Twisted Elements: Twisted Magic Book Two Read online

  I nodded, but as he headed out the door, he glanced back at her with worry in his eyes.

  When he left, I turned back to her. “Do you need water? Food?”

  Without responding, Fiona strode for the door, and I hurried to keep up with her. She stepped out to the railing and surveyed across the lake, eyes narrowed. In one way, she seemed unwell, maybe injured, but in another her expression appeared cold, calculating.

  “We were searching everywhere for you,” I said, wishing she would acknowledge my words.

  She continued to stare out into the distance.

  For an abnormally long time, my brain reeled for something, anything, that would entice conversation from her. I had so many questions, and so much to share with her, and even though I had not quite envisioned what our reunion would be like, this was not it.

  Before I could figure out how to proceed, Randall jogged toward us down the deck and came to a halt a few feet away, panting.

  “There’s no boat,” he said. “I don’t think there’s any reasonable way to start this thing. We’re going to have to swim.”

  Throat tight, I looked at Fiona. “Are you well enough to do that?”

  She didn’t respond, and I started to put out my hand but couldn’t quite bring myself to touch her.

  “If we get into the water, can you follow us back to shore?” I asked her.

  She hoisted herself up and over the railing and plunged feet first into the lake.

  I stared at her, dumbfounded, as she bobbed in the water.

  “I guess she can,” Randall muttered. “Come on. We need to try to get back to Sasmita’s car.”

  He started to climb over the side, but paused, looking over at me, his fingers gripped around the top of the rail.

  “It’ll be fine,” he said in a low voice. “She just needs some time.”

  I nodded, blinking back tears I hadn’t realized were there. My feelings about Fiona’s return were far more jumbled than they should have been, but we didn’t have the time to deal with all this right now. Randall was correct; we had to get the car and get out of here.

  We had what we came here for.

  He lowered into the water, and I followed after him. Fiona took our lead, swimming with us back to the shore, and if I didn’t know better, for a moment, I would have thought she was the same person before she had been abducted.

  At the shore, she crawled onto land with us, drenched but not seeming to notice as water trickled down her face. I resisted the urge to wipe it away, and instead wrung out my hair.

  “What’s the plan?” I asked Randall, looking everywhere but at Fiona.

  “I can go get the car.” He peeled out of his shirt and twisted out water before pulling it back on. “I’m not sure we should take Fiona into the madness until we know how she’s doing.”

  “I can’t let you go out into that alone. Too risky.” I forced myself to look at her. “You have to keep up, okay?”

  She didn’t reply, but that wasn’t the worst of it. The part that sent an unsettled little squirm up my back was her eyes: she was not incoherent by any means; she watched, studied, yet did not interact with us.

  With an exhausted sigh, I set forward, Randall joining me. Fiona kept pace with us, and I picked up my speed as we headed toward the house. I wasn’t sure what we were going to do if the men were still out front, but I could only hope that they had found something better to do, or that perhaps Edolie and Olivier had reduced their numbers, even if just by a few.

  We were accepting small miracles today.

  The house came into view, and I slowed. Both back doors stood open, and there was no indication of what was going on inside. I nodded toward the side of the house. Single file, we crept across the yard and past the collapsed porch blocking our view of the vehicles.

  I ducked down and peered around the edge. Our car stood in the same spot, but Edolie and Olivier’s truck had disappeared. I took that as a hopeful sign they had escaped unharmed.

  Several of the other vehicles remained a few yards from our car, closer to us, but they seemed to be unoccupied.

  I looked up at Randall standing above me, taking in the situation.

  “Let’s make a run for it,” I whispered, glancing at Fiona who waited behind us to verify she was listening.

  She was.

  Randall nodded, and I took off, pushing myself upright. I headed straight toward our vehicle, sucking in sharp, painful gasps as I ignored the weakness in my limbs, in my brain. Just a little farther, and we would be on the road out of this city.

  As I passed by the group of vehicles, a man popped up. He had been sitting sideways on a passenger seat with a door open that I hadn’t seen.

  He scowled at us. Even though his hand was hidden from view by the vehicle angled near his, I knew he was about to unleash something that would knock us to next Thursday.

  “Get down,” I shouted, ducking down.

  Fiona stormed past us.

  “Wait, no!” I scrambled after her. “Fiona, stop!”

  She didn’t acknowledge me, but locked her sight on the man who froze, taken aback. Before I could reach her, she clutched his head and slammed him into the car.

  He dropped to the ground.

  I stood, lips parted, staring at her.

  From right up behind me, Randall said, “Let me have the keys.”

