by Martha Carr
“If he likes ‘em. Sure, Em.” Laura swiped the loose hair away from her forehead and sighed. “I’m really glad you guys think this is as awesome of an idea as I do. I was starting to think maybe I’d gotten it all wrong.”
“You? Wrong?” Emily cocked her head. “Come on.”
“Okay, Em. So, the next step, I guess, is rebuilding this rune to bind the Gorafrex to iron, which will keep it weak enough for us to get it back into the prison. That’s a major problem solved. I’m just not sure yet how we’re going to get that thing out of its host first.”
“We can’t suck it out with a binding spell?”
“No way.” Laura shook her head at Emily with a disbelieving frown. “Body-soul binding is way more powerful than being-to-technology. Just part of the hierarchy, I guess.”
“The bondage hierarchy?” Nickie tried to wipe away her smile, but Emily snorted, then they both burst out laughing.
“Wow. You know, this is why it takes us so long to do stuff together.” Laura shook her head, but a smile flickered at the corners of her mouth. “I could’ve probably told you everything and laid it all out in five minutes, but nooo.”
“Sorry, Professor.” Emily pressed her lips together. “I know you’re used to silent lecture halls where everyone is riveted to every word you say and nobody interrupts.”
“Okay, you have that backward.” Laura chuckled and pointed at her youngest sister. “I taught a freshman Anthropology lecture last semester; a room full of eighteen-year-old kids who just moved out of their parents’ houses like it was a jail break…that’s the polar opposite of paying attention with no interruptions.”
“Yeah, that sounds about right.” Nickie snickered, imagining her sister’s face as Laura gave a lecture in front of two hundred students who’d rather be playing video games and stealing into each other’s dorm rooms.
“My point is the two of you are worse than that.”
All three witches broke out laughing, and Laura felt like she’d managed to pull herself together after a few hours spent with Nathan. Which almost made me fall apart completely.
“Okay, okay.” Emily grabbed the back of the futon frame and leaned over it, still laughing and trying to catch her breath. “Back to the plan, though. Now that I know we can all make jokes again in the face our family legacy…” She frowned and scrunched up her face in mockery.
“Hey, Em. You do a good stern Greg Hadstrom too.”
“Thank you.”
“The plan,” Laura cut in, “is that we keep destroying energy cores. I’ll work on designing a new rune to bind the Gorafrex to a piece of iron. Nickie, I’m assuming you’re happy with practicing the lullaby, right? You really rocked that last night, by the way.”
Emily nodded. “You didn’t look anywhere close to passing out that time.”
Nickie gave them two thumbs up and a sarcastic grin.
“And what do I work on?” Emily asked.
“I mean, if you wanted to start looking into how to pull a massively powerful force out of a bodily host, that’s kinda the last piece we’re missing; otherwise, fighting the Gorafrex won’t work at all.”
“Uh…right. Any ideas where to start looking for that kinda info?”
Laura and Nickie shared a glanced, and the oldest Hadstrom sister shrugged. “You could try the library. There are plenty of other magical beings who use others as physical hosts. You won’t find anything about the Gorafrex, though. I already looked.”
“Okay. Trip to the library.” Emily scrunched up her lips and rolled her eyes away from her sisters. “I’m so excited.”
“Laura.” Nickie tilted her head.
“Yeah?”
“You still haven’t told us the last detail, I think.”
“Um…I have no idea what you’re talking about.” The oldest sister chuckled a little. “And I’m not lying, either.”
“You want to put that new and improved rune into one of our weapons, but you never said which one.”
“Oh.” Laura turned toward the iron lance in her hand, tapped the butt of it against the ground, and peered up at the sharp tip glinting in the light of the magical orbs lining the Clubhouse’s ceiling. “I thought this one would be pretty good, right? Nice and pointy.”
Emily let out an appraising hum. “I like it.”
“Cool.” Nickie nodded.
