When I walked back out to Fedorov, he seemed to feel the same.
“I sense no dark magic. No imprisonment. No Looper.” Fedorov’s steely gaze darted around the room. “Not here, Charlie.”
“Not here?” I swept the room again, desperate to find a clue, something, anything. Yet, there was nothing. Just the lingering smell of an old man who I disliked to my core.
Was that it? Did I just dislike him enough to construct some sort of false narrative about him? Was he not guilty at all? Were the gnomes and Rowan wrong? It made me so crazy I wanted to cry and tear the house apart.
Fedorov seemed to sense this. He stepped towards me and put a fatherly hand on my shoulder. “We keep looking elsewhere. But now, we must go. Time is up.”
“Dammit,” I whispered, fighting the urge to cry.
Slowly, sadly, we walked back to the front door. Fedorov started to turn the knob, but something caught my eye.
“Wait,” I said, holding out my hand.
He turned to me.
I pointed at the door.
I hadn’t noticed it before but on the back of the door a faint, but glowing symbol pulsed, something like a map’s compass and one of the zodiac signs merged together.
“Do you see that?” I asked.
Fedorov shook his head. “I see… door.”
“No, that.” I stepped closer, examining it. The symbol was definitely there, and now that I was close, I could feel magic rolling off of it like heat.
“This is something. Feel it.” I gestured to Fedorov to hover his hand over the spot.
His expression changed as he felt the magic. “Interesting. How you see?”
I shook my head, not sure until I remembered Potions class. “A neverblind potion. I drank one today in class. I think it’s still in my system.”
“Ah,” he said in understanding. “Stand back.”
As I took a step back, Fedorov twirled his fingers and interlocked them, flipping his hands upside down and right side up again. Finally, he pressed his palm to the spot on the door.
The door swung wide.
And into another world.
Chapter Thirty
SPRING SEMESTER
MID-MARCH
Foggy colors whirled in front of us like a psychedelic 70s rock show. Pastel greens, oranges, yellows, and blues spiraled at a lazy speed, beckoning us through the door. A kaleidoscope of colors with no floor or ceiling, yet I was driven to step through, into the technicolor wonderland. There was something in there, I could feel it.
I glanced back. There was the cottage behind us just as it was, but ahead of us was a dreamscape straight out of a hallucinogenic trip.
As if hypnotized, Fedorov and I stepped forward and were immediately surrounded by the colorful haze. Our feet rested on something solid, but I couldn’t see it through the fog. The air smelled of vanilla and chocolate, making me crave cookies and cream ice cream, my favorite flavor.
How oddly specific.
The thought made me blink and realize what we’d done. I whirled, searching for the door, but it was gone. The haze was all around us. No sign of a way out.
I was at the verge of freaking out when Fedorov’s voice cut through my panic. “It’s okay, Charlie. I can find way out again.”
“You can?” I asked my voice trembling slightly.
“Yes.” One word, full of confidence. My rising panic settled.
“What is this place?” I asked, glancing around.
“Powerful spell.” He peered around, too, gray eyes narrowing as he assessed our surroundings. “Takes more than one Super to do. More than Nyquist, anyway.”
I swallowed. “Do we… look around?”
He nodded once and strolled forward, slowly and carefully, though still confident. I followed him, keeping close and mimicking his composure, even though inside I was pretty much having a major meltdown. Was this what tripping on acid felt like? If so, I never wanted to.
A path made of shifting shapes stretched before us. Dorothy’s yellow brick road was nothing compared to it. If it could be called any color, it would have been “morphing rainbow.” It wasn’t made of anything like cobblestones or cement. It was more like glass with a river of colors and shapes eddying underneath it.
Our feet padded lightly as if we were afraid the road might shatter to dump us into a river of multicolored paint.
As we moved forward, the fog continued to dissipate until everything opened up to reveal an enormous field.
