That’s how Leviathan would think. My brain served me a swift reminder that I wasn’t spiteful or vengeful like the monster who’d given me this ability. But that didn’t mean I couldn’t hate Fergus’s guts for what his Wisps had done to my pixies. This was for Genie, not for that cruel spirit.
“I’ve had just about enough of you lot.” Charlotte clapped her palms together, unleashing a wave of Telekinesis that enveloped the uber-Wisp. It struggled to break free, but she’d pulled out the big guns. Her face scrunched under the pressure of holding the furious ball of light, a vein popping under the skin of her neck. With one guttural grunt, she hurled the uber-Wisp as far as her magical muscles allowed. It soared through the air, arcing like a true comet, and disappeared into the distance.
But the Wisps would be back. I knew that much.
Still red in the face, Charlotte ran back to me. A meager, devastating trio of pixies followed her. Two landed on her shoulders—a male and female, their pulsating spots blue with grief. And Boudicca came to rest on my shoulder, her head bowed as tiny, sparkling tears slid down her cheeks.
“I’m so sorry,” I whispered, knowing it could never be enough.
She lifted her mournful gaze and came closer to my face, resting her small forehead against mine. If this was her forgiveness, I didn’t deserve it. Too many of her kind had died for my sake, and I couldn’t take that back.
“There’s a car coming!” Charlotte hissed, dragging me behind the drystone wall that bordered the road. “Stay here, I’m going to… uh… commandeer it.”
I opened my mouth to protest, but she’d already run to the road, waving her hands wildly. When I looked toward the spot where the pixies had fallen from the sky, there was nothing to see. They’d already returned to Chaos, unlike the pixies who still lay where they’d been cut down in Fergus’s sick paradise.
The car screeched to a standstill and the driver got out: a middle-aged man, with salt-and-pepper hair and a kindly appearance. My entire body clenched as I waited to see what Charlotte would do. Rambling about a breakdown further up the dirt track, she got close enough to the guy to grab his temples. He looked startled for a split second before white light filtered through his skull and into his eyes, flowing from Charlotte’s palms. I’d seen enough of my dad’s work to know what I was seeing. She’d wiped his mind, which would leave him out cold for a while. Long enough for us to “commandeer” his vehicle, at any rate.
“Get in!” Charlotte yelled, dragging the poor driver off to the side of the road. I didn’t agree with mind-wiping, as a rule, but saving the abductees had already called for gravedigging. Why not add another tally to this evening’s morally gray behavior?
I ran to the waiting car and jumped in on the passenger side, balancing the sack of bones on my lap, while Charlotte finished hauling the driver to safety. After giving him a curiously gentle pat on the head, she darted back and slipped into the driver’s seat.
“Seatbelts,” she instructed, holding the wheel gingerly, like it was her first time.
I arched an eyebrow at her. “You’ve driven a car before, right?”
“In theory, yes.” Her hand reached for the gearstick and ground it into first. “Well, that didn’t sound healthy.”
“Okay, let me rephrase. You’ve driven a stick before, right?” I grimaced as she put her foot down, the car bunny-hopping forward.
Frowning as she revved the engine, Charlotte cast me an apprehensive look. “Not exactly, but I know how it’s supposed to work. In theory.”
The car shot forward, making her yelp in surprise. Yanking the wheel sharply to the right, she spared us a head-on collision with the drystone wall and screeched into second gear way before the car was ready for it.
Undeterred, she pushed down on the accelerator until the car had no choice but to obey. Still, if this car didn’t overheat or give up before we reached our destination, I knew we’d owe a debt to the automobile gods.
“I think you’re supposed to change gear when it sounds like the car is about to explode,” I suggested, the revving sound splitting my eardrums.
She shot me a dark look. “I know.”
I watched as she rammed the gearstick into third, not too proud to try out my advice. Sure enough, the car settled into a more bearable sound, moving along the road without the startling lurch.
“Can you guide us?” I looked at Boudicca’s forlorn face.
With none of her usual sass, she fluttered to the dashboard and pointed dead ahead. With her back turned, I could’ve sworn I saw her shoulders shaking. As for the other two pixies, they’d settled in the back, hugging one another.
As Charlotte picked up the pace, I realized there was one other factor we hadn’t considered. While the road we started on was fine, with enough width for Charlotte to try her hand at drag racing, it quickly gave way to Irish country roads that might as well have been labelled “deathtrap.” With drystone walls lining both sides, there was just enough room for the car, and shallow shoulders every so often so cars moving in the opposite direction could pass. Only, the lack of space hadn’t done anything to slow Charlotte down. She sped along as though she were on a freaking freeway, giving me a coronary every time a curve came out of nowhere.
“Charlotte! Wall!” I braced against the dashboard as she made a hairpin turn down a very narrow road with walls on either side. I could only pray another car wouldn’t come in the opposite direction.
“There’s plenty of space,” she replied confidently. But a squeal of metal on stone said
