tell him.

Then I let the gleaming arrow I’ve made with my magic fly. Right through the perfect hole between the leaves, right through that frame around the left side of his face, so fast it whistles through the air, so unreal it almost looks like it isn’t there.

But it sure hits him as if it is.

It gets him square in the eye, plunging right in like a needle through an overripe grape. I almost hear it pop, and then he spins, stunned, flailing. And there it is: that needle-sharp tip emerging from the back of his skull. Straight all the way through, as if his head is a heart drawn on a teenager’s notebook.

Amazing to see, but I don’t have time to admire it.

I’m too busy making the gesture I use for flying—a fist first, then an open hand, and finally fingers curled over to wave once, twice, three times. Breath tightly held, half of me sure the spark isn’t going to happen. It frequently refuses to happen, when I panic too much and try to force it. Staying cool is always the name of the game when I’m doing my little magic moves.

But then I see it. A flicker of glittery blue, like all my best spells get.

I part my fingers and it stretches into a thread, ready to be wrapped around whatever I want to use to fly with. There’s just one problem, really—my options are pretty limited. In a pinch I could use my own legs, or maybe my boots. But the last time I tried that I ended up accidentally blasting across the Atlantic while upside down. Like a mad scientist in a movie who inadvertently invents hover shoes.

So much blood rushed to my head people thought I’d painted my face purple.

I don’t want to end up in France looking like a beetroot again.

So that leaves my satchel, which I know is going to be far too soft, and the contents of it, all of which are completely impractical. Notebooks and journals are my life, but they are barely going to carry one butt cheek. And of course I chose today to not bring my flying umbrella.

My usual one is long and pointy and perfect.

The thing I now have in my hand is as stumpy as a mushroom and so flimsy it flies inside out if someone breathes on it too hard. I try to extend it and it just groans. But unfortunately for me, fuckface is starting to think around the hole I put through his brain. And that gives me precisely zero time to think twice about it. He stops staggering and waving at the arrow currently impairing his ability to strategize, and starts trying to bellow my name in anger.

“Moopy Mables,” he manages.

And I just go for it.

I tuck the umbrella between my legs like some really uncomfortable-looking sex toy, and grab as much of the handle as I can, and kick off as hard as I am able to without completely unseating myself. Though of course it almost unseats me anyway. The umbrella comes close to squirting out of my grip, leaving me to spiral through a thousand branches and onto the cake-spattered ground.

Only my iron thigh muscles save me.

I squeeze with the strength of all the god knows how many girls before me who tried to crack his head like a walnut, and I stay on. I stay on. I’m sort of flying at a weird diagonal, and a branch just hit me in the boob, and I have lost one of my favorite boots, but I do not plummet to my death. And I manage to keep going, too. Fast, so fast it turns my hair into a dark streamer. It makes the world below no more than a smudge.

I hit Main Street before he’s even managed to get the arrow out.

Though I know exactly when he does. That deadening crunch is the feel of him crumpling my magic up in his fist. The sense of something fading is the last sparks dying out, as he flings them into the bushes. And that terrifying boom that almost seems to shake the world around me? That has lights being switched on all over Hollow Brook, as people try to figure out if the end of the world is nigh?

That’s him breaking the sound barrier as he launches himself into the air.

Because, yeah, he can fly. And hooooo boy, he can do it a lot faster than I’ve ever been able to. He once did a drive-by of Chicago and blew out every window on the twentieth floor of twelve buildings. Local news stations called it a freak weather event.

I call it having about ten seconds before he’s on me.

And I’m still twenty seconds away from the Gazette.

Come on, come on, come on, I urge my tiny umbrella, as he more than likely gets to the height he wants, and then starts his descent toward me. And when begging yields no results, I do something very inadvisable. Something I told myself not to try again—but I’m desperate, all right, I’m desperate.

He’s almost on me.

And I’m so close to safety.