“Al!” I shouted, shoving the line into him. It burned through his mind, and he groaned, directing it into his attacker’s face. Outside the car, an explosion in the ever-after ripped off the corner of a building. I watched in awe as it fell in slow motion, a red dust rising from the impact. In Al’s kitchen, I felt him shove someone away, and Al rolled to his knees, his savagery making my lips pull back in a snarl.

I blinked, and I was suddenly seeing reality—the demolished building became whole and serene, its elevator rising up, the windows glittering with neon.

Trent touched my shoulder, and I jumped as our auras connected.

From Al’s kitchen, a savage explosion shook me. The curse falling from Al’s lips was like tinfoil between my teeth, serrating into my spine and brain, and Trent felt it, too. I gasped as Al pulled on not only me, but Trent, and with a bellow of rage, Al flung the ball of death he’d pulled from us across his kitchen, exploding it against a quick black figure with silver hair. The attacker hit the wall, the tapestry that I hated going up in green flames. The fabric screamed, and with a clap of rushing air, the figure attacking Al vanished. On the floor, the tapestry shrieked and writhed as if in pain.

Trent’s yelp of shock echoed in me as he pulled away. Stunned, I sat alone with my hand on the mirror. A slithering blackness had risen, and I felt it settle over Al as he huddled on his cold black floor, whispering, I take this, I take this, before the smut could hurt him. I shivered as the smut lapped about my consciousness, touching me and recoiling like a living thing before it slid back to Al.

Sweet everlasting shit. We’re in trouble, I felt in our joined thoughts.

The attacker was gone, and I cut off the energy flowing between us. Al? I cautiously offered, and I felt his consciousness gather, trying to pretend that he hadn’t almost just died.

Rachel…, he started, and then we both clenched in pain. A new rush of adrenaline poured into me, and I heard in our joined thoughts, You little runt!

There was another grunt of pain, and I doubled over. With a pop, I felt Al’s thoughts leave mine. It wasn’t the snap of disconnection because I could still feel what he was feeling. It was something else. Something was wrong, and this time, Al was in trouble. His mind wasn’t working. At all.

“Al!” I shouted, forcing my thoughts into his and finding a glimmer. “Bring me across!”

I gasped as my body dissolved in a flash of thought. There was the burst of an expanded awareness, and then the awful division of self when I was again alone in the universe. A ping of fear lit through me. With a speed that left me reeling, I was yanked through the nearest ley line, stumbling as I suddenly found myself holding my scrying mirror and standing in Al’s acrid-smelling kitchen. A thick haze of dust in the air, stinking of burnt amber, choked me, and the only light was coming from a book burning in the corner.