It was odd that she realized that the few times that they’d gone to church with their Grandma Mayer had sunk deep roots into her psychic. She wanted to believe in God because she wanted to believe he would hear her earnest prayer that she would actually draw the spell correctly. The consequences for failing were all too easy to imagine, and she was afraid that meant she would fail.
She clicked out the pen and knelt on the floor. Dear God, please. Please.
She was just finishing when she realized someone was calling her name.
“Lou! Lou!”
She looked up to find one of the mice was standing beyond the edge of the cage, waving to get her attention. “What are you doing here? I told you to stay!”
“They’re loading all our stuff onto a truck. They’ve taken Tesla to the garage and put him in a giant box. We don’t know what to do! We can’t get him out. The Jawbreakers are watching over Tesla, and Chuck Norris is looking for Joy.”
Where the hell had Joy gone? Last Louise had seen, the baby dragon was in their bedroom. Joy had been trying to pack the cans of freeze-dried food and complaining that she was hungry.
“Oh! Oh! I bet she went to the kitchen. Did Chuck look there?”
“There are people in the kitchen!”
Louise felt a flare of panic at the idea of the babies trying to search the big gleaming kitchen. It was so brightly lit and sparsely decorated that a moving mouse would stand out. “Tell her to stay away from the kitchen. We’re almost out of this and we’ll. . we’ll get the gossamer call. Joy will answer it.”
Behind her, Jillian hissed out a swear word. “Oh, I’m so stupid! I have the gossamer call! Joy can get us out of here.”
Jillian took the small whistle out of her shoe and blew it. Most of the sound it produced was inaudible to humans, but the lowest frequency notes echoed through the caves.
“Jilly!” Louise cried. She thought she heard something rustle in response to the sound but it was gone before she could identify it.
“Sorry! Sorry! I forgot that it isn’t totally ultrasonic.”
“What’s this?” Joy appeared beside Nikola with a big tub of ice cream that she could barely carry. Her face and both front paws were smeared with white cream and little blots of chocolate. Joy held the nearly empty container out for inspection. The label stated “Stracciatella Gelato.” It explained why the babies couldn’t find Joy; she’d been sealed in the massive walk-in freezer. It also confirmed that the monster call traveled on a magical wavelength beyond normal sound. “What is it? What is yummy cold stuff?”
Louise rubbed her face to stop the scream of frustration and anger from coming out. Joy was a baby and didn’t understand the danger they were in.
Jillian, though, didn’t muffle her scream. “It’s ice cream, you greedy little—”
Louise slapped her hand over her twin’s mouth. “Shhh, shhh, we don’t want anyone to hear!”
Jillian continued for another minute, muttering angrily against Louise’s hand.
Louise ignored her sister. “Joy, can you get us out of this spell?”
Joy eyed the gleaming cage of power. “Oooh. Nasty cage spell. No.”
Jillian mumbled, “Mm mm mmm mmm.”
Louise translated. “Can you at least try?”
“There is no try.” Joy pointed at the shimmering bars with a crème-covered paw.
Jillian growled with frustration and pulled Louise’s hand from her mouth. “I’m done with the shield. What about you?”
Louise eyed the spell nervously. It looked right. “Yes, let’s do this.” She waved at Nikola. “Get back. We’re going to try blasting our way out.”
Nikola scurried back into the shadows. Joy waddled away, carrying her tub of gelato. Jillian spoke the command word and then “oohhh” in surprise.
“What?”
“I can see it. It’s like. . black glow. . all around us.”
“Good.” Louise took a deep breath. She spoke the command word.
With a loud crack, the spell activated and arrowed force along the directional arrow drawn in the runes. It plowed through the glyphs of the cage spell, instantly reducing part of the floor into rubble. The sudden trench continued to plow forward, into the distant casting room. The cage vanished as if it had never existed, and they were plunged into darkness. Dust and pieces of the ceiling rained down around them, the sekasha shield protecting the twins.
“Whoo-hoo!” Jillian shouted and cancelled the shield.
They did the dance of joy, jumping up and down, screaming with excitement until Louise remembered that they might be heard.
“Shhh!” Louise smacked her twin.
“If they didn’t hear that, they’re not going to hear me!” Jillian cried. “And how did you hit me? I can’t see anything.”
“I could hear you!” Louise took the spell light out of her pocket and panned it across the room. First thing she spotted was the now empty gelato container lying abandoned on the ground. Then she spotlighted Joy licking her fingers. There was no sign of the little white mouse. “Where’s Nikola?”
Joy looked around and then shrugged.
“Nikola?” Louise called as Jillian picked up Joy, muttering darkly about the baby dragon’s eating habits.
Louise thought she heard a distant squeak. She caught hold of Jillian’s hand and headed toward the noise. How far could Nikola have gotten? She didn’t think a mouse could run so far in such a short time. Had he been hurt by the explosion? There didn’t seem to be any rubble in the direction of his voice, but had she really heard him? “Nikola?”
“Lou!” came the faint answer from the darkness.
“That way!” Jillian whispered.
Around a rough corner and down a narrow hallway and they entered another casting room. The light picked out the glyphs of a spell marked out on the marble in wax and iron. She didn’t recognize any of the components but something about it made her skin crawl.
“Nikola?” Louise whispered.
She jumped when the mouse robot suddenly scurried up her leg so Nikola could perch on her shoulder.
“Lou, something is inside the sphere.” Nikola huddled against her neck, a small, fearful ball of fur.
She panned the light upwards. A massive orb hung from a chain at the center of the spell. The bars were solid metal wrought into elaborate circles and glyphs. Four legs jutted out of the bottom where it would connect to runes on the floor, acting like jumper cables on a circuit board. While she didn’t recognize the spell, she could tell that the magic all focused inward to the four points, and thus funneled into the orb.
And there was something trapped inside.
The creature shifted with a quiet rustle. Louise gasped as the light shone on glossy black feathers. There was some kind of bird in the orb. A massive bird as the beam of light revealed dozens of long flight feathers, each broader than her hand. It was too big to be a turkey vulture or a bald eagle. Why would anyone lock a bird up in this dark, cold place? Was Yves experimenting on the poor thing? Did it even have food and water or was Yves letting it suffer since he planned to kill it anyhow?
“What kind of bird is it?” Jillian whispered.
“I don’t know.” Louise cautiously moved closer to the orb to get a better look. “The feathers remind me of a crow, but it’s too big. Maybe a condor. Maybe something from Elfhome.”
“Like a roc?”
“The elves haven’t verified that rocs exist—”
With a loud rustle of feathers, the wings shifted to reveal a boy’s face. He had short unruly black hair sticking out in all directions, thick dark eyebrows, surprisingly blue eyes, and a large hooked nose. For some reason, he looked familiar even though Louise was sure that she didn’t know him. He tilted his head this way and that, like a bird would, trying to peer past the glare of the spell light.