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The pressure on her limbs turned uncomfortable, and she wrinkled her forehead as pain set in. “I’m not lying!”

Helen spun the wheel again, pulling her wrists farther away from her ankles. Paige screamed as the medieval machine tore her joints apart.

“Where is Dewey?” Helen shrieked at her.

“I’ll never tell you,” Paige shouted at her, earning another tug on the wheel.

Tears ran down her face as her muscles burned and her joints ached.

“I’m going to ask you one more time before I rip your arms from their sockets. Where is Dewey Decimael?”

Paige gasped in a sob, preparing to utter another nonresponse when someone else answered for her.

Dewey’s snarky voice sounded from behind them. “I’m right here.”

She widened her eyes, craning her neck upward to find him. Helen spun in search of the voice, letting tension go on the rack’s wheel. The pain eased slightly as the pressure against her limbs slackened.

A sickening crack sounded. Helen’s head spun from one side to the other, an expression of shock on the woman’s face before she slumped to the floor.

Dewey dropped the wooden board he held in his hand. It clattered to the floor as he flew toward Paige and hovered over her.

“Paige! Are you all right?”

“I’m okay. Get the keys. Helen threw them over there.” Paige flicked her eyes toward the keys on the floor.

Dewey flitted toward them, then he scooped them up and raced back to Paige. The keys jingled as his shaking paws tried to find the correct one for the shackles.

“I’m okay, Dewey,” Paige told him again. “Besides, I could have used that stretch after that long drive.”

An amused chuckle escaped Dewey’s lips as he shoved a rusty key into the lock and freed one of Paige’s wrists. He had the other freed in seconds.

Paige shot up to sit, tugging at the straps around her ankles.

She gasped. “They’re locked, too. Hurry!”

Dewey flew under the table and unlocked the ankle straps. Paige flipped them open, freeing her legs and swinging them over the table. She leapt off, her knees still wobbly from the rack and the drug they’d used to sedate her.

“We’ve got to get out of here,” Paige said, grabbing the board Dewey had dropped earlier.

“No, we need to get that mirror first.”

“Dewey! There’s no time for that. We’ll be lucky to get away alive!”

“Paige, we have to!” Dewey shot her a hard glance. “You were right when you said it has the power to change the world.”

Paige swallowed hard, squeezing her lips together as she considered it.

With a sharp nod, she agreed. “Okay, but I have no idea where to look.”

“I do,” Dewey said. “I saw Helen taking one of the werewolves through a secret passage in the library. I think it leads to the mirror.”

“Maybe they already took it,” Paige said as Dewey led her up the stone steps to the first floor.

She struggled to stay upright on her weak legs.

Dewey shook his head as they reached the top of the stairs and hung a left. “No. He went to get the payment. I heard him say it. We still have a chance to get it.”

Paige ran down the hall after Dewey. “Wait! The enchantment! It’s upstairs in our suite.”