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clockwork grinding and twitching as it tried to keep flying despite the damage it had taken. Tansy took only a moment to gasp for air and then spun around, ready to try the other direction—but the shadows were there, indistinct in the dark, coming faster and faster.
    I looked at Tansy, who looked back at me. Time stopped for a moment and we stood there, her one eye nearly swollen shut, the other wide with terror. She’d only ever fought the shadows at a distance. She’d never seen them up close, seen their white eyes, heard their unearthly screams. A small amount of light came in through the window, and I saw a droplet of sweat roll down her temple, silvery with moonlight.
    Sweat. Water.
    I yanked off my pack and used it to knock out the rest of the glass on the bottom of the window frame before slipping it back on. I grabbed at Tansy’s hand, jerking her toward the window. The alley, three floors down, looked a long way away.
    She resisted. “Are you insane?” Her voice shook. “We’ll break our legs. We’ll break our necks. I don’t—I don’t want to die that way—”
    “Do you want to die that way?” I gasped back, thrusting an arm out toward the oncoming shadow monsters. “Trust me.”
    “I can’t—” She twisted away from the window, pressing herself into the corner, eyes rolling toward the shadows as they raced toward us. Only a few seconds now before they reached us.
    “Tansy.” I jerked her arm, turning her toward me. “ Trust me. ”
    She stared at me, and then before my eyes the frightened girl turned back into the scout that had so awed me when we first met. She straightened and reached for my hand, her sweaty palm pressing against mine.
    We took a few steps and then leaped out into empty space.
    I glimpsed her for an instant, the silver moonlight and the golden energy of her power mingling in my vision. I closed my eyes, opening myself and letting the hunger wash over me, and did what I’d wanted to do from the first moment Tansy had caught up to me.
    As her power surged into me I turned my face towards the ground racing toward us. I wrenched at the spot inside me where the magic pooled, and with a blinding flash, the alley went white-gold.
    We struck something invisible and yielding and bounced off before landing on the cracked ground below—bruised, but whole.
    I lay dazed, my head spinning and vision sparking. The rush of warmth and life that enveloped me had wiped away the terror of the last few minutes. I’d saved myself this way once before, in my own city, but that was before I’d gained the second sight. I’d never seen what it looked like to do this magic before. I floated, light-headed and giddy, for what felt like hours, watching the sparks wheel and dance overhead.
    It wasn’t until Tansy moaned beside me that I came back to myself and realized only seconds had passed. My ear throbbed where the shadow girl had bit me, my neck sticky with blood. Though I could feel the remnants of Tansy’s magic still sparking inside me, I already wanted more. But she was starting to shake, and when I reached out to touch her shoulder she rolled away from me, curling up into a fetal position. She had nothing left to give me.
    I heard a wretched howl and looked up, the golden light vanishing instantly. One of the shadows—I couldn’t even tell which one—was climbing out the window. It came skittering down the wall, leading the way for the other three. Their fingers found purchase on the tiniest of cracks in the brickwork, sliding down the surface as if it weren’t a vertical wall.
    “Tansy! Come on, we’ve got to move .”
    I leaped to my feet, buoyed by my pilfered magic, and dragged her with me. She gave a confused cry, but after a few moments she got her feet working again and managed to stumble with me toward the mouth of the alley. We were both looking back over our shoulders at the shadows as they reached the ground when a guttural sound stopped us dead.
    A fifth shadow stood