Twisted Elements: Twisted Magic Book Two Read online

  I wanted to push her for more details, but I needed to get out of here too. At least we were united on that front, though I had to wonder just how trustworthy she was when it came to the dark witches and mages from the vault.

  As we gathered the directories from the third and second floors and piled them in the middle of her room, we chitchatted, but strayed away from any conversations that crept too close to the vault or Joseph Stone. Whatever she was up to, she wasn’t going to share.

  Instead, she told me she was originally from Punjab, India, but had lived in New Orleans for over a decade. She had divorced a couple of years ago and currently ran her own marketing consultant business. Her grandmother had been the only other living member of her family with magic and claimed she had sensed the ability in Sasmita before she had even been born.

  During Sasmita’s childhood, her grandmother had doted on her, passing down her seventy years of wisdom, some gained through trial and error, but most learned from her own grandmother—Sasmita’s great-great grandmother—who was said to have been a healer in her area since her early twenties, sometime around 1850, and gave her talent freely to all who needed it.

  She had believed the family received the gift from bathing in sacred water in the Indus Valley, around 3500 BC, and it had skipped every other generation, landing with one girl each time, since then. No records indicated she wasn’t right.

  Sasmita’s story left me breathless at the sheer scope and magnitude. My own family had no knowledge of how Jada and I had come into our magic, and they had never really worried about it that much, outside of keeping us under the radar.

  Had all our families been blessed in some way, or did we have a common ancestor? The Indus Valley was the third earliest complex civilization on the planet, and a lot had happened in that region in the centuries to follow. It was a mystery that would take a bit more than a mail-in DNA test to solve.

  In the here and now, none of that really mattered. The most important task at hand was blowing up directories, which I did with dwindling glee. The first few dozen were exhilarating, but then it became monotonous—and frustrating. I couldn’t pick up the pace between blasts no matter how I concentrated, and knowing how I had struggled with magic over the years, the chances of me nailing this in one night—or fifty—was slim. Worse, I couldn’t risk losing my magic to Jada and having to wait for it to return.

  We didn’t have all this time to waste.

  When I neared the bottom of the stack, I bent down to pick up another directory. Without standing, I looked up at Sasmita, hair in my face. Pale yellow pages blanketed the floor and furniture, and tiny shreds had sprinkled across our hair.

  “I think we should do this now,” I said. “Before anything changes.”

  I wasn’t quite ready to tell her about Jada and my shifting magic. She was keeping her own secrets guarded, and until I knew more about what was going on with her, I wasn’t about to spill my greatest weakness, besides cheesecake.

  She nodded, brushing paper shrapnel off her shirt and pants. “I’ve been trying to determine how this will play out. It’s all going to come down to timing. You will need to attack, return to me so I can put up a shield, and once his toxic cloud and pulse ends, I’ll take it down so you can attack again. There’s no way I can flip back and forth like that on my own, but with the two of us, we should be able to take him down.”

  “Maybe I should do the shield?” I said, standing upright and dusting my hands together. “You could teach me, and then you can overload him faster.”

  Sasmita shook her head, suppressing a horrified laugh. “You miss an attack, we just wait until we can make another try. You miss protecting us, and we’re done for.”

  “Fair point.” I let out a sigh. “Let’s go downstairs to the kitchen and see what the others have scrounged up, and then we’ll head up to the fourth floor.”

  20

  The five of us sat around the three tables by the window in the hotel restaurant, munching on buttered toast with cinnamon and sugar and drinking hot tea. The sun peeped over the horizon, and it was strange to think another day was arriving, and we couldn’t be out in it.

  Hopefully that problem would be solved in the next few hours.

  “So, what are our roles?” Randall asked, and then took a bite of his toast.

  Sasmita wrapped her hand around her teacup but left it in its place.

  “Nothing. You, Larry, and Lisa will need to hang back, stay down here. Safiya and I will be out as soon as we can. You’re not to come up until you hear from us.” She cast a stern look at her comrades. “Got it?”

