I pounded my fists on the doors. “No!” I shouted. “Stop! Please!”

The sound made the Asura look around. It wasn’t much of a distraction, but it was all the girl needed. She plunged her sword right into the dragon demon’s heart.

The Asura tipped his head back and roared in pain and rage. Then he burst into smoke, which swirled in the air for a moment before it blew away.

Behind me, I heard applause. “That was so cool,” someone said. “How did she do that?”

The girl got to her feet and dusted herself off, then gave her audience a curtsy. Her smile was as bright as her sword.

I backed away from the doors. She opened them and hopped off the bus. “Sorry,” she said unrepentantly to the bus driver. He glowered and stomped past her to get back to his seat.

As the bus trundled away and left the girl and me behind, I saw a plume of black smoke form in the air about halfway down the street. What now?

The girl turned to see what I was staring at. She sighed. “Sometimes,” she said, sounding somewhat annoyed, “their hearts aren’t where they’re supposed to be.”

What was that supposed to—

Oh.

As the black smoke resolved itself into the shape of the Asura, the one who just moments before had burst into that very same smoke, I realized that she hadn’t killed him, after all. She’d stabbed him in the heart, but his heart had been somewhere else.

My brain could not cope with this.

I expected the Asura to attack us, but as soon as he took shape, he fled on four strong, clawed, scaly legs.

I briefly wondered why he hadn’t used his wings and flown away, but was almost immediately distracted by the girl shouting, “Come on! We can’t let him get away!”

I had a lot of objections to this, but she was already running and I felt it would be rude not to follow.

As I chased after her, she veered abruptly into the front garden of a nearby house and came back an instant later with a bicycle. It was bright and purple, with an enormous wicker basket in front that had one forgotten potato inside.

“We’re not stealing that bicycle!” I protested.

“We’ll bring it back,” she said cheerfully. “Now hurry up and get in!”

“Get in? Where—”

She leaped astride the bicycle and it suddenly became very clear where she expected me to get in.

“Uh, no,” I said at once. “I am absolutely, definitely, five million percent not getting into the basket.”

Fifteen seconds later, I was in the wicker basket of the bicycle and we were hurtling down the street.

My arms and legs flailed ungracefully as the girl pedaled furiously behind me, her delighted laughter in my ears. I was making noises, too, but laughter was not a word I would have used to describe them. The Asura was a distant speck ahead of us, but we were catching up.