But she didn’t leap on me. Didn’t stab me in the back. I twisted. Adam stood between us. The woman rushed him. His fist hit her jaw. She stumbled. A fast jab to the stomach, then another to the jaw finished her. After she landed, he grabbed her by the hair, lifted her head, and smacked it down on the pavement. She collapsed, unconscious. He plucked the knife from her hand and waved it at me.

“Ignore the knife,” he said. “If you’re fighting back, it’ll take a miracle for her to manage a fatal stab. Get her down, then take the weapon. You’re lucky the GPS on your phone works. It’s your fighting skills you need to work on. Notice I didn’t use my powers against her?”

“You’re a guy. You have the natural advantage of upper-body strength. And she’s tougher than she looks.” I glanced down at the woman. Twice my age. Six inches shorter. Thirty pounds heavier—none of it muscle. I looked back at Adam. “She’s a trained assassin. It’s all about the reflexes.”

“Uh-huh. Well, wake up the trained assassin so I can practice my trained interrogation—Shit!” He dropped beside her. Bloody foam trickled out of the side of her mouth. “I didn’t hit her that hard.”

As his fingers went to the side of her neck, she started convulsing. Adam wrenched her mouth open to hold her tongue down. She began to gag, spewing more bloody foam. As it spattered my shoes, I backed up, then noticed a piece of plastic on my sneaker. I bent. It was part of a capsule, some powder still caked inside.

“It won’t help.” I showed Adam the capsule.

The woman continued to convulse, eyes rolling, limbs flailing. Adam hovered there, as if he wanted to do something, at least ease her suffering. Then she collapsed again, this time for good.

We checked her pockets for ID. There was none, just a key card for a room in the hotel. It was still in the folder with the room number on it.

“We’ll leave her here,” I said. “We can’t risk moving—”

Adam pointed to the blood on the pavement.

“Right,” I said. “That’s why we can’t risk moving her. They’ll find the blood—” I stopped as I realized it was my blood.

“Stand guard,” Adam said. “I’ve got to get her gone before someone drives up here.”

Adam found an old sedan that looked like it’d been there a while. He picked the trunk lock and we put her inside. I had to take her clothing, too; I’d bled on it during our fight.

Then I took cover between two cars while he went to get supplies—water to wash away the blood on the asphalt, and clean clothes so I could cover my injuries. The slash on my leg was barely a scratch—my jeans had borne the brunt of that—but my hand was bleeding. He bound it.

We searched the woman’s hotel room next. We found a vial of poison capsules and a bill made out to Amanda Tucker—an alias or a relative, maybe. Other than that, the room was clean.

“How the hell did she find me?” I said as we returned to our room to pack. “I can see them tracking me around Columbus, even to Seattle. Picking up my trail again after I visited Roni’s aunt makes sense. But how did they track me here?”

“You do have the blocker on your cell, right?” He meant the one Paige created to block our locations from any GPS trackers other than our own.

“Of course I do.”

“And you don’t turn it off?”

“Yes, I turn it off. Paige said we could, whenever it interferes with an app we need—”

I cursed and yanked my phone out of my pocket. As I checked it, Adam looked over my shoulder before I could hide the screen.

“An online Mafia game?”

I cursed, then took a deep breath and turned to face him. “Yes. I’m an idiot, okay? I obviously haven’t been playing since I was in the hospital but . . .”

“But you forgot to turn the blocker back on.”

“I’m deleting the game. Right now.” I did it as we spoke. “And I’m sorry. That was a boneheaded move. It won’t happen again. Please don’t tell Paige.”

“Have I ever ratted you out? Considering you were in the hospital recuperating from a near-fatal poisoning, I don’t blame you for relaxing with a game. And considering all hell broke loose after we left, I don’t blame you for forgetting to reactivate the blocker. But disconnecting a security feature when you’re in danger—”

“—is stupid.”

“Not stupid. Reckless, and you know that. But we don’t need to worry about it anymore. In a few hours, we’ll be in Miami.”

“Miami?”

“Yes, Miami,” he said. “We’re done here.”

“But we need to find Schmidt. We were going to the hospital—”

“Someone else can find him and bring him to Miami. I just rescued you from an assassin, Savannah. If I hadn’t been here—”

“But you were here.” I turned to him. “I know I need your help, and I’m not taking that for granted. I will go to Miami. I just need—”

“To follow up on more leads, so Paige and Lucas won’t find out that your spells are gone.”

“I’m not avoiding Miami to avoid them. That’s ridiculous.”

“No, it’s not. You’re terrified of telling Paige and Lucas or anyone else. I know why, too, but I’m going to drop that because that’s a fight that’ll only distract me from this one. You need to be in Miami, Savannah. We both do. As much as I’d rather stay in the field, they need my research assistance. So I’m going.”

“And if I don’t?”

A flash fire of anger behind his eyes answered me. I’d pushed him too far. He was right. Not about Paige and Lucas—I don’t know where that came from—but about the fact that I had almost been killed.

“Can we just stop by the hospital?” I said. “See if Schmidt is there? Then I’ll go to Miami with you. I promise.”

Dealing with Adam is a lot like dealing with fire itself. I can push and steer him in my direction, but only up to a point. Pass that point, and he’ll flare up and lash out. Step back and show respect, and he simmers down.

Problems only arise if I don’t heed that warning flash. I’ve done it a few times. Got burnt. Wised up.