Twisted Elements: Twisted Magic Book Two Read online

  “Sasmita was attempting a nearly impossible spell when it mingled with the mage’s magic,” he said, his face lifting to the window. The late afternoon rays filtered in, dancing over his eyes, and it seemed strange, as if the sunlight shouldn’t be able to breach the wards. “It corrupted hers.”

  I scowled as if the sun were in my own eyes, even though it wasn’t, and stared up at him. “What does that even mean?”

  He tipped his head with a one-shoulder shrug.

  “She created the monster, by accident.” He flicked the plate with the naan. “Enjoy your meal.”

  Before I could reply, he sauntered back toward the kitchen.

  I turned my head to stare wide-eyed at Randall. He seemed far less flustered than the stirring, twisting feeling in my stomach. For a moment, I wondered if he knew something I didn’t, or if he had misheard what the man had just said.

  Then, I realized the emotion chewing on my insides was uglier than fear, nastier than self-preservation.

  I was jealous. Sasmita had to be some witch to have had her magic corrupted so badly. What would the mage corrupt with mine?

  Not much.

  Just as I identified the feeling in me, I was too tired to hold onto it. I let it slip away.

  As if sensing I had finished my inner turmoil, Randall lifted the plates, one at a time, from the tray and set them in front of us on the table. The steam carried a delightful tapestry of scents, and I inhaled deeply to savor it before picking up my spoon.

  By the time we had finished eating, taking a nap with a monster roaming the hotel didn’t seem like such a ridiculous idea. Not like I could go fight it with a full belly and tired muscles.

  Without speaking, Randall cleared our dishes and disappeared into the kitchen for a few long moments. The sounds of people talking drifted to me from out of sight, but I didn’t have the energy to try to decipher words. Maybe after I slept, I would be properly suspicious of these people. For now, they were little more than guests at the same hotel where I was staying—we just happened to be sealed in by wards put up by a yet to be revealed monster.

  When Randall returned to our table, he offered me his hand. I took it and let him lead me toward the elevators.

  “Sasmita told me the monster doesn’t roam around and it never leaves the fourth floor,” he said in a low voice, though I doubted he was trying to stay out of earshot of the others. “All the rooms on the third floor are jarred open, and only the first four have been claimed. I guess they use one as a common area. The whole floor is sort of their base.”

  I gripped his arm as we came to the bank of elevators.

  “We’re sharing a room.” I peered up at him from under my lashes. “Right?”

  I was being weak. I could hear it, feel it, but I didn’t care right now.

  “Of course.” He leaned over and kissed the top of my head before pressing the elevator button.

  The metal doors parted and, still tight together, we stepped inside. He jammed the button for the third floor. As the doors slid back together, my chest seized as my brain circled back around to the same question: what was this monster?

  On the third floor, past the elevator waiting area, a nightstand from every room had been used to hold open each door. Apparently, privacy was a thing of the past. Then again, who would want to be closed up in a room alone, knowing what was going on here? They all probably had nightly slumber parties in each other’s quarters. If I didn’t have Randall, I would be throwing down a blanket and pillow in the hallway. Like I’m going to let some creepy thing slither out from under the bed at night, chuckling at how I had basically served myself up.

  Except, of course, Sasmita claimed the monster didn’t roam to different floors.

  Sighing, I followed Randall into the third door on the left. It was just like the room we had used earlier to freshen up.

  I beelined straight for the bed, pausing only long enough to kick off my shoes, before I dropped down on the covers. Barely lifting my hips, I tugged the blanket from under me, slipped underneath, and turned once to firmly cocoon myself on my side.

  Randall sat on the edge of the mattress, pressed against my legs, and bent to tug off his shoes. Straightening, he gripped the bottom of his shirt and yanked it up and over his head, and my tired eyes used the last of their energy to peer through slit eyelids just long enough to appreciate the view.

  When had I started to see Randall that way? Not that I had the courage to do anything about it. I had long made my decision about my stance with him, and I was going to stick with it.

  If we lived long enough for it to even matter.

  Right before my brain shut down, I wondered how we were going to escape this hotel guarded by a monster.

  17

  A thudding noise inched me back to consciousness, and I waited with my eyes closed, listening as I warred between ignoring it and slipping back into sleep, or finishing waking up. The former sounded most appealing but the latter won, mainly because it seemed as if our companions were stomping about, and I had to wonder what they were up to. It wasn’t that I distrusted them, but I also couldn’t be positive they weren’t going to use us as bait for the monster.

  With that thought, I sat straight upright, because I was no longer too tired to be concerned that I was lying around helpless while a monster roamed the hotel.

  Or the fourth floor, as it were.

  The world beyond the pale gray ceiling-to-floor drapes boasted darkness, but the room remained lit with an overhead light by the bathroom and a glass globe-shaped lamp with a rose gold bottom sitting on the end table nearest me.

  Randall lay to my side, turned away, one arm off the edge of the bed, taking slow deep breaths.

  He didn’t seem to be all that concerned about the upstairs neighbor, either. We probably needed to reconsider our stance on danger these days.

  The thudding came again, from outside the room and farther down the hallway, out of sight.

