Chapter 35 Run
POV: Carly
"We need to go." Niko was already on his feet.
She looked up at him from the floor. "What? Why?"
The flashlight swept through the hall again, closer this time, the beam cutting through the colored glass light and turning everything white for a second.
"Unless you want to explain to a security guard what you're doing in a condemned building at nine at night, I'd save the questions." He grabbed his bag off the floor.
"Condemned." She said the word slowly.
"I may have said abandoned earlier." He said. "Semantics."
She stared at him. "Niko."
"We really need to move." He said.
"This is illegal." She said, getting to her feet and grabbing her bag. "People go to jail for this. Actual jail."
"You're not going to jail." He said.
"Says the person who practically lives in the headmistress' office. You're not exactly the authority on consequences."
"That's fair." He said. "But we genuinely need to go right now."
She was already pacing. "I can't believe this. I cannot believe this. I have a perfect record. I have never broken a single rule in my life that wasn't specifically related to you and now I'm standing in a condemned building waiting to be arrested by a security guard in Black River Falls Washington which is not how I planned my Friday evening-"
"Carly." He said.
"Don't Carly me. This is your fault."
"Entirely." He agreed. "Now can we please-"
"Hey! Who's in there?"
The flashlight beam hit them both dead on from across the nave.
Niko grabbed her hand.
"Run." He said.
She ran.
They sprinted toward the front of the building, their footsteps loud on the stone floor and the security guard yelling something behind them that neither of them stopped to hear. Niko pulled the heavy door open and she went through first and they both hit the cold night air of Black River Falls and kept running.
She had not run like this since. Actually she had never run like this. There had never been a reason to run like this and her lungs were registering that complaint very clearly but she kept going because Niko was beside her and the guard was still behind them and somehow in the middle of all of it she started laughing.
Not a polite laugh. A full one. Breathless and ridiculous and completely involuntary.
Niko looked at her sideways while they ran and he was laughing too, that real laugh she had heard maybe four times and each time it rearranged something in her chest, and they were two supernatural beings sprinting away from what was clearly an elderly security guard with more commitment than speed and it was genuinely the most absurd thing that had ever happened to her.
"This is insane." She gasped between strides.
"Little bit." He agreed, still laughing.
"We could just." She gestured vaguely.
"I know." He said.
"So why are we running."
"Because you're enjoying it." He said.
She couldn't argue with that.
They ran three blocks before Niko pulled her around the back of a building and they pressed their backs against the wall and both stood there breathing hard and listening.
Footsteps. Slowing. Then stopping.
Then nothing.
She let out a long unsteady breath. "Did we lose him."
Niko leaned carefully around the corner and pulled back. "Not yet."
She laughed again and pressed her hand over her mouth to muffle it.
He looked at her with that expression. The one she kept catching him with when he thought she wasn't paying attention. Like she was something he was still trying to get used to seeing.
"I have an idea." He said. "But you're not going to like the setup."
She looked at him.
"Do you trust me." He said.
She stared at him.
"Just answer the question." He said. "Do you trust me."
She thought about every answer she had given to that question in her own head over the past few weeks. Every conversation and every moment and every time he had shown her something true about himself without being asked.
"Yes." She said. And meant it.
He picked her up.
She yelped before she could stop it, her arms going around his neck automatically, and then the world became a blur of dark and light and cold rushing air and she felt the speed of it in her stomach and her hair flying back and his arms completely steady around her and she closed her eyes and held on.
She had never flashed before.
She had never been carried by someone who flashed before.
It lasted maybe thirty seconds. Maybe less. And then the ground was under her feet again and the iron gates of Black River Academy were in front of her and the campus was quiet and dark and she was standing in the cold night air trying to remember how to breathe normally.
She became aware that his hands were still on her waist.
He became aware of the same thing at the same moment.
She stepped back.
He dropped his hands.
They both looked at the gate.
"That was." She started.
"Yeah." He said.
She pushed her hair back from her face and looked up at him. "You could have warned me."
"You would have argued about it." He said.
"That's not." She stopped. "That's actually correct." She said.
He almost smiled.
She looked at the wall. The iron gate was chained shut the way it always was at this hour and the wall rose up on either side of it in the dark.
"Right." She said. "Do you want to help me over or are you going to stand there."
"I'll help you over." He said.
"Good." She said. "Because last time you just watched me struggle and I still haven't forgiven you for that."
"You got over eventually." He said.
"After significant suffering." She said.
He laughed and walked to the wall and she followed him and he laced his fingers together to give her a boost and she put her foot in and grabbed the ledge and pulled herself up.
She got one leg over.
Then the other leg.
Then she let go of the ledge to get her balance and her arm went around his neck instinctively and Niko shifted to adjust and neither of them adjusted correctly and they both went over.
The grass on the other side came up fast.
His back hit first. She landed on top of him. The impact knocked the air out of both of them and for a moment neither moved and the campus was very quiet around them.
Then she started laughing.
Her face was against his chest and she could feel him laughing too, his whole body shaking underneath her with it, and she laughed harder because he was laughing and neither of them were doing anything about the position they were in and it was the most alive she had felt in years.
The laughter slowed.
And then it stopped.
And she became very aware of where she was.