“So.” Laura tipped the lance from side to side and eyed her sisters. “Nobody’s doing anything today. Wanna go give another energy core—”
“A good smashing?” Emily barked out a laugh. “I’m sorry. I just hear that phrase and think of the Engineer you met under the museum and I just…I mean, it doesn’t really make us sound very badass, but whatever. Did she have, like, a British accent or anything?”
“Who?”
“The Engineer, Laura.”
“No, Em. She didn’t have a British accent. She did speak archaically, sort of. Like a giant Velikan woman who’d built this ship and then spent the last few thousand years underground by herself, eating giant cockroaches.”
“Gross.” Nickie looked disgusted.
“Yeah.”
“Huh.” Emily blinked and tried not to look disappointed. “I always imagined her with a British accent.”
“Nothing’s stopping you from keeping up that imagination, Em.” Laura patted her on the back. “So, you guys wanna go destroy some ancient technology, or what?”
“Just another Monday.” Nickie headed toward the bookshelf on the far wall of the Clubhouse and reached for one of the three matching daggers Laura’s legacy ring had made about two weeks ago—it felt like forever. “Let’s do it.”
“Sweet.” Emily stooped to pick up her iron orb and the leather glove Laura had magically crafted as an anchor for the end of the orb’s iron string. Then she shot upright and grinned. “Anybody want me to go grab a teezler or two?”
“It helped us the first time, Em, but bringing a teezler anywhere is always a bad idea.” Laura raised an eyebrow.
“Oh, come on. I feel sorry for the little guys. I can’t exactly play ping pong by myself, and neither of you have come to play with me since the first time they destroyed the basement.”
“I don’t want any teezlers running around when we might run into the Gorafrex. That was a nightmare last time.” Nickie twisted the wicked-looking iron dagger in her hand, watching it flash under the light. “But I’m down to come home after we break another energy core, and I’ll play with you then, if you want.” She brought the tip of her dagger down to point it at Emily.
“Deal.” Emily raised her iron orb and clinked it against the dagger’s blade.
Laura shook her head and replaced the iron lance on the long bookshelf. Then she grabbed the heavy socket wrench the Velikan Engineer had given her as a parting gift; the thing was at least three times the size it should have been, but it packed a serious core-destroying punch. “Only you two would make deals with weapons.”
“That’s totally not true, Laura,” Nickie replied, pointing the dagger at her older sister instead. “I’m sure there were tons of civilizations way back when humans started forgetting about themselves. They probably made deals with their weapons all the time.”
“Yeah. Some of them even think they’re making actual blood pacts when they cut their palms open and shake hands.” Emily grinned and tilted her head. “At least we’re not cutting each other, Laura.”
“At least there’s that.”
Chapter Ten
“Did you have any particular core in mind?” Nickie asked, swinging the iron dagger at her side as she and her sisters gathered in the center of the Clubhouse.
“Well, that one under Thinkery was pretty important.” Laura licked her lips and nodded. “The only other one I mapped out that was around a lot of people with potential for hurting them—or worse—was under the airport.”
Emily shook her head. “What are the odds of having two of those things under such populated places?”
“One in twelve
, apparently.” Nickie grinned.
“Well, whatever the odds are, the energy cores were here first.” Laura pointed at her sisters. “Our ancestors helped the Engineers build them as part of the escape pod, so whatever just popped up above them when Austin became Austin doesn’t matter. We shouldn’t let that stop us from doing what we have to do, right?”
“Right.”
“Yep.”
“Okay.” Laura froze and sighed out a self-deprecating laugh. “We can’t even go anywhere from here.”
“Yeah, maybe we should’ve thought about that before we built the place,” Emily said. “You know, it’s great that we can get to the Clubhouse from literally anywhere and carry it with us all the time.”
“Don’t forget I can get rid of the Gorafrex’s drums in my head here, too.” Nickie swirled the tip of her dagger and pointed it at Emily.
“Nickie.”
“Yeah?”
Laura raised her eyebrows. “Can you stop talking and waving your dagger around? It was made to defeat a witch-killing energetic being. It’s sort of distracting.”
