The wrong way.
Confused, she stopped, looking down at Max’s reddened little face while she tried to sort through the clouds of hungry tiredness in her head.
Wrong.
An enormous, invisible fist punched her. She lost her hold on Max and slammed into the ground. The back of the house disappeared in a rolling ball of flame that blew out an inferno of boiling heat. She thought there was sound too, a gigantic roar, but maybe that was all inside her head.
Max.
Oh gods, she had dropped the baby.
With an immense effort she rolled onto her stomach, looking for him. He lay on his stomach too and pushed himself up on stiffened arms. He looked utterly panicked, his mouth wide open and his face purpled as he screamed.
She came up on all fours and lunged for him. Burning pain flared in her knee. She snatched him close and ran her hands down his arms and legs then clenched him tightly, twisting to put her back between him and the ferocious blaze.
Chloe. Grace looked for her. The swimming pool was thirty feet or so farther away from the house. Chloe sat frozen in the water, clutching her bucket. She stared at the fire, her face contorted. Grace couldn’t hear anything aside from the gigantic roar, but she could clearly read the little girl’s lips.
“I need my mommy! I need my mommy!”
Grace fumbled. There had to be a connection somewhere in her ringing head. She swept out with her mind, did a wide, blind scoop, and yanked with all of her strength.
That was when the earthquake hit Louisville.
A supernova blasted toward Grace. The sense of oncoming destruction blocked out everything else. She huddled around Max, trying to cover him with her body.
Later she would find out that her property was the epicenter of an earthquake that registered 5.8 on the Richter scale. She never even felt it. Nearby streetlamps warped and bent like they were sticks made of soft wax, trees fell, the cavern caved in and her car was thrown to the street, where the pavement buckled. Luckily, the surrounding area was not as developed as more urban areas and damage was minimal, although a roof and part of a stone wall collapsed at a nearby cemetery. And it was luck, not intention: that was how out of control Khalil had been.
Instead of destruction, what she felt was a gentle black smoke that swirled around the yard, blanketing her and the kids. It blocked out all the heat and noise. At the same time Khalil covered the burning house with Power. The fire died with an eerie suddenness.
Grace gripped Max in one arm and glanced around, dazed, as she tried to scoot awkwardly toward Chloe, hampered by having only one free hand and her goddamn useless knee.
Strong arms lifted her and Max. She blinked as Khalil formed around them. His expression was stark and shaken. Her gaze lowered to his moving lips. She made out his words. “Stop. I’ve got you.”
“Chloe,” she said. She couldn’t hear herself speak, and the only way she could control her dizziness was by tilting her head. She tried to say Chloe’s name again. With both her and Max in his arms, Khalil spun toward the swimming pool.
He froze, staring.
A Djinn was wrapped around a sobbing Chloe, the presence so gossamer thin she was transparent. It was Phaedra. When Grace called Khalil, she must have pulled both connections by accident.
Max’s body was rigid and shaking in her arms. She turned her attention to him. He was still screaming with such lusty energy his face was a darkened red.
She decided right then and there that screaming was awesome. Screaming meant you were alive. If you had the strength to scream, hopefully you had the strength to recover. But still.
“We need a doctor,” she said to Khalil.
He looked at her again, a sparkling crisis in his eyes, while his jaw flexed.
She was making sound when she talked, wasn’t she? She put more force into the next words. “A pediatrician. Tell them it’s an emergency.”
His Power flared. A strange Djinn appeared. Khalil said something in a sharp whip of a voice that she heard as if from a distance. After one wide-eyed glance around, the Djinn nodded and whisked away.
Oh, good. That meant a doctor would be coming. She looked at Max again. He wasn’t bleeding. That had to be good too. She had no idea what to do for him. There were classes for that sort of thing, what were they called? Whatever they were, she should take some. Her head was pounding, her ears hurt, and her skin and knee felt like they were on fire.
Then Khalil knelt, and Chloe was there, still sobbing and wrapped in towel, and he simply enfolded them all. Grace leaned against him while she wrapped her arms around the children, and Khalil put his face in her hair. She thought he and Phaedra said things to each other, but she wasn’t sure, because it was such a strain to focus on anything, so she just concentrated on holding those poor, scared babies.