by Martha Carr
“Don’t say it like it’s such a bad thing.” Nickie dropped onto the futon and propped the sledgehammer against the armrest. “This is the only place we know that stops the drums in my head. Probably stops the Gorafrex, too.”
“It’d be really great if we don’t ever get a chance to test that theory,” Emily pointed out as she sat on the arm of the old chair with the bowling bag.
“Okay, don’t get too comfortable.” Laura sat in the other armchair—upholstered in the ugliest combination of bright-red, lemon-yellow, and faded mint-green plaid. “We’re dropping these things off, then getting right back to it. Yeah?”
“Yeah, okay.”
Nickie crossed her legs, a foot dangling in the air over the other. “So that’s really it? We go in with a transport bubble, pop back into the Clubhouse to grab our weapons of destruction, go back, break the thing or disconnect it or whatever, and that’s it?”
“Pretty much.” Laura cocked her head. “I worry, though, how breaking the core might affect the museum…and all the…” She frowned.
“All the kids?” Emily asked. “If anything happens at all, they’ll probably just think it’s some great new earthquake ride or something.”
“Not every kid is like you, Em.” Nickie grinned, her foot bouncing in the air. “Some of them get freaked out when they don’t know what’s going on.”
“Wait, are you talking about me as a kid or me now?”
“But,” Laura cut in, so she could finish her train of thought, “I got some pretty good advice yesterday I think we can use to our advantage. Or, at least, might make it harder for us to screw this up.”
“Advice from who?” Nickie asked.
Laura dropped her head back against the ugly armchair. “From whom.”
“Whatever. More wisdom from Winston?”
“No.” Laura’s gaze flickered toward Nickie, and a flush of color rose in her cheeks. “Not Winston.”
“What other magicals do you work with who you can actually stand?” Emily chuckled.
“There’s a…” Laura blinked, attempting not to give herself away, which was pretty much impossible. “There’s a new professor starting this fall. He was moving into his office.”
“Ooh. He.” Emily wiggled her eyebrows. “Are you guys gonna go on some kinda totally nerdy archaeology date or something?”
“No dates.” Laura shot her a scathing glance. “And he’s a physics professor who got an office down the hall from mine because the Natural Sciences Building is full. Okay?”
“Sounds like you sure are getting to know him quickly.” Nickie snorted. “And you told him about our little Gorafrex hunter problem, so…is he a wizard?”
Laura pressed her lips together. “He’s not a wizard.”
“Oh.” Emily’s lower lip popped out in surprise. “Then what is he?”
Laura blinked. There is no way I’m gonna tell them about meeting a part-Kashgar who magicked my desk drawer back together and, apparently, makes me blush. Why am I doing that? “He’s…a dwarf.”
Emily barked out a laugh. “Well never mind, then.” She turned toward Nickie and spread her arms. “Laura doesn’t go out with short guys, remember? Roger has a better chance than a dwarf.”
Nickie smirked and narrowed her eyes. “Hmm. Poor dwarf doesn’t have a chance.”
Laura stood. “So that’s the end of this ridiculously useless conversation.”
“What was his advice?” Nickie asked.
Her older sister froze and took a breath. “That this whole ship was designed to maintain balance, and whatever was built on top of the energy core—like a children’s museum—was put there for a reason none of us will understand. So, most likely, if removing or destroying the core is gonna affect anything around it, the ship would likely do what it could to make sure nothing got tipped too far off balance. Which I’m hoping won’t even be the case.”
“Sounds like we already have the green light, then.” Emily stood, jingling her keyring in her hand.
The teezler, who thought it was going to be crushed between the back of her shirt and the back of the armchair, leapt off Emily’s back and onto the bowling bag before scrambling across the top and slipping through the tiny hole where it hadn’t been zipped all the way shut.
“Not to do whatever we want.” Laura pointed at her youngest sister. “And no…E-X-C-S—”
“No Excsindo spell. Yeah, I got it.”
“Emily…” Nickie stood from the futon and shook her head.
