by Sam Cheever
The dense purple wall disappeared with it.
We stared at the motionless demon across the room for a long moment, nobody speaking. When she didn’t move, I looked at Archie. “What do you think?”
He shrugged. “The boy’s chaos magic is powerful. It’s possible she’s incapacitated.”
I turned to my brother and found him leaning against the wall next to the door, looking pale and slightly dazed.
“He’ll be okay,” Narina said softly to me. “He’s created a lot of focused magic since we arrived here. It just takes him a moment to regain his strength.”
Focused chaos magic? I thought. Hm.
“Where do you suppose her evil hostess is?” Osvald asked, his hands shoved into the pockets of his dowdy gray slacks. The gray-blue sweater he wore was tatty looking, with moth holes peppering the wool, and his slacks were an inch too short over scuffed black loafers. With the jaunty red bowtie and wrinkled blue button-down shirt, he looked the epitome of a bookish professor.
“That’s what I’m worried about,” Sebille said, buzzing down to our level. She had a cobweb running from one wing to a pointed ear. Apparently, she’d been skulking about near the ceiling. “I’ll go do a quick reconnoiter. See if I can locate Dacara.”
I nodded. “Be careful.”
She buzzed off, disappearing around the door leading into the main house from the kitchen. I noticed she gave the sleeping princess in front o the fireplace a wide berth.
I looked at my companions. “Ready?”
To their credit, they all nodded.
I looked at Osvald. “Do you have a book that tells you how to do a binding spell?”
His black eyes narrowed in thought. He nodded, snapped his fingers, and a dusty book covered in some kind of brown paper with bent and tattered edges appeared in his hands. He looked at the book, and pages started flipping.
I left him to do his thing and forced my feet to move forward.
At the door, I stopped and stuck my head through, looking around the room before stepping inside. Aside from the seemingly unconscious Desiree, the big room was empty. It was quiet too. Unnaturally so. With only the sound of the fire in the enormous fireplace crackling and spitting as I moved slowly toward the perfectly still princess.
We spread out around her, approaching from all angles. The sound of flipping pages followed us from the kitchen.
Desiree lay with her hands crossed over her chest, her beautiful face serene and the thick arcs of her eyelashes resting on her flawless cheeks.
“She looks like Sleeping Beauty,” Eddie said, a shadow in his eyes.
I wondered if he was thinking of his own imprisonment in that castle. He’d been lying on a raised platform in much the same way when we’d found him there. His prison walls had crackled with magical fire rather than the old fashioned wood kind that bathed Desiree in a golden glow. But the parallels were creepy.
He shuddered slightly, confirming my suspicions. “Do you want to wait in the kitchen?” I asked him softly.
He shook his head. “I’m okay. It’s just weird being back here.”
That was an understatement of massive proportions.
A phone rang into the silence and we all jumped. I looked around the big room. “Do you see a phone?”
Everyone glanced around as the phone continued to ring.
Eddie frowned. “It’s coming from you?”
I blinked and then felt my pocket, embarrassed color heating my cheeks. “Oh. Ha.” I tugged my phone out of my jeans and answered it. “Lea? Is he okay?”
There was a loud crackling noise and, somewhere in the background, something crashed. Panic crawled over me with sharp, feline claws. “Lea? What’s going on?”
“Naida!” Her voice was harsh and panicked. “They’re here. Hurry!” The call disconnected and I looked at Archie. “Croakies is being attacked.”
Archie frowned. “Did she say by whom?”
I shook my head. “No. It sounded chaotic there. But I’m betting it’s the cherubs.”
“Cherubs?” Narina asked, frowning. “Why…?”
“Because I sent them,” the demon behind me said.
My gaze whipped around to Desiree. She was standing in front of the crackling fire, her expression petulant. “You’ve been so tedious. I was really hoping we could do this without violence.” She sighed, so disgusted with us.
“Do what?” I asked, backing away.
Desiree’s false smile slid away. “I want that serum.”
