The walls began to shake. In the hall, stones ripped themselves from the supports while dropped weapons picked themselves up off the ground. Everything, nailed down or not, began to lift and turn toward the doorway where Eli and Josef were crouching.
“Nico,” Josef said. “We need that exit.”
Behind them, the room was quiet. Out in the hall, things were beginning to speed forward.
“Nico!” Josef shouted.
At once, she appeared beside them, whether through her shadow stepping or just her terrifying speed, Eli couldn’t tell. She flung back her hood, her scraggly black hair standing straight up, her eyes bright as candles, and a familiar wave of fear washed over the room. She pushed Josef aside and turned to face not the hallway or the things flying down it, but the enormous treasury door. Her hand shot out, the silver manacle jerking and shaking on her wrist, and her fingers dug into the iron like it was river mud.
Deep in the stone under their feet, something screamed. Nico ignored it, digging her fingers deeper, her glowing eyes narrowing to slits as she spoke a command.
“Move.”
The enormous door moved faster than Eli had ever seen iron move. Bits of stone went flying as it surged forward, slamming itself shut with an impact that shook the keep.
For a moment, everything was silent, then there was dull clatter as the flying object collided with the now-shut door. The duke was shouting on the other side, but the sound was very far away. Then, all at once, the room began to scream.
Eli and Nico both slammed their hands over their ears as the terrible sound swept over them.
“What did you do?” Eli shouted.
“I closed the door,” Nico said, her voice thin and strained as she pulled her hood back over her head.
“I can see that,” Eli said. “My problem is with how you did it.”
“What?” Nico glared at him, her eyes bright as lanterns. “It worked, didn’t it?”
“Oh, sure,” Eli said, rolling his eyes. “Solved the crazy wizard problem, but you can’t just do that to spirits!”
“You’ve told me to scare spirits before,” Nico said grudgingly.
“That’s different,” Eli snapped. “Giving spirits a little scare is one thing. It doesn’t hurt anyone and it moves things along, but that’s not what you did. You sank your fingers into that metal and gave it an order, and that, Nico, is not good. That door can’t say no to you when you’ve got your teeth in its throat. Giving spirits orders they can’t say no to is no better than Enslavement, and we don’t do that. Besides, now we’re trapped in a screaming, panicked vault that, as you mentioned earlier, has no other exit.”
Nico turned away, scowling. Eli grabbed her shoulder to turn her back around, but Josef stepped between them.
“Save it,” he said, sheathing his swords. “Let’s find a way out. Quickly. We’re losing structural integrity.”
He was right. Large streams of grit were falling from the ceiling as the stone arches that held up the vaulted ceiling fought to get free and crush the demon. Chunks of rock clattered down the stone walls, landing in a series of crashes that were only getting louder.
“We’re not finished,” Eli said, pointing at Nico. Then, without another word, they split to search for some way, any way, out.
“All right,” Eli shouted, scanning the shaking walls. “The thief got in, and he didn’t take the main door. I can promise you that. Look for something unusual.”
“Could you be more specific?” Josef yelled, staring blankly at the quivering wall.
“I don’t know.” Eli ran his fingers over the shivering, weeping rock. “Discolored stone, a corner out of place, anything that could mark a secret door or passage, maybe a bricked-over window. I’ll take a mouse hole at this point.”
“Can’t you just do something wizardly?” Josef said, dodging a chunk of stone that fell right where his head would have been.
“I don’t exactly think these spirits are in the mood to chat!” Eli shouted back.
Josef gave him a rude gesture just as Nico cried out, “Here!”
Argument forgotten, Eli and Josef ran over to find the girl standing in front of what looked like a perfectly normal patch of wall behind a toppled shelf.
“What?” Eli said, looking around frantically. “I don’t see anything.”
“Neither do I,” Nico said. “But listen, it’s not screaming.”
She was right. While the other stones were in full-on panic, the patch of wall in front of them, a little eight-brick square, was perfectly silent. Now that Eli looked, it wasn’t shaking either. It was a rock amid the chaos, and now that he saw it, he wondered how he could have missed it earlier.