“Cost?” She paused, the second lid half tightened.

“Yeah, there’s always a cost.”

“You’re really a very remarkable young man.”

Pointing out that flattery didn’t answer the question seemed rude, so he waited. He was still waiting when she screwed the cup back on over the lid and passed the first thermos back to him. He was good at waiting. By the time the second thermos was ready, Arra’d realized that.

She sighed. “The more energy manipulated, the more it takes of the wizard’s personal strength.”

Tony nodded. That sounded reasonable. As he tucked the potion into his backpack, he decided not to make the obvious “you’re so strong” declaration. In the last twenty-four hours, Arra had destroyed a shadow, driven to Whistler and back, snuck onto the soundstage to watch him and Henry deal with the gate, spent the night away from home wrestling with personal demons—probably not literally, but he wasn’t ruling it out—popped into Tony’s apartment, shielded her speeding car from the cops, popped into her own apartment, and zapped two liters of potion. Energy manipulation levels: high. Wizard’s personal strength . . .

“Give me a minute to change.”

“Change?”

“Clothes.” She tossed the word over her shoulder on the way to the bedroom, adding, just before she closed the door behind her: “You won’t make it out to the studio by 11:15 unless I drive, and I reek.”

She was right. Not about the reeking—not by guy standards anyway although he had no idea how women her age defined reek—but about the driving. Sunday transit schedules sucked as far as hitting the burbs in a hurry.

So, wizard’s personal strength: energizer bunny levels.

In fact, ever since he’d reminded her about the cats it had been like he’d pulled a plug and the momentum of that initial “oh, my God” was keeping her moving. The faster she moved, the more she did, the less she had to deal with the crap the shadow had called up when it touched her.

Memo to self. Prepare for the crash and burn.

And hope it didn’t happen at 80K.

Or at 120K, for that matter . . .

Both hands white-knuckled around the shoulder strap, Tony couldn’t decide whether he preferred eyes open or eyes closed. Eyes open, he could see his imminent death in a fiery car crash approaching and prepare. Eyes closed, he could pretend he wasn’t in a hatchback whipping diagonally through westbound traffic and occasionally, when things were tight, into the oncoming lane.

He liked taunting death as much as the next guy, but since the next guy was a middle-aged and possibly old wizard from another world and there were still four shadows unaccounted for, all bets were off. She was worse than Henry and Mouse combined.

“So do you always drive like this?”

“Scared?”

“No.”

“Lying?”

Like he’d tell her. “No.”