Chapter 2

F uck, fuck, fuck.

She spun and took off down the street, backpack thumping against her ribs, but he'd already seen her.

"Ember! Get back here!"

The aggrieved shout spurred her, and she picked up speed, sneakers slapping against the hot pavement. Her breath came hard and fast, her body already tired from a restless night and a day of swimming, pushing itself into new heights of physical exertion by adrenaline, fear and anger.

Around the corner, and across someone's yard, down a narrow side street and through an alley into a cul-de-sac, blocked at one end by an enormous house. Shit. She edged behind a large maple tree and peered down the street. Nothing. Heat shimmers rose from the pavement, making her blink. For an instant it had seemed as if the entire world had quavered, become hazy and indistinct, before it came back into sharp relief again.

She leaned against the tree, trying to catch her breath, before swinging her bag off her back and digging around for her phone. Ten minutes until the bus left. She wasn't much closer to the station than she had been before. She needed to get a move on. At least if she were at the station, he couldn't very well drag her off the bus in front of witnesses, could he? She just needed to get there.

Her head snapped up. There was a consumptive throbbing in the air, growing louder and louder. She risked a peek past the tree trunk. At the end of the street, the orange mustang rolled slowly past. Ember glimpsed Bruno peering down the street and she dodged back out of sight, closing her eyes in silent appeal. When she risked another look back, the car had gone, the invasive engine noise slowly fading to nothing.

She was so focused on Bruno that the tremor under her feet barely registered at first. She paused, uncertainly, resting a hand against the tree trunk for balance in case the earth chose to move even more vigorously. Was that an earthquake? She looked up at the branches overhead, wondering if it was safer to shelter under the tree or out on the pavement away from the houses, and then, as the earth gave another tremor, darted into the middle of the road.

The temperature change from the shade of the leafy tree to the unforgiving black of the road was considerable. Houses all around, new builds all of them, expensive houses for expensive people, shimmered in the heat. The wavering air became hazier, thicker, almost viscous. Tendrils of white mist rose from the tarmac, like steam from a kettle, coalescing into a pulsating ball of cloud stretching high into the sky.

Ember gaped in bewilderment at the roiling, billowing mass in front of her, and then dropped her bag and clapped her hands over her ears as, with a deafening scraping of nails on a chalkboard, the cloud tore itself in half.

A man stepped out of the void, tall and lithe, with blond hair and angular features, wearing an outlandish costume the colour of pale golden buckskin that flowed and ebbed around his body like water. He blinked at her and as a slow smile spread across his face, she felt a tugging deep in the pit of her stomach.

There came another ear-splitting ripping, and she whirled. A second dense mist, black and oily, had formed behind her and was steadily tearing itself in two to reveal another man, dark-haired and black eyed. He wore what looked like a military uniform, velvet smooth in ebony black with mottled silver buttons and shoulder straps, and a sword—a sword!—at his hip.

He looked past Ember as though she was too insignificant to warrant even a glance. "Now, now, cousin." His voice was both lazy and menacing. "No one likes a cheater."

He held up a steadily revolving ball of orange, of fire, and then he threw. The fireball whizzed past Ember, so close that a streak of heat seared her cheek. There was the unpleasant smell of singed hair, and then something cannoned into the small of her back, sending her sprawling to the ground.