“And I still lost.” My fingers find the ends of the string binding the bag shut. I tug so gently I’m not at all surprised nothing happens.
“Maybe this isn’t such a good idea,” Al says. “Remember what your sister said.”
I can’t take my eyes off the bag and the urge to open it is so strong I can’t think of anything else. Cindy’s warning is in my mind somewhere, but it doesn’t matter. All that matters is the pouch.
“All of these books, this house, will any of it help? Even if we find a way to get you back, Gran was a sorceress. She could do things none of us can.”
“Magic might not be the solution.”
“Maybe not this time,” I admit. “But without it, I’ll never have a chance of defending my family from Stewart or wizards like him. It was luck we got out of the barn. With magic, we’d be on equal fighting ground.”
I test the binding again, this time yanking at the knot much harder. Nothing. It doesn’t budge. I need to cut it open. A search of the table uncovers old silver scissors stuffed into a container full of pens and pencils. Even though the scissors seem sharp and open easily, no matter what I do, they won’t cut the string. I try cutting the bag itself. Again, nothing.
“But it can’t be. What if I...” I use the scissors to cut a small hole into the bottom of my shirt, no problem. “So why won’t the bag cut?”
“Maybe it’s for the best,” Al says.
“Your sword.” I’m almost ashamed at how obvious the solution is. “You said it would cut through anything.”
I hold out my hand to him, but he makes no move to pass me the tiny blade.
“Please?”
When I realize he’s still not going to give it to me, I lean over the desk and bring myself face to face with him. From this close, I can see how worried he looks. It doesn’t make sense. Shouldn’t he be happy? He must not understand.
“If it works, then I’ll have the power to send you back home,” I say.
“Lou.” He shakes his head in refusal. “Don’t do this.”
Hearing him say my name with so much sympathy and worry, it makes me need to help him that much more.
“Please,” I say again.
His hand slips around the hilt as though he’s about to draw the sword, but he stops before actually pulling it free. The need to open the bag is so strong his hesitation has me almost in tears.
“Please.”
A single nod. No words. He draws out the sword and carefully sets it onto my index finger. It’s almost impossible to hold without touching the blade and I end up cutting myself on its edge. Once I have it held between my fingernails, I slice it against the side of the bag. The blade cuts through the fabric easier than I expect and I end up making a hole much bigger than I intend. The contents of the bag spill out around me. While I scramble to keep everything inside, I drop the whole lot.
I groan. “I’m not cleaning that up.”
“Any change?” Al asks.
I think about it for a minute and shake my head.
“I don’t feel any different.”
But as soon as I say the words I look at Al and I realize how wrong I am. He’s there, same as before, but there’s a strange net surrounding him he doesn’t seem to notice. Every move he makes, the net moves with him, pressing against his skin. But it isn’t made of string or rope or anything I’ve ever seen before. I lean in until my nose is almost touching him to get a better view of him.
“What is that?” I ask.
He looks down at himself and nervously brushes nonexistent dust from himself before returning his focus to me. “Um... my clothes?”
He shifts nervously, but he doesn’t step back, though I can only imagine how intimidating I must be right now. I’m glad he doesn’t move, and not just so I can see him better. There’s also something about being so close to him that causes my skin to tingle in the best way.
I ignore the feeling and concentrate on the stuff surrounding him.
“No, it’s all around you. Can’t you feel it? Some sort of pattern of light and dust and shadow and I don’t know what, and it’s pressing down on your skin, like it’s trying to...” I take in a frightened breath when I realize exactly what it’s doing. “Like it’s going to crush you.
“What?” There’s a panic to his voice I’d only heard once before; when Cindy forced him inside the lipstick container.
His fear justifies my own alarm. “I have to stop it.”
“Please do.”
I point his sword at him and say, “Don’t move.”
