Tally decided on a new plan.

She stabbed a button on her crash bracelet. Its signal spread through the smart plastic on her face and hands at the speed of sound, the clever molecules unhooking from each other, her ugly mask exploding in a puff of dust to reveal the cruel beauty underneath. She blinked her eyes hard, popping out the contacts and exposing her wolfen, coal black irises to the winter cold. She felt her tooth-caps loosen, and spat them at the boy's feet, returning his smile with unveiled fangs.

The whole transformation had taken less than a second, barely time for his expression to crumble.

She smiled. "Buzz off, ugly. And you"—she turned to the Smokey—"take your hands out of your pockets."

The girl swallowed, spreading her arms out to either side.

Tally felt the sudden rush of eyes drawn to her cruel features, sensed the crowd's dazzlement at the pulsing tattoos that webbed her flesh in scintillating black lace. She finished the arrest script: "I don't want to hurt you, but I will if I have to."

"You won't have to," the girl said calmly, then she did something with her hands, both thumbs turning upward.

"Don't even think…," Tally started, then she saw too late the bulges sewn into the girl's clothes—straps like a bungee jacket's, now moving of their own accord, cinching themselves around her shoulders and thighs.

"The Smoke lives," the girl hissed.

Tally reached out …

…just as the girl shot into the air like a stretched-taut rubber band let go from the bottom. Tally's hand passed through empty space. She stared upward, open-mouthed. The girl was still climbing. Somehow, the bungee jacket's battery had been rigged to throw her into the air from a standstill.

But wouldn't she just fall straight back down?

Tally spotted movement in the dark sky. From the edge of the forest, two hoverboards zoomed over the bash, one ridden by a Smokey dressed in crude skins, the other empty. At the top of the girl's arc, he reached out, hardly slowing as he pulled her from midair onto the riderless board.