Jillian, though, didn’t muffle her scream. “It’s ice cream, you greedy little…”
Louise slapped her hand over her twin’s mouth. “Shhh, shhh, we don’t want anyone to hear!”
Jillian continued for another minute, muttering angrily against Louise’s hand.
Louise ignored her sister. “Joy, can you get us out of this spell?”
Joy eyed the gleaming cage of power. “Ooooh. Nasty cage spell. No.”
Jillian mumbled, “Mmm mmm mmmmm mmm.”
Louise translated. “Can you at least try?”
“There is no try.” Joy pointed at the shimmering bars with a crème-covered paw.
Jillian growled with frustration and pulled Louise’s hand from her mouth. “I’m done with the shield. What about you?”
Louise eyed the spell nervously. It looked right. “Yes, let’s do this.” She waved at Nikola. “Get back. We’re going to try blasting our way out.”
Nikola scurried back into the shadows. Joy waddled away, carrying her tub of gelato. Jillian spoke the command word and then “oohhh” in surprise.
“What?”
“I can see it. It’s like…black glow…all around us.”
“Good.” Louise took a deep breath. She spoke the command word.
With a loud crack, the spell activated and arrowed force along the directional arrow drawn in the runes. It plowed through the glyphs of the cage spell, instantly reducing part of the floor into rubble. The sudden trench continued to plow forward, into the distant casting room. The cage vanished as if it never existed and they were plunged into darkness. Dust and pieces of the ceiling rained down around them, the sekasha shield protecting the twins.
“Whoo hoo!” Jillian shouted and cancelled the shield.
They did the dance of joy, jumping up and down, screaming with excitement until Louise remember that they might be heard.
“Shhh!” Louise smacked her twin.
“If they didn’t hear that, they’re not going to hear me!” Jillian cried. “And how did you hit me? I can’t see anything.”
“I could hear you!” Louise took the spell light out of her pocket and panned it across the room. First thing she spotted was the now empty gelato container lying abandoned on the ground. Then she spotlighted Joy licking her fingers. There was no sign of the little white mouse. “Where’s Nikola?”
Joy looked around and then shrugged.
“Nikola?” Louise called as Jillian picked up Joy, muttering darkly about the baby dragon’s eating habits.
Louise thought she heard a distant squeak. She caught hold of Jillian’s hand and headed toward the noise. How far could Nikola have gotten? She didn’t think a mouse could run so far in such a short distance. Was he hurt by the explosion? There didn’t seem to be any rubble in the direction of his voice, but had she really heard him? “Nikola?”
“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?”
“We’ll talk to him!” Jillian cried. “The enemy of my enemy…”
“Is a circus freak,” Louise muttered darkly.
“Well, yes. But if he’s intelligent, then he’ll probably see the benefit of cooperating with us. He’s bigger than us; we could use some added muscle. Besides, you dropped the spell light and you’l
l need it to find our way out of here.”
Louise hadn’t even realized that she’d dropped it; she’d run through the darkness without noticing it. She might be able to continue safely, but she didn’t like the idea of blindly trusting some vague spider-sense instead of just seeing where they were going. “Okay, we’ll get it.”
As they neared the light, Louise realized that Joy was perched on Jillian’s shoulders. The baby dragon was smacking Jillian on the head, muttering “Other way! Other way, stupid!” as they crept back to the cage.
The creature fell silent as they neared. He had shifted so he was crouched on all fours. He bowed, touching forehead to the cage’s floor. His wings half-unfurled, showing the bone and muscle structure of his back needed for flight.
“I’m sorry.” He remained bowed low. “I thought you were one of them. I’m sorry I scared you.”
“Okay, we get it.” Jillian obviously didn’t like him begging any more than Louise did.
The boy kept his head bowed to the floor of the cage. “You are her Chosen?”
“Yup! All mine!” Joy hugged Jillian’s face.
“Mmm!” Jillian struggled to pry the baby dragon off her face even as Joy stuck out her tongue at the boy.