  Slightly numb, I nodded before pulling the keys from my pocket and passing them back to him. More men could show up at any time, but it took everything in me to turn away from what had just happened and trudge to our vehicle. I slid into the front seat. Fiona stepped over the man and came up to the back passenger side door. I twisted in my seat to shove open the door for her, and she dipped inside, gliding to the center seat. Her focus locked dead ahead, out the windshield.

  I stared at her, feeling sadder than I had anticipated I would at finding her. As Randall lowered behind the steering wheel and started the car, my brain cleared a little. I relented that I still had too many questions that needed answered before I could make any sort of judgment about the situation. I just had to be supportive to her right now.

  “Hey, I know you must have been through some shit, so I’m not going to ask you to talk yet. Just let me know if you need anything, okay? Write it down, or poke me and I’ll play twenty-questions, anything,” I said, and a small breath escaped me. “I’m just glad you’re back.”

  As much as I wanted to feel the words, I wasn’t yet convinced she was.

  I refocused my attention outside the car. We headed off the property and a moment later, we turned back onto the barely accessible city streets. I let my mind wander to nowhere in particular.

  I wasn’t sure if we had enough gas money to get far, but we could at least get out of this city. That was the first goal. Everything else we would tackle one step at a time.

  Randall eased the car to a halt, and I snapped back to attention. Up ahead at the intersection, a mob of masked demons swarmed around something trapped in their midst. From between them, occasional blue magic flared and then fizzled.

  “What are they…” My voice cut off, and my stomach twisted.

  Randall’s solemn reply hit hard: “Sasmita.”

  She had said she was going after the mage. I hadn’t considered the demons would defend him, but they had chased us down to bring us back to him to use as bait to kill Joseph. They worked for him, in some way or another.

  Randall drummed his fingers on the steering wheel. “We can’t leave her.”

  “Obviously.”

  “Obviously,” he repeated absently, but he was taking in the situation.

  I leaned forward, squinting, waiting for the next blue flash to indicate where Sasmita was between them.

  The flash came again, from nearly the same spot it had been a moment ago. She was holding ground, but not making an escape.

  “Just plow the car straight through this side,” I said, pointing. “Don’t get out, just be ready to hit the gas.”

  He
hesitated, glancing at me.

  “Go,” I growled, flicking my hand toward the windshield.

  With a short nod, he slammed on the gas.

  The car rocketed forward, picking up speed and thudding over piles of debris we would normally avoid. His grip tightened and I braced for impact as the car skidded into the demon brawl. They scattered, and in the same movement, turned and surged toward us.

  Randall slammed on the brakes, and the seatbelt snapped me back against the seat. Fumbling with the button, I released it and shoved open the door, nearly falling out of it as the demons climbed over the hood and up the sides. One yanked the door away from my hold. I shoved him back, scanning the chaos for Sasmita.

  Another blue light flared. I ducked my head and charged. A demon flashed blue and collapsed. Behind him stood Sasmita, mouth bloody, hair disheveled, but fierceness in her eyes.

  A group of demons turned on her, and fear flashed across her face before she released a flare that blinded me for a moment.

  Panting, I darted between two demons and grabbed her arm from behind, pulling her toward me.

  “Come on,” I said.

  She took a few backwards steps, building up another charge. I tugged on her harder, and she spun around, killing her magic, and raced to the car with me. Inside, Randall scrambled to undo his seatbelt and twisted around to stretch through the center console and shove open the passenger side door.

  Fiona barely blinked.

  “Go, go,” I said, ushering Sasmita into the backseat. She crawled inside, and I slammed the door before ducking into the passenger seat.

  Randall hit the gas as I closed the door.

  I pressed my back against the seat, closing my eyes, head tipped to the ceiling, and sucked in deep lungsful of air. My entire body felt disjointed, dissolving, like I would fade away. It took several long moments for me to find myself again.

  Finally, I let out a breath and, opening my eyes, turned to face the backseat.

  Fiona remained in the middle, hands on her lap, gaze ahead. She didn’t seem to register anyone sat beside her.

  “We’re heading out of town,” I said to Sasmita. “I’m not sure where we are going, but far, far away from this madness sounds like a good start to me.”

  Sasmita shook her head. “No. I didn’t—I didn’t get what I needed from the mage. We have to go back.”

  She reached for the door.

  “He’s going to kill us,” I said, pushing against my seat to grab her arm. “Not one of us is strong enough to stand up to him.”

  “I told you, I’m not trying to put him back into the picture,” she said softly, but her hand didn’t lower from the door.

  “What do you need from him?”

  She hesitated, and then said evenly, “His blood. Please don’t ask any more questions.”

