The Indigo Spell b-3

by Richelle Mead

  I paused, just as I was about to climb out. “Yes, actually. But not in the way you’re thinking.”

  Once I made it to the limb Julia had indicated, I discovered she was right. It was pretty simple—so simple, in fact, that I was surprised no school official had noticed this easy access escape route and chopped it down. Well, so much the better for those of us with late-night errands. I made it to the ground and waved goodbye to my watching friends.

  The dorm’s back property had some lights on it, exactly for the reason of deterring wayward students like me. It was also along the patrol route of one of the security guards but wasn’t a spot he stayed regularly stationed at. He wasn’t in sight, so I crossed my fingers that he was busy with another part of his beat. There were enough shadows on the lawn that I was able to stay within them the whole way—until I reached the back fence. It was lit up pretty well, and really, the only assets I had were that I was a fast climber and that the guard hadn’t surfaced yet. Falling back on that hope that the universe owed me some favors—especially after tricking me about Alicia—I gulped and scrambled over. No one shouted at me when I landed on the other side, and I breathed a sigh of relief. I’d made it out. Getting back in would be harder, but that was a problem for later, hopefully one Ms. Terwilliger could help out with.

  I found Adrian waiting for me in the Mustang, exactly where I’d indicated. He gave me a sidelong glance as he drove us away. “No black catsuit?”

  “It’s in the laundry.”

  He smiled. “Of course it is. Now, where are we going, and what’s going on?”

  “We’re going to Ms. Terwilliger’s,” I said. “And what’s going on is that we’ve been walking around in front of the enemy this entire time without even realizing it.”

  I watched Adrian as I related my revelations and saw his face go from disbelieving to dismayed the more I spoke. “Her aura was too perfect,” he said once I finished. “Perfectly neutral, perfectly average. No one’s is like that. I brushed it off, though. Figured maybe it was just a weird human one.”

  “Can someone influence how their aura looks?” I asked.

  “Not to that extent,” he said. “I don’t know enough about these charms you guys use, but I’m guessing it was one of those that skewed the way her colors looked.”

  I slumped into the seat, still angry at not having figured this out sooner. “On the bright side, she doesn’t know we’re on to her and Veronica. That could give us an advantage.”

  When we reached Ms. Terwilliger’s house, we found all the lights on, which was a surprise. I’d assumed she was in bed, though this certainly wouldn’t be the first time she’d missed a phone call. Only, when we reached the house and knocked on the door, there was no answer. Adrian and I exchanged looks.

  “Maybe she had to leave abruptly,” he said. The tone of his voice conveyed what his words didn’t. What if Ms. Terwilliger had already found out what we had and had taken off to fight Alicia and Veronica? I had no idea how powerful Alicia was, but the odds didn’t seem promising.

  When no answer came from my second knock, I nearly kicked the door in frustration. “Now what?”

  Adrian turned the doorknob, and the door opened right up. “How about we wait for her?” he suggested.

  I grimaced. “I don’t know if I’m comfortable breaking into her place.”

  “She left the door unlocked. She’s practically inviting us in.” He pushed the door open farther and looked at me expectantly.

  I didn’t want to go back to Amberwood without speaking to her tonight, nor did I want to sit on her doorstep. Hoping she wouldn’t mind us making ourselves at home, I gave a nod of resignation and followed Adrian inside. Her house was the same as ever, cluttered and redolent with the scent of incense. Suddenly, I came to a standstill.

  “Wait. Something’s different.” It took me a moment to figure it out, and when I did, I couldn’t believe I hadn’t realized it immediately. “The cats are gone.”

  “Holy shit,” said Adrian. “You’re right.”

  At least one of them always came to greet visitors, and others were usually visible on furniture, under tables, or simply occupying the middle of the floor. But now, there were no cats in sight.

  I stared around in disbelief. “What in the world could—”

  An earsplitting shriek made me jump. I looked down toward my hip and found the dragon sticking his head out of my satchel and trying to claw his way up my side. Belatedly, I realized I’d forgotten to cover the aquarium. He’d apparently slipped inside the bag back in my room. The sound he was making now was similar to his hunger cry—except even more annoying. Then, impossibly, he nipped my leg. I bent over and tried to pull him off me.

