Everything, water.

But with gravity and the steep up-and-down terrain dotted with more types of plants than he could ever hope to know, pushing a flow of water overland wouldn’t be the best way to go. Unless . . .

It was risky—it would drain his energy even faster; it would put him in danger of losing his magic altogether—but in the end it would help him the most.

He weighed the options. Chance losing Keko and the Senatus, or chance kissing his water magic good-bye.

It was a no brainer. He was strong. He was centered. He was steadfast. Catching up to Keko would keep her alive, give him the Senatus, and create a better future for Henry. Magic was nothing, in the grand scheme of things. Being Ofarian meant more than magic; Cat Heddig had taught him that. If he had to let it go, so be it. The end absolutely justified the means.

So he became vapor.

The magic tugged hard at his senses and his control, but he took hold of it, quick and firm. His body and belongings divided, dissipated, rising up from the earth. Water to steam. He’d only done this a handful of times in his life—the risks of going to vapor were impressed upon young Ofarians very early—but the skill came back easily. It was the energy he worried about. So what was he doing hovering around navel-gazing for?

He grabbed a gust of wind and rode it. The invisible force yanked him from his hilltop and whisked him northwest. Over the steep drop of the land, across the open space, above the trees. Cutting his pursuit time in half, maybe even more.

Still, he wished he had an air elemental with him to speed things up, to direct traffic so to speak. As it was, he had to ride the existing air currents, expelling even more energy to keep himself on track to follow Keko’s trail.

But that wasn’t even the toughest part. It was keeping himself together. That was the danger of this form. If he spread his vapor too thin there was the threat of it snapping, coming apart. Separating. And if an Ofarian in vapor form lost control of his molecules, too much space coming between them, there was no getting them back together again.

The most tame Ofarian campfire stories described water elementals regaining their bodies after going vapor only to find their magic was gone. The most evil, the most disgusting, had Ofarians coming back into human form without limbs or heads.

That wouldn’t happen to Griffin. He refused to believe it would. He was leader of all Ofarians. And his purpose was paramount. Not even all the powers of the universe—this one and the next—could deny him that. He didn’t fucking care if that was arrogant. He had to believe it. He had to put his trust in it.

As a cloud of steam, he crossed streams and soared over tree canopies, darting through leafy sugar cane farms and scaring feral cats. The drain on his energy taunted him. He could feel it seeping away, his magic and his will squeezing every last bit out of every last drop of strength before he reached for the next. But he was gaining ground. If he was lucky, he’d catch up to Keko before nightfall.

Then all of a sudden he lost the trail, one hill looking too much like the other, the vapor form messing with his awareness. He had to go solid again, had to check the signature tracker, or else he’d be doing even more damage by heading too far in the wrong direction.

He hated to do it, to waste energy on retransformation, knowing he’d have to turn vapor all over again, but he did it, coming back into his body on the edge of ranchland, ten or so cows lingering in the distance. It took longer than he’d thought, and when he swung his pack around his body and ripped open the zipper, the tracker wasn’t fully operational.

He panicked, muttering, “No, no, no! Come on, work!”

He zapped it with more magic, pulling out every last particle of water from its surface and innards. When he turned it on, it took a long time for the screen to flicker into color, even longer for it to register his own signature and the dragging line of Keko’s residual path. The images were patchy, and blinked in and out. The device vibrated oddly, like it was struggling to work. Quickly, he memorized what he saw on the screen. Turned out his aim was only a little bit off, and he made his course correction, committing to memory her new direction.

Next time he came back from either water or vapor form, he feared the sensor would not work at all. Never had any tech felt so unstable or glitchy in his hand. Usually Ofarians had to expend extra energy to transform not-living articles, but he’d never had to worry about tech not working after re-transformation. Perhaps it was the specific mix of magic and technology that Adine had used. Perhaps Ofarian powers didn’t play so nicely with whatever it was that she’d injected into the circuitry.

He’d have to bring that up to her when he returned to San Francisco—no doubt her genius mind could come up with a solution—but for now he had to make the blip of information it fed him count.

He turned to water, and then vapor again, his magic trembling with exertion, and headed back out, riding the air. He zoomed around the dark slashes of twilit trees. He curled around wind-wracked bushes bursting with flowers. He rode as many correct currents as he could, and had to fight against others to keep on his designated path. Push and pull, push and pull.

In the middle of the night he could feel his magic dying. Lowering himself to the ground he assumed solid form. He collapsed in sleep for a few hours, shoveled food in his mouth to build up his strength, and then started out again. Broken daylight just cracked the horizon.

He hadn’t wanted to be right, but he was—the tracker didn’t work at all. But he remembered which direction Keko had gone. And he liked to imagine that he could feel her now, that he was getting close enough for his own Ofarian senses to do their thing.

He also took reassurance in knowing that she had to rest, too, and that she didn’t know she was being followed. If he slept four hours to her seven or eight, and wrung as much water magic out of his body as he could, maybe he could catch up to her when night fell again.

But that single dose of food and brief rest wasn’t nearly enough, and his magic only lasted a few hours. His molecules started to shift midair and he had to drag them along like dead weight. In the last few miles, the burn on his psyche and the ability to hold his form together became simply too much. He had to choose: continue to try to hold his vaporized body together and push just a little farther with no guarantee what it would do to his human form, or turn himself solid and go on by foot.

Before he could decide, he lost his grip on the vapor, the last finger of control releasing the final bit of magic. It happened above ground, before he had a chance to lower himself and find his feet. His body coalesced, its solid form sucking in the vapor, and then he fell, snapping through branches and bouncing off huge, arching banyan tree roots, to hit the ground hard.

He tried to get up but he had hardly any energy left. Breath sawed in and out of his lungs. His sight wavered. Every muscle protested movement, but Griffin ignored every complaint.

He hauled himself up, leaned against the banyan tree and got his bearings, and continued after Keko on foot. Weaving, weak, he needed every yard, every step, every inch. He had to keep moving.

And then, when dusk came, he finally sensed her.

She was a prick of light in the corner of his mind, a low and steady buzz setting into his blood, pulling him forward. Though his feet were leaden, he pushed on because there was a good chance her signature could go cold, and without the tracker he’d lose her.

She was moving slowly, methodically. So carefully that even in his exhausted state, he closed some distance between them as dusk gave way to night. As he drew nearer, the sound of a waterfall grew louder, obliterating the otherwise eerie silence that cloaked Hawaiian nights.