I lifted my wand, ready to undo the levitation spells, but it was too late. The magic shifted inside the slime, the taint twisting it. Between one heartbeat and the next, the slime went from a lazy river to beach-ball-sized blobs lifting off the floor. I dodged to the side as a blob floated toward me.
On the bright side, the hole the slime had punched through the wall was free of any blockage. Containment spell incoming.
“Sowil.” Now nothing would be escaping into the gym to cause trouble, other than the slime that had already been on that side of the wall.
The bear roared.
I swung around, narrowly avoiding a blob of slime. If anyone had told me this morning I’d be staring at a magically-animated, stuffed grizzly bear perched atop a narrow wall dividing two shower stalls, I would’ve laughed. Only it wasn’t funny. The slime the bear had been so carefully avoiding now drifted around it. Its glass eyes wide, the bear lunged off the stall, brushing against one of the blobs. It landed, now with a streak of bare skin.
My eyes met Rodriguez. “Time to go,” I said.
I took one small step at a time, having to divide my attention between dodging slime balls and the bear. For once, luck seemed to be on my side: the bear was too busy leaning first one way and then another to avoid the slime to notice us.
After what felt like an eternity, I pulled open the door. “Quickly.”
The first boy stepped through the door at the same moment the bear spotted the exit. I didn’t even have time to get my wand up before the bear leapt and charged.
“Out!”
The boys lunged for the door. We lost precious moments as they struggled to all fit through the door at once. Rodriguez finally gave one of them a shove before going through the door too.
I bolted after them, having just enough time to cast another containment spell, this time on the locker room door. It swung shut in the bear’s face and rattled as the bear tried to get through. None of this slowed the group down as we sprinted toward safety. Along the way, Biko had picked up a towel, and he held it in place as he ran.
A crash of wood had me twisting around. Pieces of the locker room door littered the hall. The bear had broken the object the spell was attached to, thereby destroying the containment spell too. Apparently having a healthy instinct for self-preservation even after death, it was running from the slime as fast as it could.
Which was a lot faster than any of us could move.
“Sowil.” This time, I put the containment spell across the doorway, not on the door itself. That didn’t fix the bear problem all but nipping at my heels, but it would stop the slime from getting all over the entire gym.
“Michelle, the bear!” Rodriguez yelled.
“I’m aware of the bear!” Which was only two bear-lengths behind me.
“Do something!”
“I’m open to suggestions.” I put on a burst of speed, but a glance back told me I hadn’t gained any ground.
“I don’t know. Levitate it!”
“Because we need an angry flying bear?” Levitating Biko was what had caused the current mess. I wasn’t going to risk using that spell again in this building.
Rodriguez reached the door at the end of the hall. “Do it!”
Another quick look back had me wincing. Not even two bear-lengths between us now. I went through every spell that might be able to help, but I didn’t know how they would react when they touched the tainted magic that had awakened this oversized problem to begin with.
Desperate, I tried the same spell again. “Sowil.” I fed more power into it than I had for the previous version.
It snapped into place around the bear, who put on the brakes but couldn’t stop in time and tumbled into the front of the containment spell.
And just like that, the problem got weirder. Now we were being chased by a magical hamster ball with a grizzly tumbling around inside as the ball barreled toward us.
“Through the door!” I yelled. The opening was too narrow for the ball of grizzly.
I darted through after the boys and Rodriguez, tugging the door closed. The last thing I saw was the bear sliding around the bottom of the containment spell as it rolled into the door, forcing it shut. To be sure the bear wasn’t coming through the door, even if it managed to escape its ball of a prison, I spelled the doorway, not just the door.
“Thank you,” Rodriguez panted.
The boys nodded. “What he said.”
I leaned against the wall. “Welcome.”
Biko swayed, and two boys moved to support him.
“An ambulance will be outside. They’ll take care of you.” Rodriguez got the boys moving again.
I followed, casting one last look back. If the locker room was that bad, what was waiting for us at the science fair?
Chapter Nineteen
Outside, the paramedics swooped in to take care of Biko. I relayed what I knew of the cause of his injuries while Rodriguez checked in with the officers in charge of accounting for everyone.
The paramedics were quicker than the officer, so I waited for Rodriguez in the atrium. Even with the spells I’d cast today, my magic was doing better. It pained me to admit Dr. Stiles had been right. Each time I ran out of power, my magic regenerated more quickly.
Rodriguez came in and let the door swing all the way shut before speaking. “Bad news. We have to go into the gym proper. Higher ups want a report on the supposed volcano, and a young dark elf is missing. Her parents last saw her at her sister’s maglev booth.”
“Please tell me maglev isn’t what I think it is.”
A light sparkle of humor crept back into Rodriguez’s eyes. “A science project cooked up by a dark elf and her best friend who happens to be a dwarf? No. It doesn’t have anything to do with using magnets for levitation and what two bright girls with different abilities can accomplish.”
“And I’m sure it hasn’t been affected by the tainted magic running around,” I said dryly.
“On that count, I can cheerfully confirm they didn’t use a bit of magic in the construction of their project.”
“Thank the earth for small favors.” I motioned to the door. “Shall we?”
