Whitney held up a finger. Her middle one. White bolts of electricity sizzled around it and reflected in her purple eyes. “Greed is bad,” she said. “I’m just helping save all those people who’d see this ad and feel all inadequate about the size of their cars, that’s all.”
And then she put the Bugatti in gear, and arrowed it straight for the cameras.
Somehow, the people managed to scramble out of the way—David probably helped propel them, actually, from the way they were tossed around—and one of the cameras was blown into junk by a leading wave of invisible force before the car’s bumper could touch it. The other was just knocked over like a big, ungainly insect. There was screaming. Some of it, I realized, was coming from a suited man who’d been sitting off to the side. From the horror on his face, he was the owner of either the Bugatti or the diamond bikini, and his insurance had just lapsed.
“Crap,” David sighed, and turned to me. “Would you mind…?”
“Do you really have to ask? Of course I’ll do it.”
I raced for the car, and David took the faster route, blipping directly through the aetheric from where he stood into the passenger seat. Fast as I was getting settled and the engine started, I knew that seconds were ticking. I didn’t think the car I was driving, sweet as it was, had a hope in hell of chasing down a Bugatti with a Djinn driver, but what the hell.
I like a challenge too, Whitney. Let’s play.
*
I wasn’t the only one on the trail of the fleeing Bugatti. Behind me, the state troopers had finally gotten their act together and were blaring a siren in the distance, trying to make up distance. They’d never make it. Even their fastest car wasn’t going to catch me, much less Whitney.
“They’ll block her in,” I said as I shifted, pushing the car faster around the next turn. The curves would get worse, and I knew I’d have to shed speed soon, but for now I had to try to make up as much road as I could. “She’ll never make it past the first crossroads.”
“That’s a long way, and she can do a lot of damage before she gets there.”
“Can’t you just—you know—blip over and stop her?”
“Not without destroying the car,” he said. “I thought you wouldn’t want me to do that. I’m trying to disable the engine, but she’s already put a shield around everything I’ve tried.”
He was frowning, and I could see something was bothering him. “What?”
“Whitney’s crazy, but she’s not stupid. She knows this is a no-win chase. The police will block her in, or I’ll find a way to stop her without hurting anyone.”
“Maybe it’s just a joyride.”
“She’s a thief. Not a joyrider. She has a reason for doing this—watch out!”
I saw it just as he did—an alligator, charging out of the swamp and onto the road. A gigantic one, ancient, and definitely nothing to be messed with under the best of circumstances. I didn’t think for a second that the poor gator was doing this of his own accord, though—she’d thrown him in front of us as a living speed bump, with armor and teeth. We’d kill him if we hit him. We’d also damage the car, probably so badly that we’d have to abandon the chase.
“Hang on,” I said, and reached out with Earth powers to literally drag the gator off the road to the other side. Earth powers are not my strong suit, and it felt like picking up a safe with one hand—painful, and all but impossible, but I’m not one to let a little thing like pain and impossibility stop me, and the confused reptile waddled/slid safely out of our path just in time, with his scaly tail flicking to boom against David’s door as we whizzed past. I’d gone as far over to the left as I’d dared to leave plenty of room, and even then, it had been close. Very close.
I looked back. The gator was already disappearing into the muddy swampland, grateful to be out of our affairs, I suspected.