“Oh. Right. Sorry.” Emily mimed zipping her mouth and locking it, then dropped her shoulders and grinned. “So we’re off?”
Laura glanced at all the paper butterflies the origami dragon had taken to chasing. They swarmed above the witches’ heads toward a lava lamp on the shelf. “I think we should probably leave the Clubhouse first. I have no idea how our ‘nobody but the Hadstrom sisters’ magic is gonna mix with transport bubbles.”
“Okay.” Emily thumbed the coin on her keyring and vanished.
Laura rolled her eyes and looked at Nickie. “Does she seem unusually hyper to you?”
Nickie giggled. “That’s just Emily when she’s happy.”
“Huh.” The sisters pressed their thumbs into the thumbprints and left their secret Clubhouse.
“All right!” Emily clapped her hands together and rubbed them vigorously when her sisters appeared in front of her in the basement. “Bubble time.”
Laura couldn’t hide her chuckle, even when she shook her head. “This might be the trickiest part. Hopefully. We don’t know what the energy core looks like or where it is exactly. Obviously, it’s under the Thinkery, but that could be anywhere, so we need to be a-hundred-percent focused on where we’re guiding the bubble. Got it?”
Her sisters nodded.
“Focus on finding the energy core under the Thinkery, because that’s all we know. We just have to take it from there. Conmeatus.” A translucent bubble grew on her flashing silver ring.
Emily snorted. “What? You’re not gonna ask if we have any questions?”
Laura turned her lips to the side. “If you had any, you would’ve already asked.” She stepped into the growing bubble. Her sisters followed, focused on finding the energy core.
14
The transport bubble popped, and the witches appeared in complete darkness.
“Ow. You’re on my foot.”
“Hey, you don’t have to push.”
“I do if I want your elbow out of my face. That is your elbow?”
One of them bumped against the wall and knocked something metal to the ground. The sisters froze, hoping no one heard them.
“Lychnus.” Laura’s silver ring flashed. A glowing white orb the size of a lightbulb illuminated in her hand.
“Nice.” Emily disentangled herself from between her sisters and lifted her foot out of a cardboard box full of dirty rags. “Are we in, like, a maintenance closet?”
“That looks like a breaker box…” Nickie pointed at the panel on the wall beside them, and Laura drew the orb of light closer.
“I think so. Doesn’t look like it’s powering anything though. And it’s missing the…oh.” Her foot kicked against the metal door one of them had knocked off the breaker box. “Okay we need to be careful. Keep the property damage to a minimum and all that.”
“Except for the energy core.” Emily grinned.
Laura frowned at her sister. “Yeah. Except for that.” She turned around and muttered, “Illucio.” The light in her palm lifted into the air and drifted a few feet up and in front of them.
“Let’s go.”
“Emily, be careful.”
“What?” Laughing softly, Emily spread her arms. “I’m pretty sure nobody is down here. Wherever here is. And your little light wouldn’t steer us astray, right?” She turned to follow the light-bulb-sized orb floating overhead, almost skipping.
“Emily just being happy, huh?” Laura raised an eyebrow.
Nickie raised her eyebrows bac
k. “Okay, maybe not just. Might be John.”
“She said she barely knows him.”
“Laura, that’s not a prerequisite for getting’ all giddy about someone,” Nicki said. “You already know that, though, right?”
Laura blinked, then noticed the darkness fading as the light and Emily moved down the corridor. “Come on.”
They caught up, following their sister down the passage to the right. There wasn’t much to see but a few snapped, dead wires and cement walls. Emily reached out with her left hand to trail her fingers along the wall. The color of it didn’t change under Laura’s floating orb of light, but Emily could feel the difference. “Woah…”
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing’s wrong, Laura. I just…” She tapped the wall again with her finger. “The wall changed.”
“What do you mean ‘the wall changed?’”
“It felt like cement. Now it feels like…I don’t know. Metal. Check it out.”
The orb of light retracted toward them once they stopped, and Laura joined Emily at the corridor wall. “You’re right. It doesn’t feel like cement.”