  “I don’t have any pie! What are you trying to—ahh!”

  Something zoomed over my head and smashed into the wall behind me with a loud splat. A couple wet drops of something landed on my cheek and began to burn. It was a wonder I didn’t hear a sizzling sound.

  “Sydney!” Adrian cried.

  I turned toward where he was looking and saw Alicia standing in the doorway between the living room and the kitchen. Her palm was raised toward us, a shimmery and gooey substance cupped in it. Presumably it was the same substance that currently seared my skin. I almost wiped it away but feared I’d simply be spreading it to my fingers. I winced and tried to ignore it.

  “Sydney,” said Alicia pleasantly. “Or should I say, Taylor? I figured I’d be seeing you two again. Just not so soon. I guess your car trouble didn’t delay you tonight.”

  “We know everything,” I told her, keeping on an eye on that goo. “We know you’re working for Veronica.”

  The smug look on her face momentarily shifted, overcome by surprise. “Working for her? I got rid of her ages ago.”

  “Got rid of. . . .” For a few seconds, I was at a loss. Then the rest of the puzzle pieces fell together. “You’re the one who’s been absorbing those girls. And that witch in San Diego. And . . . Veronica Terwilliger.”

  I’d been able to track Veronica back to the inn with the scrying spell. When Ms. Terwilliger had attempted a different locating spell, she’d come up blank. She’d assumed it was because Veronica had some sort of shielding. But the truth, I was suddenly certain, was that Veronica was already comatose. There was no active mind for Ms. Terwilliger to reach because Alicia had consumed Veronica.

  Ms. Terwilliger . . .

  “You’re here for her,” I said. “Ms. Terwilliger. Not me.”

  “The untrained do make easy targets,” conceded Alicia. “But they don’t have the same power as full-fledged witches, who can be just as easy to absorb if you break them down first. I don’t need the youth like Veronica did, just the power. Once she showed me how the spell works, I was able to catch her in a weak moment. That other college girl tided me over until I wore down Alana Kale.” Where had I heard that name? Alana . . . she was Ms. Terwilliger’s comatose coven sister. “And finally I can take out the big hit: Jaclyn Terwilliger. I actually wasn’t sure if I’d be able to break her, but it turns out she’s done an awesome job of wearing herself out these last few weeks, all in the service of protecting her sweet little apprentice.”

  “I’m not her . . .” I couldn’t finish. I’d been about to say I wasn’t her apprentice, and yet . . . wasn’t I? I wasn’t just dabbling in magic anymore. I had joined the ranks. And now, I had to protect my mentor, just as she’d protected me. If it wasn’t too late.

  “Where is she?” I demanded.

  “She’s around,” said Alicia, clearly delighting in having the upper hand here. “I wish you hadn’t found out about all this. You would’ve made a good hit, once you’d learned a little bit more. You’re just a small spark to Jaclyn’s flame right now. She’s the big score tonight.”

  “Tell us where she is,” ordered Adrian, a powerful note in his voice that I recognized.

  Alicia’s gaze flicked from me to him. “Oh, please,” she scoffed. “Stop wasting my time with your vampire
compulsion. I realized what was going on after that first visit, when I kept having trouble remembering your faces.” From her jumble of necklaces, she showed us a jade circle. “I acquired this afterward. Makes me impervious to your ‘charms.’”

  Something that resisted vampire magic? That would be a useful item to have in my bag of tricks. I’d have to look into it . . . provided I survived tonight.

  I saw Alicia tense to throw again, and I managed to jump out of the way, pulling Adrian with me toward the living room. More of that goo splattered behind us with a hiss. I produced a dried thistle blossom and crumpled it toward Alicia, shouting a Greek incantation that would blind her. She made a small wave with her left hand and sneered at me.

  “Really?” she asked. “That remedial blindness spell? Maybe you aren’t a prodigy after all.”

  Adrian suddenly flipped open a small panel in the wall beside us. I hadn’t even noticed it, largely because I’d been too distracted about having my face melted off. I saw a flurry of motion from his hand, and suddenly, we were plunged into darkness.

