by Amy Boyles
A tiny body flitted toward me. It looked like a small fairy with big eyes and a face that held nothing but goodness and generosity. The little light fairy flicked her wings and sailed in the water.
I smiled, reaching my hand out to touch her. The small fairy’s mouth opened into what I had originally thought was a smile, but then large piranha-like teeth flashed before me.
I released my lungs just as Axel’s hand wrapped around my wrist. I turned toward him, and in another flash and a pop, we were gone from the ponds.
I lay soaking on the ground. Water had entered my lungs. I heaved it up, vomiting it onto the gravel.
Axel coughed and sputtered beside me. My lungs burned, and my chest ached.
I reached for him. He grabbed my hand and placed it on his chest. A dim light flared close by. I peeled my eyes open, forcing myself to see what the light was.
“It’ll hurt for a minute,” Axel explained. “It’s way too easy to get used to the ponds once you’re underwater. That’s what they want you to do.”
“Who?”
“The sprites in there. They’re not always active, but when they are, they’re ferocious little beasts. I’m hoping they keep Erebus busy for a while.”
I coughed again. “Did he jump in?”
Axel nodded. “I think so. I felt the water quake just before we left. Joke’s on him. The sprites swarm.”
I pushed a strand of hair that was plastered to my forehead away. “Why do they do that?”
Axel winked at me. “Because they like to taste invaders.” He pushed himself from the ground. Water dripped from his clothes, pooling at his feet.
He extended a hand toward me and grinned. “That’s why I grabbed you before you got too close. Trust me. I did you a favor.”
I slid my palm over his and let Axel pull me to my feet. “Why’s that?”
“Sweetheart, if they’d gotten a taste of you, I’m pretty sure those sprites wouldn’t have stopped tasting. You’d be their next meal.”
FOURTEEN
Between my family being stuck in an old lady’s pin, facing off against flesh-eating sprites and encountering one ticked-off magic eater, this had been one heck of a night.
The lights stung my eyes. I covered them. “Where are we?”
Axel’s hand steadied me. “Take it slow. Give yourself a moment. Being in the ponds can screw with your sight.”
“But where are we?”
“The police station.”
“Why?”
“In case Erebus shows back up.”
I blinked. My eyes were now adjusting to the light. Axel pressed his fingers into the small of my back. “Come on. Let’s get inside and take cover.”
I stumbled into the police station. My legs were weak, and I shook from the adrenaline coursing through me. Let’s face it—I was seriously in fight-or-flight mode. My tongue felt like sandpaper, and every outside movement made me jump.
“Garrick,” Axel shouted. “We’ve got issues.”
Garrick charged out from his office. “What now?”
Axel explained the situation—everything from the pin to Erebus and the failed attempt to get him into the book.
Garrick shifted his weight and scratched his chin. “Well, now what do we do?”
“I told y’all that I knew things about the magic eater—things y’all would need from me.”
The voice of a haggard old man drifted out from one of the cells. Every head snapped in his direction.
Feet shuffled and a moment later Forbes stood before us, his arms linked through the bars. “Well, well, well. Now it looks like y’all need the innocent old man you locked up.”
“You assaulted me,” Garrick snapped.
Forbes studied his fingernails. “I’m old and fearful. When you get to be my age, you’ll understand.”
I rolled my eyes.
“Erebus might be on his way here,” Axel said quickly. “We left him at the Potion Ponds, but he tracked us there. There’s no telling if he’ll be able to find us here.”
“So whatever we’re going to do, we need to do it fast,” I added.
Garrick raised his hands. The doors locked. He pointed to the windows, and their locks snapped as well.
“Wasting your time,” Forbes mumbled. “Remember, he broke my window. Locks won’t stop Erebus.”
“Do you have a better idea?” I snapped. “It’s one thing to offer suggestions and it’s quite another to stand there and taunt us.” I pointed my finger at Forbes. “He’s coming for you, you know. You’re a sitting duck.”