  Lisa nodded, worry creasing her face, and Larry wrapped his arm around her shoulder, drawing her in closer. She fidgeted with the backpack she held on her lap.

  Randall held his toast halfway to his mouth. “I’m coming with.”

  Both Sasmita and I turned on him, lips pinched.

  “That’s ridiculous.” He dropped his toast to his plate and sat up straighter. “I’m sure if we looked around the hotel, we could find something to use as weapons.”

  “Nothing physical is going to work on him,” Sasmita said. “I can’t emphasize the point enough that he is particularly strong. If he wasn’t, I would have destroyed him by now.”

  Randall looked to me, as if he expected I would back him up. Unfortunately, as much as I didn’t like the idea of going into this without him, I also didn’t know anything to counter Sasmita’s argument. If she was right—and I had no reason to doubt she wasn’t—then it would put Randall in unnecessary danger to have him come to the fourth floor with us.

  As if the matter was settled, Sasmita shifted her attention to me, but I could tell by the look on Randall’s face that he wasn’t done with this argument.

  “My plan is when we reach the fourth floor, you will wait by the elevators,” she said. “I will run as far as I can before Winston attacks and unlock the door nearest him and dart inside. Wait out the attack, and then join me in the room. Once the coast is clear, you can spring out and let it rip, then hide back in the room and I will put up the shield. It’s going to take timing, nothing more or less. If we are uncertain we can make a clean attack, we will wait until we have a better position. We want to use precise, rational moves, not get worked up into a frenzy.”

  I nodded along with what she was saying, imaging how her strategy would pan out. So far, every situation I had run into had required grappling for the final push that would win. Staying calm and methodical this time was going to be a different way of handling business.

  Now, it was a matter of making it work.

  After we finished our toast and tea, we sat in a long, heavy silence. Randall did nothing to hide the arguments forming on his face, but he remained quiet.

  At length, Sasmita stood and lifted her chin at me. “Are you ready?”

  I nodded, unable to even glance at Randall. He might try to stop me—even by accident—and I couldn’t allow that. Winston needed to be dealt with, and there was no use putting it off.

  Silently, the other three accompanied us to the elevator and as the doors opened, Randall shoved his hands into his jean pockets. Something that might have been anger flashed across his face, but it was such a foreign expression for him, I couldn’t quite understand it.

  Whatever was going on, now was not the time. With an unspoken agreement between us to handle this later, I stepped onto the elevator. Sasmita joined me. We turned to watch our group until the doors closed, and she pressed the button for the fourth floor.

  Neither of us spoke as we ascended, and then the elevator dinged and the doors parted. The waiting area remained the same as it had been, not at all different from the other floors.

  We stepped out, and I expected to hear the puff or rumble of Winston’s welcome party, but the hallway around the corner stood silent.

  For now.

  Sasmita nodded once to me, and I waited out of view as she headed forward. Just as she turned over the threshold, she took off in a run,
in the direction of Winston.

  The familiar pfft sound carried down the hall, and I knew he had sent a cloud of lung-burning death at her. A moment later, the distinct click of a door being unlocked issued from out of sight.

  I waited, heart wedged in my throat, but no sign came if I should peer out or not. I was about to step out when the cloud floated by the opening to the bank of elevators and disappeared out of view toward the short end of the hall.

  After silently counting to ten, I crossed the waiting area and dared a peek down the hallway in each direction. To the right, the cloud had dissipated. To the left, Winston waited, eyes open.

  A room door stood ajar, propped open with a TV. That had to be where Sasmita had claimed for our base.

  I stepped back out of view, took a deep breath, and then charged.

  Winston’s clock pupils shifted at me, and my legs faltered. I forced myself onward. Winston blinked, and blue light pulsed across the wall and started down the hallway.

