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she rose to her feet, not soundlessly enough.
    Khan turned. “What are you doing?”
    “I’m looking for the power point. I’ll turn off the electricity.”
    “There is none.” He strode back. Jay retreated. Deliberately, Khan crouched and put his hand on the carpet. Nothing happened. “See?”
    Filip’s hand closed around the man’s wrist.
    “God.” Khan swore. He struggled and flung words in Arabic and Latin, words of power and binding. “You can’t be—you’re bound.”
    Relentlessly, despite the pain that twisted his face and body, Filip dragged Khan down, forced him to kneel and put a hand to his throat, under the chin. The intention to kill was clear. He would snap the man’s neck.
    “Filip, no.” Sara reached out to him. She touched his shoulders and his pain flowed into her hands and through her body. The magic pulled at her, but couldn’t hold her. The pain wasn’t important. She couldn’t watch Filip lose his soul to murder. “Let him go. Let him live.”
    She put her hand over Filip’s on Khan’s throat. “Filip.” She concentrated, feeling the sticky magic of the carpet and Filip’s determination. He would kill to be free. She wouldn’t let him.
    “The billabong.” The cool image of it filled her vision and soothed her spirit with its remembered wild desert scent and scurrying night sounds. It was Filip’s refuge and a place of healing. She had to break the magic of the carpet and transport him there.
    She held onto Filip and dematerialised.
    There was a painful flare as if her skin were burning and tearing. Filip screamed, and then the billabong closed around them.

Chapter Five
    “Fil—” Sara choked on fear and a mouthful of cool billabong water. The water closed over her head as her feet slipped, and Filip’s weight fell on top of her. Don’t let him be dead.
    He’d suffered so much pain. She didn’t want to think what damage her own frantic intervention had done.
    She pushed him up and sobbed with relief as she felt his muscles move. His thighs against her thighs, his chest heaving. He helped her steady them both to their feet, then his arms closed around her.
    Wrenching shudders shook Filip, sending the water trembling away, its ripples slapping against the rock and sand banks. The water lapped them chest high. Overhead the leaves of the ghost gums rustled. A cockatoo uttered a sleepy complaint and its mate answered.
    Sara pressed close, trying to still his shivers with the warmth of her body. She slid her hands under his leather jacket to the small of his back and put her face in the curve of his throat. Her lips touched his skin and she kissed him.
    His pain had changed everything.
    Finding a cure for young Todd’s fatal bone infection remained a serious commitment, but she was an angel. She knew death wasn’t an ending. If Todd died now, he’d go on to new challenges. His family would grieve, and the world would have lost a bright soul and all he could have grown into. Nonetheless, there would be healing and a new pattern of wholeness.
    The truth was she’d become involved in finding a cure for Todd because she was bored.
    The knowledge shamed her now. She could see how the challenge of defying the Archivist Guild had given her excitement and a sense of engaging in life. She cared about Todd and his family, but she’d seized the excuse of helping them in order to bring colour into her own orderly, dull life.
    As Filip pointed out, she hadn’t risked much. Whatever trouble she got into, she could always yell for angelic rescue. Sure, there would be decades of boring recording duty in heaven as punishment, but she’d always be safe.
    Seeing Filip suffer and not knowing how to help him had torn away that security blanket. She’d felt the price of being vividly alive, of caring. Pain was the flipside of passion.
    “Sara.”
    With her lips against his throat, she felt Filip swallow.
    His arms relaxed and the wet leather of his jacket squeaked. He cupped her face,