It had been something offbeat like that, though. If the people hadn’t been screaming, and if I wasn’t focused on Valefor’s body language and Mama being somewhere nearby, I wanted to think I could’ve placed it.

I still had my hands by my ears, as a crummy and unreliable solution to a serious problem.

My powers had been disrupted, put out of reach and made unreliable, but the effect was dissipating with time. It killed me that the time was time innocents were suffering.

There were goddamn kids in there.

If I flew and hit someone, would I be risking the innocents on the ground? They were close enough together that people on foot wouldn’t be able to get to Valefor without trampling the civilians.

“There’s a pretty one lying next to me,” Valefor said. “Short black hair, or so I hear, she tends to wear—”

“I see her,” four-eyes said.

“That’s all you needed? Hm. Step on her throat. Not enough to kill. Enough to give our Rain a time limit.”

The guy with the four-eyed mask transitioned the four-horned girl to another, more mundane Fallen.

Rain hurled his crescent blade. Four-eyes drew his own, creating the diagrams—two faint and one clear, and he drew the clear one as part of the same motion. His crescent-shaped sword was just in time to meet Rain’s power. Both fizzled out.

I saw as the other silver blade Rain held fritzed, distorted, and faded away. He looked down at his hands.

“He threw something at me,” Four-eyes said.

“If it hit you, don’t move.”

“It didn’t hit me. I stopped it.”

“Then step on the girl, Amaymon.”

I flexed my aura, straining, praying it wouldn’t falter. I saw people turn in my direction, including both Four-eyes and Valefor.

I saw Valefor pause for half a second, catching his breath, drawing it in deeper, and I clamped my hands over my ears, bending over, eyes shut.

Whatever he shouted, I didn’t hear anything muffled than a one-syllable word. He had to refer to us to catch us, and now that I knew that, I could watch for tells. If he drew in a deep breath to shout, or if he said something like ‘You’ or ‘Everyone’, I could cover my ears.

All around us, most people stopped in their tracks. Capricorn, blurring, changed to blue armor, but he kept walking. I was able to move, and the group with March and Rain seemed unaffected.

Valefor shouted out something, turning in my general direction as he did it. Two words. I didn’t try to make them out.

The Fallen were bringing their powers to bear, now. A snake shaped out of intestine and barbed wire—one I’d seen before. The Fallen that summoned it was drawing a gun with the other hand. Amaymon was creating his four diagrams, reaching for the sphere.