He doesn’t, not even to agree with me. Probably he’s too afraid to speak. I know I can’t say anything encouraging like ‘I promise not to kill you,’ because any distraction and the sword I have pressed against the magic web might slip. If the blade can cut anything, it could easily kill Al. I drag it down, careful to slice only the web and not his skin. I hope.
Once enough of it is cut, the net gives away and falls from him. I laugh in triumph as the stuff curls away from his body, shrinks into itself and disappears.
But then something odd happens.
No longer is my nose almost touching a tiny person, but smashed against something solid and warm and smelling a whole lot like dirt and leather.
I take a small step away from the table with my hand rubbing my face and peek to see what hit me. Some new spell, perhaps? Or let me guess, with my luck, it’s probably another chimera.
Or a full grown man.
I take another step back as he climbs down off the desk to stand in the space between it and me. Since I’d moved back such a small amount, he hardly has any room, leaving him pressed up against me. The tingling I’d felt before has intensified until my skin seems to be pulsing in reaction to him.
My breath catches as his fingers briefly brush against the hair on my shoulder until he seems to think better and lets his hand drop.
“Lou?” a familiar voice says when after several moments I still haven’t moved.
Familiar, but completely different. Like talking to someone in person for the first time after only speaking to them over the phone. It’s the same, but somehow this feels so much more real.
And having his full sized body practically pressed up against me makes it that much more intense. My hand moves to touch him to see if he’s as solid as he looks.
Cindy’s voice calls while thumping down the stairs, “Hey, I thought I heard...”
She stops at the door and I shove myself away from the man in front of me. I stare at Cindy as her face shifts from anger to confusion to surprise and then all the way back to anger again. She, on the other hand, isn’t looking at me at all. Instead she’s staring at the man who now has his back to me.
She opens her mouth a couple of times to speak, and when she finally does say something, it’s only one word.
“Al?”
Chapter Eleven
“What? How? What?” Cindy very cleverly asks.
I can’t blame her, especially since my vocabulary is reduced to a single nervous laugh when Al spins to look at me for a moment before turning to Cindy. With him actually human-sized, I can see so many more details such as the fact his nose and mouth are little too wide for such a slim face. And he’s in need of a shave. Not in a ‘is he growing out a beard?’ kind of way, but in a ‘he probably hasn’t shaved for days and that’s all he can grow’ way.
He has a fighter’s body. Lean and entirely made of muscle which his light shirt and tunic show off very nicely. I catch myself staring at the part of his shoulder connected to the back of his neck while nibbling on my bottom lip and I take another step back.
“Lou! What did you do?” Cindy’s demanding question gushes out when she’s able to gather her thoughts.
“It’s not her fault.” Al positions himself as though he’s protecting me from Cindy. “She was trying to help.”
“Don’t you even start,” she says. “I’m not...I can’t...I’ll deal with you later.”
Al turns and gives
me an apologetic look that offers a perfect view of his chest, since it’s more or less at eye level for me. His shirt and tunic are both ripped, all the way down to his belt, and the skin under is red and spotted with blood.
“Oh,” I manage to force out. I touch his skin for a fraction of a second before pulling my hand back. Although the contact was brief, I’m hit with an embarrassing rush of heat leaving me flustered. “How did...”
He makes a face and guilt smashes into me, knocking away all other emotions.
“Me? I did this?” My voice is at least an octave higher than normal.
“The blade’s sharper than it seems,” he says to excuse the fact I nearly killed him.
My eyes lock onto the cut and follow it down his chest, where the material of his clothes has shifted enough to show a good portion of skin, down to his belt line. I don’t realize I’ve been staring until one of Al’s hands grips my shoulder as the other forces me to look up at his face. I can feel the blush spread all the way down my neck, while the tingling where we touch has me trembling.
“I’m fine.” His voice is as smooth and warm as his touch, and I can’t help leaning toward the sound. “It’s just a scratch.”