I folded my arms and glared at him. “Unless of course, you’re the one who had us summon him to begin with.”
Forbes snarled. “It wasn’t me. I’ve already explained that.”
I shot Axel and Garrick a concerned look. “Well?”
“We may not have a choice,” Axel said. “At least for tonight we should listen to him.”
“You have to let me out,” Forbes said. “You’ll have to get me out of this cell. Inside here I’m a sitting duck, especially if everyone else is stuck inside a pin.”
Garrick’s jaw clenched. “Only in exchange for your help.”
Sweat sprinkled Forbes’s forehead. His hands tightened on the cell bars. “Yes. Only in exchange for that. I understand. Please! If the magic eater appears, there’ll be no escape.”
Garrick rushed to Forbes and unlocked the cell. Forbes stumbled from his cage, and Garrick caught the old man in his arms.
“Thank you,” Forbes gasped. “Thank you for letting me out.”
Garrick steadied him until Forbes found his footing. “What do you know about the magic eater?”
Forbes’s eyes sparkled with intelligence. I got the feeling the old coot liked it when he had all the power.
“I heard that you weren’t able to get him inside the book, huh?” he directed to Axel.
Axel folded his arms. “How does that help us now?”
“Because tricking him isn’t good enough. That’s what everyone thinks—you have to trick a magic eater into returning to the book—but that isn’t true. He’s got a purpose, hired by someone to destroy several of us. First, we don’t know who gave you the incantation to call him. You, Pepper Dunn, and your cousins summoned him, but it was at the will of someone else.”
Forbes took a breath. “It makes this more challenging. The first thing we have to know is who originally requested Erebus. The name would be in the spell. Do you have the original spell you used?”
My mind whirled. “Not on me. I’m not sure where we put it.”
Forbes nodded as if that was the answer he expected. “The first order of business is to find it. Now, given that we’re more than likely trapped here for the night and the magic eater will track you to the station, we have limited choices.”
“I want to hear them,” Axel said.
Forbes poked the air. “The first choice is to run, but that doesn’t always work. Erebus learns from his prey. He grows better, stronger. It’s what makes him such a formidable opponent. The other choice we have is to trick him—but it’ll only work once.”
“Trick him?” Garrick asked. “How?”
Forbes licked his lips as if this choice was a delicious option. “We make Erebus think we don’t have magic, that way he overlooks us. But like I said, this will only work once. After that, we’ve got to come up with a better plan.”
Axel glared at Forbes. “How does it work, and why didn’t you tell us any of this before?”
“Because I was recovering from the shock of meeting the magic eater, so I wasn’t thinking clearly.” He extended his palm. “Hand me the pin.”
My gaze darted to Axel. Hand Forbes my family? If he was the man behind having us summon Erebus, then giving him the pin would be tantamount to handing my family over to a murderer.
He sensed Axel’s hesitation. Forbes’s fingers twitched. “It can work, but we have to be quick. The creature may show up any minute.”
As if on cue, the glass
in the windows shattered. I curled into a ball and slammed my eyes shut. Shards screamed past me. My arms burned as glass sliced into my flesh.
Under the cover of my hands I sneaked a glance at Axel to see him, eyes closed, place the pin in Forbes’s palm. Forbes cupped the pin and chanted something.
Everything stopped. The world moved in slow motion, and I felt like we were suspended under water. I turned to look toward Erebus, but even that movement seemed to take an eon. Particles of glass blew around us, looking more like feathers than biting shards ready to scratch.
The tips of my ears tingled. My fingers felt charged as if an electric current was running through them. The odd sensation washed all the way to my toes.
I pivoted toward Axel. He slowly whipped toward Erebus, ready to fight.
Forbes cupped the pin in his hand, his head bowed.
The glass circled us like a tornado. It was a great cloud of debris that swirled and whirled. My gaze flickered to Garrick. He reached out as if about to shoot Erebus with a stream of magic.
