The Indigo Spell (31 page)

“I’m not her . . .” I couldn’t finish. I’d been about to say I wasn’t her apprentice,
and yet . . . wasn’t I? I wasn’t just dabbling in magic anymore. I had joined the
ranks. And now, I had to protect my mentor, just as she’d protected me. If it wasn’t
too late.

“Where is she?” I demanded.

“She’s around,” said Alicia, clearly delighting in having the upper hand here. “I
wish you hadn’t found out about all this. You would’ve made a good hit, once you’d
learned a little bit more. You’re just a small spark to Jaclyn’s flame right now.
She’s the big score tonight.”

“Tell us where she is,” ordered Adrian, a powerful note in his voice that I recognized.

Alicia’s gaze flicked from me to him. “Oh, please,” she scoffed. “Stop wasting my
time with your vampire compulsion. I realized what was going on after that first visit,
when I kept having trouble remembering your faces.” From her jumble of necklaces,
she showed us a jade circle. “I acquired this afterward. Makes me impervious to your
‘charms.’”

Something that resisted vampire magic? That would be a useful item to have in my bag
of tricks. I’d have to look into it . . . provided I survived tonight.

I saw Alicia tense to throw again, and I managed to jump out of the way, pulling Adrian
with me toward the living room. More of that goo splattered behind us with a hiss.
I produced a dried thistle blossom and crumpled it toward Alicia, shouting a Greek
incantation that would blind her. She made a small wave with her left hand and sneered
at me.

“Really?” she asked. “That remedial blindness spell? Maybe you aren’t a prodigy after
all.”

Adrian suddenly flipped open a small panel in the wall beside us. I hadn’t even noticed
it, largely because I’d been too distracted about having my face melted off. I saw
a flurry of motion from his hand, and suddenly, we were plunged into darkness.

“Now
this
is remedial blindness,” he muttered.

Alicia swore. I froze, immobilized by the blackness around me. As much as I appreciated
any attempts to slow Alicia down, I was kind of at a loss myself.

I felt Adrian’s hand grab hold of mine, and without a word, he tugged me farther into
the living room. I followed quickly, relying on his superior vampire eyesight to guide
us. I could already hear Alicia chanting and was sure some light-giving spell was
coming soon. Either that or something that would magically fix a fuse box.

“Careful,” Adrian murmured. “Stairs.”

Sure enough, I felt my foot hit a wooden step. He and I hurried down as quietly and
as quickly as we could, descending into a basement. My eyes still hadn’t adjusted
to the darkness, and I wondered if I’d just entered some secret dungeon. Yet as he
wound us through stacks of boxes, I realized the basement was just used for ordinary
storage. There was a lot of junk down here. After seeing Ms. Terwilliger’s already
messy house, I wondered what more she could possibly own.

Adrian finally stopped when we were in a far corner behind some oblong boxes stacked
nearly as high as me. He pulled me to him, keeping me in his arms so that he could
speak softly in my ear. My head lay against his chest, and I could hear his rapid
heartbeat, a mirror for my own.

“That was a good idea,” I said in as low a voice as I could manage. “But now we’re
trapped down here. It would’ve been better if we could go outside.”

“I know,” he whispered back. “But she was too close to the door, and I didn’t have
time to mess with a window.”

Above us, I could hear the floor creaking as Alicia walked through the house. “It’s
just a matter of time,” I said.

“I was hoping it’d give you a chance to think of something to get us out of here.
Can’t you use that fireball? You were pretty good at it.”

“Not inside. Especially not in a basement. I’d burn this place down around us. And
we don’t know where Ms. Terwilliger is yet.” I racked my brain. The house was small
enough that there weren’t that many places Alicia could have stashed Ms. Terwilliger.
And I had to assume she
was
stashed somewhere, if she hadn’t come to our aid already. Alicia’s language made
it sound like she hadn’t sucked away Ms. Terwilliger’s power yet, so hopefully she
was just incapacitated.

“You must be able to do something,” said Adrian, tightening his hold on me. “You’re
brilliant, and you’ve been reading all those spell books.”

It was true. I’d consumed tons of material these last couple of months—material I
wasn’t even supposed to have learned—but somehow, in this one terrified moment, my
mind couldn’t focus on any of it. “I’ve forgotten everything.”