“Oh this is awesome,” Cindy groans. She grips the arm he’s using to lift my face and digs her nails into his flesh. “Hey, you. Not-so-little Al. If you’re not dying, then how about you make yourself useful by checking the doors? I thought I heard something when I was upstairs. I’d rather not get a surprise visit from a couple of wizards.”
He doesn’t move for a minute and instead checks on me. “Thank you,” he says.
“Move!” Cindy forces him around her out of the room.
When he’s gone, Cindy cautiously approaches me. The way she moves is almost as though I’m a stranger, not her annoying little sister.
“What have you done?” she asks again, but this time a lot of the bitterness is gone, replaced with sadness. “Are you this stupid or did he trick you into it?”
The idea of her blaming Al hits harder than her insult to me. “He didn’t do anything. I opened the bag on my own. He told me not to. And why are your pockets glowing.”
Her hand goes to her head and she rubs her palm into her eye.
“Are you kidding me?” She shakes her head until she notices the bag on the floor. She picks it up and shoves it into my face. “Do you have any concept of what you’ve done?”
“I’ve taken back the magic you said I was born with.” I take a step away from her and turn so she can’t see the worry on my face. Have I done the right thing? “And now we have a chance against those wizards when they do catch up to us.”
She doesn’t back down as she follows me wherever I try to hide. “You don’t have all of your magic. It wasn’t all kept in one bag, you stupid moron.”
“Unlike those smart morons, huh?” Not the best retort, but it will have to do.
“What do you expect to do when they come? Do you know anything about magic?” Her hand goes to her hip while the other waves the now empty bag in the air. “Have you ever done a spell?”
I try to sound confidence when I say, “I made Al big again.”
“By using his own knife and almost killing him, something you could have done without opening the bag.”
“What’s the big deal?” I throw my hands up in defeat. I hate getting yelled at, especially when I haven’t done anything wrong. “Maybe you’re worried now I’ll be better than you at magic?”
Her expression is somewhere between pity and a glare. “All you’ve done is given them an easy target.”
“They’re here!” Al shouts from the hallway.
Neither Cindy nor I move. We’re too busy scowling at each other. When Al bursts into the room, he takes one look at us and slams the book closed on the table, surprising us out of our stare-down.
“We have to go.” His tone leaves no room for argument. “Now.”
“Go where?” Cindy asks. “I didn’t find anything helpful in the books, and if we run, they’ll simply track little-miss-perfect here’s new power.”
Yeah, alright, maybe it was a mistake. “Well, maybe if you explained any of this before leaving me in a room with mystical powers in the first place then I wouldn’t have opened the damn bag.”
“None of it matters right now,” Al says. “We know this building is connected to my world somehow. If we can figure out how to get there, they might not be able to follow.”
“But we have no idea how,” Cindy says. “The best we have is a box, and even Al won’t be able to fit inside now.” She crosses her arms while staring directly at me. “Thanks to someone.”
I get it, Cindy. I was wrong. Time to move on.
“There has to be another way.” I rush over to the shelves and pulling out book after book without actually opening any. It’s like I hope to simply know if I’ve found what I’m looking for. “If Gran was travelling back and forth regularly, there has to be something bigger. Maybe an object?”
I switch from the shelves to her desk and pull items out by the handful.
“It’s too late,” Al says.
From his tone I know exactly what I’m going to find when I raise my head from the desk. Stewart’s smile is bigger than ever, though the rest of him is disheveled and singed. Borin stands behind him, watching us and carefully cracking each of his knuckles. Around both of them is an eerie glow, similar to the net and Cindy’s pockets. Except where the net had been neatly constructed of beautiful, terrifying bits of energy, the light around the two wizards is blotchy and fraying around the edges. I can’t keep my eyes directly on them for more than a few seconds without feeling nauseated.
“Hello, Lou,” Stewart says in his fake sweet voice. “My, how you’ve changed.”
