surprisingly quick, and either those spikes weren’t as tall as I’d thought, or he was huge.
“What if they come back?” I yelled in his wake.
But he just disappeared into the darkness.
Breathing quickly, I heard a phantom clock ticking in my mind.
A lunch break and a sprain, assuming the mages didn’t return. That was all I had. Time for a lunch break and a sprain, plus a fake hobble back. His stride was long, though. It wouldn’t take him as long as it would a normal person.
As if there were any normal people within the magic world.
“Okay, okay,” I said softly, reaching out to Ivy House again. It was as though I existed in a vacuum, no messages or feelings going out or coming in. “Okay. I need to…open this door. No, wait, I need to fly. Flying is more important. Even if he does come back, he can’t fly. He wouldn’t be able to get me if I did.”
With shaking hands, I worked at the buttons on my shirt and pulled it off to expose my back.
“How do the others feel totally comfortable naked?” I whispered softly, putting my shirt on backward to cover things up. “Okay, wings, now is the time. Come out. Come out, come out wherever you are.”
I thought about two glorious wings extending from my back.
I thought about soaring through the sky.
I thought about jumping.
“Come on.” Eyes squinted tightly, I balled my fists, panic rising.
I hadn’t been able to do this while falling to my death, why did I think I could pull it off now, especially without contact with Ivy House? I wouldn’t be able to get myself out of this one.
24
Austin changed back into his human form at the mouth of a small cave, the trees and bushes around it nearly obscuring the opening. Ulric stood to one side in his human form, his expression grim, having been smart and taken his phone so he could call the others and direct them. Having hands in the other form was a decided advantage. Speaking of, Austin could smell the others, the gargoyle host, most of whom he didn’t personally know, and the three Ivy House guardians, their scents fresh but their forms nowhere to be seen. Traveling without wings, Austin had been the last to arrive.
He did not smell Jacinta.
He couldn’t feel her, either. Although their link had been severed at the lake, the feeling hadn’t sunk in until after they returned to Ivy House.
It felt like a hole boring through him, like a hollow absence he couldn’t bear.
Given the house’s constant blasts of panic and pleading, it couldn’t feel her either.
Austin swallowed a lump in his throat, feeling that dark brutality he struggled to contain stirring within him. Rising. If those mages had killed her…
“What’s the status?” he asked Ulric, his voice rough with unshed violence.
“She’s alive.” His tone was flat, and frustration and guilt swam in his gaze. He blamed himself for Jacinta getting taken.
Good. That meant he cared. It meant he’d do whatever it took to get her back.
Austin didn’t outwardly show his relief. But something loosened inside him. As long as she was alive, there was hope.
“Where is she?” he asked, a prompt to get the show on the road.
“In there”—Ulric gestured to the cave—“but they didn’t bring her in this way. I lost them in the trees at the base of the mountain, so I flew higher to see if I could get a glimpse of them from a higher vantage point. I saw someone working their way through the trees. It must’ve been one of the mages. They were gone by the time I got down here, but I was able to find this entrance. We’ll still need to find the other one.”
Given Austin didn’t smell this other person, it meant they’d magically masked their scent. Ulric was right—it had to be one of the mages.
“Why do we still need to find the other?” he asked, ducking into a small tunnel that his animal form would never be able to fit through.
“You’ll see.”
At the other end, the cave opened up significantly, about fifteen feet high and thirty feet wide. The dozen or so gargoyles mostly stood off to the sides, crammed together to leave as much space as possible for the three from Ivy House and Damarion, who waited in front of a shimmering magical curtain.
The mage had apparently come to erect a magical barrier.
As he approached the invisible wall, Austin got his first look at what they were