… because I need to be held accountable for actual word count…

“What is it?” Xavier asked.
Selene raised a hand to silence him–seeking the origin of the magic. Young, and desperate; she’d almost forgotten how that tasted, how bittersweet it all was, that mixture of bewilderment and pain that came just after the Fall.
West–in the ruined blocks that had been the Great Department Stores and the Great Hotels before the war, their names like a litany of what had been lost, the Printemps, the Galeries Lafayette, the Hotel Scribe, the Grand Hotel… West–where still stood the House of Lazarus. And, if she could feel it, so could every other Fallen in the vicinity; and perhaps their pet mages, too, if they had the right artefacts or were pumped-up on dust.
Needless to say, Selene did not approve of dust.
“We don’t have much time,” she told Xavier. “He’s in trouble.”