embankment.
Time slowed to a crawl. The car glided through the air as if we were being cushioned by clouds and I had to remind myself we were falling.
I told myself the snow cover would break our fall and that the tank-sized Buick would withstand the impact. I told myself we’d laugh about it later, but I wasn’t buying it.
We were screwed.
My skin went hot, then cold, then hot again. I felt like I was on fire from the inside out. The rush of adrenaline through my bloodstream made it hard to hear anything but my heartbeat.
We were in a flat spin, like one of those fighter planes in Top Gun just before it slammed into the ocean. A flat spin that seemed to be going on forever, delaying the inevitable.
Janice would never see her family again. Luke’s mortal body would break apart like shattered glass. Our story would end the way my parents’ story ended, a half step short of happily-ever-after.
“No!” The word exploded from me with the force of a gunshot. “No!”
Not now. Not here. Not again.
I hadn’t come this far to let our lives slip through my fingers.
Unfortunately I had less than a second and a half to keep that from happening.
LUKE
I popped my cherry on my fifth day on the job. The first few days I had pulled scut duty, partnering old-timers who were counting down the days until retirement. Low-crime areas, not much excitement. You could go twenty years out there and never break a sweat.
Near the end of shift on the fifth day, a call came in and we hung a U-turn and headed out toward Langley Crescent near a private high school. It was a bitch of a road: hairpin curve, poorly graded, a drainage ditch with no guardrail.
A kid high on beer and hormones had somehow sailed across the road, over the ditch, and down the embankment to the roadway below.
I was the first to reach him. One look and I was bent over, puking up my lunch. Seventeen years old and his own mother wouldn’t recognize him.
So I knew what was going to happen and I knew it was too late to stop it.
The flat spin angled and we tilted from side to side like an amusement park ride. Gravity always won. I knew I wasn’t going to walk away from this but maybe Chloe could.
I took that thought and held it tight as the ground rushed up at us.
CHLOE
Less than a foot before we hit the ground, I remembered the words.
“On the wings of my ancestors, carry us away from danger!”
And just like that we were saved.
No thunder and lightning. No fireworks display. The power of magick simply reached out, plucked us off the path to disaster, and deposited us back on the road as if nothing had happened.
This time I didn’t have to tell Luke to pull over. He had no choice. His hands, like mine, were shaking too hard to grip the wheel.
The second we rolled to a stop, Janice flung open the door, leaned out, and said good-bye to her Egg McMuffin. My stomach was in knots, too, but I couldn’t do anything more than hang on to poor Penny the cat and wait for the panic to die down.
Luke turned and looked at me. I felt the heat rise to my cheeks as his expression shifted from relief to downright wonder.
“You did it,” he said and I nodded.
I did it.
Nobody had ever looked at me like that. I felt embarrassed and proud and totally disconnected from what was passing for reality today.
“You did it,” he said again, a crazy smile breaking across his face. “We didn’t have a chance in hell but you made it happen!”
“I did,” I said with a crazy smile of my own. “My mind was blank, then all of a sudden the words popped out.”
The beautiful flowery language of magick. I’d never let anyone poke fun at it again.
Something happened to you when you cheated death. Maybe it was all that adrenaline still racing around with nothing to do once the danger was over, but my senses were on high alert and, judging from the look in his eyes, so were Luke’s .
He leaned my way.
I leaned his.
An explosion of white and silver sparks filled the
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