Victory and relief hit me at once. I bowed my head and went to leave.
“Stop.”
I was too far from the door and too enveloped within his wards to do otherwise, so I stopped and looked back at him again.
Admiration was on his face now, a surprising contrast to what I'd always expected of him.
“You are one talented woman. Very talented. In spellcasting and illusion. But your acting leaves something to be desired, Miss Swift, and I will not forget the way you killed me.”
I squared my shoulders. “And I will not forget the way you killed me.”
My earbud rang with a cacophony of voices, all of them yelling, “Get out! Get out now!”
I had just enough time to pull up a defensive spell before Cole's incapacitation spell struck. The burn spread through the spell and dissipated in a blinding flash. Vision darkened but I didn't lose track of everything. Wards came to life throughout the house, snapping down shutters and flooding the place with lantern light.
Outside, I heard people yelling things to one another, a call-and-response which was too fast for me to even register hearing it. Then the static amplified in my ears until that was all I could hear as I froze, stock still, concerned what would happen if I set foot in the wrong room.
“You would be very wise to remain as you are, Miss Swift, and tell those outside to not attack the house,” Gregor Cole said.
“And why would I tell them to stand down?” I asked.
“Because if they do not, I will order my walking animations unleashed, and I do not think your team would like to see my little,” he considered what word to use, “improvements on the last design.”
Barnes would be able to cope with walking animations, and probably Mordon and Valerin as well. However when it came to Leif and the Selestiani members, I was not so sure. Gregor Cole reached for his pocket.
“Guys, withdraw.”
“Choose your words carefully,” Cole said.
“Just do it. I can't hear you, so don't ask questions. Just withdraw.”
I held Cole's attention as seconds ticked by, and he let his hand fall away from his pocket. “Impressive. Very impressive. How a stray waif with no hope for the future and no connections has gained such power in such a brief lapse of time. It almost gives one reason to believe in divine influence.”
Cole advanced on me, step by slow step, assessing me with cool calculation. I set my shoulders back and stayed put, refusing to retreat, even though I didn't know where I would have gone to. Cole's hand lashed out, not to strike a blow, but to snatch the earbud and throw it to the ground. Though I hadn't ducked out of the way, it still stung from where his nail had caught on my ear lobe. Anna was in my arms, her sleepy expression gone and red wrinkles taking its place.
“Give me the child.”
I shook my head.
He said, “Give me the child, or I will see to it that my informant leaks another story, this one about your precious colony.”
I scoffed, “Go on, then. See if I won't stop this one, too.”
Cole's expression darkened, his teeth became points, and I saw the way his skin was beginning to stretch thinly over jutting bones.
“Be careful,” I said. “Lose yourself too much and you won't have any choice but to go wendigo in front of a lot of witnesses.”
He curled a lip, but the fangs had disappeared. “Give me the child,” he snarled and grabbed her blanket.
Exactly what happened made sense in retrospect. At the time there was a flash, a push, and the howl of wolves. In retrospect, it happened like this: One instant he was reaching for her, had her blanket between his fingers; the next instant it felt like a person had stepped between us and shoved the both of us in opposite directions. I hit the side of the hallway, he was propelled into a little sofa table with a bowl of painted eggs upon it. As he hit the table, his fist crunched the eggs. Rather than whole eggs, they were the painted shell of an egg with its insides emptied. They broke into pieces, surprisingly sharp shards breaking skin. Cole's eyes bulged. The hiss of spells whispered through the hall, down the stairs, and out the door, transforming as they went into a pack of howling wolves.
I'd read about that defensive spell before. It was called The North Wind. They'd attack whatever was in their way, but their real purpose was to open the gates for other defenses, things either too dangerous to unleash in person, or too difficult to get to. In any case, it made for the most theatrical spell I'd ever seen, even if it was gone in less than a second.
The honeysuckle pin on Anna's clothes went quiet again.
Cole held a shaking hand out, staring at the red sheen mixed with painted fragments of shell. Blood ran from the scratches. “You simpleton.”
A backhanded slap stung my face and threw me off-balance. Anna cried.
Cole grasped me by my shirt, hauling me upright. “Have you any idea what it is you have done?”
“I took the leverage away from you,” I said. “At least I will have that much pleasure if you kill me now.” I yanked back from his fists and stumbled into a parlor.
“What do you think you are doing?” Cole asked and stopped himself from pursuit. “You will bungle into hazards and get yourself killed. I won't have to lift a finger myself.”
“I'd be glad to do it. What sort of an environment have you set up where a wandering child could so easily find itself killed?”
With a sneer which distorted his face, Cole swept into the room.
I ducked his arm and ran for the next door, feeling the sting of spells as I set them off. One of them released gas into the hallway, another set a bell to clashing and clanging.
“What is it?” a servant called from their bed. “The cat didn't go after the lampshade again, did it?”
