At that, Lily really lost it. She didn’t know what she was shouting, but it probably would have earned her a lifetime of mouth washing with soap. It was only her mentor’s and Sebastian’s strength combined that held her back, and Sebastian finally gave up and grabbed her in a bear hug, pinning her arms to her side so she would stop beating against the bars of the cage.
“Hush, Lil, hush,” he whispered soothingly in her ear. “I got this, just calm down, will you? I've got a plan.” He had to repeat himself several times before his words percolated through her blind rage and grief, but finally she subsided, going limp in his arms.
He carefully set her down and stood up, visibly steeling himself for something. It was only then that she noticed his whole body was shaking and he was covered in sweat. She remembered weeks ago how he’d told her that iron hurt those with any connection to the fae. With the amount of fae magic he used, she wondered how badly his proximity to the iron was hurting him. Based on his body language, quite a bit.
She had no idea what he had planned. Beat his staff on the door until it broke? Normally she would use magic to trip the lock, but everything was made of iron. She wouldn’t be able to get a grip on the latch, much less move it.
Even as the half of her brain still functioning considered escape methods and the other half curled up and cried, Sebastian made his move. Before their very eyes, he walked out of the cage. Its bars passed through his body as if he’d become incorporeal, though he screamed in pain as they touched him, oozing burns appearing on his skin as the air filled with the smell of singed flesh. But in less than a second it was over and he was out, running full tilt at John Faust, glowing staff materializing in his hands.
Before he could swing at the man, Trista intercepted him with a spinning kick to the chest. Sebastian stumbled, barely keeping his feet as he gasped for air. He lost his grip on the staff and it disappeared, but he immediately called it back, swinging the dangerously spiked end toward Trista’s head. She dodged the blow, ducking smoothly inside his swing and double punching him in the chest, again driving the air from his body.
He stumbled back, staff disappearing again and not returning as he gasped loudly for air. But Trista didn’t let up. She followed him, methodically striking at nerve clusters and muscles as she systematically took him apart. He landed a few solid punches, but Trista’s lithe body pivoted with the blows, negating their strength. Her next strike was a knife-hand to the neck, and the blow seemed to stun him. He swayed unsteadily, then collapsed in a heap on the floor, groaning.
With a clearing of the throat, John Faust stood up, visibly shaken but doing his best to hide it. “Well, it seems Mr. Blackwell has all sorts of tricks up his sleeve. No matter. We’ll soon find them all, once I have him strapped down. Good work, Trista. Tie him up. Thoroughly, mind you.”
She did as he asked, trussing up the groaning form like a turkey at Thanksgiving. Lily watched, numb, unable to do anything to help her friend. Her throat was already raw from yelling, and it didn’t help in any case.
Excitement over, John Faust turned back to his worktable. Trista left Sebastian lying on the floor and she went to the boxes, rummaging through them in search of something. Since both their backs were turned, neither saw Sebastian casually sit up, shrug off the ropes as if they were wet noodles, and begin creeping toward her unsuspecting father.
But Lily saw it. She had just enough time to glimpse the triumphant “Ha, suckas!” look in her friend’s eye before he leapt on John Faust, attempting to put the older man in a stranglehold.
He might have been successful, too, if Trista hadn’t been so incredibly fast. Whipping around like a striking cobra, she threw whatever was in her hand like a ninja star and it struck Sebastian in the back of the head with an audible clunk. The blow dazed him, and before he had a chance to recover the young woman had already closed the distance, scooping up the discarded rope as she went and leaping on his back. In the blink of an eye the rope was around his neck and tightening as Trista pulled with all her might. Lily screamed, watching Sebastian flail and desperately gasp for air as he tried to get a hold on his attacker. But he couldn’t, and as each second passed his movements grew weaker. Finally, he sank to his knees, then forward onto his hands, then slumped to the side, unmoving.
John Faust, standing back and rubbing his neck with a hate-filled glare, motioned to Trista, who unwound the rope and stepped away, impassive once more. Lily held her breath, willing Sebastian to get up, to breathe, anything.
