"Are we close yet?" Hanji wheezed from his flying carpet a few meters away. Wind whipped his hair and rattled the rods, cups, and crystals that dangled from his over-sized backpack. It was too heavy for him, if his pained expression was anything to go by.

Chan was also pressed flat against the carpet, Mihn possibly heavier on his back than the backpack was on Hanji’s. However, unlike Hanji, Chan was absolutely delighted.

"I swear on everything unholy, if he asks that one more time I will rearrange his intestines with my toes." Mihn's threat was a low growl, her hands curled beneath Chan’s armpits to clutch at his shoulders.

The warmth in Chan’s heart came out as a quick laugh. He took pity on the little witch and called out, "Almost!" 

Hanji looked like a confused puppy, all big eyes and scrunched brow. "But we passed through the barrier already, and--oh."

"Oh?" Chan prompted. 

Hanji closed his eyes. "I feel it. The lure. Damn, that's strong."

"That's what we told you, witch," Mihn spat as a shiver rippled from her neck to her tailbone. Chan felt the entire progression all along his own spine that was pressed up against her. It almost elicited his body to make its own shiver.

"Do you feel it too?" Chan asked curiously. "You didn't feel it from so far away earlier."

Mihn put her lips right to Chan's ear. "I think I did, actually. I just didn't realize it until we were right on top of it in the forest. With the witch pointing it out, I can tell." She sounded extremely grumpy that she had to give Hanji even the slightest compliment. She certainly wasn't going to let the witch overhear it.

Her warm breath sent goosebumps erupting all along Chan’s neck. "What does it feel like?" Chan asked partly because he wanted to know–someone as deeply unmagical as himself had never felt magic before–and partly because Mihn's soft voice went straight to his brain like a drug.

Mihn hummed. Chan felt it in his own ribs. "Like pond scum against the back of my eyeballs. And a feeling like I forgot something really important. As we get closer, the pond scum starts dripping down my throat."

Chan shuddered in sympathy. Right now, he was extra glad he’d rejected the offered magical education. "Does all magic feel like that?"

Soft and chilly, Mihn’s nose nudged the shell of Chan’s ear as she shook her head. "Just this one. Other spells have different…textures."

Chan frowned. Magical affinity cropped up in members of every race, some more than others. Gumihos, animal shifters, demons, and selkies had magic running through their veins as a matter of course. Without magic, a 100 pound woman could not transform into a 5 pound rabbit or a 500 pound bear. (These would be two different women of course. No shifter had multiple animal forms. That would be ludicrous.)

Humans, gnomes, goblins were a few of the races that had a large percentage of un-magical members. Chan and Hanji were the perfect examples: two humans on the opposite sides of the bell curve. (Unless Hanji had simply attacked his magical studies with determination and grit, with no magical intuition to help him along. Some witches were like that.)

From what others had told Chan, an affinity for magic was like an instinct, a knack. A tingle in your toes and a feeling in your gut. Mihn was a human. If she’d had those stirrings as a child, her grade school teachers would have put her into Beginner’s Magic. There, she’d be taught how to manage the tingle, make it grow or fade. 

But Mihn was the most militant magic-hater he knew. Why would she have developed her magical sense if she wanted nothing to do with magic? Had something happened in the middle of her studies that had soured her to magic? But even then, she would know how to dampen her magical senses.

Chan kneaded the question in his mind like a particularly stubborn knotted muscle. Then he sighed, throwing it into the massive, dark cave in the corner of his mind. It could join the other mysteries and paradoxes that surrounded Mihn. Chan knew better than to ask her directly: Mihn was tighter-lipped about her past than a mute spy.

Mihn shifted atop Chan, rubbing her forehead on his shoulder like a cat. No, rubbing her eyes. 

Chan wished he could see her better. He had to extrapolate her position from the pressure along his back and legs. “Is that lure magic bothering you a lot?” Concern dripped from his words.

“No. Yeah. I can’t ignore it with the witch right here,” she grumbled.

Chan cast his gaze out. They had already soared over the forest and river and grasslands and were swerving around the mountains. They weren’t traveling as high as they had earlier, and as Headquarters zipped by beneath them, Chan easily saw the laughing fox face painted on Injae’s motorcycle seat.  

Chan was following Hanji at this point, as Injae hadn’t told them where she was planning to take the lure. But Hanji kept making little course-corrections, clearly feeling the lure’s magic.