Al’s hand slowly reaches for the weapon no longer strapped to his belt. I follow his lead and go for my own weapon, fingers slipping around the keys in my pocket so when I make a fist, the sharp metal edges point out between each finger.
“And look at the stray you’ve picked up,” Stewart’s amusement increases as he notices Al for the first time. “You’re a long way from home, boy. I suppose we have you to thank for releasing her magic. But I’m afraid you aren’t going to get to enjoy your first taste today. Her magic is mine.”
“Son of a bitch,” Cindy says. “I knew it. I knew there was something off about you.”
“It’s not...” Al starts to say, but stops. Instead he keeps his focus on Stewart. “You’re not going to touch her.”
“Oh, I think I will.” His amusement grows as he examines Al a little closer. “Do you truly believe you and the witch have a chance against two full wizards?”
While Stewart and Al talk, my focus goes to Borin. At first I thought the sun must have been hitting him at an odd angle to cause him to shine. But as I watch, the glow intensifies as layer after layer of light gathers around his body until he glows as bright as Cindy’s pockets. Whatever he’s doing, I know I need to stop him before he finishes.
I lunge forward, determined to stop him however I can. With my attention completely on Borin, I don’t notice Stewart’s the only one not surprised by my attack until it’s too late. My body stops mid-stride as the air leaves my lungs. He doesn’t touch me, but the magic slammed into my stomach is worse than any kick I’ve ever received.
Worse, I can’t double up in pain or clutch the hurt area. I can’t move at all. Stewart’s light engulfs my entire body in an instant, paralyzing me. And then the pain begins.
It starts at my toes and is so excruciating I don’t know how I’m able to continue standing, but his magic won’t let me fall any more than it will let me attack him.
I notice movement out of the corner of my eye, hear Borin call out a warning. It’s too late. Al’s fist lands hard on Stewart’s jaw, followed by his other fist against his temple. An impressive hit. It looks practiced. And it sends Stewart to the ground.
As soon as the first strike lands, the pain stops and my muscles loosen e
nough I’m able to move once again. I want to drop to the ground in relief, but Al’s hand on my arm forces me forward.
“Come on!”
He starts toward the front door, but Borin is ready for us. At the last second I’m able to drag Al out of the way of a blast of a patchwork of magic I’m sure was meant to knock us out, if not do something worse. I pull him toward the stairs and am relieved to see Cindy’s right behind us.
At the top we separate. Cindy rushes to Gran’s room and Al searches one of the two spare rooms. I spin and face the stairs, my keys ready in my fist.
Stewart leisurely climbs to his feet and wipes the corner of his grinning mouth with his thumb, his eyes never leaving me. Borin doesn’t move from his spot between the front door and us, though I can see he’s building up another spell much like the last.
As important as the danger is, and as much as I know I need to keep my eyes on Stewart as he calmly walks up the stairs, I can’t keep my attention from drifting down to my own hand. Since Gran’s keys were left outside under the rotten well roof, they are dull and dirty. But one is so dark it blends with the shadows of my hand. It’s unlike anything else I’ve seen today, and yet, I’m positive it’s shrouded in magic.
Cindy bursts from Gran’s room shouting, “The window’s stuck. We need another way.”
My attention finally torn from the keys, I look over at Cindy, but it’s not her I see. Right behind her is a shadow completely at odds with the rest of the hallway. The edges blur and shift, making the shape hard to figure out at first, but as my eyes adjust to the strange cloak of magic, I’m sure she’s standing in front of a door.
But we’re on the second floor. And that’s an outer wall. A door there would lead to...nowhere.
I start walking toward the dark area, determined to figure out what I’m seeing.
“What are you doing?” Cindy demands.
Her voice snaps me out of the trance I’ve fallen into and back to reality.
I stare down at my hand in confusion and realize I’m reaching toward the space in the wall with the strange shadow key between my fingers, as though I’m going to use it to unlock the door.
The Box Omnibus #1 (The Box, The Journal, The Sword) Page 8
