Page 179 of Powerless

Wrong.

Another dead end is tempting me to drive my fist into it, though I know that will only cause more damage to me than the plants.

I pick up my pace and breeze past a Sight, ignoring him and his unsettling stare. I’m in a pissy mood. Not exactly surprising, considering that I’ve been running around a maze in the heat, meeting only dead ends, and driving myself mad.

Other than evading being crushed by moving walls and encountering a few dozen snakes slithering out from under them, I’ve kept myself relatively busy with the constant running. I have no concept of time in here, but with my rapidly beating heart and ragged breathing, I know I’ve been at this for a while.

Sand shifts under my feet, and then the hedges shift at my sides.

I hear the muffled cries of excitement from the crowd as the maze begins to rearrange itself again, so I dart out of the path and into another that is also shrinking just as quickly. Turning right, I’m only faced with more closing hedges.

I spin, my eyes searching. Everywhere I look seems to promise death by plants. A pitiful way to die. I stand in the path, watching as the walls close in on me. I’ve never felt so powerless, so unable to do anything to stop this impending doom.

And then the walls halt.

My shoulders press into the two hedges now threatening to crush me. I step forward, arms scraping against the too-tight walls of foliage on either side.

A bitter laugh escapes me, the sound swallowed by the thick walls.

Clever, Father.

I sigh, pressing onward through the maze, knowing that if I come across another contestant, there is only one way to get around them.

Left.

Right.

Right.

Jaguar.

I blink.

That was not what I was expecting.

The jaguar blinks back, its coat the color of deep wine, its eyes the color of sweet honey.

“Hello, Andy.”

She cocks her head to the side, her mannerisms mirroring that of a cat toying with a mouse. And that worries me. I don’t know how long she’s been in her animal form, but I can see it’s been long enough for her to lose herself in it.

Andy’s ability is just as dangerous to others as it is to herself. The longer she stays shifted, the harder it is to keep her head. This is the exact reason she’s trained so much with her ability, and the exact reason why I don’t use it very often. When we were children, she would be in her animal form for days at a time, unable to shift herself back until finally waking up as a human again with no memory of what had happened.

Over the years, she’s learned to control it, learned to stay in her right mind even while being in a different body. But with all the adrenaline pumping through her jaguar form, her control seems to be slipping. Which is exactly why she’s staring at me like I’m a piece of meat.

“Easy, Andy.” I raise my hands slowly in the air, taking a step back.

She takes a step forward. No, sheprowlsforward.

Shit.

This path is so tight that there’s no way she could get peacefully around me even if she wanted to. Not that there is anything peaceful about the way she’s looking at me, the way she’s crouching low in the sand.

I don’t want to hurt her, but hell, she wants to hurt me. She’s eyeing me like a predator would, promising their prey a painful death.

I reach out for an ability close by like I’ve done multiple times since stepping into this maze. Plagues knows I’ve tried to grab hold of a Bloom’s power so I could flatten these walls and walk straight to the center of the maze. And that’s exactly what I would do if they weren’t so deliberately staying out of my range.

The thrum of Andy’s ability is overpowering, the only one close enough to feel—

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