Thieves, killers, unable to die—it occurred to me I had more in common with the shadowborn than I did with Bethany or Thornton. It made me wonder if my fate would be the same as theirs. I’d never given any thought to whether I was aging normally. If I was, if I kept growing older but couldn’t die, would I end up like them, a shambling undead thing?
The door jolted behind me. It wasn’t going to hold much longer. We were running out of time. “Okay, so if we can’t kill them, how do we get out of here?”
She shrugged. “We don’t. That’s what I’m trying to tell you. You saw what they did out there. The shadowborn can phase out of the material plane at will. When they do, you can’t touch them, you can’t even see them. They can walk right past you, right through you, and you wouldn’t even know it. They can pass through walls or doors like they’re not there. They can attack from any direction, from out of the shadows. It’s how they got their name. It’s what makes them such perfect assassins.”
There was another loud thump on the door, followed by the chuk of a katana blade cutting into the wood. Bethany’s face went the color of ash.
“Fine, if we can’t attack them and we can’t get out, how do we at least even the odds?”
Bethany opened her mouth to speak. Her expression informed me I was about to be called an idiot again, but then she stopped. She reached into her cargo vest, pulled out the displacer charm, and started scraping at it with her thumbnail.
Another thump. The wood splintered behind me. “Put that thing away, Bethany. I told you I’m not leaving without you.”
“I know, and that was sweet of you.” She glanced up at me, but as soon as our eyes met she looked back down at the charm quickly, as if suddenly embarrassed. “Anyway, that’s not what I’m doing. Basically, charms are a way to carry magic safely. Every charm has a spell inside it that gives it its power. I just need to find a way to reverse the spell inside this one.”
“What will that do?”
“Think about it,” she said. “It’s a teleportation charm, right? What’s the opposite of teleportation?”
“I don’t know, staying where you are?”
“Being stuck where you are,” she said. “What you said got me thinking. Even the odds. If I can change the spell inside this charm from a displacement spell to a containment spell, the shadowborn won’t be able to phase anymore. We might actually stand a chance of fighting our way out of here.” She inspected the displacer closely, turning it over and over. “This would be a lot easier if I’d engineered the charm myself. Whoever made it could have used any of a hundred different spells, and without knowing exactly which one I don’t know how to properly reverse it. It’s a crapshoot.”
Sword points pierced the door behind me. “We don’t have a lot of time,” I said. “They’re going to break through any minute. You’ll only have one shot at this.”
“Then I’m going to have to try to force the spell to reverse itself,” she said. She glanced around the room. “I need a talisman, an object to act as a focal point for the spell. It has to be something symbolic of being stuck in place. It could be anything, but it would be best if it were metal, like a pin or—”
“A nail?” I asked.
“A nail would be perfect,” she said.
I turned to Thornton. “In the closet, on the top shelf, you’ll find a wooden idol. I saw it there last night.”
Thornton loped to the closet and rose up on his hind legs. Standing like that in wolf form, he was tall enough to reach the top shelf easily. He nosed his way in and knocked the idol to the floor. The hundreds of nails that had been hammered into it thudded against the carpet.
“That thing got enough nails for you?” I asked.
Bethany picked it up and inspected it. “A West African nkisi. It’s tourist-grade magic, nothing with any real power. No wonder they stuck it in a closet. But the nails are real enough.”
She twisted one of the nails in the idol’s head, gritting her teeth with the effort until it slid out of the wood. She held onto the nail and dropped the idol.
“Now what?” I asked.
“Now you cross your fingers while I try to reverse the charm,” she said.
I crossed my fingers. “Does this really do anything? Like, magically?”
She sighed. “It’s a figure of speech. I meant you should hope this works, because if it doesn’t, we’re dead.” She looked up at me from the displacer, her eyes grimly serious. “Trent, I’m going to have to open the charm. When I do, the magic is going to try to get inside you. You can’t let it. If it does, there’s no telling what it’ll do to you. I need you to look away from it. That’s the only way to be sure. Okay?”
I nodded. “What about you?”
“It can’t get inside me. I’ve got the sigil of the phoenix on me. Magic can’t get through that. It’ll protect me.” I remembered the tattoo of the fiery bird on her back. I should have known it was something more than a trendy style choice. “Don’t worry about me, you just remember to look away. You too, Thornton. Ready?”
The door cracked behind me. It wasn’t going to hold much longer. “Do it,” I said.
She wedged her thumbnail into a seam on the side of the displacer and worked it until the charm split open on tiny hinges. A bright white light glowed from within it like a miniature, trapped star. I looked away quickly. A second later, a wall of sound hit me. It was like a hundred voices shouting wordlessly in my ear, and beneath it, a thousand more singing tunelessly. I saw my shadow jumping all over the wall as the spell inside the charm flickered and danced. I felt light-headed and dizzy. My skin burned like it was on fire. Was that the magic trying to get inside me? I thought of Ingrid’s grotesquely mutated arm and the living corpses on the other side of the door. I didn’t want to end up like either of them. I squeezed my eyes shut. That seemed to help.
Somehow I was able to hear Bethany’s voice over the noise. She was muttering in the same weird language I’d heard her use back at the warehouse. Once again the eerie tone of the words gave me goose bumps. Magic—it wasn’t all sweetness and light, Q’horses and elf princes the way Elena De Voe had written about it in The Ragana’s Revenge. I saw now, firsthand, there was a darkness to it, something as old and bleak as an ancient tomb.
Through my eyelids I noticed the light change, dimming from bright white to a pale, rosy red. I heard chunks of wood break away from the door but I didn’t dare open my eyes to see what was happening. “Bethany, hurry!”
Something shoved the dresser hard, knocking it away from the door. It tumbled forward, taking me with it. When I hit the floor, I rolled away to keep the dresser from landing on top of me. “Bethany!” I couldn’t keep my eyes closed anymore, not if the shadowborn had gotten through. I opened my eyes, and just then the screaming in my ear stopped, the bright light went away, and the dizziness passed. Bethany had closed the charm again, I saw, only now the nail was driven through its center.
Portions of the door splintered and broke as the shadowborn punched and kicked their way through. A moment later, the door came out of its frame and toppled to the floor. Thornton backed away with his hackles up, a long, low growl emanating from his throat. I ran for my sword and picked it up off the floor.