I adjusted the containment spell so we could both pass. Rodriguez held the door open for me. A poster blocked my view of the room until I was inside. From here, I couldn’t see a volcano because of all the booths, posters, and dividers, but the plume of smoke, cloud of ash, and rivers of lava snaking through the gym made it clear we were on the right track.
The volcano was far from the only item that had gotten too cozy with the twisted magic. Four super-sized beanstalks obscured the opposite corner of the gym. An actual full moon hung in the center of the gym. What that was for, I hadn’t the foggiest idea, but there it was. Our old friend, the slime, floated through the air, which I’d expected, not that it made encountering it again any more fun.
A mechanical clicking drew my eyes to the ground, where spider bots crawled across the gym floor. They nimbly navigated over dropped purses, across fallen paper, and around one poor lost teddy bear. The bear broke my heart. I dusted it off and set it by the doors to the gym. Hopefully it would find its way back to its child.
“Did you happen to ask where the maglev table is?” I eyed Rodriguez.
He nodded but didn’t look at me. “By the volcano.”
“Of course. Where else would it be?” I muttered.
Without a word, Rodriguez headed into the maze of booths. I followed, dodging a few of the spider bots and hopping over a slender lava flow. Even when the magic died down, the damage to the building would take a while to fix. I didn’t know of any gym floors that were naturally lava-proof.
We passed a booth with a whistling tea pot. I knelt down to unplug it, only to find it wasn’t plugged in. I backed away, deciding that was one bit of science fair madness I could let run its course.
“I think the volcano is around the corner.” Rodriguez pointed at a booth with a toppled-over display.
“Then
the girl should be close.” I waited for him to nod before raising my voice. “Hello? I’m with the police? We’re here to help.”
I followed Rodriguez around the corner.
“Stop!” A young voice shouted.
But it was too late. We both lifted off the ground. I spread out probes, but this wasn’t exactly magic. In fact, I had a sinking suspicion we’d found the maglev technology. Though I wasn’t sure why it was working on us. Humanoids like Rodriguez and myself weren’t overly magnetic. Maybe that was what the tainted magic had twisted.
About four feet off the ground, we hit a current, magnetic rather than wind because I didn’t feel much air movement other than what I generated. It swept us around a set of booths and within centimeters of a poster with a crumpled side.
That’s when I spotted the volcano. It wasn’t large, only mounded five or so feet above the gym floor. It looked just like a textbook drawing, with alternate patches of gray-black from previous lava flows and orange tones from lava currently cascading down its sides. Also like a real volcano, puffs of ash, steam, and smoke curled out of the vent to form an ash cloud hovering in the air.
A dark elf flailed desperately only a few feet from the plume of smoke. She couldn’t have been more than twelve. Her gray-brown skin was almost entirely covered by ash, which liberally decorated her jeans and t-shirt. The flailing wasn’t helping her get away from the volcano, but it was keeping her out of the ash cloud. The same one the magnetic current was so helpfully carrying us toward.
“I told you to stop! How are you going to help me now?” she wailed.
“What’s your name?” Rodriguez asked.
“Acadia.”
“Acadia, we are going to get you out of here.”
Oh, that was my part. The plan for escaping the magnetic flow that was taking us through a small, but active volcano.
The ash burned by eyes, and I blinked furiously as I carefully lowered the shield that blocked me from seeing magic. Surprisingly, the glow from the magic coating the room, while bright, wasn’t overpowering. Even more surprising, a fair bit of the magic flowed through the magnetic field, illuminating it for me. It could’ve been a magical property I didn’t know of or a trick of the tainted magic. Maybe later I’d have time to look it up.
A bright pulsing blob of magic obscured my vision. Before I could react, a blast of air pushed it away.
“You okay?” Rodriguez asked.
“Yup. Checking for an exit. Thanks.”
“Anytime.” He went back to talking to Acadia. “Do you like to read?”
While he tried to keep her calm, I traced the magnetic flow pushing us toward the volcano. Even though it looked like we were headed directly into the volcano, the magnetic flow actually turned only a foot past Acadia, descending parallel to the volcano before skating along the floor. That was the way out of this mess.
“Rodriguez, can you take care of any more blobs of slime?” I kept my voice low. If she didn’t know the damage the slime could do, I didn’t want to inform her.
He nodded. “I take it you have an exit plan. What do I need to know?”
“Follow my lead, and keep the slime away. I’ll do the rest.”
“Got it.”
It was time I introduced myself. “Acadia, my name is Michelle, and my partner and I are going to get you out of here.”
“From where I’m at, it doesn’t look like that’s likely.”
If at any point I’d thought my life had reached the maximum amount of absurdity allowed for a single person, I’d been wrong. Swimming through a magnetic field dodging caustic slime and a rogue volcano while convincing a girl we really could help proved it. “We have a plan, and it’ll work.”
She lost a little ground and shrieked. From where she was, it had to feel like the volcano was about to swallow her. “I hope it’s a good one.”
“The best one I have.”
Acadia muttered a few unflattering words. Given the circumstances, I didn’t blame her. “When we get close, grab on to me and don’t let go. I have to keep my right hand free, but I’ll be holding on to you with my left. And no matter what, don’t let go.”