Her father must have noticed her fearful stare, because he gave a coughing laugh. “Don’t worry, Lilith dear. He’s just unconscious. I have a great many plans for this boy. I wouldn’t allow him to escape so easily. A quick death is too good for a Blackwell.”
This time he gave Trista special shackles to use on Sebastian, which she fastened securely before stepping back to let her father cast some spell. At his words Sebastian floated up in the air to hover, limp, a few inches from the ground. Weak with relief that her friend wasn’t dead, Lily’s interest was momentarily piqued, curious to know what words John Faust had used to shorten and simplify the usually complicated process of creating a neutral gravity bubble. However he’d done it, it enabled the much smaller Trista to maneuver Sebastian’s unconscious form toward the door with minimal effort.
“Put him in one of the cells, I’ll deal with him later. Don’t damage him, mind you,” he admonished as she accidentally banged Sebastian’s lolling head against the door frame, “Oh, and bring Allen back with you. It’s time we got started,” he finished as she disappeared up the stairs.
“Allen?” Lily asked, prompted to words. “He’s alright?”
“More or less,” John Faust said dismissively, bending to pick up his overturned stool and sitting back down at his worktable.
“What have you done to him?” Madam Barrington demanded, turning from where she’d been examining the flickering portal at their back.
“Nothing life-threatening. He didn’t, after all, kill anyone, only stole my research and destroyed years of sweat and tears, not to mention expensive and valuable equipment. I simply helped him to…understand my pain.”
Though his back was turned to her, Lily could hear the venom in his voice, and she shuddered, feeling sick. The iron didn’t help. On top of everything that had happened, her proximity to such a large quantity was making her feel nauseous.
“What are you going to do with him?” Lily asked, hoping to distract him.
“Finish what I started. If your friends hadn’t interfered last time, we’d already be on our way to finding Morgan le Fay. I could use you, still, of course. But I think it more fitting for Allen to have the pleasure, since he stole my research in the first place, which prompted me to invent this location spell.
“But if you have Morgan’s diary back, then why would you need to use the spell still?” she said. “I thought you said it was dangerous. You can’t do that to Allen.”
“Allen will be fine, child. The side effects are not life-threatening, and he can’t possibly get any crazier than he already is.”
“No! You can’t do this! Please, why not use the diary?”
Her father waved a dismissive hand in her general direction. “I had only just managed to translate it when Allen took it. I haven’t even properly studied it and there’s no guarantee Morgan’s vague ramblings point to her final resting place. I’ve wasted enough time preparing the last twenty years. Now is the time for action.”
Just then she heard the sound of footsteps accompanied by a whimpering sound. Caden and Trista appeared through the basement door, supporting Allen between them. The poor man was trembling and pleading in broken sentences. Caden turned and locked the door behind them, then all three headed toward the middle of the room.
“Where is Kipling?” Lily yelled at Caden, roused to life once more. “Where is my cat? What did you do to him?”
“Be quiet, girl! Or I shall find reason to make Allen’s stay here much more uncomfortabl
e.” John Faust’s irritation was evident, but he paid her no more mind as they manhandled a weak and struggling Allen into the device, strapping him down.
Lily quieted, but with her whole body already aching and nauseous, the thought of her beloved companion lying somewhere, bleeding, dead…her stomach heaved and she threw up, making a mess all over the floor of the cage.
The sound made all three of her captors look up, and John Faust shook his head impatiently. “Good heavens, Lilith, what is the matter? Are you ill?”
“The iron,” she gasped, leaning against the brick wall as far from the cage walls as possible. An idea had come to her. She began to groan loudly, holding her stomach, dry retching a few more times for effect. Madam Barrington started forward, looking concerned, but Lily waved her back.
Her father sighed. “Ah, I had forgotten. It affects you more strongly. Well, with a few assurances of your good behavior, I suppose you can observe from somewhere else in the room. Caden, get the shackles. No, the regular ones. And a gag.”
