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"Oh, shit!"

And I guess Casanova agreed Because he grabbed Caleb, who grabbed the other bit of rope "No, Caleb takes Cassie!" Pritkin said "You come with--"

I didn’t hear the rest, if there was any, because I was being shoved brutally backward I hit concrete hard, just as red lightning exploded where we’d all been standing, and part of the roof disintegrated into astone I would have ducked and covered my head, but it was the part Caleb and Casanova had been standing on, and I was screa the the slender lifeline that Caleb had so wash of relief floodedas the line held, they were going to be--

"Cassie!" There were spells going off everywhere, deafeningly loud, but I heard that and my head jerked around To see Pritkin, lit for a second by unnatural spell light, and silhouetted against athis way And then I was grabbing hi he was able to grab it at all when I couldn’t even see it with all the weird ju, and the roof was exploding and--

And there was a disorientingair, and no, no, no, no, NO--

But then we caught--a barely perceptible jerk on a filas at all because this was al wind and abject terror and pant-wetting desperation And that was just the initial descent Then we hit the curve at the bottom, where the line dipped almost all the way down to the street and I felt loose pebbles in the roadbed roll under my filthy toes for a moment, a completely surreal experience that would have lifted my heart to my throat if it hadn’t already taken up permanent residence there--

And then we took off, ourus up and forward at the sa street

For a longbut a rush of neon on either side, colorful streans and buildings sprang in and out of existence and taxis honked and people shouted at us or ran to get out of the way

But for so as we ran up a car’s roof, pushed off, sprang over top of a bus, swooped down on the other side right in front of anothercar, and then bounced up onto a red, double-decker bus that caught us just as our ihost

I hit the open aisle, still gasping on wild, insane, out-ofcontrol laughter to match a crazy situation that couldn’t possibly exist, but somehow did, and it took , too And then ere running down the spiral stairs and ju into Caleb and Casanova as they ran up to us on the street

"Show-off," Caleb said breathlessly

Froreat building, and across a strangely nor hall, and then through a set of double doors--

Into a seely endless dark oval, slick and seamless, and littered with stars

And a voice that crashed like thunder all around us "Council is now in session"

Chapter Thirty

I don’t knohat I’d expected Maybe a courtrooly fauess if you made it this far, you either weren’t supposed to need coht to deserve it

I wondered which category we fit in as I gazed around, trying to get a grip

It was a little hard, since there was nothing to grip on It was like we’d stepped out of a spaceship into a star field, being suddenly confronted by a big, dark space and hundreds, ht creature I’d seen on the drag Soe and brilliant, but I couldn’t tell if that had to do with power or if some were just closer than others

I couldn’t tellelse, either, since I literally couldn’t see ht in here, but it didn’t see It was like the space between the stars, limitless and black, just a featureless void

And creepy as hell