Inside, the darkness felt stifling. It was obvious that the power had been cut—there were no lights anywhere, not even emergency lighting. None of the exit signs were illuminated, and an eerie silence hung in the air. Kurt tiptoed forward, not sure where he was or who he might meet in these hallways. If the bomb truly was going off soon then all of the Dark Warriors would be evacuating the building. Kurt and Natalie were probably by themselves in here.

Kurt knew he didn’t have much time. He wasn’t sure how long it would be until the bomb went off, but it was only a matter of minutes at this point. Maybe he didn’t have to worry about the wizard and shifter guards following him in here after all. They weren’t going to want to enter a building that was about to be locked down by a containment spell and then blow up.

Kurt started running down the hallway, trying to figure out where the front entrance of the building was. He had no idea which floor Natalie worked on, and he needed a map of some sort if he was going to have any hope of finding her. He pushed down the panic that he could feel trying to take hold of his heart, and he kept running. He knew time was ticking away, but he couldn’t think about that right now. All he could think about was putting one foot in front of the other, and doing the best he could to find Natalie.

He felt his phone buzz in his pocket and pulled it out to see that he had a text from Wyatt.

Shit! Will check with the wizards. Sending out an alert now to everyone in case any of the crew happens to be near the building. Will keep you updated.

Kurt sighed. He doubted anyone was going to be close to this building right now. There was nothing around here except offices, most of which were closed at the moment due to the late hour. There were a few bars, but they were only frequented by business travelers who were staying in nearby hotels. None of the locals would be here. Kurt once again realized just how alone he was.

Then he realized suddenly that he should just text Natalie to find out where she was. If she had texted him then she obviously had access to her cell phone. She could easily tell him where she was. He quickly typed out a message to her and hit send.

Coming for you. What floor is your office on?

He slowed his run to a walk as he stared down at the phone, hoping her reply would come soon. He nearly jumped out of his skin when his phone buzzed again, but his heart sank when he saw that it wasn’t a text from Natalie, but rather a standard alert message from his phone carrier.

Message undeliverable. Please try again.

He cursed, and tried again, hitting send once more on the message for Natalie. Once again, an error message came back a few moments later.

“Goddammit!” he roared, forgetting to be quiet. Not that it mattered much anymore. Stealth wasn’t the important thing at this point. Speed was. And he needed to hurry.

Kurt once again started running, making his way quickly down the hallway. He needed to find a map, a guide, or something that would give him a clue as to where Natalie was. To his great relief, the hallway he was running down spit him out moments later into a huge lobby area. There must be something here that would help him. A huge reception desk at the front seemed promising, and Kurt turned to run toward it. As he beelined for the desk, two wizards suddenly appeared from a hallway on the opposite side of the lobby. They stopped short for a second when they saw Kurt, looking at each other uncertainly. Then, in unison, they shrugged and continued running. They ran out of the front doors, slamming them behind them. Through the huge windows on the front of the building, Kurt saw the wizards outside beginning to perform spells, which he figured must be the containment spells. He was stuck in here now.

“Well, no choice but to press on,” he said aloud. As if there had ever been any other choice. He would never leave Natalie in here alone.

At the reception desk, he pushed through all the papers, frantically searching for a directory. To his relief, he soon found one, and he flipped the pages until he found a listing for Natalie’s company.

“Fifth floor!” he shouted to the empty lobby, and took off running for the stairwell. He didn’t even bother trying the elevators. The lights were all off, so the building still had no power. Even if the power did come back on, he wouldn’t have wanted to chance it. The last thing he needed right now was to get stuck in an elevator, powerless to do anything to stop the bomb. He took the stairs three at a time, his heart pounding with adrenaline as he climbed. He hoped Natalie was still at her office. If she had left already, he had no way of finding her. His cell phone wasn’t working in here. Every time he glanced at, he saw the tiny “No Signal” message at the top of the screen. He realized at some point that the Dark Warriors had probably put a spell over the building to interrupt cell service and keep Natalie from calling for help from her cell phone. They had done their best to cut off all communication with the outside world. He was just glad she had managed to get a message to him before everything in here had gone into blackout mode.

