“I think it’s that way,” Jonathan said. “But what were those—?”

Suddenly a wave of silent shapes surged through the trees. The slithers’ wings were furled into their snakelike bodies, like black arrows launched by invisible archers. Jessica’s arms shot up just in time to ward off one flying toward her face. Acariciandote exploded with blue sparks, its charms glowing white-hot, but the icy needles of a slither bite shot all the way up into her shoulder.

“Jess!” Jonathan pulled her to himself, shielding her with his body. She heard the thunk of a slither plowing into his back, and he let out a grunt of pain.

With her good hand Jessica pulled Disintegrator from her pocket and turned it on, the beam of white light cutting through the blue time, turning a few of the darting shapes into flaming streaks of red fire.

She played her flashlight through the trees in all directions, the familiar glow of power moving through her. But the beam connected with nothing. The swarm had passed through the clearing in seconds flat.

Jonathan pulled away, groaning and stretching to reach the middle of his back. “Ow! Right on my spine! Little creeps.”

“What was that all about?” Jessica cried, flicking off the flashlight.

Jonathan opened his eyes, blinking away the white light. “Who knows? Maybe they didn’t realize it was you…. Down!” He wrapped his arms around her, pulling her to the ground.

Jessica heard the whistle of more slithers passing just overhead; they’d shot from the trees again, coming from a new direction, fearless of her flame-bringer’s power. She turned Disintegrator on and waved it randomly, missing completely as the last slithers disappeared into the trees.

“We need to jump!” Jonathan cried, his eyes shut tight against the white light. “They’re using the trees for cover!”

He pulled her up from the ground by her numbed hand, jumping straight up into the sky. They spun slowly around each other, their flight unbalanced from the uncoordinated jump.

Nothing was in the air with them, but Jessica saw another flight of slithers slicing from the trees and through the spot where they had stood a moment before. She angled Disintegrator’s beam downward, and soon the clearing floor was dotted with screaming, burning bodies.

“What are they doing? Don’t they know I’ll just kill them?”

“I think they’re trying to delay us.”

As they reached the peak of the jump, Jessica whipped the flashlight around, but nothing flew nearby. In the distance, though, the rest of the slither cloud had gathered itself around a rising black nucleus, a single darkling on the wing.

“That’s not good,” she said. The rescue plan had assumed it would take a while for anything big to reach Jenks from the deep desert. But apparently a darkling had come early, while she, the flame-bringer, had been late.

“Can I open my eyes?” Jonathan said as they began to descend.

She swept the flashlight across the trees below them one more time, but nothing sparked to life, and she flicked it off. “Sure.”