The sky above us was a muted purple. Five moons lined up one after the other, glowing down on the field and giving everything a purplish tint. It wasn’t nighttime, despite the moons, but it wasn’t daytime, either. More like a glittery twilight.
Pines, oaks, palms, maples, sequoias, and all manner of mismatched trees lined the horizon while bushes and flowers covered either side of the path.
Dark birds flew overhead, but it was impossible to discern what type they were. They were black and flitted in circles like bats but appeared too large to be the flying mammals I knew.
Subconsciously, I sidled closer to Professor Fedorov, fearing pterodactyls or Draculas might swoop down for their next meal.
“Don’t think they can hurt us,” Fedorov said, without taking his gaze from the path. “This is dream world. Many imaginings.”
The “he didn’t think they could hurt us” speech wasn’t very reassuring. I was still sticking by Mr. Confident. Let the dinosaurs try to chomp on him first.
Small creatures scurried between the bushes and flowers. They were elusive and fast, but when I finally caught a good look of one of them—all flat blue eyes and striped orange fur—I figured they were the offspring of a Furby and Garfield.
“How long have we been walking?” I asked after a while.
“Hard to tell.”
It felt like five minutes, but it also felt like an hour when I thought about it. “How are we going to find our way back?”
“We don’t have to.” Fedorov’s answers were clipped. He was bearing no distractions, but I was getting restless.
After another indeterminate amount of time, a whirring sound reached our ears. We stopped.
Ahead of us, around a bend in the path, a tall metal thing moved in our direction. It had long, piston-like legs with screw claws and awkward hinges for knees. Its body was shaped almost like an ostrich’s and made out of metal plates held together by rivets. A long neck like a washing machine hose held up a head the size of an oversized stapler. The thing had no eyes or mouth. It was but a crude representation of an animal.
Fedorov and I stepped out of the path as it passed, paying us no mind. Whoever had birthed these imaginings had to be on some serious acid.
“Weird,” I murmured.
We were about to step back onto the path when I felt something move around my feet. I glanced down, then cried out as octopus tentacles wrapped around my ankles and squeezed.
“Ahh! Let go!” I exclaimed as pain shot up my legs. “I thought you said they couldn’t hurt us,” I shouted at Fedorov.
His gaze flicked to my feet. Acting immediately, he lifted his hands and aimed them toward the tentacles. My cuffs flashed as I prepared my own attack, but before either of us could do anything, another set of tentacles whipped out of the bushes, captured Fedorov’s legs, and pulled him down.
He hit the ground with a thud. I went next, landing on one shoulder with bone-cracking force. We barely had time to blink before the tentacles started dragging us across the ground, pulling us past the bushes and toward the open pasture.
My body bouncing against the ground, I tried to steady my hands to shoot a spell at the meaty tendrils, but my hands jostled too violently to allow me a clean shot. As I tried to think of a way to channel energy down my legs, I glanced up.
The pasture extended before us as far as the eye could see, and the tentacles were so long they disappeared into the horizon. They pulled us along like tin cans tied to the back of a car. Worse yet, they were dragging us tow
ard a black hole, a rip in the fabric of the purple sky itself.
Fedorov and I exchanged a quick glance, then he swept a hand in a downward arc, shooting a laser beam of magic that hit the tentacles several yards away from his feet. Why hadn’t I thought of that? Cuffs flashing an angry red, I released my own magic. It hit the appendages, barely missing the tip of my tennis shoes.
Nothing happened.
Our magic seemed to have absolutely no effect on our faceless attacker.
As the creature, or whatever it was, pulled us along. Both Fedorov and I kept shooting at it. We tried fire, ice, electricity. Nothing worked.
We got closer to the hole.
What if it was a mouth? Oh, God!
I tried harder, growing desperate as I shot spell after spell to no avail.
It seemed to take hours, but also only seconds, to reach the blackness. Once there, I could see the tentacles were coming from the orifice and were being sucked in like spaghetti noodles through a giant mouth, the professor and I along for the ride.