The stairwell was dark, and even with his keen dragon eyesight Kurt had to strain to see where he was and where he was going. As he passed the fourth floor he felt his heart pounding even harder. Just one more floor to go. He hoped with every fiber of his being that Natalie would be there. She had to make it through this. She just had to! She was too special for this world to lose her so young.

He reached the door that led to the fifth floor and he pushed it open with all his might. To his surprise he was greeted by a flashlight beam aimed right at his face.

“Kurt!”

He choked back a sob at the sound of her voice. “Natalie!”

He held up a hand to try to block the blaring light from the flashlight until she lowered it and he could see her. Her face was so white that it almost looked like it was glowing. “There’s a bomb! But I don’t know where. We have to get out of this building but they’ve put a containment spell on it. And we only have seven minutes until the whole thing blows!” she looked down at her cell phone and shook her head. “Six! Six minutes left.”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” he said, pulling her into his arms. She trembled as he held her, and he could tell she was doing her best to fight back tears. “Calm down. We’re in this together, okay? I don’t know how to get past the containment spells, but I do know where the bomb is.”

Natalie pulled back and looked at him with wide eyes. “You do?” her surprised expression looked almost comical in the strange shadows from her magic ring’s flashlight beam. He wanted to laugh, an absurd reaction considering the dire situation they found themselves in. Perhaps the stress of the moment was making him act slightly ludicrous. Or perhaps he felt like laughing would make it seem like everything really was going to be okay, when Kurt had no way of knowing in that moment whether that was true.

He didn’t have time to philosophize about his feelings right now, though. He wanted to live, and he wanted Natalie to live, and that meant they needed to get moving.

“The twelfth floor men’s restroom,” he said, already turning back toward the stairwell. “I overheard some shifters outside talking about it. That’s where it is. Let’s go!”

But Natalie wasn’t moving. “The twelfth floor? That’s seven flights of stairs from here! We’ll never make it in time by foot.”

“We don’t have a choice! We have to try!” But in his head Kurt was doing the math and realizing to his horror that she was right. There was no way they could get up seven flights of stairs in six minutes. And besides, once they were up to the twelfth floor they still had to get to the bomb and disarm it. He scrunched his eyes closed and rubbed his forehead. He could try shifting into dragon form and flying them up there. But his dragon form was huge, and he wasn’t sure it would fit in the stairwell. He certainly wouldn’t be able to fly at top speed, with all the corners he’d have to go around to continue up the stairs.

“Come on,” Natalie said, her voice sounding suddenly, strangely calm.”

Kurt opened his eyes again and was surprised to see her standing in front of him with a broomstick. “What the…where did you…how…?”

She laughed, and the sound eased some of the tension in the air. “There’s a janitor’s closet right there, next to the stairs. I opened it while you were thinking, in hopes that there would be a broomstick inside. As you can see, there was. It’s not one designed specifically for flying, so it won’t be comfortable. But it’ll do. Magicae volant!”

She pointed her magic ring at the broomstick while speaking the flying spell, and the broomstick immediately began to buzz with energy and hovered a few feet above the ground. Natalie grabbed it and rushed into the stairwell, climbing onto the stick and facing it upward toward the ascending stairs.

“Hop on,” she said. “And hold on tight. It should only take a few minutes to get to the twelfth floor like this.”

“Better than a dragon flying, in this situation,” Kurt said, feeling delirious with relief. Sometimes he completely forgot that wizards could fly, but he had never been so glad that they could. He wrapped his arms around Natalie’s waist and held on tightly as she began zooming forward.

She was right: this broomstick was extremely uncomfortable to ride on. Kurt winced as the long skinny pole bounced beneath him. Most wizard broomsticks had magical padding that felt almost like a seat cushion. This ordinary broomstick had none of that, and with every bounce it rammed into his groin in places he definitely did not want to be rammed. It was their only option, though, so he gritted his teeth and bore the pain. Natalie whipped around the corners of the stairwell at a dizzying speed. They were going so fast that Kurt was surprised they both didn’t go hurtling from the broomstick and smash their skulls open on the concrete stairs.