“I’m sure we’re close. Then Hanji will neutralize it and you’ll feel better.” Chan stroked the top of Mihn’s head awkwardly, his partner’s face still buried in the back of his shoulder. Her chin was digging painfully into his shoulder blade. He didn’t say anything.

“Don’t talk to me like I’m a sniveling child,” Mihn snapped. She didn’t jerk her head away from his hand, though, and Chan tucked the little show of trust deep into the gilded corners of his heart.

The two carpets and three humans zoomed over steadily drying terrain. Grasses turned yellow and brown, trees transitioned from straight, tall pines and birches to the gnarled forms of solitary mesquites and acacias. This was the habitat of giant scorpions, griffins, two-headed ostriches, dragons, and manticores. None were in sight, but a wide swath of downed grass showed where the unicorns had thundered through.

“Is that it?” Hanji’s voice startled Chan from his survey. He slid his gaze along Hanji’s outstretched arm that was pointing to a dot a half mile ahead hovering far above them. Below the dot was a mass of off-white bodies that even from this distance looked frenzied.

It would be all hands on deck once the lure was neutralized. All the unicorns would be suffering from exhaustion, fatigue, dehydration and injuries.

“That’s it,” Chan said matter-of-factly. “Our boss took the lure on a flying carpet.”

“OK. Wow, I see what you mean. Those animals are really…out of their minds.”

They soared upward, the winds growing fiercer as they ascended. Plastered together as they were, Chan felt Mihn tense as they approached Injae. Being so close to that pond-scum feeling must be pretty rotten. He patted Mihn’s hand soothingly.

Mihn was not soothed. "Injae!" she bellowed, nearly rupturing Chan’s eardrum. Chan jerked so hard he would have fallen off the carpet if Mihn’s weight hadn’t held him down. “Move that thing over there!" Her flapping hand was a blur in the corner of Chan’s vision. "The herd is trampling a griffin nest!”

How did Mihn know that?

Chan looked down. From this height, the shifting mass of horseflesh obscured everything. If there was a griffin down there, he couldn't see it. But he believed Mihn. Griffins made nests of twigs–like the half-falcons they were–on the ground–like the half-lions they were.  At least it wasn't birthing season. There should be no griffin cubs in the nest.

He and Mihn were below Injae’s carpet, its rough bottom rippling magically. Unsurprisingly, Mihn’s roar carried over distance and howling winds, and Injae veered east. The herd followed.

Injae’s windswept black hair came into view as Chan urged his carpet level with hers, Hanji keeping pace. The bag sat, unassuming and dirty, by Injae’s crossed feet.

“Is this an acceptable spot, Mihn?” Injae asked seriously. Her nose was pink and her cheeks were chapped from being in the howling wind for so long. She was no less beautiful for it, simply more wild.

Chan felt Mihn’s nod against his head.

“Good.” Injae turned to the witch bobbing in the stiff wind. "I appreciate you coming, Hanji. I know you don't often leave your shop."

“Don’t mention it.” Hanji scooched his carpet closer, until it overlapped with Injae’s. He stretched out a single finger and tapped the lure. The bundle made no move, but Hanji acted like it had grown slobbery jaws and bit him. 

“Ah!” He jerked his hand back, shaking it out. “That is a nasty piece of work. Actually–” Hanji's lips pinched together and he wiggled beneath his backpack urgently, like a rabbit trying to escape a trap. 

“Actually what?” Injae said warily. 

Hanji gave up wiggling, turning limpid eyes on the other three. “Actually, that lure might be on the brink of full entropy. But I can’t find out without my materials. And I need space to work. Let’s land. Quickly.”

Listening to the witch, Chan felt like a child in a university classroom. 

Mihn sounded like a university student at a protest. “No landing! You want to be trampled? Or…” Her voice lost its belligerence but none of its volume as she continued. “That’s a great idea! Go ahead and land, witch.”

“Mihn,” Chan chided with a giggle. He twisted to see Mihn’s wicked smirk up close and personal. She glanced at him, practically cheek-to-cheek, her eyes sparkling.

“Unless you have something in that bag to keep the unicorns away from the lure while you work on it, I’m afraid going to the ground is impossible,” Injae told Hanji, completely ignoring the stack of Rangers.

Sweat was beading on Hanji’s brow. Panic radiated from him: a rabbit unable to escape the snare. “You don’t understand. I think that thing is about to explode!”