Her neck wouldn’t move, so she couldn’t look around. Her fingers barely worked. She connected her mind to the transmission, but it wouldn’t shift. The revs were frozen in place in the high twenty thousands, but she sensed no movement in the drive shaft.

All this prompted a silent, slow-motion scream. The longer she wailed, the more her voice came back. She flexed her fingers as hard as they’d go through the syrupy air. With each tiny movement, a small amount of color returned, though she couldn’t be sure if she was breaking out of the spell—or into it.

“Nilah, is that you?” grunted Cyril. She’d almost forgotten about the Hambley driver next to her. All the oranges and yellows on his jumpsuit and helmet stood out like blazing bonfires, and she wondered if that’s why he could move. But his car was the same gray as everything else, and he struggled, unsuccessfully, to unbuckle. Was Nilah on the cusp of the magic’s effects?

“What…” she forced herself to say, but pushing the air out was too much.

“Oh god, we’re caught in her spell!”

Whose spell, you git? “Stay… calm…”

She couldn’t reassure him, and just trying to breathe was taxing enough. If someone was fixing the race, there’d be hell to pay. Sure, everyone had spells, but only a fool would dare cast one into a PGRF speedway to cheat. A cadre of wizards stood at the ready for just such an event, and any second, the dispersers would come online and knock this whole spiderweb down.

In the frozen world, an inky blob moved at the end of the tunnel. A creature came crawling along the ceiling, its black mass of tattered fabric writhing like tentacles as it skittered across the tiles. It moved easily from one perch to the next, silently capering overhead before dropping down in front of the two frozen cars.

Cyril screamed. She couldn’t blame him.

The creature stood upright, and Nilah realized that it was human. Its hood swept away, revealing a brass mask with a cutaway that exposed thin, angry lips on a sallow chin. Metachroic lenses peppered the exterior of the mask, and Nilah instantly recognized their purpose—to see in all directions. Mechanists had always talked about creating such a device, but no one had ever been able to move for very long while wearing one; it was too disorienting.

The creature put one slender boot on Cyril’s car, then another as it inexorably clambered up the car’s body. It stopped in front of Cyril and tapped the helmet on his trembling head with a long, metallic finger.

Where are the bloody dispersers?

Cyril’s terrified voice huffed over the radio. “Mother, please…”