I blinked. “Huh?”
“We thought you had it,” Archie said. “We came to get it from you.”
Desiree stamped her foot. “Don’t be tiresome. I want my serum!” She threw her hands into the air and something burst from them. Lots of somethings, actually. And the floating things slashed at my skin as they glided past.
“Ouch!” I smacked at the heart-shaped magic saturating the air, earning a new set of bloody wounds for my trouble. In desperation, I flung my energy at the thickening mist of heart-shaped blades, managing to barely knock the nearest ones away.
Around me, people were yelping and screeching in pain. Only Archie seemed adequately covered to keep most of the damage at bay. He’d pulled his sleeves down over his hands and pulled the collar up around his face. The bell-shaped sleeves of his robe were quivering at the ends as if his fingers were moving inside.
I hoped he was trying to open a void.
A stiff wind slashed through the room, blowing some of the little blades away from us. They hit the wall with a thwuck, and many of them stuck there.
All around us, things began to lift off tables and other surfaces, dancing on the air in a wide vortex of erratic movement. A pair of candlesticks jerked skyward and slashed toward my head. I dove just in time to keep from getting clipped and they sailed past me, crashing through a window across the room. The mantel clock rose up and shot toward Desiree. She flipped her fingers, and it transformed into rose petals as it hit her skin.
The sweet scent of roses filled the room.
A blanket flew into the air, dancing with the throw pillows from the same couch. The blanket collided with a small table, whose contents swirled around it as it pranced across the room.
The fireplace poker spun away from the hearth and nearly impaled Osvald. He dove beneath a dainty chair. The small chair lifted away from him and smacked into the fireplace, falling in pieces into the flames.
A cloud of hearts flashed toward a giant mirror that suddenly flew to cover Eddie. The blades sank into the mirror’s wooden frame and stuck there.
But there were too many of them to avoid completely. The razor-like hearts slashed and ripped, scraped, and sliced everything they encountered.
I huddled behind a couch and eyed the action, my eyes going crossed from the activity. It was magic mania.
Narina’s wind magic was rocking the room. Lashing the window curtains and blowing some of the heavier furnishings toward the demon princess in front of the fire.
Eddie stood in the center of his own type of whirlwind. Arms up and eyes closed. Chaos surrounded him.
Desiree stood fearlessly in the same spot, never dodging, never moving, and yet somehow never taking a hit.
Archie had dropped to a crouch, but his fingers still worked inside his robe.
Behind Desiree, the air thickened and roiled. His void slowly opening.
Pain slashed along my arm. I looked down, horror turning my blood to ice. All along the scratches caused by Desiree’s heart-shaped weapons, something sprouted from my skin. Something green and leafy with…
All the color fled my face.
“Roses!” I yelled. “The cuts sprout roses.” A thorn ripped through my skin and pain sliced through me in a jagged tear. I screamed as warm blood gushed from the wound.
No one seemed to hear me because the wind drowned out my voice. Eddie was lost in his own little world. Behind me, poor Osvald was shrieking in pain.
Green energy flashed through the room.
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Sprite energy.
I lifted my head to look for Sebille. A bladed heart slashed across my cheek, barely missing my eye. I yelped and dropped back down but spotted Sebille as she fired another blast of magic toward Desiree.
A slash appeared in the air behind the demon. A narrow black opening split the air. Desiree didn’t seem to notice. “Give me the serum!” she screamed to the room at large.
Sebille hit her with another blast of energy. It smacked the air in front of Desiree and bounced off in a wash of crimson energy that crashed into Sebille and sent her flying to smash against a wall.
Desiree swung an arm at Sebille, and a dense stream of the deadly hearts shot toward the sprite. Shaking off a daze, Sebille flashed out of the way. But Desiree’s swinging arm made something hanging from her neck flash in the light. A thick silver chord hung around the princess’s neck. A small vial hung from that chain. It was about two inches long, slender, and made of silver. Ornate silver vining and leaves wound around the small vial and culminated in a rosebud at the top. Inside the vining, something red glistened in the light.
