Red pulled Hat’s shoulder back and pointed at the onrushing scoot. Hat raised his gleaming silver arm and Mistletoe swerved. The frayed burn of an electrostatic pulse missed them by inches. Ambrose buried his face in her pigtail.

Hat got off one more pulse, too high, before Mistletoe was practically up his nose. The two men dove out of the way. As she swerved again to avoid slamming into the half-open door, she thought she caught frantic movement inside the house.

“Hold on!” she yelled, as if Ambrose needed encouragement. Aunt Dita’s street dead-ended into the side of an absynthium bar, and they were about to hit it. She threw both heels out straight and slammed Nelson’s emergency brake. As the skid took hold, she yanked the handlebar as hard as she could to the left and held it. Ion lifts churned and crackled. Ambrose and Mistletoe leaned parallel to the street. The wall kept coming. Time slowed down enough for her to read a faded poster: DON’T BELIEVE. Don’t believe what? Suddenly Ambrose grabbed the handlebar over the top of her hand and pulled. Nelson spun, sputtered, and stopped, tail bumper inches from the wall.

Mistletoe let out a long breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding and looked back down Dita’s street.

It was empty now except for the teardrop shrubs, one of which they’d sideswiped. Brittle, papery leaves were settling in their wake. Mesmerized and scared, she watched the last leaf drift to the ground. The wrong kind of charge was in the air—and not just from Hat’s arm cannon.

The silence lasted less than a second before the explosion sent Aunt Dita’s door spinning across the street, trailing orange flames and black smoke. The noise came right behind the flash, a sharp pop in her ears and a deep thud in her chest. Up and down the street, the tinkle of shattered glass. Nelson rocked back against the wall.

“What was that?” Ambrose squeaked.

But Mistletoe could only watch, numb, as the roof of Aunt Dita’s neat little hut collapsed in on itself, on the people inside, on the big pile of blankets Mistletoe curled up in when she was tired, on the shelf full of real dried fruit, on the miniature self-watering greenhouse they’d bought together at the New Egyptian Market. The greenhouse had only ever produced tiny, malnourished carrots. It had become their favorite joke: we’ll never go hungry again!

She saw all these things in an overlapping flash.

Then she snapped out of it and gave Nelson’s throttle a nudge forward. “We have to see if she’s in there.”

“We can’t just—”

She pulled up sharply as Hat and Red burst from the thick cloud of smoke engulfing the street in front of Dita’s house, riding sleek black ESCPD scoots complete with little round gyrostabilizers for high-speed cornering.

“Cops,” she hissed.

“Cops don’t try to kill you for no reason.”

“Maybe not where you’re from.” She glanced left: more wall. But to the right there was an impossibly narrow alley, half hidden by a crumbling piece of green stucco that drooped off the side of the bar.