“Yes.” Auntie sounded both proud and regretful. “It is over a century since a sibyl was last born to my blood, and none before has ever had such easy use of His gift. The digital camera is a glorious invention; seeing through it is less painful than removing one’s eyes.”
“Tavish.” I struggled against Auntie’s constricting tail. “C’mon, they’re trying to scam you.”
“Nae, doll.” He shook his head. “Sibyls have to speak of that which they see, nae matter even if the speaking will lead them to harm. If the lassie says the boys will die if I dinna come in, then that is their future.” He pointed at me. “But before I do, Malia, you will let the sidhe go.”
“Theodora,” Auntie said, “do you have it?”
Dora moved to a small table and picked up a halter of golden rope, knocking off the computer game she’d shown me earlier as she did. She carefully put the game back on the table next to the glossy mag, her fingers gently lingering on her wedding picture as if she were reluctant to let it go. Then she held up the golden halter to show Tavish.
He gave a derisive snort. “I offer you my word, Malia. There is nae need to bind me to your servitude.”
“You do not think I would trust your kelpie half to be compelled by your word alone?” She sounded like he must really think her stupid. “It is too wylde and easily lost to the lure of the water.” Which was news to me. I hadn’t realized Tavish’s other shape wasn’t just him in another form, but judging by the frustration in Tavish’s eyes, she was right, and he’d been hoping she wouldn’t know.
Tension thickened the air, and I thought we’d hit some sort of supernatural Mexican standoff—
The sudden sting of fangs in my throat startled me more than any actual pain. I yelped in surprise, and stupidly thought, Damn, she’s bitten me.
“With my venom in her body, kelpie,” Aunt Snaky said, “the girl will die before dawn, even with her sidhe blood. Agree, and I will give you the antidote.”
Sick fear curdled my belly. I swallowed and pushed it away. I frowned down at Auntie’s red-and-black scaly tail wrapped around me. She had the antidote, but to get it, Tavish had to let her bind him with the golden halter. But if he was bound, then Auntie would hold all the aces, and I’d bet all of Dora’s fortune that that would end up with Tavish, me, and more horrifically, the boys dead. Because no way was Aunt Snaky going to say Thank you and wish us good health after her dinner.
“Die before dawn’s a bit dramatic, isn’t it?” I tilted my head back to look up at Auntie. Her hair had dropped out, and her features appeared to have melted, leaving her head doing a good impersonation of an egg, if eggs had red-and-black scales. Very attractive. “Don’t s’pose you could be more specific about how much time I’ve got left?”
She frowned at me, then looked back at Tavish. “Do you agree, kelpie?”
In answer, Tavish screamed with rage and smacked his palms against the Ward. His magic rolled over me like the pressure wave after an explosion. My ears popped painfully, but the Ward didn’t break, just flashed the vivid crimson of an anti-crack grid and absorbed all the juice he’d thrown at it.
“Kelpie, you cannot break the Ward by force.” Aunt Snaky echoed my thoughts. “The more power you use against it, the stronger it becomes. And I would that you were at your best for the task I require of you.”
He curled his hands into frustrated fists and dropped his arms. Then he smiled. It was his kelpie smile full of Charm, a predator’s smile, but one that cajoled and tempted and beguiled. A smile that pledged to take all my sorrow, all my loss, all my hurt and leave my soul light and pure and at peace, if I would only come to him, and join with him in the depths . . . I clawed at the scaly tail that imprisoned me, fighting to go to him, to be with him—
“Theodora! Stop!”
Auntie’s shout broke the Charm-net Tavish had caught me in, and I sagged in her hold, bereft and despairing as if I’d lost something precious. The sound of sobs made me look up, and I blinked at Dora. She was on her knees at the front door, grief-stricken tears streaming down her face, and the hand with the gold halter stretched out to Tavish, frozen with her fingers only millimeters away from the Ward. Damn, he’d almost gotten her to break it. But the Ward was still there—An idea burned bright as dragon’s fire in my mind.
“You are also time wasting, kelpie,” Aunt Snaky said sharply. “Do you agree?”
“Hey, Tavish,” I called, “speaking of time wasting, I thought you said my soul looked like rainbows this morning?”
Tavish shook himself like a horse shedding water and sent me a puzzled look. “What, doll?”
Gods, give the kelpie a clue. He needed to get in, and the Ward needed to disappear. So I’d do my party trick. Simple. “Rainbows, and pixie dust, remember?” I said, pointedly.
His dark-pewter eyes showed a shocked rim of white as he caught on. “Nae, doll, you canna, ’tis too strong.”
Two boys’ lives were at stake. “We can but try,” I muttered, and focused on the Ward . . .
I called it.
For a second, nothing happened, and my stomach clenched in desperation. Then the Ward glowed like hot embers. Auntie hissed and her tail tightened round me, compressing painfully. The Ward melted from the doorframe and flooded like molten lava across the tiled floor toward me. She hissed louder, but just as she started to jerk me away, the Ward streamed over my legs—
—heat blazed through my veins, seared the breath from my lungs, shriveled the flesh on my bones—
And I fell into a furnace of fiery flames.
I CLIMBED MY way back to consciousness and blinked as the blurred writing in front of my nose rearranged itself into something legible: Round Wire Bright Nails, Steel–Self Color, 6.00 × 6 inch, 1-kg pack. I blinked again, tried to ignore the spike of pain that felt like a dwarf was hammering one of the six-inch nails into my brain, and scanned around. Apart from the statues in the room off the hallway, I was alone.
Good news: I wasn’t dead. Yet. My head was the only thing that was hurting. And the Ward on the front door was now bubbling away inside me like a malevolent spell in a black witch’s cauldron.
Bad news: Sucking up the Ward had killed my phone, there were still two kids hiding out in Aunt Snaky’s swimming pool, and there was no sign of the gold halter, so Tavish could be fishing the boys up for her dinner.
Good news: Tavish had said Aunt Snaky was near shedding her skin, and I’d gotten the impression that if she did it when the boys weren’t around, they’d be safe. Tavish was tricky enough to play for time.
Bad news: If the boys weren’t around, Auntie would eat Dora. And I wasn’t sure if Dora wasn’t as much victim as baddie in all this. And whether her camera was a sort of weird “sibyl accessory” or not, she’d obviously thought getting me involved was going to somehow save her.
But whether Dora needed saving or not, Tavish and the boys still might. I started to scramble up but promptly fell flat on my butt, and discovered why nothing but my head hurt. Aunt Snaky’s venom evidently contained some sort of neurotoxin; my legs were paralyzed and the rest of me was about as coordinated as a goblin high on methane. I clamped down on the dread threatening to short-circuit my mind and forced myself to assess the situation.
I could lie here and wait to be rescued, or die (cheerful thought), whichever came first. Neither prospect filled me with anything like joy. Or I could do something. Oh, and if I needed any more motivation, I still owed Auntie for biting me, and for my trashed trouser suit. I needed something to fight with. Half a dozen Stun spells would come in extremely handy right now, but all I had in my backpack was another Look-Away crystal. I surveyed the hallway looking for anything else that could help. There was the army of statues, but even if I had enough pixie dust to animate them—which I didn’t—they’d only end up damaging themselves. My eyes lit on the box of nails. And the sledgehammers lined up along the wall. Auntie was magical, and while her snaky skin might be as tough as old boots, nothing reacted well to having six inches of metal hammered into it. Using my arms to pull myself around on the smooth marble floor—thanking the gods it wasn’t carpet—I gathered the hammer, the nails, the spell, and two of the platters, which I’d discovered were actually small arm shields, and bundled them all up inside a drop cloth.