edge of the salt ring. My penny glowed. I reached into my far left pouch and pulled out a handful of black roller dust. I whispered the command and threw it into the air. Just as I had practiced it so many times, it thickened and lengthened into an opaque black wall surrounding me. The crowd shouted and hooted.
Asa sent a couple more weak light beams that ricocheted off the dust wall and fizzled out at the salt line. “Come on! Try something else!” someone yelled. Then, right on schedule, he raised the ground beneath me. It rumbled, split as the crowd gasped. Then one side of the split raised three feet in the air, and the other lowered, knocking me off my feet. My dust wall dissipated as my body fell through it. But just as we planned, I jumped back up just in time to catch the remainder of the dust wall and spin it into a whirlwind. It grew and grew between the two of us. Gasps went up in the crowd, and the people fell back. Then Asa pretended to be sucked into the swirling black vortex. Carefully, I tossed him to and fro inside the circle, my whirlwind shaking him like a dog shakes a toy. In the audience, Trixie Holland pouted in a way that meant I was more impressive than she wanted to admit. I smiled.
The guards suspended beneath the lip of the wall were moving. Sure enough, there were shadowy silhouettes on the wall, six of them, flitting across from the dark place where the spotlight had been deliberately disabled. Small, slight shadows like the one I had seen on Mourning Night. In their towers, the decoy guards were all sound asleep, bewitched with a sleeping spell just as Mr. Jameson had guessed, their guns hanging useless at their sides.
But beneath the walls, the real guards hadn’t been touched by the spell. They were alert, and their guns were trained on the shadows as they began to descend into Elysium one by one, a rope of small black ants slipping down the wall. Underneath the windmill, Mr. Jameson flapped his handkerchief twice.
I saw Mother Morevna reach for the stone in her pocket. I saw the thin sparkle of her containment spell crackle overhead, an invisible dome of magic. Then she pulled out her own handkerchief and pretended to cover her nose with it.
I gave Asa another shake or two with my whirlwind and tossed him to the ground. He landed, crumpled, and as the crowd shouted, he rose to his feet, clutching his arm. Now would come the fire projectile. He’d send it at me, I’d send it back, and then it’d be over for both of us. Across the circle, Asa’s eyebrows rose ever so slightly.
Are you ready? he was asking.
Nearly imperceptibly, I nodded.
Asa raised his hand, palm outward toward me. I felt his energy grow stronger, vibrate. A jet of fire shot out at me from his hand, grew into a thick log of flame. I grabbed the handful of dust and threw it into the air, whispering it into action. Under the windmill, Mr. Jameson nodded, turned, and flapped his handkerchief again. The guards began following the thieves as they slunk, silent, through the streets and back toward the Sacrifice building. I stood up just slightly taller to see.
Then everything went wrong.
The fire ricocheted off my shield of dust, but instead of flying back toward Asa, it went up, into the sky—straight up, impossibly up. Parting the clouds. Then it disappeared, leaving the clouds dark and angry and boiling overhead.
An eerie silence fell.
Then someone pointed.
“Look!”
The fire was coming back down, bigger and brighter than it had been before. It descended like a comet, over the church, over the garden, straight toward the Sacrifice building. There was a deep, earth-shaking boom of impact, the sound of metal tearing, wood breaking.
Oh God…
Then came the bang bang bang of gunshots followed by screams. The thieves.
The crowd panicked, began to scatter. Smoke and dust rose around them, in a cloud, thick, choking. I felt someone grab my hand—Asa.
“What’s happening?” he said. “Did I—” he asked. “Did you—”
We jumped off the platform and started to run. Asa shouldered his way through the crowd, and I stayed close behind him until he stopped and I collided with his back.
“Get some water!” someone cried.
Above the cloud of dust, flames rose, huge and angry, cracking wood, whisking away black tar paper. The smell of burning food rose