Wood Sprites(172)

“We can improvise. We’re good at that.”

“Yes, we are.” Louise breathed out relief as her manacle clicked open. She bent over the cuff on Jillian’s leg, glad that Jillian was embracing anger to keep out fear. Her twin was trembling from one or both of the emotions flooding her. When Jillian’s manacle unlocked, she threw the hunk of metal as far as the chain would allow. They hugged each other tight, just for a moment, trying to draw strength without weakening the other.

Jillian pulled away first and stood, hands on her hip, looking very much like Peter Pan. “So, what do you think? How do we take down this spell?”

The cage was a weird mix of things that they’d never seen and spells from the Codex. It had the familiar design of concentric rings, the outer rings triggering first and cascading inward. The inner layer shimmered in the deep shadows of the cave, weaving like the mad vines around Sleeping Beauty’s castle. The scrollwork seemed no more substantial than a hologram. When Louise reached out to tap it quickly—triggering a gasp of alarm from Jillian—the bars proved to be solid and cold as steel. They arched overhead, created a sphere. Since the inner shell was tightly woven, they wouldn’t be able to reach the more vulnerable parts of the spell.

When Celine activated the cage, she hadn’t used a typical trigger word but a series of phonemes, much like those used in spell locks. Louise focused the light onto the spell engraved into the floor. The first ring contained elements from a lock. It was inscribed on an inlaid piece of marble that most likely hid the actual key words that switched the cage on and off. If they had their tablets…

If wishes were fishes.

“Without magic, it will collapse,” Louise said. “Do you think we can burn all the magic in this area?”

“No,” Jillian said after glancing around them. “There’s too much magic here. The sunroom is a mud puddle compared to this. This is a lake. Look over there.”

Louise turned to see what Jillian was pointing at. The narrow beam of the spell light picked out details across the large room. The floor was several large slabs of marble fitted together to make one large block. A spell had been marked onto the floor with a combination of wax and metal filings. It was a massive spell with Celtic knot complexity of subroutines and processes. She could identify all the pieces but how they worked together, she couldn’t even guess.

“I’m drawing a blank on how to get out of here,” Jillian whimpered.

“It’s okay. I managed to keep these.” Louise pulled out the two metal-ink pens she’d tucked into her sock. They were designed to draw functional circuits for electronics but it worked just as well for magic. “We can do a force strike spell.”

“Will it be strong enough?”

“We can ramp it up with a series of focusing rings.”

Jillian considered it and nodded, but added a warning. “There might be a rebound effect. It could be bad.”

“We could do a simple shield, like the ones that the sekasha use, to protect us.”

“I’ll do the shield!” Jillian cried and snatched one of the pens out of Louise’s hand. She crouched on the floor and carefully marked a circle just big enough for both of them to stand in. “You do remember force strike well enough?” she whispered. “Because I don’t think I do—not all of it.”

They both had drawn the sekasha protective spell countless times for their videos, both for the Wind Clan and the Fire Clan and had discussed at length the differences in the tattoos and the information they’d found in the Codex. Louise took a deep breath, looking down at the bare floor. If she screwed up, there wouldn’t be any way to fix the mistake.

“I can do this,” she said more to herself than to Jillian. “It’s a fairly simple spell. I just have to take my time and do it right.”

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 shipping crate. 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.”