  With one hand, I reached over and shook Randall, keeping my other hand under the blanket, as if that would somehow protect me from whatever was about to happen.

  Randall didn’t budge for a couple of shakes, and then he sucked in a breath as he flopped onto this back.

  “Oh, goodie, we’re still in Hotel California,” he said. “It wasn’t a dream.”

  I hissed for him to be quiet, and then whispered, “There’s something out in the hallway.”

  He laid with his eyes open, fixed on the ceiling as he listened.

  The thud sounded louder this time.

  He sat upright, twisting to face me, his expression pinched tight. “I really hate that I’m about to say this, but we probably should go see what that racket is about.”

  “Or,” I said, glancing at the doorway, “we could barricade ourselves in and see how that pans out.”

  “Can the monster walk through walls?”

  I bit my bottom lip, and Randall placed his hand on my thigh, through the blanket, less reassuring and more in comradery that we were probably going to die; we had really been testing the odds lately.

  Shoulders slumping, I nodded and untwisted the covers around my legs before lowering my feet to the floor. As I leaned forward to grab my shoes by the bed, a long quiet pause followed from the hallway. I could just go back to sleep and ask Sasmita about this in the morning.

  The thud resounded again, and I couldn’t at any point imagine what could be causing it.

  Resigned, I slipped on my shoes and then joined Randall who had dressed and stood by the bed, facing the hallway.

  I inched past him and, with a look back, headed toward the door. In a few long strides, he caught up with me and took the lead, stopping just before the threshold and peering out. I came up behind him and stretched onto my toes to get a view over his shoulder.

  The hallway appeared empty and untouched. To our right, the doors to the four claimed rooms, two on each side, stood open, the interiors dark, though I couldn’t tell if anyone was sleeping in them, or if
they had all convened elsewhere, or maybe they lay under the covers, terror-clenching their blankets as they stared blankly at the ceilings.

  Because that was what I would be doing once I returned to bed.

  Randall crept out into the hallway, and I considered, briefly, retreating inside and quietly shutting the door. We were in this together, apparently, so I pretended I was down with foolishly strolling out into the hotel. Not that it mattered much. We had been roaming around the corridors during the daylight hours, and Sasmita had seemed certain the monster wouldn’t be an immediate problem, besides the whole holding us captive part. In actuality, the hallway was as safe as the room.

  With that thought in mind, I followed Randall. We made it halfway toward the dead end when the thud came, shaking the ceiling.

  I snapped my head back to stare up as the thud boomed again from right above us.

  A chill spread just under my skin.

  Without looking at Randall, I asked, muscles tight, “Remind me what floor we’re on?”

  “Third,” he said slowly. “We’re on the third floor, and that sound is definitely coming from the fourth floor.”

  In my mind, I reeled through the possibilities of what the monster could be doing. Stomping around? Slamming doors? Practicing being a discus thrower?

  “So,” Randall began, like we were going to discuss what color of towels to buy and not what I knew was coming next.

  I shifted to look at him, barely forcing my stiff muscles into compliance. “You want to go up there.”

  “Well…” He took a deep breath, not nearly as much of an un-oiled Tin Man as me, and pointed upwards. “We have to meet it eventually. Unless you plan to live here. I mean, it’s not bad accommodations, but if we’re planning to leave in time to try to save Fiona—however that might go—then we should probably scope out what we’re up against and start making a plan.”

  “Intel,” I muttered, chewing over what he had said.

  He wasn’t wrong, as much as I would have liked him to be.

  We had faced down one of the worst witches in history, a bog monster, and the crazy man who had brought us to him, and even some demon-goat creature in a pitch-black tunnel. We could snoop around a monster confined to one level of a hotel.

  It wouldn’t even be the worst thing we had done in the last twenty-four hours.

  I nodded and said, “Let’s do it.”

  With that, I spun around and headed for the elevators. My step was surprisingly light, my chest not quite as full of dread as it should be. Maybe it was from being nearly coma-like for the last few hours, or maybe I had just started to accept that, until we found Fiona and made our final escape from this madness, we were going to have to face random wily creatures.

  Joseph Stone was the real sucker in all this. He had to willingly walk up to six more supervillain witches and mages that had a lot of time to make up for after being stuck in their painting prisons for decades, if not centuries.

  If he could do that, I could take on whatever spooky thing lurked upstairs.

  At the elevators, I pressed the button and the doors opened instantaneously. For some reason, I was taken aback that it was empty, even though the hotel was otherwise unoccupied besides us and our circumstantial companions.

  “Perhaps we should wake Sasmita,” Randall said, pausing before entering the elevator.

  I turned to him, fluttering my eyelashes, and said in a quiet voice, as not to be overheard if the others were awake, “You mean the woman who created big and scary upstairs?”

  He hesitated, a thought forming on his face, and I narrowed my eyes at him. My heart sank.

  Sasmita was a better witch. It made more sense to bring her along than me.

  Instead of saying anything, Randall pressed the call button again as the elevator doors slid closed and when they opened again, he stepped inside.

  Smart man.

  I joined him, and he reached over to stab the number four.

  The elevator shook and shot upward. Randall stared at the button panel, hand still poised over it.