The magic eater darted into the room. He seemed to suck up the glass or somehow the shards didn’t touch him—I wasn’t sure which was true, but he moved through the sea as if the shards didn’t bother him.
Which they probably didn’t, now that I thought about it.
Where I stood trapped in syrup that made me unable to move quickly, Erebus was a cheetah, floating between us, assessing each and every one of us.
I shivered as he approached me. If he attacked, I knew I wouldn’t be able to fight back. This gooey magic that had me bound was too thick to move through.
His long face studied me. My heart jackhammered against my ribs, and I nearly choked under the creature’s stare. His empty eyes and the dark hollow of a mouth were sickening up close.
His warm breath flowed over me, and I felt the strangest comfort before Erebus finally moved to Axel. Once the magic eater was finished with him, he darted to Forbes.
I don’t know how long I held my breath, but it felt like an eternity as the creature sniffed up and down the old man. It seemed like Erebus knew Forbes was a person of interest, but he couldn’t prove it.
Sweat trickled down my temples. Forbes’s magic would either work or it would go very, very sour.
I would’ve crossed my fingers, but I couldn’t move fast enough to do it. Finally, after what seemed like forever, Erebus drifted away from Forbes and darted to Garrick, studying him before whisking out the door.
Once Erebus was gone, it took a good five minutes before Forbes’s spell wore off and I could move at a normal pace again.
First thing Garrick did was repair the windows. I glanced at the backs of my arms, which were lined with slices.
Axel crossed to me and curled his hands around my forearms. I flinched. “Ouch.”
He didn’t reply, only closed his eyes. A moment later my wounds healed. When he was done, Axel kissed my forehead.
“You okay?”
I nodded dumbly. “You?”
He grunted a reply that I took to mean yes.
Axel jerked his head toward Forbes. “Your plan worked. Let’s hope it holds for the rest of the night.”
Forbes grinned. He was obviously quite pleased with himself. “It’ll hold. The magic eater won’t be back—not tonight. We’ve managed to keep ourselves alive for one more day.”
There was still something about Forbes that I didn’t fully trust. “Why didn’t you use that spell last night, when Erebus attacked you?”
“Because I was saving it,” he snarled. “I couldn’t exactly show my hand so early.”
“But you used it tonight,” I argued. “What’s the difference?”
“Young lady,” he said with distaste in his voice, “the difference is that we were stuck between a rock and a hard place. I had no other choice.”
Forbes ran a hand over his silvery hair. “Now. If we’re to survive and put Erebus back where he belongs, in that book, we’ve got work to do.”
I scoffed. Was this old man delegating to me what to do? A man who other than this one spell, hadn’t lifted a finger to help us?
Needless to say I was irritated.
I folded my arms. “Why should we listen to you?”
Forbes took his cane from the cell and moved to leave the station. He stopped at my question and slowly pivoted toward me. “Because if I hadn’t been thrown in the pokey today, I could’ve helped y’all find a way to get Erebus back in his book. Plus, we could’ve done something even more important than that.”
“Which is?” Axel said.
Forbes tsked. “You younguns don’t know everything like you believe you do. Snow and Saltz are dead. Two incredibly talented magical people. If a magic eater can walk into a school and kill Saltz, then we have a real problem, and the problem isn’t simply the magic eater.”
“What is it?” Garrick asked.
“It’s whoever tricked you into summoning Erebus in the first place. That’s the person yanking the strings. Unless we can find them, we’ll never get Erebus back in his book.”
That made no sense to me. “Why not?”
“Because,” Forbes snipped, obviously annoyed that he had to explain simple things to me, “whoever had Erebus summoned is probably blocking him from returning to the book. It’s as simple as that.”
He nodded toward the pin. “Now, I suggest you release Betty Craple and everyone else because we’re going to need their help discovering who’s actually behind this.”
“Which means we go back to Snow’s. To the day of the meeting.”
