Fingertips gripping concrete Toes balanced

on a ledge. Chilly wind whipping at clothing, blowing dark hair into her face. Claire glanced down, seeing the steep drop. Her stomach lurched. The wards flickered in and out here; she'd found the boundary.

Back at the Coven, Adam saw and felt it through her.

If Claire knew he'd managed to connect with her through her air magick, she showed no sign, though she was hardly in a place to let him know. He'd hooked up with her in the middle of what appeared to be an escape attempt.

All night and into the morning, Mira had instructed him about how to reach out to Claire using his mind. It wasn't something he should've been able to do, considering he had no air magick to call. Mira had explained that it was a thing that even some non-magickals could achieve. Basic psychic ability—remote viewing. That coupled with Claire's strength in air magick and the fact that apparently he and Claire had some sort of special connection—some emotional and psychic link already—meant that maybe, just maybe, he could reach her.

By midmorning he and Mira had been falling over with exhaustion and they'd still had no luck. Mira had left and told him to get some rest. As Adam had been falling to sleep, so utterly overwhelmed with fatigue, he'd been thinking of Claire, trying to reach out to her. Then, in the murky half-awareness of that place between sleep and wakefulness, he'd begun to have flashes of another place.

He'd been so surprised he'd nearly lost his tenuous hold on the images. Adam had sat bolt upright and then laid back down immediately. He'd calmed his breath and closed his eyes, strengthening with all his might the fragile link he'd managed to achieve with Claire.

Gradually, the images had come in clearer and steadier. He'd even begun to get sound and sensation. That had happened after she'd climbed out of the broken window, perhaps because she'd been occasionally beyond the wards that girded her prison, dwelling in the border of them.

Her fingers slipped and adrenaline surged through Adam's veins as it did through Claire's. Fingertips scrabbled for purchase, found it, gripped. She inched to the left, little by little, the side of the building scraping through her clothing against her stomach and chest. Then Claire stopped, staring at the red brick in front of her. She drew a breath, steadied herself…

And leapt backward like a diver off the high board.

Falling. No, plummeting toward the ground. Wind whipped at Claire's clothes. Long, dark hair streamed around her head.

Fear rose in Adam's throat. In the bed, his fingernails gouged his palms, drawing blood. Pain surged up his arms.

"No, no, no, no."

It was all he could chant in the two seconds it took for her to fall. Seconds that seemed like forever. He braced for the impact.

Magick flared, tingling through his chest. For a moment he thought he'd called it and then realized it was only a ghost of Claire's body.