“No, you haven’t.” His voice in the darkness was calm and reassuring. He smoothed
back my hair and pressed one of those half kisses to my forehead. “Just relax and
focus. Sooner or later, she’ll be coming down those stairs after us. We need to take
her out or at least slow her down so that we can escape.”

His reasonable words centered me and allowed the gears of logic that ran my life to
take over again. A little light was coming through from the basement’s small, high
windows, allowing my eyes to finally adjust and make out some of the dark shapes in
the basement. I could still hear Alicia moving around upstairs, so I crept away from
Adrian and walked over to the staircase. With a few graceful hand arcs, I chanted
a spell over the steps and then hurried back to my corner with Adrian, slipping back
under the shelter of his arm.

“Okay,” I said. “I think I’ve got a minor delay ready.”

“What is it?” he asked.

Just then, we heard the door at the top of the stairs open. Light spilled down, though
we still remained in the shadows. “You’re out of options,” I heard Alicia say. “No
place left to—ahh!”

There was a loud
thump-thump-thump-thump
as she went sliding down the stairs and hit the bottom with a crack.

“Invisible ice on the stairs,” I told Adrian.

“I know I’m not supposed to say this,” he said. “But I think I love you more than
ever.”

I took his hand and tried not to think about how happy his words made me, even in
this life-or-death situation. “Come on.”

We left our hiding spot and found Alicia sprawled ungracefully on the floor, trying
to get to her feet. A silver orb of light hovered in the air near her, bobbing along
faithfully with her movements. Seeing us, she snarled and waved her hands to cast
at us. I’d anticipated this and had an amulet ready. I swung it on its silken cord
and said a few quick words as we passed her. A brief, shimmering shield flared between
us and her, just barely absorbing the small glowing darts she hurled our way. The
shield was similar to the one Ms. Terwilliger had used at the park but had to be summoned
on the spot and didn’t last long.

I didn’t know what Alicia planned on doing next, but obviously, something bad was
coming. I cast a preemptive spell I’d never used before, one of the ones that Ms.
Terwilliger had told me not to bother with. It took a lot of energy and was powerful
if used correctly, yet was deceptively simple and elegant in its effects. I merely
blasted Alicia across the room with a wave of power just as she was about to stand.
She flew backward, into a stack of Christmas items. A box of ornaments fell down,
shattering near her on the hard floor.

Casting the spell left me dizzy, but I managed to keep moving. I summoned a fireball
when we reached the stairs but held it in my hand, keeping it low as though I were
going to roll a Skee-Ball—though my intent was simply to carry it. I prayed it would
melt the ice, and after my first few steps, I knew I was right. “Careful,” I warned
Adrian. “They’re wet.”

We made it to the top, but Alicia had already scrambled after us. From the bottom
of the stairs, she used the same spell on me that I’d used on her, throwing a wave
of invisible energy at Adrian and me that knocked us to the floor. I’d been holding
on to the fireball, despite Ms. Terwilliger’s warnings about how doing so would drain
my own power. When Alicia knocked me down, the fireball flew from my hand and landed
on Ms. Terwilliger’s couch. Considering it looked as though it was covered in some
cheap fabric from the 1970s, I wasn’t entirely surprised that it lit up so fast.

On the bright side, the fire solved our darkness problem. On the downside, it meant
the house was likely going to burn down around us after all. The callistana, who hadn’t
been fast enough to keep up with us when we’d gone downstairs, came scurrying over
to my side. I had only half a heartbeat to make a decision.

“Go look in the rest of the house for Ms. Terwilliger,” I told Adrian. “I’ll stop
Alicia.”

The growing fire created weird shadows on his face, highlighting his anguish at this.
“Sydney.”

“This is one of those times you have to trust me without question,” I said. “Hurry!
Find her and get her out.”

I saw a thousand emotions flash through his eyes before he obeyed and ran off toward
the other wing of the house. The fire was spreading rapidly throughout the living
room, in a way that had to be magical. The increasing smoke gave me an idea, and I
cast a spell that enhanced it, creating a hazy wall at the entrance to the basement
stairs. It allowed the dragon and me to make a short retreat before Alicia appeared,
parting the smoke as cleanly as though she were opening curtains.