A raw scream tore out of my throat as darkness enveloped us.
I shouldn’t have been able to see anything, but the neverblind spell allowed me glimpses of my surroundings: flashing teeth dripping with blood, twisted claws reaching for us, bulging eyes inside empty skulls, hairy pincers on a giant spider.
I screamed again, my throat going raw.
After an eternity, we stopped, landing on something squishy. The tentacles let go, releasing my legs and leaving an insistent throbbing behind.
I sat up, blinking, my hands sticking to the ground as I pushed to my feet. Shaking my arms, I tried to dislodge the slobber-like substance that dangled from my fingers. What the hell? Had we landed in a vat of snot? It certainly felt and smelled like it. My stomach clenched at the thought.
“What is this?” I asked into the gloom as my feet sank into the stuff.
Fedorov didn’t answer. I searched for him, head swiveling around. There was no sign of him.
“Professor Fedorov!” Panic fizzing in my chest.
No response.
The goop made a squishing sound as it quickly started climbing up my legs.
“No!”
I pushed down at it, trying to free one leg, but I only managed to get more of the gunk on my hands. Trying my magic again, I discovered it had the same effect it’d had on the tentacles.
None.
The sticky stuff continued to inch up my body and, in a matter of seconds, it was up to my thighs, my waist, my chest. I cried out for help.
God, no! I was going to drown in snot!
My legs and arms pumped, fighting for release, but I just sank deeper.
What if Fedorov had already been eaten by the slime? No one else knew where I was. Disha and Bridget were sleeping soundly at the dorm, and tomorrow, when they started looking for me, Nyquist would pretend he knew nothing. He would say I had mysteriously disappeared, the way Micah Adelson had.
And when my friends went searching for me, they would find no trace of me.
The goo climbed to my neck. I lifted my chin, buying myself two seconds of extra air, then the stuff was at my mouth, my nose, my eyes.
An instant later, I was completely encased, a bug trapped in amber.
Oxygen ran out. My lungs began to burn. They were on fire.
This was it.
I would never see Disha, Bridget... Rowan.
“Wake up, Charlie!”
My heart ached. I didn’t want to die. I wanted to—
“WAKE UP!”
I sat up, gasping for air and clawing at my throat.
Fedorov was kneeling next to me. He patted my back and weaved his fingers in front of my face in some spell. My desperation eased. Air flowed down my throat as if someone were blowing it in.
“I… I was drowning,” I sobbed.
“You’re fine, Charlie.”
I grabbed my head. “I thought I was gonna die.”
“You were trapped in bad dream, but you’re awake now.”
“A dream?”
“Yes.”
“So I wasn’t drowning?”
Fedorov seemed to nod and shake his head at the same time as if he wasn’t sure. “It is over now.”
My panic slowly eased as I took in deep breaths, and Fedorov’s calming words and spell did their work. Once I had a hold of my senses, he helped me to my feet.
I blinked at our surroundings and froze.
We stood inside a dome-shaped area made of a swirling, colorful brilliance. It towered above our heads, then fell around us, trapping us like roaches under a giant bowl. Ribbons of light hung from the top, coming down like puppeteer strings and revealing its morbidity in full.
Twenty bodies hung suspended from them.
Luminous ribbons enfolded each person, wrapping around their necks and middles, under their arms and legs, holding them six feet off the ground.
I examined each face, horror rising in my chest like the sun at dawn, burning and all powerful.
“Are they… are they dead?” I asked.
“No. They dream,” Fedorov said, his face upturned as he regarded a particularly young girl who couldn’t have been more than nine years old.
“Anama!” I exclaimed when I spotted the fae behind one of the dangling shapes. I ran to her and glanced up at her slack features, which held none of their normal vivacity and attitude. Her green skin had a sick tint to it.
My hand rose as if to touch the tip of her fine, fae-made boot.
