“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 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.
“That’s not a bird!” Jillian cried. “It’s a—It’s a—what the hell is it?”
“I don’t know,” Louise whispered.
The bird boy wasn’t wearing a shirt. While they couldn’t see how everything connected to his back, it was obvious that he had wings and not just a feathered cloak. He looked like a high school gymnast, lean but strongly built, all his shoulder and chest muscles sharply defined. His wings were raven black, shifting just like a nervous bird’s. He wore dark fabric pants but his feet were bare.
“He has bird feet!” Jillian cried.
Why were bird feet more stunning than wings? Louise didn’t know but she couldn’t stop staring. His shin and ankle looked human but his foot split into three long toes with sharp talons at the end of them.
“Do you think he’s—he’s intelligent?” Jillian asked.
Was he in the orb simply because he was more bird than boy? He felt at once pitiful and dangerous. She took a step back.
He lunged and caught hold of Jillian.
The twins both screamed. Louise grabbed the boy’s wrists and tried to free Jillian.
Joy appeared on his arm, hissing angrily. “Bad! Bad! Let go!”
He let go with a cry of dismay, spilling the twins onto the floor. “I’m sorry!” He shouted as they scrambled backward. “Please! Wait! I’m sorry!”
Louise was across the room and halfway up a flight of stairs that she hadn’t noticed before when she realized that Jillian wasn’t following. Nikola was clinging to Louise’s shirt collar, squeaking frantically, “Go! Go!”
“Jilly?” Louise shouted.
“Listen!” Jillian called from somewhere in the darkness.
“Please!” the caged winged creature cried. “Forgive me! I’m sorry!”
“He could be just parroting the words.” Louise dashed back to take Jillian’s hand and tug her toward the steps.
“If he’s intelligent enough to talk, we can’t leave him in the cage!” Jillian resisted being pulled away. “We’re going to burn this place down, remember?”
They were probably going to need a distraction to get cleanly away from the mansion. A fire would work well. To leave any animal trapped in a cage, intelligent or not, while the place filled with flames was unthinkable. Still, Louise didn’t want to risk her twin. Without Louise’s precognition power, Jillian couldn’t sidestep danger. It was probably why Jillian was often caught when Louise had always managed to stay one step out of trouble. “What if he’s dangerous? How do we let him out without getting hurt?”