“What’s a Chosen?” Louise studied the giant birdcage. If he wasn’t dangerous, how were they going to get him free? Where was the lock? “Is that like being an elf? Are you—were you an elf?”
Jillian managed to pry Joy free. “I don’t think he’s an elf.”
“He’s a tengu,” Joy stated. “Stupid poopy face.” She muttered other things that sounded like curses that the tengu seemed to understand. Hurt and dismay showed on his face.
“He said he was sorry.” Jillian held Joy in her arms so the baby dragon couldn’t plaster herself to Jillian’s face again.
“Who are you?” The boy sat up, moving slowly so he wouldn’t scare them. The circular metal cage didn’t allow for him to stand. “What are you doing here?”
“We’re trying to escape from Yves,” Louise said.
“Yves?”
“Crown Prince Kiss Butt. The son of the exiled emperor of the elves. Yves Desmarais. Husepavua. Whatever his real name is.”
“Ah, Okami Shiroikage,” he whispered. “The Unmaker. I thought he was just a legend made up to frighten our people. I was wrong.”
“He locked us up in a magical cage so he could study us,” Louise said.
“But we broke free,” Jillian added. “What did he do to you?”
“Nothing yet,” the winged boy said.
“Nothing?” the twins both cried. “But you have wings!”
Despite everything, he grinned. “Yes, I have wings. I was given them on my sixth hatching day. It was like having Christmas and New Years and Halloween all at once. My people are part human, part crow. Not that you can usually tell when we’re on Earth.”
Louise completed a full circle around the spherical cage without seeing anything that looked like a door. Maybe if they raised the orb. She panned the light up the chain and across to the winch controls. To her dismay, there was an arc-welding machine sitting on the floor. One of the elves sealed the orb shut after they put the tengu into it. The finality of it shocked her. Yves didn’t intend for the crow boy to come out of the orb alive.
Jillian was right. They couldn’t leave him here. It would haunt them the rest of their lives.
But how did they free him? Even if they could figure out the welding machine, they didn’t have time. They had to save the babies. They couldn’t use the force strike spell; a blow hard enough to break the orb open would probably kill the crow boy.
She scanned the room, quickly considering what she had to work with.
“Oh, be nice!” Jillian cried as Joy wiggled her butt at the boy.
They had called the baby dragon down to the caves to phase them out of their cage. “Joy, can you get him out of that?”
The baby dragon turned up her nose like an offended princess. “No.”
“No?” Louise echoed in dismay.
“Tengu belong to Providence,” Joy explained.
“Who is Providence?” Jillian asked.
“He’s the guardian spirit of the tengu,” Crow Boy said.
“Five Claw Dragon.” Joy lifted her front right leg and showed off the fact that she had five claws on her paw. “Double stupid poopy face.”
“A dragon?” Jillian cried as Louise asked. “Like you?”
Joy blew a raspberry. “Completely different but mostly the same.”
Louise guessed that meant that the dragons were about the same as humans were to one another. She and Elle were both nine-year-old girls but after that, everything was different about them.
“So, you can’t get him out because of Providence?” Jillian asked.
Joy nodded her head energetically. “Tengu belong to Providence.”
Perhaps Joy wouldn’t be so insistent if Crow Boy hadn’t grabbed Jillian. They couldn’t stand there and endlessly debating with the little dragon.
Louise reached out to pet Joy on the head. “You can’t touch him, but can you move the cage?”
Joy stared at her with suspicion. “Move cage: free tengu.”
“He stays where he is,” Louise pointed out. “You leave him where you found him.”
“Please, Joy,” Jillian added. “I’ll get you candy!”
“Jawbreakers!” Joy cried.
“Whatever. Just phase the cage, please!”
“Okay.”
They swung the cage side to side on the heavy chain. As it was at its farthest point, Joy shifted it and the tengu was left in midair. He landed lightly and leapt forward to get out of the way of the swinging orb.
The twins backed nervously away from the tengu.