I recognized that liquid. I’d seen it before. In the vault at Croakies.
It looked like love serum!
I needed to get hold of that vial. But the void behind Desiree was open and, as I glanced in her direction, Desiree was slowly turning as if sensing the abyss behind her.
Narina swung her arm in a fast circle, wind whipping the space around it. I realized she was going to send Desiree into the void with a brutal gust of wind.
If she did, I’d lose my chance at that vial. “Narina, wait!”
Too late, Narina released the burst of air and it slammed into Desiree.
The princess stumbled, her arms flailing and her hair whipping around her face, blinding her. She tried to lean into the squall, pushing back against it, but one of her stumbling feet hit a flying stool and she started to fall toward the void.
Sebille buzzed past and I screamed. “Sebille! The vial!”
She glanced my way. I pointed toward Desiree. The princess stumbled back into the void, and, in the blink of an eye, it started to close.
Sebille shot toward it, but she was going to be too late.
Or worse. She flew into the void with the demon, just as it started to close.
21
Kegel, Kegel, Kegel
Sebille shot through the narrow slit of the void, and there was a burst of green before the opening snapped shut like one of those old-fashioned spring-loaded coin purses.
The screaming behind me stopped.
The wind died on a final, whisper-like sigh.
And everything that had been floating through the air slammed to the floor.
Silence pulsed. I ran toward the spot where the void had been and slid my hands frantically through the spot. There was nothing. It was as if Sebille and Desiree had never been there. I spun around, fixing Archie with a panicked look. “Can you open the void again?”
“I can, but Desiree will be waiting for it. She knows we’ll want Sebille back.”
I paced, my fingers twisting. “We can’t just leave her in there.”
Archie sighed, looking at Narina and Eddie. “Be ready.” He lifted his hands and…
Bzzzz
An insistent dragonflybuzzed my head, sifting green dust onto my face. I fought a sneeze as relief spilled through me.
With a final, whirring loop de loop near my left ear, Sebille popped into full size. She stood in front of me, grinning. The chain with the vial dangled from her fingers. “Looking for this?”
I gave a happy little scream and, before I thought about what I was doing, grabbed the sprite in a relieved hug. “How’d you get out?”
She shoved me away, a look of pure disgust on her narrow, freckled face. “No full-body touching.” She shuddered. Then she shrugged. “I have mad skills.”
“What’s that?” Osvald asked.
When we turned in his direction, we found him climbing slowly to his feet. He was covered in bleeding slices and his dark, greasy-looking hair was a jumble on his head. Like me, he was sprouting green and thorny things from the slices in his flesh. I shuddered, beyond disgusted. Osvald caught us all looking at him and pointed to a spot somewhere in front of where he stood. “That. There. What is it?”
I squinted at the spot, seeing nothing. “I don’t see anything. With Sebille and the vial back, I turned my thoughts to the next problem. “We need to get back to Croakies, like yesterday.” My hopeful glance at Archie earned me a negative shake of the head. “The anomaly is defunct. We won’t be taking it back to the edge of the forest.”
I groaned, my stomach twisting with alarm. “It will take us days to walk back.”
“And don’t forget the wraiths,” Eddie said. He joined us, still looking pale but not quite as exhausted as before. “We could really use that turtle right now.”
“No, really, people. What is that?”
I whipped toward Osvald, ready to yell at him to quit interrupting. But I saw it too. It was a cloudiness in the air. A slight opacity that hadn’t been there before. I squinted. “He’s right. There’s something there.”
Eddie groaned. “She’s coming back. I knew that was too easy.”
My eyes went wide. Easy? What world did he live in where he thought being slashed near to pieces by flying hearts was easy?
Sebille walked over and poked the cloudy air with a fingertip. Energy flared in a spark and she jumped. “Ow!” She sucked the tip of her finger. “Whatever it is, there’s an energy charge to it.”
