“The city can’t take much more of this. Don’t—can’t you see that if all of this goes to shit, there won’t be anything nice left for you to spend your money on?”

“It’s handled,” he said. “I’d fret more about myself, if I was you.”

I wished I still had the assault rifle. I’d let it slip from my fingers after ‘Noontide’ had knocked me out for a second. I backed up a bit, reaching out to the side. The bounds of the circle were like a solid wall.

While I focused on that, he was looking around, studying… the cars? Why?

I didn’t know what to expect here.

Slowly, he nodded, as if he’d assessed the situation.

I felt weirdly okay, de-powered. My heart was pounding, but I felt focused, and all of the emotions that had surrounded things were gone. It was as if the power effect cut me off from all the pains and suffering of the rest of the world.

The—

Rain. There’d been no onset, and I was naturally resistant, but I’d felt the emotion creep over me. Doubt, frustration, regret for my failings in the moment.

Was that why people hadn’t felt the fear aura in the same way? Had Rain’s power diluted it or added some lavender into the mix, diluting the dark green?

He took a step forward, closing in on me, his axe in one hand. As I ducked left, he moved to cut me off. I headed the other direction, toward the cars he’d been looking at, and he took a step to the side, ready to block and take a swing if I tried it.

The cars that had concerned him—he’d been looking around them. Was there a way through? Through a window, past the boundary of this circle? It didn’t feel like it made sense, but I looked anyway.

He took that opportunity to reach for something at his belt.

A canister of something.

I hurled myself at him. I felt battered and sore and clean emotion ran through me as I threw myself into the jaws of the lion.

The ground was slippery. I almost lost my footing as I ran.

I saw the axe move, brought back to swing, and kept one eye on the ground. I couldn’t afford to lose traction in a key moment. One of my feet touced on secure ground, in the track where tires had melted ice, the second following, landing further down that same line. The third—it had to be where the Kenzie van or one of the other vehicles had turned off, because snow and ice had scattered and been pressed down.