Her half brother came over to the cage and threw a pair of what looked like thick hand-cuffs into the cage. As she’d hoped, they were not made of iron.
“Put those on,” Caden said, his voice higher than his father’s but with that same smooth quality.
Lily did as instructed.
“Now come over here. You in the back, if you cause any trouble, she stays here, no matter how sick she gets. Got it?” Madam Barrington nodded, standing calmly as Lily went to the door of the cage and waited as Caden unlocked it and pulled her roughly out. As soon as he’d locked it once more, he took a strip of cloth and gagged her tightly, so she couldn’t cast spells. Finally he led her over to a chair on the other side of the room, near the door, and sat her down, using some lengths of rope to tie her to it. “Cause any trouble and you’re back in the cage, understand?”
Lily nodded, noticing that even though Caden’s voice sounded like his father’s, his speech was less refined and lacked the subtle hint of British upbringing that was no doubt a result of John Faust’s youth spent at boarding schools in England.
Checking the ropes one last time, Caden left her, returning to his father’s side and helping him with some adjustments as Trista looked on, trying to stand where she could keep an eye on everyone in the room. Unfortunately for her, Madam Barrington and Lily were now on opposite sides of the room, with the device in the middle. She appeared to consider the situation, then turned toward the cage, gauging Madam Barrington as the greater threat and only glancing occasionally over her shoulder at Lily.
So far, so good, Lily thought. The next part would be the hardest.
She closed her eyes and tried to calm herself. It was difficult. Everything still throbbed, her stomach felt like it was in freefall, and she was on the verge of tears, fighting to keep horrible images of her companion's lifeless form from her mind. Not ideal conditions. But she couldn’t give up. Not now. Not ever.
She pinched her arm, the sharp pain giving her something else to focus on besides her fears. She used that focus to bring her mind under control, ignoring what was going on in the center of the room, ignoring her grief for Sir Kipling, ignoring her worry for Sebastian, ignoring her hatred for her father. With every fiber of her being, she focused inward, feeling the strong pulse of the Source with relief and summoning it to her will.
Though she hadn’t yet managed to cast without words, after weeks of practice she thought she understood what Allen had been trying to teach her. Magic wasn’t like a hammer or saw, a tool separate from herself that she didn’t need to understand, just know how to use. Magic was supposed to be instinct. A part of her as familiar as an arm or a leg. You didn’t tell your limbs what to do, you just decided and they followed along. It was like the difference between doing math on your fingers and in your head. When you didn’t understand math, hadn’t internalized its functions and variations, you needed physical and visual aids to control it. But once you understood how it worked, had made it a part of your subconscious, it was a simple matter of instinct.
Tuning out the world around her, she let her head droop, as if in defeat. In reality she was looking at the shackles around her wrists. They were heavy cuffs, but the locking mechanism looked to be a simple turn latch. She focused on that latch, visualizing it vividly and imagining it turning, seeing every detail of its turn in minute detail. When she was ready, she opened her mind to the Source, summoning it to her in the calmness she’d practiced during meditation. She let it flood her mind, feeling its energy, and directing it toward the latch until her whole body coursed with it. Concentrating so hard that her temples began to throb, she knew the words of power and forced her magic to fill them, follow them, bring them to life. It was sluggish to respond, but she bore down, keeping her visualization front and center until the magic flowed the direction she wanted.
Slowly, the latch quivered, then shifted, then finally clicked, and she felt the left shackle loosen. She didn’t stop there, despite the beads of sweat trickling down her forehead and neck. Renewing her efforts, she slowly, laboriously unlocked the other shackle, holding onto her newfound control by the skin of her teeth as shouts and cries from the center of the room threatened to distract her. In a last gasp of concentration, knowing she didn’t have the skill to untie the knots behind the chair, she went for a less tidy, but still effective, solution: heat. Singed, the strands would be easy enough to break.
