”Don’t touch that!” I said. ”It’s wired to my chi.”

”Oh, so it’s not just a rust bucket, after all,” Belinda said.

How could they know about the modifications I’d made to my car? I’d thought I’d been keeping a low profile. Even when I was really desperate for cash, I had never sold anything that was illegal. I only ever experimented on my own personal things. I figured that, if I were ever caught, I could claim it was for ”personal use” and the judge might go easy on me.

”We know all about your little enchantments,” Belinda said. ”I suggest that you activate them now. Before it’s too late.”

She gestured at the road up ahead. The forest track was about to meet the main road.

In the dim light of my car’s single headlight, I could make out a group of armed men in black kevlar standing behind a makeshift barricade of cinder blocks, blocking the exit from the forest. Behind the men was the squat shape of an armored vehicle with a heavy mounted machine gun. Trees crowded up on either side of the blockade.

There was no way round.

”Even my strongest enchantment couldn’t—” I began.

Astrid leaned impulsively over to me. Sudden warmth flooded me as she kissed me passionately and unreservedly on the lips. Her tongue reached into my mouth, and I returned the kiss, even as I struggled to keep the car going in a straight line.

Something powerful and electrifying tore through my body like blazing white light into darkness. My chi exploded with power, and my vision became totally clear, even in the dark.

The LCD screen above my spell panel flashed.

Jeremy Parker received a boost!

New stats:

Level 1

Class: Unaffiliated

Spells: Force Barrier 2 (+3), Ensnare 1

”What did you just do?” I asked, reeling from the sudden onslaught of clarity and power that enveloped me.

“I was giving you a boost of confidence,” she said. “But I didn’t expect whatever just happened. Looks like you have some hidden powers, Jeremy.”

Hidden powers? What was she talking about? But I couldn’t deny the fact that I’d somehow gotten a boost from kissing Astrid. It was just another weird thing to add to the compounding list of weird things that had happened this evening.

When I opened up the panel on my dashboard and flicked the switch to arm the defensive enchantments, they came to life. Instead of a Level 2 enchantment as the Force Barrier should have been, the runes painted on the chassis were now a Level 5. I pushed the Force Barrier button and the spell crackled into life around us.