The floor rippled beneath me again, causing me to fall once more. She began speaking a complicated incantation, one I recognized as the start of the spell that had frozen Eddie in place. That was her plan. Make me into a living statue and leave me in this burning building, paralleling what I’d done to her. Desperately, I scrambled to my feet, needing to get out of the way of the spell. As she finished speaking, I saw something incredible: Malachi Wolfe, standing in the doorway to the burning room. His eye patch was on his right eye (it changed from day to day), and there were pieces of rope around his wrists and ankles as though he’d been bound.
I couldn’t replicate the statue spell on my own, but I’d heard the mirroring spell enough to feel good about that. I spoke the words and felt the magic engage in me. Alicia’s eyes widened in alarm as she attempted to move out of the way of the rebounding spell. What she hadn’t seen, however, was the herd of Chihuahuas running into the room with Wolfe. He’d spoken a word to them and pointed at her, and they swarmed around her feet, causing her to stumble and preventing her from moving away quickly. The statue spell seized her, and suddenly, she was as frozen as Eddie, except far less graceful looking. He was like some noble warrior, ready to strike. She was mid-fall, staring in disbelief at the yipping pack of Chihuahuas swarming her frozen feet.
“Would’ve been here sooner,” growled Wolfe, calling the pack off with a quick gesture. “But that bitch tied me up. Had to wait for the dogs to gnaw through my ropes.”
“Quickly!” I said, running toward Eddie. “Help me get him out of here.” I coughed from the thickening smoke and glanced at Alicia, her pretty face frozen in a snarl of dismay. “Help me get both of them out of here.”
Between Wolfe and me, we managed to drag the frozen forms out before the building came down. We got them to Wolfe’s main house as the fire department showed up, followed almost immediately by Adrian, Trey, Ms. Terwilliger, and a few of the witches from the lake. Adrian pulled me into an embrace.
“Are you okay?” he asked. “When Jackie called me, I didn’t know what to expect.”
I rested my head against his chest, reassured by his touch. “Fine. I got lucky. Really lucky. But Eddie—”
One of the witches from a coven I didn’t know produced some dried flowers that she spread over Eddie as she chanted a Latin spell. Moments later, Eddie came to life again, still in mid-jump. He stumbled as he landed, looking around in surprise when he wasn’t where he expected. Adrian and I astonished him further by sweeping him into a group hug.
“You’ll have to unfreeze Alicia too,” I said in dismay. “We need to find Jill.”
Ms. Terwilliger frowned. “That’s unfortunate. This is actually a very neat way to deal with her. You didn’t get any indication where Jill was beforehand?”
I shook my head and released Eddie. “No. She admitted Jill was alive ‘for now’ but didn’t elaborate.” I thought back, trying to replay each word amid the chaos. Although it had been nice to hear Alicia confirm Jill was alive, we’d already gotten a sense of that through our spells. It wasn’t as useful as I’d hoped. “And she said something about Jill listening to psalms.”
It made as little sense to Ms. Terwilliger as it had to me, and she gave a great sigh, exchanging glances with some of the other witches. They didn’t look thrilled about releasing Alicia either. “Well, once the fire department’s finished, we’ll have to create a secure circle and release her to get some answers.”
Trey, who’d been standing off on the sidelines, suddenly cleared his throat. “You might not have to. I think I know where she’s at—or, well, at least who’s holding her.” All eyes shifted to him in astonishment, but he didn’t flinch under the scrutiny. “I think the Warriors of Light have her.”
Chapter 13
Adrian
“WHAT DOES SALMON HAVE TO DO with the Warriors?” I asked.
Sydney shot me a wry look. “Psalms, not salmon. And I don’t know the connection.” She regarded Trey expectantly. “They’re a kind of religious poem, right? From the Bible?”
He nodded. “Yes. Well, that is, the ones the Warriors like to quote all the time aren’t actually in the Bible. They’ve made up a bunch of their own. But they recite them a lot on formal occasions, before meetings . . . stuff like that. If Alicia said Jill was hearing them, she’s probably being held by them somewhere. Believe me, they’d love nothing more than to hold a Moroi captive.”
Eddie turned toward Jackie incredulously and pointed at Alicia. “Unfreeze her like you did me! We need answers, and we need them now! Before it’s too late for Jill!”
I’d never seen him so worked up and was tempted to calm him with compulsion. Jackie remained remarkably unruffled. “I’m certainly not going to release her here—if we do it, it’ll be with a dozen other witches to secure her. And even if we do, don’t expect her to be forthcoming.”
“She’s right,” said Sydney slowly. “Even if we free Alicia, we don’t know that she’ll tell us anything.”
“I’ll make her talk,” insisted Eddie. “Or Adrian could compel her.”
Sydney didn’t look thrilled about that, but in my head, Aunt Tatiana was chomping at the bit. Yes! Yes! We’ll compel her into telling us things she doesn’t even realize she knows!
“There are spells to protect against that, and Alicia’s wily enough to have taken that precaution.” Jackie glanced at one of her witch friends. “What do you think? What time span would weaken her?”
The witch regarded frozen Alicia with a critical eye. “I’d leave her like that for a week, honestly. But if you’re in a rush . . .” She eyed Eddie before turning back to Alicia. “I’d say forty-eight hours.”
“Forty-eight hours!” exclaimed Eddie. “Jill might not have forty-eight hours if the Warriors are holding her! They could be performing some execution ritual as we speak!”
Jackie remained undaunted. “Being in that frozen state strips you of energy. Two days like that, and she’ll be physically and magically burned out. Much easier to question. Even then, I still wouldn’t free her unless we’re in an extremely secure location with extra backup. She’s too unpredictable.”
“Two days is too much,” Eddie reiterated. I couldn’t help but share his dismay. Sydney, however, looked thoughtful.
“Alicia will be less of a threat and maybe easier to interrogate by then,” she said slowly. “And in the meantime, we might be able to get some faster answers about the Warriors.”
“How?” Trey and I asked together.
“From Marcus,” Sydney said. “Or rather, from one of his contacts. She’s undercover in the Warriors. She might be able to uncover something before we could get it out of Alicia anyway. Let me check with her and Marcus. If they can’t dig up anything in twenty-four hours, the witches will release Alicia for questioning.”
No one seemed thrilled by that compromise, but they agreed to it. We all finally dispersed, with Eddie going to stay with Trey while Sydney and I returned to Clarence’s house. Sydney called Marcus along the way to explain the situation, and he promised to get back to her as soon as he could. When we arrived at Clarence’s, Rose and Dimitri were chomping at the bit to know what had happened. I let Sydney fill them in while I went to my mom and Declan. He’d only been in my life for a couple of days, but I was surprised by how much I ached to see him, even though he did little more than sleep. After the turbulent events of the day—and the panic I’d felt upon learning Sydney had faced Alicia alone—Declan’s presence was soothing.
Marcus called Sydney back a couple of hours later, saying he had news and would come to Palm Springs immediately to deliver it in person. Marcus was as much a wanted fugitive as Sydney, though, and in his usual cautious way, he arranged for a meeting away from both Clarence’s and Trey’s the next day.