“You know, if it actually is metal…” Nickie spread her arms. “Who here says it’s pure iron?”
“That makes sense. Iron Gorafrex prison inside the ring of energy cores.” Laura squinted down the corridor. “Does it look like this thing is curving to you guys?”
“Barely. Maybe a little.”
Laura nodded. “Okay. Keep going. You might be right, Nickie. We might be pretty close.”
After two minutes of walking, Laura’s floating ball of light rose higher, leaving them in darkness. “Uh…wait a minute. Reditus.” The tiny orb pulled a U-turn and descended.
“Lychnus.” Emily’s ring flashed copper, and she sent a second sphere ahead of them and to the right. “This thing goes on forever, doesn’t it?”
“I don’t think this is a hallway anymore.” Nickie squinted into the fading darkness as the lights floated away, illuminating the large chamber ahead. “I can hardly see.” She tossed her hand toward the darkness in frustration, and the black ring on her thumb flashed on its own. Her sisters’ lights ballooned to twenty times their size, and the chamber around them illuminated fully.
“Man, that’s bright.” Emily shielded her eyes.
“You didn’t mean to do that, did you?” Laura asked.
“I didn’t even think about a spell.” Nickie raised an eyebrow. “Have you noticed that the rings don’t always need a spell for accidental magic?”
“Oh, yeah. I noticed.” Laura gazed at the tall walls of the chamber, all smooth, dark, and a little shiny under the huge orbs of light. “I mean, spells and wands are necessary, right? Just slower. The rings were made for fighting a Gorafrex and locking it up. Not a lot of time for saying a spell or flicking a wand. Or trying to find it again if you drop it in a—”
“Uh…guys?” Emily’s voice came from the left, sounding far away. “I think we found the energy core.”
Her sisters turned and saw the massive cylinder rising from the chamber floor. It stood at least twenty feet tall and maybe half that in diameter, the cylinder made of something like glass and long metal, curving arms clamped to it every few feet.
“Em, I think you’re right.” Laura approached the cylinder to stand by her sister. “At least now we know what they look like.”
“Yeah…” Nickie ran a hand through her hair. “I don’t think it’s gonna be as easy to dismantle as we thought.”
“Only one way to find out.” Laura pulled her keys from her back pocket, thumbed the coin, and disappeared.
Emily peered at Nickie. “I don’t think we’ve ever done this much popping in and out of anywhere.”
“You’re obviously getting a kick out of it.”
“I really am.” They grabbed their keyrings and popped into the Clubhouse.
Laura already had the giant Velikan socket wrench resting over her shoulder. She raised an uncharacteristically mischievous eyebrow at her sisters. “It’s like you’re not even trying to keep up.” She disappeared.
Emily barked out a laugh. “When she gets going, she really gets going.” She slipped her fingers through the handles of the bowling bag.
Nickie picked up the sledgehammer and swung it up with a grunt to rest over her shoulder. “I hope she lets me get in at least one good swing with this thing. This is gonna be like…hitting a piñata for a noble cause.”
Laughing, Emily pressed her thumb on her coin, and Nickie followed.
“Okay. Who wants to go first?” When both her younger sisters stared at her with open mouths, Laura rolled her eyes. “Come on. Of course I waited for you. This is part of the Hadstrom legacy for all three of us.”
“Well, sort of.” Emily set down the bowling bag and flexed her fingers. “I mean, we wouldn’t really be down here if we’d stuck to the original legacy and kept the Gorafrex where it…” She glanced at Laura’s darkening frown and shrugged. “I mean, yeah. We’re doing this together. Legacy and everything.”
Laura nodded at Nickie. “Wanna go first?”
“You don’t have to ask me twice.” Nickie walked a slow circle around the outside of the energy core, looking for weak spots or anything particularly fragile. For the most part, those were at the base of the core, where the glass-like cylinder emerged from a metal cradle that looked like the legs on a clawfoot bathtub.
