Sugar neighed, beat her wings, and turned around.

“Control your horse!” Jim snarled.

“You control your horse.” Oh wow, now that was a clever comeback. He’d surely drop to his knees and bow before my intellectual brilliance.

Sugar touched down on the stone.

“A pegasi!” Dali pushed her glasses back on her face and reached out to Sugar.

Jim grabbed her and yanked her back. “What’s wrong with you?”

She pushed out of his arms and gently patted Sugar. The pegasi lowered her head.

“See? She can sense my magic.” Dali rubbed the mare’s neck. “You are so beautiful.”

“I don’t want to dismount,” I told them. “I don’t know if she’ll let me back on.”

Teddy Jo picked up two big sacks sitting next to Doolittle, slowly approached us, and handed them to me. I hooked them up to my saddle.

“Blood is in the left, bones are in the right,” Doolittle said. “The bones are vacuum packed. The blood has been chilled and is split into three different thermoses.”

“Thank you,” I told him.

Dali raised her arms. I bent down and hugged her.

“You can do it,” the white weretiger said. “You will kick ass.”

If only I had her confidence.

“Do you have your food and water?” Teddy Jo asked.

“Yes.” He’d already asked me that this morning.

“And your compass?”

“Yes.”

“And you brought the ski mask?”

“Yes. It’s not cold, though, even up above.”

“It’s not for the cold. The pegasi like to chase birds. Birds don’t like to be chased.”

“Okay.” Whatever that meant.

Jim picked up Doolittle, wheelchair and all, and raised him up. I hugged the Pack’s medmage.

“Good luck,” he told me.

“Thank you.” I would need every drop.

“Remember, try to bond with the pegasi.” Teddy Jo said. “Treat her as a friend, not a horse.”

“I would try to be friends with her but she’s too busy being a smartass.”

“Now you know how the rest of us feel,” Jim said. “Who the hell is that?”

I glanced in the direction he was pointing, where a man rode the air currents on blood-red wings. “That’s Christopher.”

“Who?” Jim looked like he was about to have a heart attack.

“Christopher. He remembered how to fly.”

Dali laughed.

Jim stared at me. I had to go before he suffered an apoplexy and the rest of the Pack, with Dali at the head, came after me. “Bye!”

Sugar galloped off the edge of the tower and then we were flying again, the remains of my aunt secure in my saddlebags.

CHAPTER

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