A scream finally broke her concentration, scattering her thoughts like shards of glass as her head came up. Sights, sounds, and feelings came flooding in and she became hyperaware of the whole room. With effort she blocked out the flood of sensation, focusing on the middle of the room. Allen was screaming. John Faust must have activated his location spell, because the device was alight as his power coursed through it, through Allen. Her uncle was rigid, eyes shut and mouth wide open as the veins in his neck and arms stood out. Caden and Trista watched, mesmerized, and Lily knew it was now or never.
With a mighty heave—well, mighty for her at least—she flexed her arms, twisting away from the chair. She could have wept in relief when she felt the ropes give way. Moving as little as possible, so as not to draw Trista’s observant eye, she carefully disentangled herself and put aside the now-open shackles, removing her gag. Her eyes were fixed on the key to the iron cage lying on a worktable behind the group watching Allen. All she needed to do was sprint over, grab it, and free Madam Barrington before they had a chance to stop her. With John Faust distracted, they might have a chance of disabling her siblings before they could react.
She was gathering what remaining strength she had, preparing to sprint, when a voice echoed in her head. It was like a thousand bells all ringing at once in one, massive toll of pure noise.
Unlock the door.
She clapped her hands to her ears in pained shock, but the voice was gone as suddenly as it had arrived. It felt like the same presence that had spoken to her and Sir Kipling at the museum. The same presence that had helped them, had put its magic into her ward. But what did it want her to do? She was already going to unlock the door to the cage. Wait, what if it had meant…
She looked to the side at the door to the stairs leading up to the ground level. The doorknob slowly turned, as if someone on the other side were trying to open it on the sly, but was foiled by the lock.
Wincing in sympathy at Allen’s continued screams, she inched over to the door and turned the key Caden had left in the lock. The door opened a crack and she peered through. Sebastian’s brown eye peered back.
“Lily?” he hissed, jumping in surprise at her sudden appearance.
“No time!” she whispered back. “I’m going to go get Madam Barrington out. Cover me!”
Not waiting for a reply, she turned and sprinted for the worktable. Trista saw the movement out of the corner of her eye and whipped around. Expecting to feel a blow on the neck or back, Lily ignored her, grabbing the key and heading straight for the cage. She heard Sebastian shout Trista�
�s name, but didn’t have time to look back to see what was happening.
Fortunately, Madam Barrington had been alert the whole time, watching Lily from the other side of the room as things unfolded. She was already speaking, preparing a spell as Lily slammed into the bars of the cage, not bothering to slow as she shoved the large, heavy key into the lock and turned it, pulling the door open with numb hands. Madam Ethel Mathers Barrington strode out of the cage, eyes alight with righteous anger and hair standing on end, crackling with magic just waiting to be unleashed. And unleash it she did, straight at Caden. Not as observant, or quick, as his sister, he was only just tearing his eyes away from his father’s pulsing form when the magic hit him. The young wizard dropped like a rock, stunned by the massive bolt. If he’d been a mundane, it would have killed him. But Madam Barrington knew he was wearing a ward and in no real danger.
Pushing herself away from the dampening influence of the iron, Lily joined her mentor as they prepared to attack John Faust. Just then an ear-splitting yowl rang out and her heart leapt at the sound, threatening to burst from her chest in joy. Forgetting everything, she spun, searching desperately for the source of the noise.
There, in fine feline form, was Sir Kipling, leaping back and forth at Trista as he and Sebastian tag-teamed her. Lily realized he must have slipped in with Sebastian. Over the commotion she also heard high-pitched squeaks and realized the tiny flashes she saw were two pixies circling, diving at Trista’s head. Lily’s half sister might be inhumanly fast, but with a cat-shaped buzz saw, two miniature dive-bombers, and an angry witch attacking from all sides, she couldn’t defend herself. Lily wanted to rush to their aid—it looked as if Sebastian was limping—but instead she turned away. They had things under control but wouldn’t for long if she didn’t do something about John Faust.
Love, Lies, and Hocus Pocus Allies Page 26