“Don’t touch,” Fedorov snapped.
I snatched my hand back.
“Can’t we wake them?” I asked, my tone high-pitched and desperate.
“That would be unwise. It could kill them. Or damage their minds, at very least.”
“Why so many?” I asked as I followed the tip of Anama’s pointed ear to the ribbons of light above her head.
Fedorov didn’t respond. I glanced back and found him staring at the ground, lost in thought. After a long moment, he met my gaze and said, “I’m not sure.”
It sounded like he might have a theory but nothing he was willing to share.
“What do we do? How do we rescue them?”
The professor seemed at a loss. His face was twisted in concern as his mind seemed to go through all the possible ways to rescue them but came up empty.
“It is beyond my knowledge,” he admitted without embarrassment or pride. “We need help. Dean McIntosh would know what to do.”
Yes, she would have known what to do. I just had to hope that there was someone else as good as she had been, someone who could free these poor people, then teach Nyquist and whoever else was helping, a lesson. A very hard lesson.
I rushed back to Professor Fedorov. “We have to go back. We can get Professor Middleton, Hitchcock-Watson, Madame Bernard, everyone! Together they can figure out how to—”
Fedorov put a finger up and cocked his head to one side, cutting me short. His gray eyes moved from side to side as he seemed to hear or perceive something I couldn’t.
“They know we’re here,” he whispered.
“What?!”
Without another word, Fedorov hurried to the edge of the light dome and began weaving a spell, his cufflinks flashing.
I ran to his side. “How do I help?”
He didn’t answer, just continued weaving his spell, muttering under his breath while I stood there feeling useless, my heart thudding in my ears.
The light around us strobed in quick succession.
Was Fedorov’s spell doing that?
I turned, glancing all around.
My answer came when the dome flashed red, and a ragged crack split up one side. A group of twenty warlocks poured in through the opening, their hands crackling with magic.
Nyquist was front and center, murder spelled on his features. His gaze roved around the dome, over the dangling bodies, and just as he was about to spot us, Fedorov stepped in front of me and quickly waved a hand over my face.
Wh
at was he doing? There was no time!
My skin tingled and felt rubbery, but I had no time to consider what he’d done because, next thing I knew, he was shoving me through the crack he had made in the dome.
“Run!” he said, pushing me forward as we came out onto a patch of dry lawn back in the real world.
I did as I was told and ran, Fedorov quick behind me.
“Defensive magic!” he called out as we sprinted, reminding me of our lessons last year.
Rifling through the spells in my arsenal, I came up with a blocking spell and threw it backward in a random effort of protection against whatever our pursuers might throw at us.
Something exploded behind us. I flew through the air and landed on a cobblestone street. Fedorov landed next to me and groaned as his shoulder hit the ground. Pain thundered through my body, but there wasn’t time to examine it now.
“Good blocking spell,” he said, weaving his hands so fast they were but a blur.
Was he using a spell to speed his spells? Shit, I needed to learn that.
His magic set us back on our feet so quickly I had to put out my arms for balance. I glanced around and realized we were outside of Nyquist’s cottage. We’d left the nightmare world and were back in the Academy. Thank God!
“Go back and hide!” Fedorov ordered, turning to face the cottage and the men who were now pouring out of it.
“I’m not going anywhere,” I said, joining his side and facing the threat.
As I squared my shoulders, the air around us wavered and twanged as if someone had plucked a dissonant chord in a guitar. The hell?
“Dermo!” Fedorov growled at me, probably some Russian curse word. “Stubborn, stubborn. I told you to go. That was barrier spell.” He turned his back on Nyquist and his cronies and began to weave his hands at empty air.
What the hell? Had he gone crazy?
As soon as his hands stopped, Fedorov grabbed me by the arm and shoved me away from him. The air between us snapped as if a door were shutting.
“Now, go!” he commanded, before turning his back on me to face the men.
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