“I’m not screwing with you. It’s much harder to focus on invisible air currents than it is a tangible broomstick.”
“So it could be anything, then? Not just a broomstick?”
“Just focus, Indie.”
Sighing, I close my eyes, and the heat flares to life in my stomach. But pushing it down rather than pulling it up is another beast entirely. I push and shove and slam the heat down, but it’s as if I’m trying to jump through a springy new mattress; I can get a few inches of movement, but mostly it’s impossible. Yep, just as I anticipated, flying isn’t as easy as Bishop makes it out to be, even with the stupid learner’s broomstick.
Time ticks by. The sun moves across the sky, reminding me just how long we’ve been out here alone, and without any witnesses—we might as well be wearing freaking neon targets on our backs for all the opportunity we’re giving the Priory to attack. I’ve already drained the water Bishop packed for the trip, and I can pretty much bet on a wicked sunburn come morning. I don’t want to quit—wouldn’t normally dream of quitting—but there hasn’t been even a glimmer of progress and we still have the long drive home ahead of us.
“Okay, I’m done.” I toss the broomstick into the sand and stalk away from Bishop with my hands laced behind my head. To suck at flying after doing well with moving objects is more than a little disappointing.
“Don’t give up.” Bishop, for once, jogs to catch up to me. “You were getting so close.”
“Close?” I laugh. “No I wasn’t. I’m hot and sweaty and tired, but close? Not even slightly.”
Thank God he doesn’t argue the point, because I’m feeling violent. He chews the inside of his cheek a moment before speaking. “There is something more I can do to help, but you won’t like it.”
“There’s something more, and you haven’t told me?” Yep, definitely feeling violent.
“You won’t like it.”
“Tell me, already. I want to fly. What is it about the hours of practicing in the heat that hasn’t given you that impression? I’m willing to—”
“I drop you from a height,” he interrupts.
I close my mouth and give him a glare.
“Adrenaline can help you harness your magic in the right direction.”
“Yeah, right. Sort of like candles are energy drinks for witches?”
“Fine, don’t believe me.”
“Great, I won’t. You know, you might gain a little more credibility if you stop bullshitting me for fun all the time.”
“You don’t want to do it, just like I thought—I get it. But you should know I wouldn’t let you get hurt. I’d catch you before you hit the ground, if it came to that.”
I shake my head and huff and roll my eyes a bunch, but all the while his words are sinking into my brain. “You won’t let me hit the ground?” I ask.
He shakes his head.
“Say it out loud. Promise.”
Bishop places his hand over his heart. “I, Bishop, hereby promise not to let one Indigo Blackwood hit the ground.”
I bite my lip, contemplating. “What the hell. Fine. Let’s do—”
Bishop snags his arm around my middle and lifts into the air so suddenly and quickly that I jerk in half like a foldaway bed. My hair sucks around my face and my stomach does a flip, the landscape below becoming smaller and smaller until I’m sure NASA is probably picking up our movement on their satellites. And then the hands around my middle are gone. There’s a split second where I reach out to anchor on to something solid, before I realize there’s nothing to grab.
I plummet. A whole-body fear clutches at me, a tremendous rush of chemicals passing up my body like the worst roller-coaster ride times a million. And then all I can hear, all I can feel is the wind. It pushes against my body and warbles my cheeks, instantly drying my damp top as I pinwheel my arms, belly flopping toward earth.
“Push it down. Push the heat down.” It’s Bishop, plummeting next to me like he’s my parachuting buddy or something. The same wind sucks his hair back and flattens his T-shirt tight against his frame, but, unlike me, he couldn’t look calmer. Until he appeared, all I could think about was how it was going to feel when I splatted to the ground, but now I remember that I’m supposed to harness my magic, push it down and blah blah blah. But I can’t. How can I concentrate with the ground zooming nearer by the second? This was a mistake. I wordlessly reach out for Bishop.
“Sorry!” he yells over the wind, shaking his head solemnly.
“What? Help me!” I say, choking on a mouthful of air.
The sand nears, closer and closer by the wasted second. Forty feet. Thirty. Twenty-five.
“Push it down!” he yells.
I reach out to claw on to the shirt flapping around his midsection, but he pulls away, just an inch out of reach, grinning that infuriating grin. “Push it down!”