Jason's cheek had split, showing one pale molar through the red meat of his face, but it was undoubtedly him. He was out cold, but at least he had a pulse, possibly because Cyrus had had a bad angle. "He's one of my students."

Cyrus looked down at the gun still grasped in Jason's fingers. "How bad a teacher are you?" he asked incredulously.

"Not this bad!" I said grimly, as two more indistinct shapes ran for us from the front of the house. I hoped it was the two who had been in the backyard earlier, because otherwise the odds were just getting ridiculous. "Dammit!"

My pulse sped, pumping adrenaline through me as I tried and failed to get my shields back up. Cyrus turned and fired, emptying both his guns to slow them down. The sound of gunfire was deafening, and through the tingling, almost-silence afterwards, I watched his hands jerk the clip out of the Clock, grab another from a pocket, and shove it in. "My last," he told me tersely.

I nodded, having looted Jason for a couple of guns, one of which I handed to Cyrus. Jason wasn't wearing much of a potion collection, and what he did have was standard-issue crap that wouldn't help with industrial-strength shields. But he was carrying half a dozen knives, all of which I sent flying at the approaching figures.

Normally, I wouldn't have been able to control another mage's weapons. They are spelled to respond only to the caster to prevent exactly this sort of thing. But Jason had had problems with the spell to animate them and had asked for my help. We'd had fun layering on the charms, spelling his daggers to find and target enemies on their own and to slice through most shields. Yet the dark-haired girl who rippled into view a moment later batted them away with a gesture.

Amelie had always been good with counterspells, I thought numbly, and sent the garden hose coiling through the air toward her, wrapping her up and throwing her to the ground. "They're all my students," I told Cyrus. "Don't kill them!"

"No problem," he said sarcastically, firing the borrowed gun uselessly into the other mage's shields. It was Colin—a redhead with a talent for finding trouble. Only this time, he seemed to be more intent on causing it. "Think they'll do us the same favor?"

A knife sliced by my ear and embedded itself in the side of the house. "Doubt it," I said. "Run!"

We skirted the house, my head pounding with every beat of my heart, just as Amelie expanded her shields. They snapped the hose like a weak rubber band, and she jumped back to her feet. Colin launched the rest of his arsenal at us and I heard several knives bite into stucco, but most took the corner just fine. I concentrated and finally got a shield of sorts back up before we were impaled by anything, but it wouldn't hold. Especially not when stretched to cover two.

Colin and Amelie followed us into the backyard, silently ordering their weapons to continue the beating. My shields shuddered with every punch. I could measure how long they would last in seconds, and I really doubted I'd get them back up a third time. And when they were gone, so were my options.

Cyrus glanced at me. "Can't you do something?"

"I'm thinking!" It didn't help that Jason's spell was still stuttering along my nerves like a persistent toothache, pounding in my skull, drumming on my bones.

"You're the teacher," he said impatiently. "Surely you have a few surprises you haven't shared with them yet!"

"Yeah. But they're all deadly."

"And that's a problem because?"

"I don't want to kill my students!"

"Too bad they don't share that sentiment. And I'm not dying to keep your graduating class intact! Either deal with this, or I will."

"There has to be an explanation," I said desperately.

"Maybe, but we won't live long enough to hear it if we don't do something!"

He had a point. We'd cleared the backyard, avoiding the kitchen door, where flames and black smoke were now billowing skyward, and started up the living room side of the house. Only to find yet another of my students—a lanky African American named Kyle—waiting for us. He added his weapons to the melee, and my shields gave up the ghost. We were officially out of time.

Damn. My insurance agent was going to have a heart attack.

I used the last of my energy to cast a spell that took a chunk out of the living room wall. We stumbled through the opening, and Cyrus pushed the TV cabinet across the breach. We ran for the dining room, and I scrambled onto the table. A ceiling joist had partially come loose, with one end resting on the table while the other remained attached to the second floor. It was as wide as a balance beam and sloped upward at a fairly gentle angle. It wasn't stairs, but it would do. And if anyone was above, they wouldn't be watching a hole in the floor.

"Come on!" I said.

Cyrus pulled my stolen gun from my jeans, keeping a wary eye on the door to the living room. "You first."

I somehow hauled myself to the second floor—or what was left of it—with one leg constantly threatening to buckle under me. "Get up here!" I whispered as he picked up the dining table and wedged it into the door behind him.

"You'll need a distraction or you'll never bunch them up. I'll stay here." I started to argue, but weapons rattled against the other side of the table, shaking the heavy wood, and I decided we didn't have the time. I turned and limped as fast as possible for the bathroom.

It was a mess, with gaping holes in the walls, ceiling and floor. Luckily, my coat hadn't slipped through any of them. It was still lying where I'd dropped it, now water-spotted as well as stiff with dirt, over by the commode.

I edged cautiously around the shallow ridge of cracked tile that was all that remained of the floor. Adrenaline prickled on the surface of my skin, urging me to go faster, faster, while my heart hammered in my rib cage and my mouth was metallic with panic. It took every bit of training I had to proceed carefully, to stop my hands from trembling, to focus. Since my mother's death, there were a total of two people in the world I really gave a damn about. And one of them was currently facing a group of soon-to-be war mages with an empty gun.

I'd almost made it when a row of tile slithered out from under my feet, cascading down into the mess below. I made a wild grab for the toilet to keep from following and my coat slid toward the edge of the hole. I thought I'd lost it, but it hung on a pipe and I was able to snag it with my toe. I grabbed it just as a rainbow of spells exploded below.

A glance through the missing floor showed me only the wrecked kitchen until Cyrus burst in, his hair on fire from a spell that hadn't missed by much. He barricaded the door with the fridge then looked up when I hissed his name. "Go around—get behind them!" he mouthed, gesturing furiously.

His hands were bleeding for some reason, but he was alive. I nodded and dropped him a gun, then started back as fast as possible. I rooted around in my coat as I ran, grabbing things out of the potion belt I usually wore draped low on my hips. It was weighed down with vials, each in a little leather sheath like bullets in a bandolier. Ironically, I'd been lecturing on potions to this very class just last week.

I really hoped they hadn't been listening.

Most new war mages are all about the flash and glitter of a well-flung spell, with respect for deadly human weapons coming in a close second. They deride potions as old-fashioned and bulky, and half carry them only because they're required to do so. But they are a mainstay of a mage's arsenal precisely for times like this.

The ingredients are chosen not, as norms seem to believe, for their own magical properties, but because they are particularly good at catching and holding magical energy. A potion belt is a sort of extra battery pack for a mage: when we're almost exhausted, the spells we've painstakingly captured in these little vials become a priceless commodity. One that younger mages almost never use to its full potential.