  “Now this is remedial blindness,” he muttered.

  Alicia swore. I froze, immobilized by the blackness around me. As much as I appreciated any attempts to slow Alicia down, I was kind of at a loss myself.

  I felt Adrian’s hand grab hold of mine, and without a word, he tugged me farther into the living room. I followed quickly, relying on his superior vampire eyesight to guide us. I could already hear Alicia chanting and was sure some light-giving spell was coming soon. Either that or something that would magically fix a fuse box.

  “Careful,” Adrian murmured. “Stairs.”

  Sure enough, I felt my foot hit a wooden step. He and I hurried down as quietly and as quickly as we could, descending into a basement. My eyes still hadn’t adjusted to the darkness, and I wondered if I’d just entered some secret dungeon. Yet as he wound us through stacks of boxes, I realized the basement was just used for ordinary storage. There was a lot of junk down here. After seeing Ms. Terwilliger’s already messy house, I wondered what more she could possibly own.

  Adrian finally stopped when we were in a far corner behind some oblong boxes stacked nearly as high as me. He pulled me to him, keeping me in his arms so that he could speak softly in my ear. My head lay against his chest, and I could hear his rapid heartbeat, a mirror for my own.

  “That was a good idea,” I said in as low a voice as I could manage. “But now we’re trapped down here. It would’ve been better if we could go outside.”

  “I know,” he whispered back. “But she was too close to the door, and I didn’t have time to mess with a window.”

  Above us, I could hear the floor creaking as Alicia walked through the house. “It’s just a matter of time,” I said.

  “I was hoping it’d give you a chance to think of something to get us out of here. Can’t you use that fireball? You were pretty good at it.”

  “Not inside. Especially not in a basement. I’d burn this place down around us. And we don’t know where Ms. Terwilliger is yet.” I racked my brain. The house was small enough that there weren’t that many places Alicia could have stashed Ms. Terwilliger. And I had to assume she was stashed somewhere, if she hadn’t come to our aid already. Alicia’s language made it sound like she hadn’t sucked away Ms. Terwilliger’s power yet, so hopefully she was just incapacitated.

  “You must be able to do something,” said Adrian, tightening his hold on me. “You’re brilliant, and you’ve been reading all those spell books.”

  It was true. I’d consumed tons of material these last couple of months—material I wasn’t even supposed to have learned—but somehow, in this one terrified moment, my mind couldn’t focus on any of it. “I’ve forgotten everything.”

  “No, you haven’t.” His voice in the darkness was calm and reassuring. He smoothed back my hair and pressed one of those half kisses to my forehead. “Just relax and focus. Sooner or later, she’ll be coming down those stairs after us. We need to take her out or at least slow her down so that we can escape.”

  His reasonable words centered me and allowed the gears of logic that ran my life to take over again. A little light was coming through from the basement’s small, high windows, allowing my eyes to finally adjust and make out some of the dark shapes in the basement. I could still hear Alicia moving around upstairs, so I crept away from Adrian and walked over to the staircase. With a few graceful hand arcs, I chanted a spell over the steps and then hurried back to my corner with Adrian, slipping back under the shelter of his arm.

  “Okay,” I said. “I think I’ve got a minor delay ready.”

  “What is it?” he asked.

  Just then, we heard the door at the top of the stairs open. Light spilled down, though we still remained in the shadows. “You’re out of options,” I heard Alicia say. “No place left to—ahh!”

  There was a loud thump-thump-thump-thump as she went sliding down the stairs and hit the bottom with a crack.

  “Invisible ice on the stairs,” I told Adrian.

  “I know I’m not supposed to say this,” he said. “But I think I love you more than ever.”

  I took his hand and tried not to think about how happy his words made me, even in this life-or-death situation. “Come on.”

  We left our hiding spot and found Alicia sprawled ungracefully on the floor, trying to get to her feet. A silver orb of light hovered in the air near her, bobbing along faithfully with her movements. Seeing us, she snarled and waved her hands to cast at us. I’d anticipated this and had an amulet ready. I swung it on its silken cord and said a few quick words as we passed her. A brief, shimmering shield flared between us and her, just barely absorbing the small glowing darts she hurled our way. The shield was similar to the one Ms. Terwilliger had used at the park but had to be summoned on the spot and didn’t last long.

