The taco truck went airborne.
My brain refused to process what my eyes were seeing.
The truck hurtled toward us as if someone had hit it with a giant bat. It was like a movie.
Food truck. Propane. Fire.
We were trapped between two rows of cars.
I wrenched the wheel to my left. Rhino plowed into a red Honda. The impact yanked us forward. The taco truck flew past.
“Out!” Mom barked.
We moved. I landed on my side of Rhino. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the taco truck stop as if it had hit an invisible wall. It turned, spinning on its axis in midair.
I sprinted down the row of cars, ducking behind them as I ran.
The taco truck smashed into Rhino. The world exploded. The blast wave picked me up and tossed me to the right, straight into a white pickup. Thunder punched my ears. My head swam. I spun around, trying to clear the transparent swirls in front of my eyes.
An orange fireball engulfed Rhino. Grandma Frida wasn’t going to like that. Not one bit.
My ears stopped ringing.
The truck in front of me slid, pulled out of the way. I dashed left, across the row, ducked behind a black car and kept moving, back toward Rhino and the burning wreck.
It had to be Xavier. His talent relied on sight. He must’ve been hiding behind the taco truck and now he was digging through the cars, shoving them out of the way trying to find me.
I jumped to my feet, ran back toward the entrance, and ducked behind another white truck. I pressed myself against it, edged toward the row, and peeked around the bed.
At the far end of the row, Xavier stood, his arms raised in a mage pose, elbows bent, palms cradling invisible basketballs. The ground around his feet glowed with white. He had set up an arcane circle. A pair of over-the-ear headphones shielded his ears. He’d come prepared.
Connor with a simple amplification could throw a city bus around like a frisbee. Xavier had less control but almost as much power, and my siren call would do nothing. He wouldn’t be able to hear me.
I chanced a second look. Another man stood next to Xavier, tall, lanky, with pale blond hair dripping onto his forehead, identical headphones protecting him from my magic. Dag Gunderson.
How was he here? Where was Alessandro? Was he dead?
A second circle, a deep magenta, ignited at Gunderson’s feet. The glow flared, illuminating a wooden crate behind them, and settled into a steady glimmer.
Alessandro couldn’t be dead. It would take a lot more than Gunderson to kill him. I grabbed onto that thought and used it like a life preserver to keep myself from being dragged down into panic.
Gunderson thrust his arms forward and strained, as if trying to lift an enormous weight.
My magic spiraled to them. Without my voice, my wings were my next best bet. But mesmerizing with wings alone took time. Xavier would snipe me the moment he saw me. Not to mention that they were too far away, and distance was a factor.
Gunderson snarled, the veins in his neck bulging. The arcane circle slid off the ground, tilted on its side, and hung in the empty air twenty feet above the asphalt like a curtain of magic.
What the hell . . .
Wood cracked. The crate behind Xavier snapped open, and a cloud of projectiles rose in the air.
Oh great, Xavier brought his toys.
I opened my mouth and sang. My magic snaked across the parking lot and wound around their minds, but I had no way in. I sang out, pouring power into my voice.
No effect. It was like trying to grasp a cannonball dipped in oil. It was heavy and slick, and the tendrils of my magic kept sliding off.
The projectiles shot forward, slicing through Gunderson’s arcane screen, and turned into glowing magenta sparks. The shower of magic rained onto the cars like an arrow storm launched by an ancient army.
A spark punctured the truck bed next to me. I glimpsed an eight-inch nail coated in a magenta glow and dove to the side. The nail detonated with a shriek. Magic crackled above my head. I glanced back. The truck bed was a mess of twisted metal, like an aluminum can that had exploded from the inside out. All around me holes gaped in cars. Metal debris littered the parking lot.
Moving cars back and forth trying to find us would have taken too much juice. Instead, they would turn them into shrapnel bombs.
I pushed harder with my power, straining with everything I had. The shoots of my magic had wrapped so tightly around both Gunderson and Xavier that I could barely see their glow in my mind. It did nothing. I had no way in.
I’d never felt so useless.
A sad sound rose to the sky behind me, a song without words sung by a beautiful male voice. It reached into my chest, took my heart in its fist, and squeezed. The world went white in a daze. I choked on empty air.