“Not a time limit. A goal. There’s a book in my house. Katsuo brought it as a hospitality gift. Poetry of some sort. I have little use for it, but it may come in handy someday, so I’ve stowed it in the crawl space under my house. Find it—”

“Where?” I said. “Be more specific. Otherwise, you’ll probably nab me while I’m still searching. Where’s the crawl-space hatch, and where exactly down there is the book?”

He told me.

“Good. Now, which house is yours?”

He laughed. “I’m not giving you everything.”

“Fine. I’ll find it myself. Now I’m going to cast a spell, and you’re going to say a few words of it. You’ll repeat the deal and tell me that you will abide by its terms.”

He sighed and grumbled about my lack of trust, but did as I said. His eyes stayed green.

But that was the last bit of truth he told. After I’d ended the spell, he promised me a five-minute head start—and gave me less than three.

I made it to the forest, then my legs tried to shut down. They’d had enough of this “running away” crap. It was time to turn around and fight. The idea of being prey, even of playing at it for a while, brought a wave of bile to my throat. But if I was going to outwit Dachev, I needed to give him what he wanted…for now.

If cornered, I’d fight, but I already had a hole in my hand, a chunk out of my shoulder, and whole hanks of hair missing. I wasn’t too worried about the hand and shoulder scarring, but I really hoped the hair would grow back. In the meantime, the less damage I took, the better.

There was a path through the forest. It might seem like the smart thing to do would be to veer off that path and cut through the woods, but my goal was speed, not stealth. If I’d had my blur spell, that would have made things much easier, but I was trying hard not to bemoan what I lacked.

If I needed to hide, witch spells were perfect. Plus, since my death I had learned a few nasty offensive ones, the sort even spell-hungry Paige might deem too dangerous. They took time to cast properly—time I hadn’t had back in that village. If I needed them, I’d make the time to do them properly.

As I raced along the path, I kept glancing over my shoulder. The first time I saw Dachev, he was less than fifty feet behind me, but within a quarter-mile he’d dropped to well over a hundred feet back. Not accustomed to chasing former track stars obviously.