By now, we should have been traveling at many times the speed of sound. Our bodies compressed the air, superheating the gases below us until they reached temperatures hot enough to vaporize rock . . . or melt metal. Most meteorites burned up within seconds. My timing would have to be perfect.

I did my best to stay atop the other automaton, using it as my own personal heat shield. The metal skin on my exposed arms began to melt. The air around us turned to flame. I concentrated on the other automaton’s magic, watching spells snap and melt away. The wooden body began to crumble as its protections vanished. I could feel my own magic struggling to hold me together.

“Yeah, it’s a short lesson.” Praying this worked, I concentrated on the ground below and shouted, “Dixitque Deus fiat lux et facta est lux!”

I imagine I looked a bit like the Human Torch as I materialized above the parking lot, my arms blackened, my body covered in flame. I dropped a good forty feet, smashing through a Hummer that was too slow to drive out of the way.

My hands were useless lumps of coal, held together only by magic. The air rippled from the heat rising off my body. But I was alive, more or less. I rolled off the crumpled remains of the truck and climbed to my feet. The winged vampire who had been guarding the roof swooped toward me, then apparently thought better of it.

I strode through the open garage door. Hubert stared at my glowing form. “What did you do?”

“Research.” I could still bend my left arm at the elbow. My right arm was dead from the shoulder. Blobs of molten metal streaked the charred wood.

Hubert backed away, hands shaking as he clutched his silver cross like a shield.

Time in this body had acclimated me to its senses. I could see Hubert’s possession, the other minds tumbling and fighting for control like some sort of magical spin cycle. What remained of Charles Hubert was tattered, shredded almost to nothingness.

I could see something else, too: a darker thread of consciousness woven through those invading minds, seeping into Hubert from elsewhere. “End this, Charles. Let me—”

“Let you help me?” He sounded weary. “You and I both know we’re past that.” He raised his cross to his forehead. Behind him, Lena lifted a black revolver.

I rapped my left hand against my metal-clad chest. Chunks of charred wood fell away from my fingers. “You can’t kill me with that.”

Lena pressed the barrel of the gun beneath her chin.

“Oh.”

A true sorcerer could have manipulated the gunpowder in the bullets, transforming it into something inert. I needed my books, and a way to pause time or freeze Lena in place before she pulled the trigger.

“Show me how you claimed that body for your own, and I will give Lena back to you.”