Free Through Time-Whiplash by Claudy Conn Page A

summon enough strength to jump shift away.
    “Damn his soul to bloody damn hell!” Trevor shouted as he lost the prince to the winds.
    “Let’s follow him,” suggested Jazz.
    “So we shall, for he can’t get far, but we need a plan. Can’t just rush after him willy nilly. We have to put some cunning into this and out-think him.” He gazed at her, and their eyes met.
    She felt a bolt of sensation sweep through her and tried to make light of what she was feeling by saying, “What?”
    “You have power, little Fios,” he said with a touch of admiration. “That Fios I mentioned earlier—BJ, who is married to the Druid Daremont—she, too, is a slammer.”
    “Yeah, well, there you go. Told ya I had power,” she said with a short laugh. “Now what?”
    “You are always asking that, and I have told you, some matters must be worked out … played by your ear, as you humans say.”
    She laughed. “Not by your ear, just by ear.”
    “Just so.” He put up his chin.
    “You are a Royal Seelie, and according to you, you have just gone through a war with the Dark Fae and then tracked Pestale and could have put him to death, so, yeah, you may not realize it yet, but you got the answers ,” Jazz said, partially because she believed this and partially because she knew he needed to be reminded of it. He might be a Fae, but he was also a male.
    He eyed her for a long moment and said, “What we really need is Nuad and his Golden Net.”
    “Who is that, and what is a Golden Net?”
    “Nuad is our Chief Tracker, and the Golden Net is a netting made of enchanted gold thread. No Fae, Seelie or Unseelie, can escape it. They can’t shift out of it. It is how we transport an unruly Fae who has broken the law—not that we actually have any unruly Fae, if you don’t count the traitor Gaiscioch,” he mused out loud.
    “Trevor,” Jazz said, surprising herself, for his name came easily, “if the orb allowed him to escape the Dark Realm, why then, did the orb bring him here? Why can he only shift in spurts? Why can’t he go back to the Dark Realm and start over?”
    “It is called ‘jump shifting’, and I can only speculate that the orb is not responding to him accurately, either of its own free will—”
    “Its own free will?” she cut in, her brows arched. “We are talking about an object, an artifact—how can it have free will?”
    “Seelie Fae Relics and Hallows take on a life of their own through time. They evolve because they are infused with powerful magic. Magic begets more magic, and they get stronger, they initiate their own divine purpose, they often take sides, and they have preferences.” He shrugged. “A human would say, it is what it is … at least I was told that humans often say that.”
    She laughed. “You were told?”
    “Again, my friend Red—Princess Royce. Besides, you have said it, and it made sense to me … sort of. Red has often tried to make me see there is more to your race than I have observed. I am beginning to agree that some of you … can be endearing.”
    Jazz grinned. “Some of us, eh?”
    He ignored this and said grimly, “What I have to do now is find a way to call to the orb with the hope that it will be able to link to me, and perhaps use it to return him to the Dark Realm, and then us to our time period,” he answered.
    “I might be able to help you with that,” Jazz said.
    He snorted. “ You —help? You are not even Fae. Why would it respond in any manner to you?”
    “Hey, who just sent that Dark Prince flying?” she countered.
    He considered this. “Indeed, little Fios, you have a formidable power, but you have no connection to our Relics. I, on the other hand, have the ability to locate Seelie Fae Relics.”
    “I can locate them when they are near because they in turn respond to me.” She eyed him and said, “We Fae seers have lots of abilities. Not all of us have the same ones. I have three very important ones. Speed—I can be very fast. I am a