Cole, seething with rage, was past common sense. He turned his attention to the source of the noise and directed a spell against it. Even though it was Cole's house and everything was meant to withstand a battle should one erupt within its walls, it was no match for Cole's power. The door didn't disintegrate into nothing, just broke apart into a thousand pieces as doors were wont to do while in my presence. It didn't take Cole long to vent his fury on the inanimate object protecting his own worker, but it was long enough for me to wrench open another door.
I dodged through the opening and slammed the door locked behind me. A second after I had left a locking spell on the door frame, the entire wall shuddered with the force of Cole's weight ramming against it. The hinges groaned and bent. A crack appeared by the frame, knocking plaster to the floor. It would buckle soon.
I didn't plan to wait around. With Anna wailing and the entire household now up in arms and men outside fighting the walking animations, the place was a verifiable madhouse. Fast as possible, I ran along the billiards table and searched out for doors or portals which would lead elsewhere—anywhere else. There was no movement of air, which meant that the room was sealed off. A wave of despair crippled me, then I saw pool cues displayed on the walls. It didn't seem very like Cole to have a place where he would be definitely trapped if worst came to worst.
Ever since being without magic myself, I had given a lot of thought as to trinkets. Though I'd never bothered with anything so sporty as a cue, I'd enchanted plenty of broomsticks and pencils and paintbrushes. Wood held spells very nicely, and the cues were nice because they could be left out in plain sight without anyone thinking twice about their presence. Unless Cole was acting very against character or was too self-confident, one or more of these billiards paraphernalia should do something important.
Now which one it was would be the real question. I had a few seconds, if even, to grab the right one. If Cole was here, in a panic, and there was something threatening him, which cue would give him a way out?
He was right-handed and he would go straight for it—I went for the right-side wall, reached out and raised my hand another foot to compensate for his added height. A hair higher than this was a dark stained pine cue. I felt a tingle race up my f
ingers as I contacted the wood.
I couldn't be sure what sort of an enchantment it was that Cole had placed within it. For all I knew it could be a portal, it could be a last-second destruction spell which would obliterate this entire log cabin and all there was in it.
Behind me the door whomped with another hit. Cole snarled and shoved it open. I snatched the cue down and ran for the other side of the billiards table. Unable to break it over my knee owing to my present one-handedness, I brought the stick down sharply over the edge of the table.
“Stop!” Cole shouted and reached out his hand even though there was no way he could grab it. The fear on his face made my heart skip.
An explosive snap rang through the room and brilliant whiteness washed from the broken cue. The table flipped with the concussion waves.
Solid floor fell away and the confines of the room evaporated into nothingness. The sudden acceleration shoved me backwards and then I floated through empty air, going into free fall. There seemed to be nothing anywhere around me.
In that moment I learned what it was to make a mistake while holding someone who had depended on me. I didn't know what would have happened if I'd been caught in the cabin, but it wouldn't have damaged Anna. She'd stopped crying, and I knew how terrible it was to have the both of us going through the empty nothingness with no way out.
Chapter Thirty-Four
The blank space started to thicken and pad. I dropped to the ground, bruising my butt. I jolted to my feet, realizing that I was not dead and I was also not in Cole's cabin. There was a rug over pale carpet and chairs seated around a short table with a bowl of flowers on it. I heard the tick-tock of a grandfather clock.
Heart slowing, I told myself to settle down. That I was not in an immediately terrible position was wonderful, after all. We'd been lucky. My thoughts turned towards home. I wanted the comfort of being safe within Mordon's wards, but how was I to get out of here? A faint noise caught my attention. Confused, I looked around—slowly, cautiously, just in case I wasn't the only person here.
Humming in the pale moonlight stood a woman in a white robe. Silence strung tight between us and neither one of us moved. It was then that I realized that the only sounds were the ones that Anna made, and the strange woman's humming. There was nothing coming from the outside. Then the woman went on her way to get herself a drink of water, as if she had not even seen us.
Hesitantly, I twitched the curtains aside and realized that filling the area behind the glass was nothing but a sheer wall of bricks. When I looked back, the strange woman was gone but her humming came from right beside me.
The faint humming faded across the room, and the only sound that broke the silence of the house after this was the soft sobs of Anna settling down. When that had died away in tiny groans everything was quiet.
I dragged myself out of the trance. My body felt like I had jumped into running a marathon with no preparation, and it was hard to clear my head from the fog of exhaustion. After a few minutes of standing and wobbling on my feet, I decided to do a healing spell. The dizzying buzz of words tumbled from my lips as meaningless as a children's ditty, and I wasn't sure if I'd said it right. Knowing it wouldn't be wise to lay down, I remained standing, hoping that my spell would work. The ground wobbled beneath my feet as the spell sapped strength, then my vision became clear. Weaker but far less tired, I slowly came out of the aftermath of exhaustion.
I strode through the house, trying to think.