Something about the sight niggled in my brain. I joined Sebille, squinting at the apparition. It was rounded at the top and bottom, long and slender. It reminded me of something…
“Naida, you’re leaking,” Osvald said.
I tilted my head and narrowed my eyes even more. What was it?
Sebille poked one of my arms. Hard.
“Hey! Ouch,” I complained, rubbing my arm. “What’s the deal?”
“Osvald’s right. You’re leaking.” She grimaced. “And sprouting.”
I looked down at my jeans in horror. Had I peed myself in the chaos? Surely not. Though, now that I thought about it, I did kind of have to pee. I tightened my thighs against the thought.
Kegel, kegel, kegel, I thought frantically until the moment passed. Then I noticed the silvery magic sifting from my fingertips. Keeper magic? I frowned. But why?
Sebille turned to my uncle. “Archie?”
He shook his head. “It’s not a void. Maybe it’s some kind of portal.”
I reached toward the thickening air. Unless… My finger touched the spot. Pain ripped through my core as my magic was torn violently from me. Energy flooded the cloudy spot on the air but stayed within the oval-shaped parameters.
I screamed, doubling over as the magic seared my cells on its way out.
Almost as quickly as it started, the magic siphoning stopped. My knees buckled and I hit the ground, taking deep, calming mouthfuls of air into my lungs.
“That’s the mirror,” Sebille finally said. She reached out again, shoving her hand into the center of the object hanging unsupported about a foot above the ground.
I looked up and saw what looked like the back of the wooden communication mirror in the artifact library at Croakies. I shoved painfully to my feet, my body feeling like it had been bludgeoned.
The space between the aged wood frame was gray, as it was when it was opening for a new communication. Something shifted at the bottom of the mirror. I grabbed Sebille’s arm and tugged her backward. “Watch out!”
We took a step back and the mirror cleared.
A small, gray shape with a snapping tail and irate orange eyes jumped through the mirror. “Meow!”
“Mr. Wicked!” I scooped him up and held him close, kissing the top of his soft head. “What in the world?”
He bit my cheek. “Ouch!”
Wicked shoved against me with his tiny feet and earned his freedom. He stalk
ed back to the mirror and stopped, looking back at us over his angrily whipping tail. Then he turned back to the mirror and jumped through. Disappearing from sight.
“A portal it is,” Archie said, sounding relieved. Without another word, my uncle followed Wicked through the mirror.
The rest of us went quickly through after him.
As I stepped onto the cool, concrete floor of the artifact library, the first thing I noticed was the horrible sulfuric stench.
Then I noticed the sounds of crashing and thumping beyond the dividing door.
But it was the blood-curdling screams that finally started me running.
Eddie reached the door first. He threw it open, and a sliver of metal slashed through the air, mere inches from his head. The tiny arrow embedded itself into the wood of Shakespeare’s desk behind Eddie and quivered there.
Eddie ducked sideways and ran toward the bookshelves.
“Watch out!” Lea screamed.
Shimmery green energy flashed past me as I ducked through the door.
The sprite cannonballed past in her bug form. She immediately started firing energy at the fat little attackers divebombing everyone in the room.
Meow! Wicked ran past me, leaped onto Slimy’s terrarium and sliced his claws at any cherubs that got too close.
Inside his glass home, Slimy hunkered near his sunning rock looking bug-eyed.
So, basically normal for him.
I flung a ribbon of Keeper magic into the air, the energy coiling rapidly toward the library.
Eddie lifted his arms and flapped his hands together like discordant wings. Energy flared away from his hands and flapped across the room, growing as it moved and spinning like strange whirligigs.
Two cherubs divebombed Narina. She flung up both arms and fired powerful gusts of wind at them, sending them butt-over-belly across the room to smash into the wall.
The exterior door opened as they hit the wall. Several more cherubs flew through.
There looked to be dozens of the nasty things in the bookstore. And there were arrows flying everywhere.
