A backward glance didn’t tell him much. People ambled along the sidewalks and streets, ready to enjoy the night. No one looked their way, and certainly nobody stared. But then, anyone watching them wouldn’t want to be obvious about it. A glance every now and then would be enough.

Regardless, no one had randomly stolen Reagan’s broken-down car, which bore its fair share of bad paint and dents. They needed to get to shelter, now.

“What’s the situation with Darius?” he asked. “Do you trust what Reagan is telling you?”

“She’s a terrible liar, so yes. She didn’t need to say a word, though. We do not want to mess with the extreme elder staying with him. Trust me. Her and I don’t seem to play nice together. But Reagan seemed more worried about us staying in the bar. Maybe Darius’s house is safe?”

Emery licked his lips, glancing behind them again. Nothing had changed, and he didn’t see anyone he’d noticed on his first sweep, which meant very little. “Maybe. Or maybe getting us out of the bar was just a precaution. We could chance going back.”

She clenched her jaw and said something under her breath that sounded like “nuck fuggets.” “The car getting stolen right now is fiercely bad timing.”

Bad timing for us, great timing for the Guild. They’d clearly taken advantage of the situation.

“You got that right.” He pulled her to cross the street. “I know you are more knowledgeable now, and can do things on your own, but—”

“It’s fine,” she cut in, looking away right before they continued on down the sidewalk. Houses rose on either side and pedestrian traffic reduced a little. “I don’t mind being manhandled as long as the person doing the manhandling is someone I trust that also has an idea of what to do in the given moment.”

“That makes things easy,” he said, teasing but also meaning it.

“It seems my mother’s training has really come in handy. I keep getting thrown in with headstrong jerks. My complacency melds just fine.”

“That’s not very nice,” he said with a grin, clutching the back of her shirt. He had no idea what might pop out at them. At all costs, they needed to stick together. Since his first reaction to danger was to do a spell, and hers was (usually) to run like hell, keeping contact was necessary.

“At least you won’t beat me up,” she muttered, bringing out her phone. “Do you have a plan, or does it just seem like you do?”

“It just seems like I do. Though going back to the bar is our smartest bet. If Darius is bringing his new friend to keep an eye on her, they probably haven’t shown up yet.”

“You don’t think so?”

He gritted his teeth, uncertainty rising through him. It was a shifter bar, which gave jurisdiction to Roger. If Darius waited too long, he might lose his chance to interrogate the mages and gain firsthand knowledge of the situation. Emery doubted Darius would take the risk.

Of course, it also seemed implausible that Darius would bring a dangerous elder out in public with him, but that possibility was dangerous to Penny. More so than Emery would like to risk.

“Damn it. We need a plan B.” He wanted to break something in frustration. Instead, he took a deep breath. Best not to panic Penny. Then she’d really be unpredictable, and that might be lethal in their current situation. “We can’t walk to Reagan’s place from here, even if that wasn’t a horribly bad idea. I’m not great at stealing cars, even if that wasn’t a horribly bad idea.”

“Right. Does your phone work?”

“Yes, why?”

“Do you have a rideshare service on it, like Uber or Lyft?”

He patted the phone in his pocket for no particular reason. “No. It only has the apps that came with it.”

“One of us needs to be the designated tech-savvy one. I’d hoped that would be you.”

“Hope dashed.”

“Not at all. You just need to learn. I’m pretty sure you can. You’re smart,” she said, utterly serious. He couldn’t help chuckling despite the situation. “You should set Lyft up on your phone really quick and call for a ride.”

“Except I don’t have an account to download apps. Or a credit card to set up an account…to download apps.”

“In the house that Jack built,” she said randomly before exhaling. “Okay, plan C. Do you have any cash? Or wait, what am I thinking? We can see if Callie and Dizzy are—”

She spun, ramming his arm with her elbow and knocking it away from her. Her hands pulled up to her chest and magic pulled from her cloud and into a tight, focused weave three inches thick. A moment later, he knew why.

A bright red blast, full of dazzling elements, flew at them from behind. Sophisticated, practiced, and somewhat powerful, the spell had clearly been created by an advanced user.

Penny’s spell blasted out toward it, wrapping it up easily before turning end over end, eating through it.

Shapes slipped behind the corner a block down, the attacking mages taking cover. Emery and Penny were wide open.

“Let’s go,” she said, grabbing his arm and yanking him forward. “There are two more grisly spells in the making. I don’t know how many more of them are around, but it’s safe to say we’re outnumbered, and this isn’t a good place to fight.”

“If we don’t take them out, they’ll just—” Her spell, having successfully consumed the other, grew in power and continued on its way. “It is headed back to the user.”

“I hope so. I don’t honestly know if it’ll work. We made No Good Mikey use a casing to attack me, but my spell didn’t reach him in the end. He’d already scrambled over the fence, into his yard, and shut himself into his house before my spell started pursuing him. He was not impressed with Reagan tricking him into using magic. Or being a magical target.”

Emery didn’t have time to laugh at her antics. Black fog clouded his vision and he saw the way ahead, teeming with bodies and flashing magical spells.

“We can’t go straight. We need to turn up here. Pick up the pace.” He started to jog. “They’re here in numbers. Our stint in the bar must’ve given them time to organize.”

“There are a great many ways out of here,” she said, yanking him right at the next corner and then down another street. A group of girls yelled and jeered at a group of guys on the other side of the street. One of the guys was showing his man-boobs and shaking his rather large belly. “We can walk quickly down the middle of Bourbon Street and blend into the crowd. You’ll have to take off your shirt, though.”

“You first.”

“I’d rather be the one jeering and whooping.” She laughed, strangely not a forced sound, given the situation, and shoved him left at the next corner.

With the next turn, the black fog rushed into his vision, only to clear immediately when Penny pulled him around the corner. “One back there.”

A jet of magic roared behind them, the power blistering as it passed by.

“They’re either packing serious power, or they’re constructing spells together,” Emery said, breathing heavily now.

“I thought mages didn’t work together.”

“Not in the way you’re thinking. Not like witches. Remember when we made that spell in Darius’s warehouse? We each created half of it, then merged it together? Mages work that way when confronting a larger power source. Or else naturals would go unchallenged.”

“Like building a Lego village with someone.” She nodded, like that made sense, and pointed in front of them. Beyond a roadblock cutting off traffic, people meandered up the middle of the street. Neon light glowed and spilled across the cement, sliding over the passersby. Music pulsed and people moved, lifting their plastic cups and cheering for no reason other than the fun of a constant party.

“We’ll walk down there for a ways.” She grabbed his hand and they veered right, around the roadblock and into the crowd. The crowd wasn’t as dense as it would be for a festival or Mardi Gras, but there was ample opportunity to hide. “Stay to the middle,” she said. “Keep with the crowd. When we can, let’s break away and run again. We need to get away from the mages.”