Icame awake with a gasp, sitting up in the bed, heart hammering. I was in the room in the Royal National Hotel. The lights were off and the only light in the room was the ambient glow from the window looking out onto the courtyard. I should be safe, but my precognition was screaming at me and I could feel the aura of a spell, familiar and very close. I looked right.

Rachel was standing ten feet away, in the doorway to my hotel room. Sea-green light glowed about her and there was a look of death on her face.

I rolled off the bed as a green ray stabbed from Rachel’s hand, striking the bed and disintegrating it into flaring particles. I landed awkwardly, coming to my feet, Rachel shifted her aim, I dodged back the other way, and her second ray hit the window, causing it to disappear in a cloud of dust. Rachel was between me and the door but there was empty air behind me and before I could think about what I was doing I dived through the window as a third ray cut the air above me. There was a flagpole below and I slammed into it, got a grip with my hands just before I would have slid off, let go on the backswing to come down with both feet on a tiny ledge in the wall above the main doors, then bounced to fall the last ten feet to the concrete below. I hit with a jolt and rolled—pain flashed through my shoulder and knee but I could still run and I came to my feet in a dead sprint.

From above I heard a scream of fury and felt another spell; I followed my precognition and dodged right just as a green ray flashed over my shoulder and opened a hemisphere in the concrete ten feet wide with a hollow whuff. A second ray fell short behind me, and a third struck the hotel building as I put the concrete pillars of the main entrance between me and Rachel. She screamed in fury again, the sound fainter now, and I knew she wouldn’t stop coming. I’d seen the madness in Rachel’s eyes; I’d found her deepest, darkest secret and she was going to kill me for it.

I raced out into the main road, bending right. My heart was pounding, every bit of my body surging with adrenaline. A blue van was passing just ahead and I moved without thinking, bounding onto the hood of a parked car, bouncing up onto the roof, and leaping into the air. I hit the roof of the van with a thump and nearly slid off, my precognition giving me just enough warning to drop and cling to the smooth metal as the van accelerated southeast towards Russell Square. I’d been awake for less than thirty seconds.