Free Time Slipping by Elle Casey Page A

pixie out of the mix and let him fly free of your protection. And my other fae friends need you more than ever, so let’s ramp this up a notch … or eight notches. Let’s do eight. I pictured the green light around my friends growing brighter, thicker, and stronger. I imagined Tim breaking free and his dust flying out in the air behind him. Keep that pixie dust from touching anyone inside the bubble. No pixie dust for anyone. Neutralize it, block it, tamp it down, send it out into the ether. Do whatever is necessary to keep my friends or me from being pixelated. Since my communication with The Green depended on me being able to picture something and not just say it in my head, I then imagined the dust hitting the bad guys and making them sing and dance, and then showed the dust bouncing off the bubble and everyone inside it remaining very sober. I prayed The Green would understand me; now was not the time for me or any of our friends to dance ourselves to death. I’d save that kind of merrymaking for after I spent a week or two with the dragon and was safely home in the Green Forest again.
    I opened my eyes. “Okay, it’s done. You’re out of the bubble.” I pushed the door open and slid out onto the ground. “Be careful, Tim. I don’t want to have to go back to the Green Forest and tell Abby that you were killed in the line of duty.”
    “Never fear, Tim is here,” he said. “And I’m pretty hard to kill if you hadn’t noticed.” He flew off toward the front porch and I walked quickly after him.

Chapter Ten

    IT’S IMPOSSIBLE TO FULLY APPRECIATE a pixie splat until you’ve seen one in person. I’d stood witness to one before but not one with this degree of awesomeness. Tim was zooming out toward his prey one second, and the next, he was flattened like a bug on the windshield of a car going fifty miles an hour. I swear, when he slid down the spell’s barrier, I could hear the squeaking sound of his skin against its smooth surface.
    I ran over and picked him up off the ground, holding him up in front of my face. He was dangling by the back of his tunic, the one part of it that rested between his wings. I was trying not to laugh but wasn’t succeeding very well. “Holy shit, Tim, are you okay? Talk about an epic face plant.”
    His eyes were closed and one wing was slightly bent, but he still managed to speak. “Holy chowder buckets, what did you have for dinner? Anchovies?”
    I shook him a little and breathed out extra hard as I spoke. “Nooo. Doritoooes. Spiiiike fooound ‘em at the reh-heh-hest stop.”
    He opened his eyes and tried to fly out of my grasp, but his one wing was too messed up. He stopped his escape to run his hands over it a little, straightening it out. A small kink remained, but I was pretty sure it was the one from before. When he was done, he hung down, arms and legs dangling toward the ground, his head tilted up to look at me.
    “What now?” I asked.
    “What do you mean, what now? I’m just getting started.”
    “Oh. So you did that on purpose, is that it?” I bit my lip to keep from laughing.
    “Yes, as a matter of fact, I did. Had to figure out if the spell was still in place, didn’t I? Wasn’t vulnerable to a speed entry?”
    “If you say so.”
    He lifted off from my hand and stared at me, hands on his hips. “Listen, elemental, you need to just step back and observe the master at work. No castle gets breached on the first try. Look it up in the history books if you don’t believe me.”
    I looked over at the house and then back at him. “Castle?”
    “Step back and observe, grasshopper. Watch me bring this witch to her knobby, misshapen knees.”
    “Okaaay,” I said, taking a few steps toward the van. “Go on and do your nasty thing, spy master Tim.”
    “Hey!” he whisper-yelled at me. “I told you that information was top secret! What are you doing talking about it out here?”
    “Oops. Sorry.” Like anyone out here gave a flying pixie poop about