its placid surface. If the water moved, the spell would react. I couldn’t tell how. The stone Georgia lay upon held a dull, pulsing energy, a sullen violet radiance that wound in slow, hypnotic spirals through the rock. A binding was in effect, I was sure, something to keep her from moving. Another spell played over and through Georgia herself—a cloud of deep blue sparkles that lay against her skin, especially around her head. A sleeping spell? I couldn’t make out any details from here.
“Well?” Murphy said.
I closed my eyes and released my Sight, always a mildly disorienting experience. The remnants of my hangover made it worse than usual. I reported my findings to Murphy.
“Well,” she said, “I sure am glad we have a wizard on the case. Otherwise we might be standing here without any idea what to do next.”
I grimaced and stepped to the water’s edge. “This is water magic. It’s tricky stuff. I’ll try to take down the alarm spell on the surface of the pool, then swim out and get Geo—”
Without warning, the water erupted into a boiling froth at my feet, and a claw, a freaking pincer as big as a couple of basketballs, shot out of the water and clamped down on my ankle.
I let out a battle cry. Sure, a lot of people might have mistaken it for a sudden yelp of unmanly fear, but trust me: It was a battle cry.
The thing, whatever it was, pulled my leg out from under me, trying to drag me in. I could see slick, wet black shell. I whipped my blasting rod around to point at the thing and snarled, “Fuego!”
A lance of fire as thick as my thumb lashed from the tip of my blasting rod, which was pointed at the thing’s main body. It hit the water and boiled into steam. It smashed into the shell of the creature with such force that it simply ripped the thing’s body from its clawed limb. I brought my shield up, a pale, fragile-looking quarter dome of blue light that coalesced into place before the steam boiled back into my eyes.
I squirmed away from the water on my butt, shaking wildly at the severed limb that still clutched me.
The waters surged again, and another slick-shelled thing grabbed at me. And another. And another. Dozens of the creatures were rushing toward our side of the pool, and the pressure wave rushing before them rose a foot off the pool’s surface.
“Shellycobbs!” I shouted, and flicked another burst of flame at the nearest, driving it back. “They’re shellycobbs!”
“Whatever,” Murphy said, stepped up beside me, and started shooting. The third shellycobb took three hits in the same center area of its shell and cracked like a restaurant lobster.
It bought me a second to act, and I raised the blasting rod and tried something new on the fly, a blending of a blast of fire with my shield magic. I pointed the rod at one side of the shore, gathered my will, and thundered, “Ignus defendarius!”
A bar of flame, bright enough to hurt my eyes, shot out to one side of the room. I drew a line across the stone with the tip of the blasting rod, and as the flame touched the stone, it adhered, spooling out from my blasting rod until it had formed a solid line between us and the water, and an opaque curtain of flame three feet high separated us from the shellycobbs. Angry rattles and splashes came from the far side of the curtain.
If the fire dropped, the faerie water monsters would swarm us.
The fire took a lot of energy to keep up, and if I tried to hold it too long, I’d probably black out. Worse, it was still fire—it needed oxygen to keep burning, and in those cramped tunnels there wasn’t going to be much of it around for breathing if the fire stayed lit too long. All of this meant we had only seconds and had to do something—fast.
“Murph!” I snapped. “Could you carry her?”
She turned wide blue eyes to me, her gun still held ready and pointing at the shellycobbs. “What?”
“Can you carry her?”
She gritted her teeth and nodded once.
I met her eyes for a dangerous second and asked, “Do you trust me?”
Fire crackled. Water boiled. Steam hissed.
“Yes, Harry,” she whispered.
I flashed her a grin. “Jump the fire. Run to her.”
“Run to her?”
“And hurry,” I said, lifting my left arm, focusing as my shield bracelet began to glow, blue-white energy swiftly