On the Prowl

hitting the ground, and found herself engulfed in a moving knot of people. An elbow jabbed her ribs. She heard screams, cries, yelling. Panic sent her heartbeat rocketing. She fought to keep her feet.
    Suddenly she found herself in a pocket of space left inexplicably open in the shoving crowd. She started to reach again for fugue—then saw the body lying on the ground.
    It was Jackie.
    Kai threw herself to her knees beside her friend. Terror keened her senses, drowning the immaterial in a flood of physical. She shivered as she reached for the pulse point on Jackie’s throat…strong. Jackie’s heart beat strongly.
    Kai shuddered in relief. She ran her hands over Jackie’s head, looking…there, yes, there. On her temple, a knot. The skin wasn’t broken, but something had hit her, knocked her out.
    Another shiver hit. The air was freezing all of a sudden. Jackie had on a warm jacket, but was it enough? Maybe—
    A woman built like a small rhino lumbered into the open space around Jackie. Kai pushed to her feet, thrusting out a hand and calling out for her to stop. Her voice was lost in the din.
    The woman’s face crumpled in fear. She pushed right back into the crowd.
    Kai blinked. She’d never scared anyone off by waving at her before. What in the…oh. The cold. The cleared space. Even nulls sensed ghosts sometimes. Kai imagined spirits ringing her and Jackie, pushing back at everyone. She’d have to tell Jackie her ghostly friends weren’t useless after all. Once Jackie was…oh, God. She had to be all right. She had to.
    A sudden surge of people broke past the ghosts’ ability to frighten—a mob with neither intention nor control over where it went, pressed willy-nilly by others behind them. The blood drained from Kai’s face. She shoved a man aside. Another, a woman, was pushed almost on top of them, but saw Jackie at the last second and managed to stagger over her body without stepping on her
    Too many. There were too many, pressed by too many others. She couldn’t—
    Then a man in a khaki uniform slipped through the rush of people streaming the other way. Nathan. He bent and scooped Jackie up in his arms. “Get behind me!” he shouted. “Hold my belt.”
    Kai all but plastered herself against him. She gripped his belt as if her life depended on it, and rode in his wake as he cut sideways through the mob.
    They broke out of the crowd near the fountain. Nathan didn’t stop, but stepped up into the first stone tier, drained and dry now for winter. Carefully he laid Jackie down, running his hands over her much as Kai had done, then lifting each eyelid. “Concussed,” he said, voice raised enough that she could hear. “What happened?”
    “I don’t know! It happened so fast—these people, the ones with ugly colors, they started yelling at us. At the Gifted, I mean, but I couldn’t see what they did. Something that scared people, because all of a sudden everyone was—it was—” Kai found herself horribly close to tears. “I couldn’t stop it. I couldn’t.”
    He gave her a look, then rose and wrapped his arms around her. She started shaking.
    He lowered his head so he could speak softly, close to her ear. “Adrenaline. You’ll be okay in a minute.”
    “Jackie—”
    “Can’t do anything for her here. She needs the hospital. It’s emptying out now,” he added. “We need to go.”
    “Go?” She lifted her head to stare at him.
    “I’m sorry. I couldn’t prevent it. I…” He sighed. “A judge has issued a warrant for your arrest.”

    NATHAN got Kai moving while she was still too stunned and shocked to protest. First he had to make sure her friend received care, though, so he carried the woman to the makeshift stage that had served as a podium. The speakers had made it to safety inside the Midland Center, but the television people remained, avidly filming. The local news anchor hurled questions at him, but she was easy enough to ignore.
    Uniformed officers were clearing out the last of the crowd as he and Kai left, some tending the fallen. Sirens sounded. They reached Nathan’s official car on Illinois Street just as a car he recognized pulled up halfway down the block. “That’s Knox,” he said as he shut his door. Kai was already in the car, but he suspected Knox had seen her. “He’s got the warrant.”
    “He’s got it? You mean…you mean you aren’t arresting me?”
    Stunned, Nathan forgot to turn on the ignition. How could she think that? “No. Good God,