I ran my hand along the plaster and felt a slight indent. I pressed it, and the wall to my right slid aside, revealing a dark square space and cables that ran down into a deeper darkness. A dumbwaiter, I presumed. I leaned forward a little, but as I did, that sense of wrongness sharpened abruptly.

I threw myself sideways, hitting the carpet with a grunt but somehow managing to keep hold of my gun. I raised it, my finger on the trigger. But there was nothing there.

Was there?

I narrowed my gaze, and saw it—the faintest shimmer of air.

Someone was there all right. They were just using a glamor—and not the type that altered their form, but rather one that hid it completely.

I pulled the trigger. The shot rang out like the boom of a cannon, but whoever was behind the glamor was quicker than a rattlesnake.

A body hit the ground to my left, the sound almost but not quite smothered. I fired again. This time there was a grunt as the bullet hit home.

I scrambled to my feet, only to be knocked down again as my unseen assailant threw himself at me. As we went down in a tangle of arms and legs, he reached for the gun, trying to tear it from my grip. I swore and became flame, and he screamed as his body went up in a whoosh of fire. I clenched a fist, made it flesh again, and smashed it into his jaw as hard as I could. As he went limp, I threw him from me, then recalled my flames and fully regained human form.

Only to realize there’d been two of them.

Something smashed against the back of my head and sent me flying. I hit the wall hard and felt the black tide of unconsciousness descending. I fought it with every scrap of energy and determination I had in me, and punched upward with my free hand. I didn’t hit anything, but it didn’t matter because I wasn’t actually trying to. Multiple fingers of flame leapt from my clenched fingers and fanned out, seeking, searching, for my attacker. There was a soft curse and the faintest sound of footfalls, but there was no escape from my net. It caught him, wrapped around him, and then flung him—hard—against the nearest wall.

He didn’t move. I released the flames and let their energy filter back into me as I forced myself into a sitting position. Bile rose up my throat, and again the tide of black threatened. I sucked in air, drawing it deep into my lungs, into my body, trying to calm the churning in my gut and the weakness washing through my body. It was a weakness that could affect my ability to raise fire as a weapon and was undoubtedly why intuition had been warning me to conserve it.