“You new or something?” the other girl said.
“Come on,” Kyle said, reaching for Selene’s arm. “I’m getting you out of here.”
Selene flinched back, shaking her head. “No! You can’t—” She took a breath. “Just go.”
“No. This is different from last time.”
“Out of where?” the other girl said. She walked around a table, passing close by my hiding place; she had dirty blond hair, cut short, and she was staring suspiciously at Kyle. “I haven’t seen you . . .” She tailed off, her eyes going wide. “Wait. Kyle?”
“You have to get away,” Selene said. “If someone sees you here . . .”
“I am getting away. With you.” He spared the other girl a glance. “You as well.”
The other girl was still staring at him. “Onyx and Pyre want you dead, mate.”
“I don’t care what they want,” Kyle said, starting to turn back to Selene.
The other girl looked at Kyle for a second more, then I felt the futures settle as she made her decision. She drew in a deep breath for a scream. Kyle’s head snapped back, his eyes going wide.
My stun focus took the girl in the small of the back. Her scream turned into a whoof of breath as she thumped to the ground twitching, eyes rolling up in her head.
Luna and Variam stepped out from behind the freezer. “Saw that one coming,” Luna said.
Kyle stared at the unconscious girl, then at me. “Why—?”
I put my stun focus back in my pocket and began channelling a thread of power into it. It would take several minutes to recharge. “For someone who works for a Dark mage, you’re way too trusting.” I nodded down at her. “Make sure she doesn’t wake up in the next ten minutes.”
Kyle shook himself and knelt by the girl’s side, pulling out a syringe. Selene was looking from me to Variam to Luna, wide-eyed. “What are you doing here?”
“They’re with me,” Kyle said.
Selene’s eyes passed over Variam and Luna, then settled on me with recognition. “You’re Verus, aren’t you? It was after you got Morden arrested that everything went wrong.”
“Yeah, well, he’s making up for it now,” Kyle said, shooting me a glare. “Take those stairs down to the basement. There’s a staircase up at the end that’ll lead you out. We’ll meet you there when we’re done.”
“I can’t,” Selene said.
“She can’t,” I said at the same time.
“Yes, she can!” Kyle snapped at me.
“No, because—”
“Shut up!” Kyle stood, the syringe clenched in one hand. “You said you owed me a favour. Well, this is it. You make sure she gets out safely, right now. You’ve done enough to mess up our lives already, don’t you fucking dare back out now.”
“You should have let me finish,” I told Kyle, my voice level. “She can’t run out of here because if she does, then as soon as Onyx notices she’s missing, he’ll kill her with that bracelet on her wrist.”
We all turned to Selene. She dropped her eyes, pulling on her sleeve to cover up the black metal bracelet that had just been visible. The movement revealed bruises on her other wrist. “Oh yeah,” Variam said. “Death magic focus, right?”
Kyle stared at the bracelet. “Well . . . you can take it off, right?” He turned to me. “Deactivate it? There must be some way—”
“Guys?” Luna broke in. “Maybe think about having this argument later?”
“Yes,” I said, and addressed Kyle. “And yes, I can deactivate it. With two hands and time, neither of which I have. We pull this off, then I’ll do everything I can to help her. You have my word.”
Kyle looked from me to Selene, torn, the internal struggle written on his face. “But . . .”
Variam was already moving, and he patted Kyle on the back as he passed. “Yeah, I know, you want to be the hero. Just trust him. If he says he’ll do it, he’ll do it.”
Luna followed him with a sympathetic glance at Selene. Kyle took a deep breath and looked at Selene. “I’ll be back.” He turned towards the door.
“Get out of here and find a place to hide,” I told Selene.
Selene’s eyes were full of fear, but she nodded. I walked past her to the door.
Onyx’s mansion was big and full of corridors, but the layout hadn’t changed since Kyle had last seen the place, and I had my divination to guide us. We moved quickly and quietly along the halls. Shouts and laughter echoed down from above, but all the activity seemed to be in the upper bedrooms; the ground floor was empty. In under a minute, we were turning into the crossroads I’d marked on my map. The door at the end was locked. Kyle produced another key and we were inside.
The storeroom was old and dusty, piled with all sorts of junk, everything from stepladders to fishing rods. Someone had ransacked it a few times and not bothered to put stuff back where they’d found it; several crates were broken open with their contents scattered around. I could sense dozens of magical auras, but most were minor, the kind you get from items that are too old, broken, or weak for mages to care about. Except the statue in the middle. That aura wasn’t weak at all.
The statue was of a man, bearded and dressed in ceremonial robes, maybe sixty years old. His right hand held a wand, while his left was extended in front of him, palm up. His expression was confident and proud; the sculptor had done a good job of capturing his features. His name was Abithriax, and very soon I was going to be meeting him.
All right, you bastard. Let’s see how well you do this time.
Variam and Luna moved into the room. “It’s not going to summon an elemental this time, right?” Luna asked.
“This time?” Kyle said.
“Council deactivated that ward when they moved it,” I said.
“They didn’t deactivate that,” Variam said, pointing sharply at the statue. “You see it?”
I frowned, focusing. My magesight showed me a lattice of space magic surrounding the statue, tied into the local environment somehow. “Gate ward?” I said doubtfully. It didn’t look quite right . . .
“Sink ward,” Variam said.
“Shit.”
“What’s a sink ward?” Luna asked.
“Redirects gates,” Variam said. “And the focal point is this room.”
“Which means that if we try to gate out of the bubble realm, we won’t end up in the middle of nowhere,” I said, my thoughts racing. “We’ll end up here.”
Kyle frowned. “Abort?”
I hesitated for only a moment before shaking my head. “Change of plan. You three evac with Starbreeze once the gate’s open. I’ll go in alone.”
“What?” Luna asked. “No. You need—”
“I can survive coming out into a room full of people with guns. You can’t.” Movement in the futures caught my attention. “We’re out of time.”
From somewhere in the direction of the kitchens, a shout went up. “Damn it,” Luna muttered. She shot me a look. “This does not mean I’m agreeing with you.” She turned, pulling the cube from her bag, and slotted it into the statue’s hand.
Luna’s cube is an imbued item. It’s powerful, but single-minded: it seems to care about Abithriax’s prison, and nothing more. It’s the only thing that can open the gate to that bubble realm, and Luna’s the only one who can use it. As it touched the statue, light sprang up around the statue’s hand, thin white beams reaching into the cube’s depths. The cube responded slowly, red beams moving to answer.
“Crap,” Variam said, staring at the statue. “You weren’t kidding, were you?”
The light show was impressive even to normal vision. To magesight, it glowed like the sun. I could have pointed to it with my eyes closed from a hundred feet away. “It’s going slower than last time,” Luna said, tension in her voice.