  I didn’t know what Alicia planned on doing next, but obviously, something bad was coming. I cast a preemptive spell I’d never used before, one of the ones that Ms. Terwilliger had told me not to bother with. It took a lot of energy and was powerful if used correctly, yet was deceptively simple and elegant in its effects. I merely blasted Alicia across the room with a wave of power just as she was about to stand. She flew backward, into a stack of Christmas items. A box of ornaments fell down, shattering near her on the hard floor.

  Casting the spell left me dizzy, but I managed to keep moving. I summoned a fireball when we reached the stairs but held it in my hand, keeping it low as though I were going to roll a Skee-Ball—though my intent was simply to carry it. I prayed it would melt the ice, and after my first few steps, I knew I was right. “Careful,” I warned Adrian. “They’re wet.”

  We made it to the top, but Alicia had already scrambled after us. From the bottom of the stairs, she used the same spell on me that I’d used on her, throwing a wave of invisible energy at Adrian and me that knocked us to the floor. I’d been holding on to the fireball, despite Ms. Terwilliger’s warnings about how doing so would drain my own power. When Alicia knocked me down, the fireball flew from my hand and landed on Ms. Terwilliger’s couch. Considering it looked as though it was covered in some cheap fabric from the 1970s, I wasn’t entirely surprised that it lit up so fast.

  On the bright side, the fire solved our darkness problem. On the downside, it meant the house was likely going to burn down around us after all. The callistana, who hadn’t been fast enough to keep up with us when we’d gone downstairs, came scurrying over to my side. I had only half a heartbeat to make a decision.

  “Go look in the rest of the house for Ms. Terwilliger,” I told Adrian. “I’ll stop Alicia.”

  The growing fire created weird shadows on his face, highlighting his anguish at this. “Sydney.”

  “This is one of those times you have to trust me without question,” I said. “Hurry! Find her and get her out.”

  I saw a thousand emotions flash through his eyes before he obeyed and ran off toward the other wing of the house. The fi
re was spreading rapidly throughout the living room, in a way that had to be magical. The increasing smoke gave me an idea, and I cast a spell that enhanced it, creating a hazy wall at the entrance to the basement stairs. It allowed the dragon and me to make a short retreat before Alicia appeared, parting the smoke as cleanly as though she were opening curtains.

  “That,” she declared. “Hurt.”

  I cast a spell that should’ve encased her in spiderwebs, but they fell away before they even reached her. It was infuriating. I’d memorized so much, but these “remedial” spells weren’t working. I understood now why Ms. Terwilliger’s main strategy had been for me to lie low and hide my ability. How would I have ever been able to take on Veronica? True, Alicia had taken her out, but only after probably weakening her as she had Ms. Terwilliger. I even understood now why Ms. Terwilliger had told me to get a gun—which, I realized now, I’d left in the car.

  The ice spell had worked because Alicia hadn’t seen it coming. The only other spell that had worked on her was the blast of power, an advanced one that had still left me weak. It was going to take another one of those, I realized. I had no idea if I had the ability to do a second one, but trying was the only chance I had of—

  I screamed as what felt like a thousand volts of electricity shot through me. Alicia’s hand movement had been so subtle, and she hadn’t even spoken. I fell down again, writhing in pain as Alicia strode toward me, her face triumphant. The dragon bravely put himself between the two of us, and she simply kicked him aside. I heard him yelp as he skittered across the floor.

  “Maybe I should absorb you,” said Alicia. The shocks abated, and I could only sit there and gasp for breath. “You could be my fifth. I can come back for Jaclyn in a few years. You’ve turned out to be a lot more powerful than I thought—and annoyingly resourceful. You even made a good effort tonight.”

  “Who says I’m done?” I managed to say.

  I cast the first of the advanced spells that came to mind. Maybe it was inspired by the broken Christmas ornaments, but suddenly, I had broken shards on the brain. The spell required no words or physical components and only the slightest of hand movements. The rest was taken from me—a draining of energy and power that hurt almost as much as the electrifying spell Alicia had just used.