"You didn't squash it when you killed it?"
Jeremy sighed.
I looked at him. "And you thought we were ready for kids?"
"No, I just thought one more wouldn't make much difference. Now, if I could have the bag please?"
I put it into my knapsack and handed it to him. He looked down at the knapsack--lime green with a daisy on the front.
"Hey, I didn't pick it out," I said. "You bought it; you can carry it."
He took the knapsack with a slow shake of his head. "Let's get this back to a hotel, examine it for damage and send it off to Xavier."
Clay and I looked at each other, seeing our opportunity for a city run vanishing.
"Uh, Jer," Clay said. "Elena and I were wondering..."
He stopped, eyes narrowing as he stared at something over my shoulder. I followed his gaze to a curtain of smoke rising from the road. It looked like sewer steam...only there wasn't a sewer grate or manhole cover in sight. I walked over and looked down to see a hairline crack in the asphalt. Clay grabbed my arm and yanked me away.
"Don't give me that look," he said as I caught my balance. "You don't know what that is."
"An underground volcano ready to bury us all under a mountain of spewing lava?"
The smoke wafted up, a thin, slow moving line that dispersed before it hit waist level. Jeremy crouched for a closer look.
"Probably some kind of trapped steam," he said.
Clay rocked on the balls of his feet, fighting to keep from yanking Jeremy out of the way too.
"I don't think it's West-Nile-carrying steam," I said.
When Clay didn't move, I laid my fingers on his arm. He nodded, but I could feel the tension strumming from him as he watched Jeremy.
"Jer?" I said. "We should probably get going."
"Mm-hmm."
He waved his fingertips through the smoke. Clay let out a strangled sound.
I tapped Jeremy's shoulder. "We really should go. Before one of the residents notices the smoke. And us."
"Yes, right."
He pushed to his feet. Yet he didn't move, just stared at the smoke, a frown-crease between his brows. Then his head jerked up, body going rigid. I followed his gaze and saw nothing, just the trees, leaves rustling--
"Clay!" Jeremy shouted.
Hands grabbed my arms and I flew backward, stumbling, then lifted, feet flying off the pavement, fingers tight around my upper arms, half shoving me out of the way, half carrying me. My back hit the low wall of a fence. A flash illuminated the night sky as a transformer overhead exploded in a shower of sparks. All went dark as my rescuer's body shielded me from the falling cascade.
"Clay!" The voice came from above me, and as my brain cleared, I realized it was Jeremy, not Clay, who'd been shielding me, that he'd thrown me clear of a transformer...before it blew.
"Clay!"
"Over here," came a voice beside us. "Where's Elena?"
"She's here." Jeremy looked at me. "Are you all right?"
"Still seeing sparks," I said.