“Why do you need your right hand free? Are you going to shoot the bear? Someone tried that, and it didn’t work.” The words all came out in one long, breathless run.
I held up my wand. “I’m better with my right hand.”
“Oh, cool! Do you know that movie, The Witch vs. The Sorcerer? The one with the witch who saves the world from a sorcerer?”
Rodriguez blasted a blob of slime out of our path.
On a whim, I summoned the soundtrack, a soaring electronic violin song. “Yup, and just like that witch, I’m getting you out of here.”
“Cool!”
The magnetic current brought me close enough to grab her, and I wrapped my arm around her body. She clung to me. The music hit a high note, and we were falling.
Acadia screamed, drowning out the music.
“Kannu Sowil!” I held the shield between the volcano and the three of us, moving it as we moved to protect us from the lava beside, and then below, as well as debris falling from above.
Two blobs of slime appeared in our path, and Rodriguez shoved them out of the way.
Acadia stopped screaming, and we swooped down and leveled out just above the floor. The tempo of the music picked up.
I redirected the shield from under us to in front of us right before we bulldozed through three tables, sending posters and bits of science experiments flying.
We twisted around, heading for a stream of lava. I extended the shield under us in case the magnetic flow dropped us. The magnetic flow carried us away from the lava, and we dropped an inch closer to the ground. I released the shield.
Far from afraid, Acadia had her hands in the air, giggling as we leaned away from a booth.
The song ended just as we reached open floor and fell the eight inches down. I took the brunt of Acadia’s fall, not that she even noticed hitting the ground.
Acadia all but bounced off me, grinning. “That was better than a roller coaster! Best ride ever!”
My backside ached, and my muscles protested as I stood. I couldn’t help the small groan that escaped. “I’m glad you liked it. Now, would you like to get out of here?”
Acadia shoved her hair away from her face, leaving a smudge of ash on her cheek. “Yah. The last part was fun, but the rest was scary.”
“That it was.” I offered her my hand.
She peered around me at Rodriguez. “Could you both walk me out?”
Rodriguez got to his feet, moving as slowly as I had, and smiled at Acadia. “Of course.”
With one of her hands in each of ours, we walked out of the gym. Of all the things her family expected, a tale of riding magnetic currents and dodging slime—and of course the volcano—wasn’t one of them. Over her head, her parents looked at Rodriguez and me. I could see the thanks in their eyes and nodded.
Before either parent could get away from hearing all about Acadia’s adventure, Rodriguez pulled me to the side. “I’m guessing you can’t fix all the rotten spells in there.”
“You would be correct.” I was at half-power, which was great compared to where I’d been a few days ago, but that mess needed more than one witch.
“I block it off, and the school gets to call one of those pricey firms.” He rubbed his temple. “No one is going to like that.”
“Nope, but we have a different problem.” My cheeks puffed out as I exhaled. “We didn’t find the source. I’m betting cleaning supplies again, but…”
“It could be anything.” Rodriguez grimaced. “Right. I’ll have them lock up all the cleaning supplies and evacuate the campus until a firm can track down the source.”
“A lot of the clans have a special rate for schools.”
“I’ll tell the administration.” He waved over an officer. “You have items to dispose of, and I can manage blocking off the building all on my own.”
“You
’re sure?”
“I can block off a building, Michelle. And if I run out of magic, I’ll have two rookies guard that door.” The corner of his mouth turned up. “Lots of new officers will be on guard duty until this mess is taken care of.”
“Got it.”
Rodriguez turned to the officer waiting politely a few feet to the side. “Could you return Ms. Oaks to her car?”
The officer nodded.
A few more words a quick stop by Rodriguez’s car for the bag of gear I hadn’t used, and a quiet car ride later, I was back at my car. I stowed my stuff and sat heavily in the driver’s seat. Leaning forward, I rested my head against the steering wheel.
What a whirlwind of a morning. Every time I thought we’d seen the last of the tainted magic, it came back again. Each time it returned, it distracted me from the important problems. Ethel’s death, Elron’s abduction, my future as the premier.
I couldn’t think.
That’s really where this went. I couldn’t think about the cases as thoroughly as I should. I couldn’t think about the accident and all its mysteries, or processing Ethel’s death. I couldn’t even pause long enough to think about Elron and how to get him back. All I’d done for days was run from one problem to another. Run. Run and never stop.
Run, because if I slowed down, I’d realize this had beaten me down. My magic was replenishing faster, but that was it. My soul couldn’t take much more, and I couldn’t even think about that because if I did, I’d collapse.
Collapsing wasn’t an option, not until I rescued Elron.
My phone rang, and I groaned. “Please not another case.”
I dug out my phone, eyes widening when I saw restricted flash across the screen where it usually listed the number. “Oaks Consulting. Michelle speaking.”
“Announce you’re stepping down and will not be premier by eight tonight, or we start hurting the elf.” The voice switched from sounding like a young woman to that of an older woman with a heavy rasp before the tone changed to that of a gruff man. It shifted too smoothly to be different recordings spliced together, which meant a spell was altering the speaker’s voice.
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