Page 151 of Malcroix Bones Academy

“Keep going,” my robed companion barked at the driver. “All the way to that address. Turn off the meter,” they added. “And don’t answer your phone.”

“Of course.” The driver’s voice came out blank, monotone. “Yes. I will do that.”

They were using magic on him, too.

Understanding around my situation cycled back again.

Someone had kidnapped me and brought me to Overworld. Why?

But the reason was obvious, wasn’t it? They wanted rid of me. But why not just kill me now? Why not just kill me on the grounds of the school? They’d drugged me and dragged me here, knowing I’d get caught, and end up in Magical prison, or worse.They could kill me now, and why would anyone care? From what Caelum told me, half the people in charge of the Magique world governments were blood supremacists connected to Dark Cathedral.

Would they go after Archie too, try to make him look complicit?

Gods, this was all my fault. They’d found out I was looking into them.

They’d known what Caelum and I were up to.

I scrabbled for cab’s door. In my clouded, weaving mind, it seemed like my only chance. I had to run. I had to jump out of the car, find somewhere to hide until the drug wore off, then, what? Find another mirror? If I could just get back to Malcroix Bones, maybe I could find Caelum. We could go to Professor Forsooth. Forsooth was definitely the only Magical in authority I trusted enough for this.

And sure, it wasn’t much of a plan, and maybe a lot of the details didn’t entirely make sense, but I had to try.

It struck me then, I knew where a mirror was already.

If I could just find a way back to that Victorian house on the outskirts of Southampton, I could use the mirror in the stone crypt in my aunt’s garden.

I was trying to get a grip on the door’s latch, when the hooded figure let out a guttural string of words. A painfully cold wind blew over my skin… right before my body froze in place. My muscles locked as if they’d been encased in ice. My back remained hunched. My eyes stared down on the door handle, but I could no longer pull on it. My fingers froze where they’d grabbed the latch, but the door remained locked, and I simply held it, unmoving.

I fought to breathe, to move my eyes. My chest and lungs moved the bare minimum to keep me alive, but I still felt like I was suffocating. I couldn’t turn my head.

“Don’t get any more stupid ideas,” the voice next to me said.

I couldn’t answer.

I remained stuck there, my body frozen, for what felt like an endless stretch of silence. I couldn’t even raise my eyes, so I couldn’t see through the car window. I could only hunch there, breathing, heart beating, and I couldn’t even control how much I did that.

Time stretched.

I fought to think through the hiss of the car’s tires over rain-wet roads, and the rain itself when it began pattering down on the windshield and the roof of the car. I’d been with Caelum. Someone knocked him down and kidnapped me. Where was he now?

Was he awake? Was he alive? Would he go for help?

Gods. Was he alive?

The question paralyzed me. It hadn’t occurred to me until then that he might not be.

That magic could have been fatal. He could be dead.

My chest clenched, fighting painfully against the automated, magical breathing as I stared down at the taxi’s worn door. My eyes burned, until I couldn’t even see that.

I looked for my monocerus, but couldn’t feel it with my magic. I felt for the sun primal, instead, the one that floated above my head.

It appeared immediately behind my eyes.

Relief flooded me, enough to bring more tears.

I could see the flaming sun clearly, even if it still didn’t look quite right. Flames shot from its aura, blurring into blue-green, flaming threads. It felt erratic, chaotic, volatile. It got a little better, though, when I focused on it. The harder I concentrated, the clearer it became, and the more I felt its fiery warmth in the rest of my body.

I put all of my intention and will into that liquid fire.