“I felt them leave you,” Nakita said, smiling. “But they scattered when they diffracted against the sun. You need to modify your thoughts to his aura before they bounce off the atmosphere, not after.” She felt it, I thought, stifling a quiver of anticipation. Barnabas had never said that when we practiced. I shifted awkwardly on the pavement to disguise my shiver, thinking this would look stupid to anyone driving by. Not that we’d seen anyone on the road yet. This was the closest I’d ever gotten to making this work. Nakita had been able to teach me how to bend light around my amulet to hide it, too. Maybe Nakita, for all her awkward inabilities among people, was the better teacher. And wouldn’t Barnabas be happy about that?

“Let me try again,” I whispered, closing my eyes and calming my thoughts to get them past my aura resonance, and then thinking with a precise narrowness, Barnabas, we’re stuck on the road. Can you find us?

“Now!” Nakita exclaimed, and I twisted my thought, making the wave wider, more green, perhaps. It hit the curve of the atmosphere and bounced back, being drawn into something as if it belonged. Barnabas, maybe?

Stiffening, I gasped when I got a flash of feeling, like a memory belonging to someone else. It was as if I were seeing from Barnabas’s eyes as he sat in some bushes across the street from a nice house, and he jumped as my thought popped into his mind. Then he was gone, and I was surrounded by sand and squinting from the sun. I was wearing a white shirt billowing in the oppressively dry wind. A young man with black eyes sat across from me working on a laptop, his clothes as white and billowy as mine. Someone swore as my thought echoed in his, and I opened my eyes, finding myself back on the road in the middle of the cornfields.

Ohhhh, this can’t be good.

Nakita was crouched before me, a hand on my shoulder, concern in her eyes, and her black hair falling about her face. “Madison? Are you all right?”

Squinting, I held out my hand and she took it, backing up to help me stand. I looked down at my sneakers and brushed off my tights. A bad feeling was growing in me, and when she saw my expression, I sensed Nakita’s worry shift to alarm.

“How fast can you fly?” I asked, and she stared at me as if I were nuts.

“Why?” she asked, and I looked at the sky, wincing.

“Because I think I just told Ron we’re up to something.”

Four

Nakita stood beside me in her designer jeans and trendy sandals, her black toenails catching a glint of sun. Her eyes darted from the sky to the rustling fields on both sides of us. Her amulet was blazing a violet that sent purple flashes of light against the darker shadows in the corn. Hair swinging, she spun in a circle, scanning the sky.