“That,” she declared. “Hurt.”

I cast a spell that should’ve encased her in spiderwebs, but they fell away before
they even reached her. It was infuriating. I’d memorized so much, but these “remedial”
spells weren’t working. I understood now why Ms. Terwilliger’s main strategy had been
for me to lie low and hide my ability. How would I have ever been able to take on
Veronica? True, Alicia had taken her out, but only after probably weakening her as
she had Ms. Terwilliger. I even understood now why Ms. Terwilliger had told me to
get a gun—which, I realized now, I’d left in the car.

The ice spell had worked because Alicia hadn’t seen it coming. The only other spell
that had worked on her was the blast of power, an advanced one that had still left
me weak. It was going to take another one of those, I realized. I had no idea if I
had the ability to do a second one, but trying was the only chance I had of—

I screamed as what felt like a thousand volts of electricity shot through me. Alicia’s
hand movement had been so subtle, and she hadn’t even spoken. I fell down again, writhing
in pain as Alicia strode toward me, her face triumphant. The dragon bravely put himself
between the two of us, and she simply kicked him aside. I heard him yelp as he skittered
across the floor.

“Maybe I should absorb you,” said Alicia. The shocks abated, and I could only sit
there and gasp for breath. “You could be my fifth. I can come back for Jaclyn in a
few years. You’ve turned out to be a lot more powerful than I thought—and annoyingly
resourceful. You even made a good effort tonight.”

“Who says I’m done?” I managed to say.

I cast the first of the advanced spells that came to mind. Maybe it was inspired by
the broken Christmas ornaments, but suddenly, I had broken shards on the brain. The
spell required no words or physical components and only the slightest of hand movements.
The rest was taken from me—a draining of energy and power that hurt almost as much
as the electrifying spell Alicia had just used.

But oh, the results were breathtaking.

On Ms. Terwilliger’s coffee table (which was now on fire) sat a set of five perpetual
motion balls. I used a transmutation spell on them, forcing them out of their spherical
shape and breaking them apart into thin, sharp razor blades. They broke free of their
strings and came at my command. That was the easy part.

The hard part was, as Ms. Terwilliger had told me, actually attacking someone. And
not just making them slip and fall. That wasn’t so bad. But an actual physical attack,
one you knew would cause direct and terrible damage, was an entirely different issue.
It didn’t matter how terrible Alicia was, that she’d tried to kill me and wanted to
victimize Ms. Terwilliger and countless others. Alicia was still a living person,
and it was not in my nature to show violence or try to take another’s life.

It was, however, in my nature to save my own life and those of my loved ones.

I braced myself and ordered the razors forward. They slammed into her face. She screamed
and frantically tried to pull them out but in doing so lost her balance and went back
down the stairs. I heard her shriek as she fell into the basement. Although I couldn’t
see her, her magical lantern orb merrily followed her all the way down.

My triumph was short-lived. I was more than dizzy. I was on the verge of passing out.
The heat and light from the fire were overwhelming, yet my vision was going dark from
the exhaustion of casting a spell I was in no way ready for. I suddenly just wanted
to curl up there on the floor and close my eyes where it was comfortable and warm. . . .

“Sydney!”

Adrian’s voice jolted me out of my haze, and I managed to peer up at him through heavy
eyelids. He slipped an arm around me to help me up. When my legs didn’t work, he simply
scooped me up altogether and carried me. The dragon, who’d suffered no permanent damage
from the kick, clung to my shirt and scurried into the bag that was still draped over
my shoulder.

“Where . . . Ms. Terwilliger. . . .”

“Not here,” Adrian said, heading swiftly toward the front door. The fire was spreading
over the walls and ceiling now. Although it hadn’t quite made it to the front of the
house yet, our way was still thick with smoke and ash. We both were coughing, and
tears ran out of my eyes. Adrian reached the door and turn the knob, yelping at how
hot it was. Then he managed to kick the door open with his foot, and we were free,
out into the clean night air.

Neighbors had gathered outside, and I could hear sirens in the distance. Some of the
spectators watched us curiously, but most were transfixed by the inferno that was
Ms. Terwilliger’s bungalow. Adrian carried me over to his car and gently set me down
so that I could lean against it, though he still kept an arm around me. We both stared
in awe at the fire.