A humming noise woke Ursula, and she cracked open her eyes. The sound grew louder as she pulled herself out of the dense fog of sleep. Her head throbbed, dulling her senses, but there was movement around her—flashes of blue and white in the darkness. For a moment, she wondered if this was the road to the afterlife, but the shooting pain behind her eyes suggested she hadn’t yet shuffled off this mortal coil.
When her pupils focused, she saw Kester sitting next to her, his face now clear of blood and his nose unbroken. His hands gripped a steering wheel. Shit shit shit.
The only possible explanation for his rapid healing was that… she hesitated to even think it. Could it be that the words he’d whispered had repaired his arm, fixed his broken nose? Could it have been magic?
If that were the case—if he could cast spells—she didn’t even want to think about what else he could do. She clamped her eyes shut again, trying to regain control. No. Magic isn’t real. She’d had a fever tonight, and a psycho had kidnapped her.
Unfortunately, that thought wasn’t reassuring either.
Kester focused on the road ahead. The radio blared pop music, and the sound rattled through her throbbing skull. Blue road signs flashed by on the shoulder. The M4.
On the plus side, she was alive. On the down side, she’d been kidnapped by a man who’d tried to claim her soul. She didn’t know what that meant, but there was a strong chance it involved murder.
“Where are we going?” she managed.
Lazily, his gaze flicked to hers. “You requested a trial, though I have no idea how you knew to ask for that, since you know literally nothing else.”
“It was on a note I’d written to myself.” She glanced at her right hand, handcuffed to the passenger door handle. “Where does the trial happen? And what is it, exactly?”
“Outside of London.”
“Thanks for narrowing it down.” Okay, so he’s not going to be helpful with details. Why would he be, if he’s about to murder me? “My flatmate, Katie, is going to be worried about me. She’s going to call the police.”
“We’ll sort that out later.”
She glanced at the handcuff again. It wasn’t an ordinary manacle. It almost looked like a golden circle of light trapping her wrist. It almost looked like… magic. The thought curdled her stomach.
Kester’s glowing eyes, her own fire powers, the mysterious attacks, the healing spell, the handcuffs made of light… It was getting a little harder to convince herself that magic wasn’t real, and yet she really didn’t want to be a part of this madness. She could barely cope with her normal life. Please let me get back to my poverty and unemployment.
Even though the handcuff didn’t burn her, the circle of light held her wrist in a sort of force field. The unnatural sight of it tightened her chest, filling her with a sense of dread. If things like this existed—along with glowing eyes and flaming hands—what else didn’t she know about the world? She swallowed hard, still trying to free her wrist. “What the hell is this?”
“I can’t have you jumping out the door while I’m driving. You’re unpredictable, as you so helpfully informed me earlier.”
She felt the now-familiar heat and rage begin to simmer insider her, as if her body knew what it was doing. She wanted to burn this thing off of her.
“You won’t be able to melt it.” Kester continued, his voice bland. “It’s immune to hellfire.”
If she had to be manacled to get her to this trial, maybe it wasn’t something she really wanted after all. Now that she thought about it, trials weren’t generally fun events. The phrase “trial by fire” popped into her mind, and she felt a sudden desperation to rip herself free from the car, to tumble into the road and sprint through the dark fields. Suddenly, the impending homelessness she’d been fretting about earlier no longer seemed as daunting as this nightmare.
She glared at him, her pulse racing faster. “Can you at least tell me if I’ll get to keep my soul?”
“Maybe. Maybe not. It depends how you do.”
Great. With her heart thrumming, she scanned the car’s interior, searching for weapons. It was upholstered in deep red leather, intermixed with chrome and instruments the color of gunmetal. The GPS was off, but Ursula could see that the speedometer read 160 kilometers per hour. They were flying down the M4. Even if she managed to free herself, her body would shatter when she flung herself from the car.
“Aren’t you going a bit fast?” she asked, her mouth dry.
“We’re in a hurry. Besides this is a Lotus. It’s not made for driving slow.”