Somehow, they made it to the twelfth floor in one piece. Natalie was panting hard as she brought the broomstick in for a landing by the twelfth floor doorway. Her face was still pale, and her eyes were full of fear. But she moved with a steady sort of calmness that Kurt admired for someone who knew they had about four minutes standing between them and certain death. They both had to keep this calmness going if they were going to stand a chance of surviving.

Natalie had stepped out of the stairwell and into the twelfth floor of the building. She was waving her magic ring’s flashlight beam back and forth, taking in their surroundings.

“This looks like it’s set up roughly the same as the fifth floor,” she said. “Which means the restrooms should be this way.”

She took off running to the left, and Kurt followed her, hoping she was right. About a minute later, they came across the bathrooms. Natalie stormed into the men’s restroom with Kurt hot on her heels, and then they both stopped short, gawking at the monstrosity in front of them.

Somehow, the lights in here were still shining, albeit dimly. On the countertop between the two sinks, a large, purplish black sphere was suspended in midair. The sphere was about the size of a beach ball, and looked slick and slimy, almost as though it was made of oil. Every now and then, sparks flew from it and landing on the counter, glowing for a moment before sizzling out. Above the sphere, in shimmering black numbers, a magical countdown clock hovered. The clock had just counted down to below the three minute mark.

“Shit!” Natalie said, the panic rising in her voice again. “I have no idea what kind of bomb this is. It doesn’t look like anything I’ve ever seen before. How am I supposed to defuse it in less than three minutes if I don’t even know what it is! If you perform the wrong defusing spell on a magical bomb you can cause it to detonate early.”

“Calm down!” Kurt said sharply. His tone of voice had the desired effect. It cut through Natalie’s panic, at least for a moment. She turned to look at him with terror-filled eyes. He knew he only had seconds before he would lose her to her panic again. “I know what kind of bomb this is.”

“You do?” Her eyes widened in confused disbelief.

“I do. Or, I at least know the spell to defuse it. I heard the Dark Warriors outside talking about a farina spell.”

Natalie scrunched up her face. “Farina? That’s…that’s a flour spell. And it’s very difficult to do. But why would you need a flour spell for a…”

She trailed off squeezing her eyes shut as she thought. Kurt tried to remain calm himself, not saying anything as the countdown clock ticked below the two minute mark. For the first time in his life, he truly thought he might die. It was an odd sensation. All of his senses seemed to sharpen. The sights, sounds, and smells around him seemed unnaturally strong. His heart pounding in his chest seemed to slow, until it felt like it was only pounding out a beat every three seconds or so. Every second felt like an eternity, and still, Natalie thought. The clock had ticked below one minute remaining when she suddenly opened her eyes and raised her head.

“Of course! It’s an oleum bomb! It can’t be deactivated, necessarily. But its impact can be nullified.”

“Um…” Kurt said, not sure what she meant by that but wishing she would hurry up and nullify the bomb, if that’s what she wanted to call it.

Natalie was raising her magic ring already, and Kurt could see her hand was shaking. “Magicae farina!” she yelled, her hand pointing toward the swirling sphere. In response to her spell, a few puffs of white powder flew from her ring.

“Damn it!” she yelled. “That will never be enough.”

The clock ticked toward forty-five seconds remaining. “Hurry!” Kurt said. But he was already giving in to the idea that this was going to be his last forty-five seconds of life. He moved toward Natalie to pull her into his arms. If they were going to die, they should at least do so in each other’s arms. But Natalie shooed him away.

“I just have to concentrate enough to make a lot of flour,” Natalie said, speaking so quickly that Kurt almost couldn’t understand what she was saying. “It’s an oil bomb, made with magical oil that will explode like crazy thanks to a magic spark that goes off at the end of the countdown. The spark is indestructible, but the flour can soak up the oil making the spark virtually harmless. But you need a lot of flour. More than just a puff. Ack! I need to concentrate!”