Forbes smiled. A silver cap in his mouth glinted. “That’s exactly right. We discover who sent Erebus and we can get rid of them. Otherwise…”
I cocked a brow. “Otherwise?”
Forbes sighed. “Otherwise we’ll all die.”
FIFTEEN
“Thank goodness someone finally got me out. I thought I’d be trapped in there forever, forced to listen to my mother and aunt argue about the best way to make blackberry cobbler.”
Amelia sat in the living room, a blanket draped over her shoulders. She rocked back and forth. Obviously the strain of having been locked up with my family had gotten to her.
I patted her shoulder. “You’ll be okay.”
She shook her head. “You don’t know what it was like. My mothers argued it wasn’t their fault we got stuck in the pin, and Betty wanted to kill them. She almost magicked their mouths zipped shut.”
I stifled a laugh.
Amelia suddenly shrieked. “I think I’ve got some sort of disorder now. I’m in shock.”
I rubbed her head. “It’s going to be okay.” I pulled away from her and moved to stand by Axel, who had his back against the far wall and was facing the front door.
He wasn’t going to let anything sneak up on him.
“Okay,” Betty snapped. “Now that we’re finally free, no thanks to my daughters”—she shot them a hard look—“we can figure out a plan moving forward.”
Forbes took the wheel. “We need to go over the list of people who were at the meeting. Other than us, that is.”
Betty thought for a moment. “It was most of the usual folks—no one stands out, but I have their names.”
“Then we must talk to them—see if any seem suspicious,” Forbes said. “See if any of them may have sent this plague down on us. We must split up.”
Mint and Licky agreed to talk to some folks, as did CJ and Sylvia. Betty pinned her gaze on me.
“Pepper, Cordelia and Amelia, y’all need to head over to Snow’s and see if there are any clues as to what happened.”
Amelia scoffed. “We know what happened. We got tricked.”
Betty glared at her. “But we need to know if there are any tidbits that could point to who did this. Remember, Snow was killed first.”
I shot Cord and Amelia pointed looks. “Betty has a point.”
“It’s settled then. First thing in the morning, y’all will go over there.”
�
�And I need the original spell,” Forbes said. “The one y’all used to call the magic eater.”
I glanced at Cordelia. “Do you have it?”
She shook her head. “I don’t have it. Amelia does.”
Amelia scoffed. “I don’t have it, either. I thought Pepper had it.”
Forbes ran a hand down his tired face. “I need to look at the original incantation. That’s one way to figure out who summoned Erebus. Without it, this could take a long time.”
My stomach soured. All eyes were on me. “Um,” I finally mustered. “I’ll search through my things.”
“You’d better find it,” Forbes snapped. “We must have that slip of paper.”
“She’ll find it,” Betty said. “In the meantime I still want the girls at Snow’s in the morning.”
Betty continued to hand out assignments while Forbes nodded his head in agreement. When it was all finished, Axel leaned over and whispered in my ear.
“Be sure to take Hugo.”
Fear spiked down my spine. If Axel wanted me to take the dragon, that meant he believed something bad would happen. “Why?”
Axel shrugged. “Just to be on the safe side. We’ve all got a lot to do. Just make sure you keep your dragon close.”
“But before you said not to take him.”
“I think it’ll be okay, at least for right now. Erebus doesn’t want you. But take Hugo, just to be safe.”
Axel brushed the backs of his fingers down my arm. A sliver of desire shot straight to my gut. I cleared my throat to push those thoughts from my head.
“When I’m not with you,” Axel continued, “Hugo is your best protection. Besides yourself, that is. He’s your own personal bodyguard.”
I smiled. “Will do.”
The sun burned high and bright the next morning. As soon as pinks and blues cracked the horizon, I was up and ready to go. There was no work in Magnolia Cove right now. It seemed all hands were on deck to deal with the magic eater.
Even Snow and Saltz’s funerals were on hold. Hopefully we’d have this whole situation resolved tonight and things would get back to normal.
