The orbs responded before my mind understood: one slammed to the rooftop and the other two darted beneath Maddie.

I shouted her name and lunged to grab her arm. I missed, but one orb caught the small of her back while the other pressed between her shoulder blades.

She stopped there, balanced in mid-air, lying on her back six stories above the ground. If she jerked in either direction, she’d fall. My heart pounded, my throat clenched, but my mind slipped gears. I didn't know what to say, what to think; she'd just jumped off a roof but she looked calm and controlled.

Then she opened her right hand to reveal one of her mozzies. "She stings."

"Maddie, don't." I didn't know what she was doing, but I knew it wasn't good. "Stop. Whatever the hell you're--just stop!"

The mozzy took flight toward me, and my orbs couldn’t bat it away--I needed all three to keep Maddie from falling. So I watched helplessly as the bug flew at my face. It disappeared around the side of my head. The buzzing sounded in my left ear, then a faint breeze touched the fine hairs on my neck.

"Goddammit, Maddie," I said, a nauseated bubble in my stomach. "I’m going to drop you."

"No you aren't," she said.

The mozzy circled toward my face.

"PJ killed him," I said, almost pleading, as the orbs shifted in response to minor adjustments in Maddie’s balance. "PJ made him kill himself. I saw him--I saw his face, I saw--"

My throat closed convulsively when the mozzy landed on my cheek. I felt the drag of barbed feet across my skin. I wanted to brush the bug away, but if I moved, it would sting. The mozzy crawled to my lips, then across my nose to my right eye.

My eyelid snapped shut. Segmented antennae scraped my eyelashes.

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Hanging in the air, six stories above concrete, Maddie twitched. Her weight shifted and slipped. The orbs spun and flattened and barely caught her.

I couldn't help myself; I reached for her and the mozzy flashed from my eye to the inside of my wrist and stung.

I've looked into this. There’s a whole scale of insect stings, called the Schmidt Sting Pain Index:

1.8: A sting that feels like someone fired a staple into your cheek.

2.0: A sting that feels like getting your hand mashed in a revolving door.

3.0: A sting that feels like using a drill to excavate an ingrown toenail.

4.0: A sting that feels like sticking your tongue in an electric socket.

4.4: A sting that feels like walking across broken glass with a 3-inch rusty nail in your heel.

The mozzy that had stung my neck earlier, on the second floor of Maddie's art building, I’m scoring at around 4. About as bad as a scorpion, according to that scale. Enough to stop you cold, a flare of pain like piercing your ear with a hole-punch.

The sting on my wrist rose to a whole different level. More like a tarantula hawk wasp: immediate excruciating pain that shuts down your ability to do anything but scream.

The mozzy stung the inside of my left wrist, then flew in a short loop and stung the skin between my ring finger and pinky.

I screamed. If the orbs hadn’t adjusted themselves without my conscious control, Maddie would’ve fallen. If every hidden chamber of my heart didn't want her alive, if the orbs didn't response to my subconscious needs--she would've died. Instead, her faith in me, her knowledge of me, was rewarded. She wavered in the air ... then the orbs steadied her and she opened her hand again, and another mozzy flew at me.

"You killed him," she said. "You and Rachel. You killed your best friend, your oldest friend."

The second mozzy landed on my thigh and stung through my jeans.

I fell to my knees and waves of darkness boiled at me. But if I fainted, the orbs would drop Maddie. So I focused. I wept. I forced the orbs steady.

"I never told PJ about the Rock," Maddie said. "He knew about Dewey, and now he knows about Shandra, but I didn’t tell him that you’re all bound together, that the Rock is the mother lode of actives."

The mozzy crawled a few inches. My vision feathered and dimmed.

"But now, Lark--you killed my brother." She blew at the third mozzy in her palm, a gentle kiss of breath. "I’m going to tell him everything."

Through the orbs, I felt her pivot. She grabbed one orb in each hand and I drew her onto the roof.

I saw her, dimly, standing over me. The tunnel of my vision narrowed and darkened. The orbs wobbled back to me, spent and weak, and lodged in my chest.

Maddie’s shoes filled my vision. The world spun: clouds, roof, shoes, clouds, roof, shoes.

She rolled me to the edge of the roof.

Then she rolled me off.