Kurt forced himself to watch Natalie and not the clock. He at least wanted to be looking at her when he died.

“Magicae farina! Magicae farina! Magicae farina!”

Natalie’s eyes were shut tightly in concentration. The first time she yelled the words, only a puff of flour appeared again. But the second time, a cup or so seemed to shoot from Natalie’s magic ring. The third time, Kurt’s eyes widened as about twenty pounds of flour shot from her ring.

“Magicae farina! Magicae farina! Magicae farina!”

Kurt watched in astonishment as an unbelievable amount of flour filled the air. It began to accumulate on the counter and grow into a giant pile. The sphere now looked white in color instead of purplish-black. It was coated with flour, which Natalie frantically continued to shoot from her ring, her eyes still shut.

“Magicae farina! Magicae farina! Magicae farina!”

Flour filled the air, making the room look hazy and white. And then, a horribly loud buzzer sounded off. Kurt covered his ears and turned to look at the countdown clock, which was now displaying a string of zeroes. Before he could register what was happening, the buzzer stopped and was replaced by a thick boom. Kurt heard Natalie scream, and he felt himself flying backwards against the wall. A sharp pain shot through his left shoulder, and he was sure this was the end. They were too late. They hadn’t had enough time to neutralize the bomb. He covered his head with his arms and waited for the boom to turn into an all-out explosion.

But no all-out explosion ever came. Instead, things became eerily quiet. Kurt finally looked up and looked around. Every surface in the bathroom was covered in white flour—the walls, the ceiling, and the floor. By the sink, some of the flour looked slightly purple. Globs of sticky, purple-gray flour appeared randomly all over the bathroom. One glob had landed on Kurt’s arm, and he gingerly poked at it. It was hot, but it hadn’t burned his arm. Likely because there was a thick, insulating layer of flour already on his arm.

The countdown clock had disappeared, but the lights were still on, Kurt turned to look for Natalie, fear filling him as he searched the white haze. Was she alright? He saw her sitting up then, looking at her arms which were also covered with flour and sticky purple goop. She looked over at him uncertainly and then smiled.

“We did it,” she said, and a tear trickled down her cheek, leaving a soggy trail in the flour. “We stopped the bomb.”

She struggled to her feet, white clouds of flour flying around her as she did.

“You did it,” Kurt said, standing and rushing over to pull her into his arms. “You managed to do the flour spell and neutralize the oil. That was all you.”

But Natalie shook her head. “No, we did this together. If you hadn’t come to save me, I never would have known where the bomb was or had a clue about how to defuse it. You’re more of a hero here than I am.”

Kurt laughed and held her tighter, then pulled back to kiss her flour filled face. “I don’t want to be a hero. I just want to be your man.”

Natalie grinned. “I think that can be arranged.” Then her face turned serious. “Listen, about moving to Torch Lake. I know it means a lot to you, and I’ve been thinking—”

“Shh,” Kurt interrupted, putting a finger to her lips. “We’ll talk about logistics later. Right now, I just want you to know that all that really matters is that we’re together. You’re my lifemate. I just want to be with you, come what may. We’ll figure it out in a way that’ll make us both happy, I promise.”

“How can you promise that?”

Kurt shrugged. “I can promise it because if there’s one thing I know for sure, it’s that my love for you is stronger than anything. There’s no obstacle that could be put in our way that my love would not overcome. I’m going to spend my lifetime showing you that.”

He bent down to give her a quick kiss, and then laughed.

“What’s so funny?” Natalie asked.

“You should see yourself. You’re completely caked in white. It looks so ridiculous.”

Natalie laughed. “You’re one to talk. You should go look in the mirror.”

“I would, if it wasn’t also covered in flour.”

Natalie laughed harder. “What a mess!”

Kurt grinned and leaned in to give her a quick kiss, overcome with joy that they were both still alive.

“What a beautiful, beautiful mess,” he said.