“Right.” The middle sister lowered her weapon and smiled.
“Maybe we should add to the Clubhouse magic,” Emily suggested. “You know, make it so we can use the transport bubbles from here instead of having to pop out first and then cast them wherever we appear. ‘Cause now I’m gonna have to come all the way up from the basement to get to you guys before we leave.”
“Actually, that’s a good idea.” The oldest Hadstrom sister fingered the silver coin on her keyring and nodded at Emily. “You could work on figuring out how to do that, too, if you want. Not exactly high on the priority list, but it has potential.”
“Yeah, okay.”
Laura stepped away from her sisters and hefted the giant Velikan socket wrench in her arms. “See you guys by the front door.” She slid her thumb over the keyring’s thumbprint and disappeared.
Nickie turned to meet Emily’s gaze. “Nathan the Kashgar, huh?”
“Part Kashgar. That’s very important.” They chuckled. “Looks like it perked her right up after we told her we didn’t give a crap about her making new friends.”
“Yeah, she needs a lot more of those.” Nickie took a deep breath. “Don’t take too long getting upstairs, okay? Laura in go-mode is like a long fuse being lit. We want the Laura bomb to go off where it’s supposed to, like on the energy core.”
“Aye, aye.” Emily gave her sister a goofball salute and slipped her thumb over the Clubhouse keyring in her hand.
Nickie glanced at the ceiling, then she took a few seconds to look around the magical hideaway they had built when they were kids. Nobody in the world could get in or out of this place, including the Gorafrex. “And a teezler, I guess.” With a chuckle, Nickie lunged and brandished the iron dagger like a sword. She waved it about for a second, laughing at her imaginary fight with something even she didn’t know. Then she stopped, cleared her throat, and nodded at the weapon. “Okay, got that out of my system.” Nickie thumbed her keyring and vanished.
When she popped into the living room, Laura was already pacing.
“You okay?” Nickie asked.
“Just ready. Are you ready?”
“Yeah. Emily said she wouldn’t take too—” That super annoying tapping came again at the side of the house. Nickie slumped her shoulders and turned toward the window facing their side yard. “Seriously?”
“What’s that sound?” Laura went for the window, making that her new purpose while she had all this problem-solving energy and nowhere yet to focus it.
Nickie rolled her eyes. “The grackles, man. I thought they were bad when they could scream all over the telephone wires, but jeeze. That tapping takes it to a whole new level, doesn’t it?”
“How long have they been doing this?” Laura pressed her forehead against the glass like Nickie had earlier and watched the huge black birds pecking at the siding of their house.
“Probably since they fell out of the sky. I got them to stop right before you came home. Apparently, beaking our house is the most exciting thing you can do as a magical messenger who can’t fly or deliver messages.”
“Huh.” The oldest Hadstrom sister stared at the birds a little longer, then headed toward the foyer. “When we get back, we should try helping those things.”
“Well, I’d love to help ‘em. They helped us.” Nickie shrugged and ran a hand through her hair. “Any idea how to do that?”
“Nope. We’re short on ideas lately, aren’t we?”
Chuckling, Nickie wrinkled her nose and bobbed her head from side to side in consideration. “I think the answers we need are the ones that kind of inherently come from doing everything else on our own, you know. Family legacy.”
Her older sister rolled her eyes and let out a huge sigh. “Family freakin’ legacy.”
Just before they could step into the foyer, the magically expanding and contracting parts of their Victorian house on Pressler Street started acting up. A black wall slid into place where the entry to the living room usually was, blocking Nickie and Laura from getting to the front door. Laura tried not to let it irritate her too much. “It’s about time.”
Walls spun and buckled, sifting one over the other and in every direction along the bones of the house so that Emily had access via the basement. The house stopped changing, Laura and Nickie stared at each other, then heard the basement door—which was on the main level—click shut. Again, the house whirred and groaned and rumbled into a different shape, and the wall blocking the two witches inside the living room lifted into the ceiling and the second floor.
