“A what?”
She looked confused. “A… small town? What would you call it?” She shook her head and flinched. Her question forgotten, Fleance clasped her hand.
“What are you getting from Parker?” he asked.
“Getting from him?”
“Distance. Direction.” He tried to describe what the pack sense felt like to him.
“Like a radar?” She half-grinned, then blanched. “Oh, God. That isn’t a joke. I used to be able to see my flock mentally, like someone had scattered rice on a black sheet, but…”
“I know. He’s the center, and you’re moving around him.” He remembered it all too well: the lurch from his mental image of himself being central to his understanding of the world, to being on its periphery. From being free to being a pawn.
Sheena’s voice dropped. “I might have been the smallest sheep in my flock, but at least I was still the center of my own universe.” Her hands made fists on the dashboard. “Be nice if this new hellhound radar came with a scale. I can see where I am, and where he is, but not how far—”
She slammed back against the seat. Fleance didn’t need to ask why. Cold fingers of dread curled around his throat. Parker was close enough that he could feel his fear magic, too. He pressed on the accelerator. The fear was coming from behind him—if he could just get enough distance—
“How is he keeping up with us? Nothing can move this fast,” Sheena muttered, glancing at the speedometer. “Wait… It’s a trap. It must be. He’s doing the same thing he did yesterday, herding us forwards!”
“Where else are we meant to go?” The road stretched out in front and behind, empty.
Sheena pointed. Her face was skull-like, lit from below by the phone screen. “There should be a turnoff on the left before we get to Tumunui. There!”
Fleance took the turn onto a thankfully sealed road. A sign warned of logging trucks, but all that appeared in his headlights were pine trees.
Including one that had fallen to block the road.
Fleance swore and braked. He turned the car, half-expecting to find Parker looming on the road behind them. But the forest was still empty.
“There was a gravel road back there,” he muttered, half to himself. “I don’t know where it goes, but the more remote the better.”
“Fleance…”
“Can you see on the map?”
“I…” There was a clatter and the phone fell to the floor. Its screen illuminated Sheena from below, making her face look almost skeletal. She swallowed. “Fleance, when you said hellhounds have weird powers…”
He cursed himself. He’d already seen that she was volatile—he should have seen this coming, too.
She flickered. Not invisibility—this was worse. Fleance gasped, despite knowing what was happening. “Try to focus on being in the car,” he said, and repeated the words telepathically. Sheena’s mind slid against his, one second there, the next gone. Like trying to touch mist. He went back to speaking out loud. “Don’t think about stopping moving or getting out of your seat. Stay here. We’re safe so long as we stick together. Stay with me.”
He hoped he sounded like he knew what he was talking about.
“I think it’s—” She faded out again. Fleance’s hand went through the space where her shoulder had been, and he snatched it back. “Afraid. Trying to get away.”
“Focus,” he urged her, his voice sharp with fear. Terror was building up inside him. His hellhound snapped at it. The shadowy Sheena tried to pick up the phone and it fell through her fingers. “You can turn invisible, that’s fine, just don’t fall out of the car.”
“Oh God,” she burst out. “Fall out of the car? You mean fall through the car? Is that even… Oh, shit, if I can walk through walls now then you’re right, I could fall right through—”
“You won’t.” Fleance reached for her hand without taking his eyes off the road. Her hand was too warm, but it was solid. “See? You’ve got this. It’s going to be okay. You’re a, a box of birds.”
Her fingers tightened around his and she snorted. Fleance was about the reach for the mate bond, hoping to find her smirk reflected there, but remembered just in time.
He swallowed.
Outside, the world was blanketed in white. Frost glittered in the headlights, and the trees on the side of the road clutched frozen lumps of snow in their branches. He thought of something that might reassure her.
“I know it seems bad now, but we’re going to get through this,” he said, scoping out the road ahead. Sheena had mentioned national parks might be an option to avoid any collateral damage; this forest might not be a real park, but it was isolated enough. “If there’s anything I’ve learned these past few years, it’s always worth holding out for a Christmas miracle.”
“That’s… a long wait.” Sheena sounded baffled.
Fleance frowned. Winter had the world firmly in its grip; true, he hadn’t seen festive decorations other than posters advertising a light show and banners with stars on them, but he knew in a vague sort of way that not all countries went as full-tilt into Christmas celebrations as America did. He said as much to Sheena.
“Those are Matariki decorations,” she said. “For when the constellation reappears in the sky. Christmas isn’t until summer.”
The world tilted around Fleance. He knew the seasons were reversed south of the equator. But he’d known it with his head, not his heart, and it was his heart that had clung to the cold and the dark as signs that things would end up okay.
“Forget I said anything,” he muttered.
Sheena’s eyes narrowed. *Did someone just laugh?* Her voice brushed against his mind, but it felt undirected, as though she was poking around randomly.
“Invisible…” She looked up at the rear-view mirror just as the car went over a bump in the road. The seatbelt rattled tight, snapping through her chest to lie flush against the seat behind her. Sheena’s eyes went