The portal had taken me to a cottage, a place with antiquated furnishings and the scent of cheap cherry candles. Unlike any of the ruling class houses, this place hadn't been designed by a person who knew how to arrange rooms and its walls were clogged with candids from disposable cameras. Someone had taken the time to arrange them in frames, but the frames, like everything else, were either secondhand or cheap. It in no way resembled the homes I'd grown accustomed to seeing.
Now wasn't the time to be pondering this, though. I didn't know if Cole had easy means to follow or if he had his hands full with the chaos I'd left behind, but I wouldn't take any chances. Striding quickly across the house I reached the first exit I could find and yanked. It was locked. I checked the shelf nearby for keys, saw nothing. Then I rattled another door. Also locked. I was putting Anna down to grab a chair to break a window when I heard someone approach.
I whirled around and raised up my magic to defend or attack before they had a chance to do it first.
Reason and logic started to assert themselves. I was in an unknown secondary location, apparently alone, and locked in. Panic and claustrophobia threatened to overtake me, both of those took effort to suppress.
“First thing's first, survey surroundings, take an assessment,” I said aloud. A shiver ran down my spine. Something seemed to be listening to me, watching me. I whirled around, seeing no one, and yelled, “Leave me alone! What is it with this stupid Frankenstein obsession that Cole has? I'm always the one who has to clean up the mess. Why can't people just leave other people alone and let them live their lives?”
Yelling did nothing besides make Anna cry again, but I felt marginally better. With the brief burst of emotion out of the way, I could focus on what I needed to do now.
“Get out of here before Cole or one of his minions shows his face.”
I was not physically restrained, at least. I'd probably be sunk if I didn't have the soul gem, but that little thing was doing a good job of keeping me steady. I didn't want to overtax it, however. There was a slight chance that Mordon or Valerin might manage to find me, but I wasn't going to bet on it. The best I could do would be to leave behind a clue as to where I planned to go from here.
Once I got out of here. Cole had done a good job of barricading the house off. I didn't understand who maintained the lanterns—though it could be an independent spell doing that work. I checked the house over, but was disappointed. Though it looked like someone should be living here, there was nothing that showed life. The cupboards were so bare that not one but three mice had died and were now dried up carcasses positioned on the shelves where food had once been. Aside from furniture and decorations, there were no personal affects.
I checked the room for a way to leave. Nothing obvious or not so obvious. Cole hadn't been pleased when I'd broken that cue, so was this one of his safe houses—I assumed he had them, it would be an oversight if he didn't given the way he was universally despised by anyone who wasn't rich—or was this someplace else?
It was disheartening, but I remained resolute to find something, anything at all. There had to be a point to this place. As it felt like a home, it was meant to keep the prisoners from panicking—prisoners. Yes, that was the right word. There wasn't a guard, so they had to compensate for it in other ways. Making the house appear non-threatening would discourage people from desperate measures to escape. But what sort of desperate measures?
I sank onto the seat beside Anna and set to work soothing her, as she was very understandably upset by all that had occurred. A bottle would have been nice to give her, but the best I could do was let her suck on my shirt while I recovered my nerves. The humming continued. I couldn't tell if it was an active haunt or a residual haunting. Railey would have been able to tell me, but I tried not to think about her any longer. It hurt to have a friend gone, even if she had been technically speaking dead for over a decade. Now I had to think about her. A decade of ghostly companionship was an intimacy unlike any other, and one that I hadn't fully appreciated. The first step in coping with a haunting came to mind.
This was old territory, terrifying and thrilling, strangely comforting despite its dangers. It reassured me that there was still a place and a time when I knew what could happen and what to do. My world had changed so swiftly from haunts and bogies in the dead of night to leading masses of people in dynamic and unusual societies. I knew the rules and the etiquette here, what was considered rude and what was polite, what was kindly meant and what was dangerous. A ghost-like entity shouldn't be ignored,
particularly not with my method of arrival.
“Can you hear me?” I asked. The humming stopped. If there was a reply, it wasn't loud enough to be audible. “I'm going to get a bowl of water. When it settles, splash it if—”
Glass fell from the kitchen, shattering on the floor. I remained stationary.
“That wasn't a nice way to talk,” I said. What was it that Railey and I used to do in cases like this? It had been such a long time ago, but I definitely knew we'd had cases like this. We used to tag team it together. Railey would have reminded me. She knew all the ghostly ways, as well as the taunts the dark ones preferred. She'd been there to guard me against the ethereal assaults. Being bound to me had kept her strong.
My skin prickled. But Railey wasn't here any longer. She'd moved on. I'd last seen her at her graveside, and she'd been happy and free. And looking better than she had in years. It was selfish to want her here with me now, but I wished she was here. I climbed to my feet, facing the tile floor with the broken remains of a crystal vase fractalling tiny rainbows in their shadows.
Lost Magic (The Swift Codex Book 3) Page 26