Crow Boy knelt down before them and bowed his head. “Thank you.”
“We’re not out of the doo-doo yet,” Jillian muttered darkly.
* * *
They found their way to an extensive wine cellar. Judging by the boxing supplies, the staff would be packing up the wine after the art. Yves was truly abandoning the mansion at full speed. They picked their way through the racks until they found the dimly lit spiral staircase leading up. Louise stopped at the bottom step. She could smell fried onions, cumin and coriander. She thought she could hear voices.
She reached up to pet Nikola where he was riding her shoulder. He’d been quiet since they found Crow Boy. “Nikola, are there still people in the kitchen?”
“Yes. Nattie is cleaning up from dinner, and there are six others with her. They’re fighting about money; the mansion’s general operating fund is empty.”
On the house blueprints, it had been clear that this stairwell was the only way down into the sub-basements. It spiraled down two stories, past the basement level without connecting, from the large walk-in pantry off the kitchen. There had been no other way out. Obviously they would need a very large distraction somewhere else in the house to lure off the elves.
Louise started ticking through available resources when Crow Boy brushed past her. He’d picked up a long bar of steel from somewhere that he carried like a spear.
“Hide,” he whispered and ran silently up the stairs.
“What’s he doing?” Jillian whispered fiercely.
“Getting into a mess!” Louise ran after him. She couldn’t even shout after him to stop him; they were too close to the elves. What was he thinking? For them to hide and then sneak out when the elves dragged him back down into the basement? It wasn’t going to go that way. The elves were going to kill him and they’d be trapped as the secret elves searched the basement. What could she do to stop the oncoming disaster? Have the babies call 911? No, the police wouldn’t be here in time to save Crow Boy. No one would get there in time. Turn off the lights? No, the mansion electrical system was still last century. Blow something up? Yes, that would work!
“Is Tesla still in the truck?” Louise cried to Nikola clinging to her collar.
“
Yes. The Jawbreakers are with him.”
“Tell Chuck to get to the garage! We’re leaving now!”
“We are?”
“Yes!”
At the top of the steps, Louise nearly tripped over unconscious elves sprawled on the pantry floor. It was Celine with a big ring of keys and one of the males that acted as drivers. Were they why reason Crow Boy ran upstairs? Did he hear them coming and realize that the elves were about to check on the caged prisoners?
And this was the best plan he could come up with?
Granted he had mowed these two down easily enough but her spider-sense was screaming “this will not end well.” Louise stepped over Celine and grabbed a large sack of flour from the panty shelf. She had only seconds before everything toppled to complete disaster.
As if on cue, someone shouted, “We need help! The yamabushi is loose!”
Louise ran into the kitchen, carrying the bag of flour.
After the cave dark of the dank sub-basement, the kitchen was a sudden assault of light and smell. Every light was on, reflecting off the gleaming granite counters and stainless steel appliances. The coppery scent of fresh blood mixed with hot spices and fried onions. Dirty pots and pans beside the sink with steaming water still running was proof that Crow Boy had taken the elves off guard. The fight had spilled to the other side of the kitchen where he leaped and kicked and spun, fending off Nattie and three males armed with butcher knives. Shouts of “the yamabushi is loose” rang deeper within the house and Louise could hear reinforcements racing toward the kitchen. Crow Boy was about to be overwhelmed by sheer numbers.
Louise put the flour bag on the granite counter and quickly sketched a disperse spell onto the wrapper.
Nattie snatched up one of the kitchen chairs and swung it hard at Crow Boy. It caught him mid-leap and smashed him down to the floor. The elves leapt to pin the boy to the floor.
“Don’t kill him,” one of the males warned. “We need him breathing.”
“Breathing, yes.” Nattie stomped down on Crow Boy’s left leg and there was a sickening crack. “In one piece, no. Give me that knife.”
Louise gave the flour bag a hard shove, sending it skidding across the polished stone. She shouted the trigger word. The bag exploded as all the particles blossomed in all directions like instant dry blizzard.