The wizard had enchanted it somehow. Or…trapped something inside it?
Faconi gaped at the mummy dog, but only for a second. Then he snatched the book from the desk and ran toward a closet door at the back of the room, looking very much like a man intent on escape. I hung on for dear life as Bas took off after the wannabe wizard, mummified bones creaking as he ran. Ahead, Faconi tore open the closet door and ran inside as if it were an exit to the outdoors. Bas did the same, and I squeezed my eyes shut, waiting for the inevitable moment when the canine’s skull would meet the back wall of the closet.
The impact never came.
There was no wall. There was no closet. The door that should have opened to reveal a row of poorly fitting sweaters, instead opened to reveal…a lake.
I had a split second to register the fact that Bas had run out into empty air, and then we were both falling. Bas hit the water first, sending a spray of freezing water over my face a split second before I too was lost in the dark blue depths. The cold stole the breath from my lungs. Water dragged at my fur as it tried to force its way into my nose and mouth. Energy roared to life inside me, riding a wave of adrenaline, a desire to survive and protect whatever lives I had left.
The power blossomed out and up, exploding in a wave of force that pushed me a few inches deeper into the water. Warm tears leaked from the corners of my eyes. I was going to drown.
A mummified jaw grabbed me by the scruff of my neck. Seconds later, I was being held in a fierce grip, my face finally above water. I sputtered and coughed as I twisted in Bas’s grip, searching for the wizard who’d led us on this miserable chase only to leave me to die in the lake.
Before I could locate my prey, Bas dropped me. Panic seized me, and I dug my claws into his bandages, trying not to let my head slip under the water again. Furious, I opened my mouth, ready to demand an explanation.
Bas spoke first. “You have taken something that doesn’t belong to you. Give it back, or be hunted down like the cowardly thief you are.”
He wasn’t talking to me.
“Who are you?” Faconi demanded.
I clung to Bas’s back, staying close to the surface of the water. I didn’t think the wizard had seen me. That could be to our advantage. I looked around, finally spotting the middle-aged man standing at the water’s edge. Who, he’d said. I knew that word. He wanted Bas’s name.
“I am Bas, messenger of the gods. I was sent with a message for you. The amulet is not yours. Give it back now so that I might return it to its rightful owner. If you force me to take it from you, I make no promises that you’ll survive the experience.”
The wizard’s face twisted into a sneer. “Tell your master the amulet is mine now.”
Bas bared his teeth. “I’m not leaving without it.”
“Then you won’t leave.” Faconi pulled the book from under his arm and flipped it open. “And you won’t tell anyone you found the amulet.”
I didn’t need to understand what he’d said to know what he’d meant. He planned to hurt Bas, and he was opening the book for a spell to do it. Bas swam madly for the shore, but Faconi was already reading from the book.
I reached inside myself, searching for the magic, for some sign it was building again. I’d never had any control over it before, never tried. The pale lady had been very clear that the magic was to help the witch. She’d said the magic would happen when it was needed, my job was just to be there. To be helpful.
There. The magic. I felt it inside, like the flicker of a small candle flame. I concentrated on that dancing bit of light, concentrated until it grew bigger and bigger, the flame beginning to crackle and burn in earnest. Power flared out from my body in a warm rush of blessed heat—
Heat that was abruptly extinguished as the muted blue sky darkened to an ominous grey and a torrential downpour covered the lake and the banks around it.
The wizard didn’t stop chanting. He leaned forward, using his body to protect the book as best he could.
Bas floundered for a second as the rain made the surface of the lake rough and choppy, and I let out a miserable mewl as tiny waves tried to drag me off the mummified dog’s back.
Bas was still five feet from shore when the wizard’s spell struck him in the chest.
The bolt of purple energy drove into Bas’s body, expanding inside him in a wave of violet before concentrating in a single spot in his throat. Bas made a horrible choking sound, floundering in the water. It was all I could do to stay low enough on his back that the wizard couldn’t see me, but not so low that I drowned. The wizard held out his hand, then flung it skyward. The purple light inside Bas flew up and out of his mouth, then exploded in a shower of purple sparks.
I had no idea what the wizard had just done, but he wasn’t sticking around to explain himself. He ran around the edge of the lake, onto a bridge I hadn’t seen when we fell in. The bridge was a contraption of rickety wood that started with a single step just outside the door we’d fallen through before curving around what looked like the face of a cliff and extending over the very edge of the lake. That was how the wizard had left the portal without falling into the water, while we’d missed the sight of the bridge entirely. I stared in growing horror as the wizard ran over the bridge and up the curved steps to the still-open door that led to the bedroom closet.
He darted inside and slammed the door shut behind him.
Bas regained his composure and determinedly swam to the edge of the lake, climbing out on trembling legs and forcing himself to keep going until he left the reach of the rainstorm. I dropped onto the grass with a gasp, sucking in a breath of air that wasn’t heavy with rain.
“What did he do to you?” I asked.
Bas didn’t answer right away, his jaw twitching as if he were grinding his teeth. Finally he shook his head and opened his mouth.
I waited.
No sound came out.
Bas’s eyes widened. He opened his mouth again.
Still nothing.
Suddenly I remembered the bright purple light in Bas’s throat. The way the wizard had flung it into the sky, and how it had burst. My tail fell. “He took your voice.”
Bas’s snout wrinkled as he pulled back his lips to bare his teeth, and his hackles rose.
“It’s okay,” I told him. “I’ll help you.”
He darted forward. I jerked back just in time to avoid being caught in his jaws when he snapped them closed in the space I’d been a moment before.
“Bas!” I stared at him, every muscle in my body tense, ready to run. “I’m trying to help you.”
Bas stared at me as if I’d grown a second tail. He looked out at the lake, deliberately glancing up at the rainstorm.
I didn’t look. I was pretty sure I knew what he was getting at.
“I don’t tell the magic what to do. I put the magic out there, and it helps people. The wizard kept his concentration, that’s not my fault. It’s good magic.” I lifted my chin. “I’m helpful.”
Bas snorted. A sound so filled with disgust, it almost made me flinch.
All I wanted to do in that moment was find someplace warm and dry where I could clean myself off and have a nice nap. My muscles hurt, and my tail felt like it had a kink in it from the force of expelling all that magic in such a short time span. The witch usually comforted me when I felt like this. Petted me and said things in a soothing voice that was almost as welcome as a scratch behind my ears.
But the witch wasn’t here. She wasn’t here to help Bas.
But I was.
I looked up at Bas and opened my mouth.
The mummy dog snarled and snapped his jaws again, putting his mouth close enough to my face that I felt his hot breath.