  I picked up speed, barreling toward the light. As I reached the open doorway, I grabbed the frame and swung myself inside just as the light shot by the room in its mad rush down the hallway. I stumbled backwards, into the dresser, and gripped it with my fingers, panting.

  Sasmita came beside me and watched with me as the blue light faded from the hallway.

  “Okay,” she said in a low voice. “You ready?”

  I called up my magic, and it came so easily, I couldn’t believe I had struggled with it earlier. The feel of what I needed to do—collecting magic in my hand—was still fresh with me, and I knew this was the right time to take on Winston, if there was such a thing.

  I nodded. “Let’s go.”

  With that, I darted out of the room and charged the short distance toward him. His eyes shifted and then narrowed as I approached. I jutted out my hands and slammed them into the wall, right under one eye, and let loose. Magic pumped from my hands into him, and he lit up blue, eyebrow-gears at sharp angles.

  Sasmita yanked me back as Winston blew a puff. She shot up the shield, blocking the fumes from reaching us, and nodded toward the room.

  I hesitated, but she grit her teeth and gave me a sharp look as she fed the shield magic siphoned through her body. Point made. I darted back to the room and waited just inside, resisting peering out. A moment later, Sasmita barreled inside, shoving me back.

  Blue light glowed down the hall.

  “I think this one is going to be bad,” she said. She took a stance inside our doorway and flung her hands up, erecting a shield.

  A rumble built, and Winston’s blue glow grew in intensity. The glow erupted down the hall, bright light that blinded me, and I had to look away. The sound was akin to a tornado howling through the corridor. The room shook and swayed, and I braced against the wall, face turned, and clenched my muscles.

  When it was over, it took me a minute to find my senses. The world swayed with each step as I approached Sasmita, who had all but plastered herself against the wall next to the shield but had managed to keep it up the entire time.

  Good call to leave her on shield duty.

  She dropped our protection and together, we poked our heads out.

  The doors to all the other rooms had been blown inward, off their hinges. The furniture beyond had been flipped over and rammed into the far end of the room.

  Without Sasmita’s shield, we would have been dead, either cracked against the wall or smashed between the bed and dresser.

  I pulled back inside, Sasmita following. Her hair was disheveled, and I could only imagine how I looked too.

  I pressed my back against the wall and took a few steadying breaths. “He doesn’t seem to like our company.”

  She shook her head. “We’re going to have to try again. You ready?”

  “One moment.” I called up my magic and let it trickle into my palm. “He’s quite a bit more difficult than a directory.”

  She raised her eyebrows and nodded. “It’s not every day you get to deal with a magical monster.”

  “New adventures left and right,” I muttered. My hand tingled and prickled, and I nodded toward the doorway.

  She stepped aside to let me out. I sucked in a breath, held it, and then charged out the door, veering right back at Winston. My palm slammed into the wall and I shoved my magic forward. Winston glowed blue, eyes narrowing and widening and then narrowing again. It seemed trapped, pissed, and ready to end us.

  The ground shook. I wanted to turn back, but I forced more magic into him. The hallway began to rumble.

  Just a little more.

  “Safiya!” Sasmita’s voice sounded distant, even though she stood only a few feet from me. “Get away!”

  For a moment, I felt stuck, fused to Winston by our magic, my palm stuck to the wall like a magnet.

  Gritting my teeth, I pumped in more magic. I could envision it funneling up through my body and out my hand, forcing its way into him.

  The world swayed under me, and I thought I might lose consciousness. Maybe I had overdone it.

  I realized the building was rocking back and forth.

  Sasmita wrapped her fingers around the bicep of my free arm, but I shook her off and slammed my other palm against the wall too. I leaned in, giving it my all, a conduit for the free-roaming magic of the world. My body throbbed in time with the blue magic coursing through me, and I imagined if I could have seen myself, my entire body would be glowing. Squeezing my eyes shut, I tried to block out the way the hallway rumbled and shook, and kept feeding in magic.