Emily knelt by the bowing bag and unzipped it, watching her sister so she didn’t miss a thing. Her hands wrapped around the teal, fourteen-pound bowling ball. The minute she lifted it and stood, the stowaway teezler scrambled unseen up the side of the bag, leapt out, and disappeared behind the energy core.
“All right. This is gonna be fun.” Nickie dropped the sledgehammer to the chamber floor, tightened her grip, and swung it back in a wide arc. She brought the head down on both the bottom of the glass cylinder and the metal cradle holding it. An ear-splitting crack and a loud, piercing ring echoed upon impact.
Laura took a few steps back. “Jeeze.”
“I felt that in my teeth.” Emily stuck a finger in her ear and wiggled it around, flexing her jaw.
Nickie grinned. “I’ve always wanted to hit something with a sledgehammer.” She pulled it back, swung it up, and brought it down hard. Something sparked, and Laura grimaced. The middle Hadstrom sister gave her hammer one good swing before stepping back. “Man. I guess at least it’s good practice.”
Laura balked. “For what?”
“You know, when I get really big. Like bigger-than-Austin famous. It probably won’t happen, but if the mood ever strikes one day, at least I’ll know I can smash a guitar.”
Emily snorted, then burst out laughing as she hefted the weight of the bowling ball in her hands.
“Nickie.” Laura stared at her with wide eyes. “You wouldn’t actually do that, would you?”
“Really?”
“Yeah, really. It’s a completely useless, wasteful, violent—”
“Laura, of course I would never do it.” Nickie propped both hands up on the end of the sledgehammer’s handle and cocked her head in surprise. “I’m kinda attached to my guitar being…attached.”
Emily laughed. “No, she’d just break it Stevie Ray Vaughan style and play the crap out of it until it falls apart. You’re close, Nickie. You should start bringing a backup with you.”
Nickie grinned and pointed at Emily with a wink. “There you go.”
“That actually happens?” Laura’s head turned side to side as she glanced between her sisters.
“Oh, yeah.” Emily stuck her thumb and two middle fingers into the bowling ball’s worn inserts. “Google it.” She took a few steps back, swung the bowling ball behind her, and burst out laughing. “Sorry. Sorry. If I throw it like that, this is gonna turn into the Energy Core Bowling Alley.”
Nickie snorted, and Laura rolled her eyes.
“Lemme just…I’m gonna figure this out. Hold on.” Emily lifted the ball in front of he
r chest, then closed her eyes and thought of how she could do the most damage. Then, she nodded, swung the ball back, and launched it at the energy core’s column of glass. The copper ring on her thumb flashed. “Impe—what?”
The teal bowling ball burst with a bright-orange light and, with a crack like thunder, it shot like a cannonball from Emily’s hands. The ball struck the glass-which-wasn’t-quite-glass with a deafening crack. Sparks flew and ripples of bright-green magic scattered across the cylinder like an electrical current. The ball remained where it was, wedged halfway through the bowling-ball-sized hole it had made in the cylinder.
15
Emily gazed at the bowling ball and jumped back, shielding her eyes as another burst of sparks rained down. “Note to self. Never try that at an actual bowling alley.”
Nickie threw her head back and roared with laughter.
Laura craned her neck to stare at the stuck bowling ball and giggled. “You know, I…I think that’s probably the best place for it, Em. And if Dad ever asks…” A sharp, surprised laugh escaped her. “I’ll tell him…that it’s…” She burst out laughing.
Emily folded her arms, grinning. “That it’s what?”
“That it’s part of the legacy!” Laura tried to suppress her laughter.
Emily glanced up at the teal ball. “I think he might actually appreciate that. Woah.” She huffed out a breath and couldn’t decide whether to laugh or cry out. “I just had the best idea, like, ever.”
Nickie gestured toward her from the top of the sledgehammer handle. “Care to enlighten us?”
“Not yet. I still have to—” The youngest witch stopped when a small white ball dropped right down the middle of the clear cylinder and disappeared at the bottom beneath the metal base. “What the heck was that?”