  “Uh…” I began.

  The button lit up as the elevator came to a short stop.

  The doors slid open.

  Randall dropped his hand to his side, straightening, and stood next to me as we stared out into the empty waiting area off from the main hallway.

  “We really can’t be surprised,” I said in a voice so soft, it was barely audible, but I was mostly trying to reassure myself anyway. “The monster put up wards around the hotel to keep us inside. It’s not a stretch that he can control the elevator.”

  “Less worried about that,” Randall said, matching my volume. “Far more worried if that means he knows we’re here.”

  The elevator doors should have started to close by now, but they did not.

  “I’m pretty sure that’s a yes,” I whispered, voice hoarse. “If he comes at us, make a run for the stairs.”

  My hand shot out to grip his and together, we stepped out into the hallway.

  I expected the hulking beast to round the corner from the main hallway to greet us, probably with terrible claws and serrated teeth, but nothing came. Even the thudding had ceased.

  Randall squeezed my hand before we crossed the short distance past the elevators. Just inside the hallway, I peered left and then right, beyond Randall. No looming monsters. No blood on the walls.

  Not even stains on the carpet.

  My shoulders relaxed a notch, but I forced myself not to let my guard down yet as we continued down the hallway. Something lived up here, and it didn’t allow us to leave the hotel, so that meant we were not on the same team.

  Still, there were no indications of anything, supernatural or otherwise.

  “Is it possible…”

  My thoughts trailed off. Sasmita and her group could have lied to us, but to what end? They didn’t seem to be having a good time here, but even if they were, why would they want us to be here with them? Randall and I had little to offer anyone these days, and less as time went on, it seemed.

  They could work with whoever had taken Fiona and lured us here to stop us from rescuing her, but that left gaping holes in their plot, starting with how they would have known we would get a map from the fortune telling machine at the Dark Bazaar, or that Randall would choose for us to investigate the spot over this specific hotel. Too many glaring problems with that idea, which left me with…nothing.

  Much like what lived up here on the fourth floor.

  “Let’s just go,” I said. “We’ll talk—”

  Something at the far end of the hallway caught my attention, like something had darted across the wall, though that didn’t quite add up.

  I turned to face the wall. Two clocks sat aligned with each other several feet apart, with gears and cogs branching out from them. The other levels of the hotel were modern, elegant, and not the least bit steampunk, and these clocks seemed to be afterthoughts.

  They were also oddly intricate.

  Two creases formed in the wall, just under the clocks, and slid upwards, revealing white behind them.

  The clocks shifted ever-so-slightly.

  My brain died, and my body didn’t seem far behind.

  The lines fluttered, the white going in and out, and then a new slash formed lower down on the wall, centered from the clocks. The slash parted, revealing glistening white in the wall behind it as the top lip curved up in a sneer. The clocks shifted again, but they were pupils in the enormous eyes formed in the wall above the mouth.

  The wall had a face—a living, moving, monstrous face—and it was staring right at us.

  A long, hoarse sound in between a grunt and wheeze escaped my throat, and it kept coming until my lungs emptied.

  I couldn’t look away from the face in the wall, and the longer I stared at it, the weirder it became. It wasn’t just features in the wall, like some smuggler caught in carbonite. The face belonged to the wall.

  When Sasmita’s magic had gone awry, she hadn’t
just brought forth yet another monster; she had enchanted the hotel itself.

  Or, at the very least, the wall on the fourth floor.

  What had she even been trying to achieve in the first place?

  I made a mental note to ask her about that, as soon as I could find my legs again and get the hell back to my floor where I belonged.

  Far away from the wall that watched us with interest.

  “Well, this is something we’ve seen now,” Randall said, deadpan.

  I mentally nodded, but couldn’t bring myself to actually move.

  “We’re, uh, going,” Randall said, to the wall.

  Its pupil-clocks shifted again. It pursed its lips and blew out a puff of blue fog. The cloud drifted toward us, and like morons, we stood there, watching it come our way.

  Reality slammed back into place.

  That wall monster had blown something at us, and it probably wasn’t an enchantment for good dreams.

  I turned away as the fog engulfed us. My lung seized, and fire welled up in my chest. The world seemed to pause in silence as I struggled to feel anything besides the inferno inside me, charring me from inside out.

  The fog faded, and I found myself on my knees, eyes wet as I sucked a deep breath down my ragged throat. I couldn’t bring myself to swallow, and spit pooled in my mouth as I tensed with each inhale, noting as the pain eased little by little.

  When I could breathe more clearly, my attention spun back to the wall, but I remained facing to the side, not quite looking at it in an attempt not to elicit another puff of doom from its rancid mouth.

  I needed to run, but could I escape before the next cloud consumed me? I wasn’t sure my lungs wouldn’t start bleeding with another dose of those noxious fumes.

  Randall stood to the side, hunched over, breathing normally again but also seeming stuck in the same dilemma of not wanting to move but also not wanting to stay.

  On my knees, I shuffled to the side, in the direction of the elevators, and waited.

  The wall did not respond, but I could feel its weird gaze on me and catch glimpses of its shifting pupils from my peripheral.