  A brilliant light flashed, and a cracking sound filled the air, shoving into my head. My feet went from under me. I fell with nothing below. A scream screeched out of my throat, but it couldn’t compete against the sound of the fourth floor collapsing. I slammed into another floor that ripped apart and then another, and another.

  My back rammed into the ground, knocking the air from my lungs. Darkness engulfed me, and I couldn’t tell if my eyes were opened or closed. My chest refused to expand, and the lack of oxygen caught up with me until the world spun, despite being unable to see anything.

  With effort, I flopped onto my side and sucked in a deep, burning lungful of air. Then another. After a moment, my vision cleared, and I found I was lying in a dark cavernous room with unfinished walls and several large stainless-steel freestanding wine coolers.

  My throat felt raw, and I coughed as I sat upright, waving my hand in front of my mouth, trying to clear dust that billowed up around me.

  I looked straight up, and it took my brain a moment to see the hotel from this angle: staring up through broken floor after floor, smashed in together, all towering above me, ready to cave in and seal me here in the basement forever.

  A shadow to my right caught my attention. I jerked around as Sasmita pulled herself upright to a sitting position and cleared her throat a few times. She looked around, her eyes unfocused, as dazed as I had been.

  Leaning forward onto hands and knees, I padded over to her. “Winston blew up the hotel, I guess.”

  She shook her head, gesturing to give her a minute as she struggled to find her voice. Finally, she said, “I think he discharged his magic or something. You must have overloaded him. We can—”

  Her gaze locked on something behind me.

  In my spot, I twisted around to look.

  Long tubes, composed of a thin filmy substance a bit like spiderwebs, hung from the ceiling like crepe paper decorations. One end hooked into the wall and the other disappeared into the darkness of the farthest side of the basement.

  Scowling, I pushed to my feet and followed the loops without touching them, heading deeper into the room. The only light came from the world above, so I had to squint to see.

  The end of the basement had been blown out, and the tubes carried on below the earth out of sight. As I watched, they gently contracted and released, contracted and released, like they were pumping something.

  Or feeding.

  “I think we found the source o
f Winston’s sustenance,” I said, and in the otherwise empty room, my voice came out much louder than I had expected.

  Sasmita approached from behind me. “What the…”

  She reached up, and I sucked in air between my teeth as her finger stroked one of the tubes. “Yeah, there’s definitely magic coming through there. Let’s tear them down.”

  With that, she pinched the tube and a green light flared between her fingers. The tube fell into two sections as if it had been severed.

  Another trick to learn.

  I sighed, refusing to feel any sort of rejection at the moment, and instead flipped through my options.

  My old standby would have to do.

  I strolled over to the next tube and lifted my arm to grab it. The tube felt thin but unbreakable between my fingers, and I didn’t particularly enjoy touching it, as if I were playing with the intestines inside the belly of a beast.

  In a way, I was.

  Shoving away the thought, I welled up heat and clamped down, burning my way through the tube. Smoke trickled up, and then the tube split into two, the ends charred.

  Sasmita made her way through the room with her green flare. I ducked under and around severed loops to the intact ones and burned them apart.

  Finally, only one remained.

  “Care to do the honors?” Sasmita asked, gesturing to the tube that hung above her head.

  I crossed over to her and stared up at it. “Goodbye, Winston.”

  With that, I clenched it with my fist and burned my way through it.

  Above, the remains of the hotel rattled.

  “I think the last wall is coming down,” Sasmita said. “That must be—”

  The rest of her sentence was cut off as the hotel above us collapsed with a clattering roar, sealing out light. Dust rolled through the basement, and I bent low, covering my nose and mouth with my hand and trying not to breathe as the cloud swept over us.

  When the dust settled, I slowly stood upright and lowered my hand, taking tentative, small breaths. Dirt coated my skin, my hair, my clothes, even my tongue and teeth. I spit, but it did little to help.