Emily stood there with her glove on and the iron orb in her hand. “Ready?”
“You’re gonna use that thing for an energy core too?” Laura asked.
“Totally.” The youngest sister grinned. “That bowling ball was awesome when I used it, and this is like a thousand times better.”
Laura glanced at Nickie for a little support in voicing their baby sister was making an odd decision. Nickie just shrugged. “We can’t say she hasn’t practiced enough.” Then she went to her sneakers by the front door and stepped into them.
For a minute, Laura didn’t respond. Then she blinked. “Yeah, I can’t argue with that. Okay. Who wants to kick off the transport bubble?”
“Go for it.”
“Yeah?”
Emily and Nickie nodded. The youngest Hadstrom shuffled a little side to side, not quite dancing but standing about as still as Laura was—which wasn’t much at all.
Nickie watched her fidgety sisters with growing amusement. Busy, busy, busy. All the time. I’m so glad I don’t get the jitters like that. If either one of them would pick up a guitar—or any instrument at all—I’d love it. Too uptight around here and not enough music.
Laura lifted her hand and stared at the silver legacy ring on her thumb. “Visualize the energy core. What the other ones looked like. And that it’s under the Austin Airport, okay? We wanna make it to the right one.”
Emily offered her sisters another ridiculous-looking salute.
“No problem,” Nickie said.
With the barest hint of a thought, Laura’s ring picked up on what she wanted to do. The luminescent, swirling bubble formed on the top of her ring and grew to the size of an orange before disconnecting from her hand. It floated between the Hadstrom sisters and, in under a minute, became big enough to fit all three of them inside.
The witches stepped into the bubble, shared a determined glance, and visualized their destination.
Chapter Eleven
The bubble popped, and they looked around in curiosity.
“Okay.” Emily summoned a glowing white orb from her copper legacy ring and floated it toward the ceiling. The light drifted and illuminated the high ceiling of the passageway they’d entered, however far underground they were. “I know we were just in one of these last night, but I’m creeped out a little by these chambers.”
“Really?” Laura an
d Nickie shared a confused glance.
“I didn’t know you got freaked out by anything, Em.”
“Well, I mean not freaked out like scared or anything.” Emily hefted the iron orb in her hand and headed away from her sisters down the curving corridor. “Just like…that thing’s been down here for a really long time, right? It’s creepy that all of this looks abandoned and forgotten and that none of it works anymore.”
“I’m pretty sure that’s because all of those descriptions are true,” Laura said, following her youngest sister as Nickie came up behind them.
“Yeah, I know that. The whole world just forgot about this totally awful thing our ancestors put away in this prison, in the very center of Austin, and sure, maybe things are almost on the way to not working at all. Except the energy cores. We already know those can be activated. But can you imagine what it must’ve been like for that thing? Locked up down here, inside iron walls for centuries. I don’t even know what it’s like on the inside, but the outside isn’t that awesome. The Gorafrex knew that the whole ship was moving on through time without it, but that wouldn’t have mattered. It was just…down here.”
Laura swallowed and wished she didn’t so easily empathize with what her sister was saying.
“You can’t feel sorry for it, Em.” Nickie tightened her grip on the iron dagger.
“No, I don’t feel sorry for it.” Emily’s lower lip turned down in denial. She shook her head. “I’m just trying to imagine what it would be like. I mean, I know none of us are gonna live anywhere close to a couple thousand years, but still. That would make it even more pissed and even more dangerous, don’t you think? It snuck onto the ship and got caught. Whoops. It got stuck in jail, which yeah, would seriously suck too. But then to just be forgotten about…like it took the three of us longer than it should have to even figure out what the Gorafrex really was.”
“I hear ya, Em.” Nickie nodded and caught sight of the opening into the energy core chamber on their left.
“We shouldn’t have been able to forget it in the first place,” Emily continued. “Something that powerful that wakes up human Peabrains after using their magic and that wants nothing more than to kill witches and wizards specifically for the kind of magic they give up when they die. How does anyone forget about that?”