The gravel on top of the Epic Center roof crunched under Reena’s tennis shoes as she crouched below the line of the concrete ledge that lined the perimeter. It blocked some of the wind too.

Before her, the bristled red panda had taken two steps toward Mica and her proffered pickled ginger. So, red pandas did eat pickled ginger. Who knew?

Mental note. More research.

How was she going to do this? She was hidden now, but the instant she rushed the little creature, it would run. It would jump on the ledge and prance away, and Mica? Well, Mica wasn’t exactly the most coordinated person in the world. Actually, other than Jim, Mica was the clumsiest person Reena had ever met.

The instant Mica pursued the red panda, she’d fall off the building.

So startling it was a no go.

Reena paused, watching in silence as the little red panda eagerly ate the strip of pickled ginger Mica offered. The bristling of its fur calmed, and Mica cooed and clapped her hands joyfully.

“Isn’t that tasty?” Mica laughed. “I knew you’d like it.”

The red panda ate some more, happily munching away. It stood on its back paws and used both front paws to shove more ginger in its mouth.

So much for what I know. Reena smirked to herself.

The little panda was so focused on Mica and its pickled ginger treat, maybe it wouldn’t notice Reena sneaking up behind it now.

Reena crept around the corner and slid toward the happily snacking red panda, its pink fur no longer bristled.

“You are so cute,” Mica was saying, her voice muffled by the wind. “I don’t know where you came from, but I hope you stick around. If you stick around I’ll smuggle you as much pickled ginger as I can sneak out under Uncle Fox’s nose.”

Mica kept babbling.

She did that with animals. But then she did that with people too. If the average female woman had 50,000 words to speak in a day as the old research study declared, Mica had twice that.

The gravel crunched and rustled, but the red panda didn’t notice. It was too focused on Mica and her constant chatter.

A perfect distraction.

This is going to work! It’s really going to work!

Reena crept closer. She brought her backpack around and unzipped it quietly. All she’d have to do is grab the little red panda by the back of its neck and shove it in her bag. Mica would help her get it closed, and then they could go home.

Easy peasy, lemon squeezy.

She was three feet away. The red panda hadn’t taken its eyes off Mica yet, and Mica gave it the last of the pickled ginger.

It’s now or never.

Reena closed her eyes and calmed her nerves. Months and months earlier, Barb had coached her through an obstacle course at Peregrine HQ. Precise motion was directly proportional to sufficient oxygen. Most people didn’t breathe deeply enough, and that couldn’t be the case with a Peregrine Agent in the field.

Peregrine Agents couldn’t make mistakes.

She inhaled. Deeply.

She exhaled, long and slow.

And she opened her eyes to focus on her target, the cheerful little red panda with its twitching pink-and-maroon striped tail.

Reena lunged.

She seized the scruff at the back of the red panda’s neck—and time stopped. As though the world had frozen mid-spin. The wind disappeared. Mica disappeared, and so did Epic Center.

Reena’s vision blurred and jolted violently, and she was kneeling in a darkened throne room. Once elegant marble floor tiles cracked and shattered, stained with dark blood and strewn with glass that reflected the light like shards of broken mirrors.

The air froze her lungs. It smelled of copper and burning wires and death. Her toes and fingers felt numb, stiff, the throb of a deep wound somewhere in her chest aching.

What is this? What’s happening?

Before her, in the dark, an ornate throne stood on a raised platform. It sparkled in spite of the shadows, studded with diamonds, but no one sat on it.

A hand on her shoulder.

Reena turned her gaze and looked up into the terrified features of a face she knew well. The face had watched over their dining room table at home as long as Reena had been alive.

Eedo Hani? Reena whispered, her voice echoing in the dark.

What was her father’s sister doing here? The woman’s mouth moved, but no sound came out. Blood dribbled down the side of her face, trickling between the short twists of her dark hair.

Light, blinding light, seared Reena’s eyes, and the whole room shook with a distant explosion. Jagged sections of the ceiling tumbled through the air and erupted against the broken tile floor in showers of shrapnel.

Her father’s sister scooped her up and carried her close to her chest.

But how is that possible? She can’t carry me. Reena swallowed the panic rising in her throat as the whole world shook and fell apart around them. And she’s dead. She died years ago.

Reena glanced down at her chest where the low ache of hemorrhaging had begun to grow cold. Her chest felt hard, like stone. The wound over her heart had begun to solidify, turning from flesh into rock.

What kind of nightmare is this?

A powerful thrust launched her backward so hard that she crashed against the copper-plated roof of the Epic Center pyramid. She gasped for breath like she hadn’t tasted oxygen in years.

She was back in Wichita. Back on top of Epic Center.

But the little red panda was gone.

Before her, on the roof of Epic Center stood a sparkling, pink dragon. Thirty feet long from the tip of its snout to the end of its spike-covered tail. Its tail thrashed against the blue sky, and it opened its crocodile mouth to roar over the deafening wind.

Reena gawked until her mouth felt dry.

What was this?

What had happened?

Where had the red panda gone?

What was that vision?

The dragon arched its neck and shrieked, a sound somewhere between the distant rumble of thunder and the high-pitched dissonance of the wind chimes on their porch.

It shook its rhinoceros-like body, scattered iridescent scales along its spine and sides and flanks sparkling like pink prisms in the sunlight. And it snapped open leathery pink wings that stretched sixty feet wide, beating the sky.

The force of the unveiling wings threw Reena on her back again. And Mica’s screech of terror on the other side of the roof made her heart clench in horror.

The dragon had just knocked Mica off the Epic Center roof.