  I blinked, trying to make sense of the new information. All magic, including spells, came from within us, through our ability to channel the energy from the earth. Sure, there were plenty of aspects about magic that I didn’t fully understand and even less I knew how to execute, but the idea of needing blood seemed…unusual. It didn’t fit with everything I knew about magic or had recently learned. Even Joseph Stone hadn’t been on a quest for their actual blood. He just wanted them back in their cells.

  Was this the reason the wielders were coming for the dark witches and mages?

  I opened my mouth to say something, but the first words on my tongue were a question. And so were the next. And the next.

  I sighed. “I can’t ask anything, not even one?”

  She clenched her jaw and shook her head, and it took every bit of willpower left in me to stomp down all the things I wanted to say and shove them into a mental closet.

  “I have to go back out there,” she said, gesturing out the side window. “I’m going to wait until everything calms down again, and then I will sneak up the back of the float.”

  “Then what?”

  “After I get his blood, I leave town and go to the next dark mage,” she said, and it sounded far simpler than it was in actuality.

  “And once you get blood from all of the dark witches and mages, and you succeed at whatever you are trying to do, what happens then?” I asked, but even as the words came out, I knew my real underlying message was aimed at myself, not her, and I said, more firmly this time, “What happens when they are left unchecked? Will the consortium send help? We don’t even know who they are or how long it takes to replace someone like Joseph Stone. Will everything we’ve gone through to save Fiona or get their blood even matter then?”

  Silence danced between us, taunting our next move.

  Finally, Randall said, “We have to put them back.”

  “How?” I turned back to settle in my seat again. “How are we going to get him back into his painting?”

  Randall sucked in a deep breath, as if steeling himself for his next words: “First, we go get the painting from Joseph’s van. Then, we figure out the next step. It’s what we do.”

  Everything came together then, the truth I had been ducking and dodging since Joseph Stone had been killed. We didn’t have many options, not in the grand scheme of everything.

  We had to take down the mage.

  28

  Joseph’s van was right where he had left it among the debris on the road where we had encountered him during his arrival to New Orleans.

  Randall parked the car across the street from it, since the rest of the road was covered in destruction too high for our little vehicle. We twisted and turned in our seats, scanning the area for any masked demons in the event they still had a grudge against Sasmita for trying to attack the dark mage, or us for helping her get away.

  “Coast is clear,” Randall said, shoving open his door.

  We stepped out, and I jolted a little as Fiona crawled out behind Sasmita. She hadn’t said a word the entire trip over, and it continued to surprise me that she wasn’t unaware of what was happening around her. In fact, her expression remained calculating, which didn’t suit her familiar face at all. It was like we had found almost-Fiona.

  I wanted to believe she was just in shock and this would all sort itself out in time.

  For now, we had to focus on getting the mage back into the picture. Chances were, we very soon wouldn’t have a future to worry about at all.

  We stopped at the back of the van, crowded together by the building piled behind us. Randall reached up and unlatched the back of the vehicle, and the doors swung open.

  Inside, a large gold-framed painting stood on its side, propped at an angle.

  “I think I forgot how big these pictures are,” I muttered, glancing back at our car. “There is no way we can fit this in there. None.”

  “We’ll need to take the van,” Sasmita said, standing right behind Randall and peering between us. “Why would he leave it out in the open like this, though?”

  I didn’t say anything as I mulled around the question, but then I remembered how he’d had Eliza Brown’s painting in the house in Green River, once he’d taken it from Arlo’s bedroom.

  “He was about ready to use it,” I said. “The vault is the only place that keeps them safe, I think, so it would make no difference if he had it in a basement, or in a shed with a padlock, or even a magical barricade. It’s not going to stop the people who want it, and everyone else isn’t going to care about the painting.”

  Randall looked at me, mouth in a line. “Thank you for that, Miss Morgan.”

  “Hey.” I grinned, despite everything. “Let me have my moment.”

  He laughed and turned back to the painting. “Alright, so if we’re going to take the van, then there’s no use unloading this. We need to see if he conveniently left his keys in the ignition.”

  With that, he squeezed around us and headed to the driver side. The door was unlocked, and as he pawed around inside, I sized up the picture.

  “Joseph opened the pictures,” I said to Sasmita. “Like, he traced the edges with his fingers
and opened it and he could put Eliza Brown back in. I’m not sure how he did that, though.”

  Sasmita clicked her tongue. “That’s a neat trick. I can do it, but it’s not going to be quite that smooth.”

  Before I could ask anything, Randall strolled back over to us. “Sorry, folks, there’s no keys.”

  “We could just hotwire it,” Sasmita said.

  I swung around to look at her, my face squashed up.

  “With this,” she added, wiggling her fingers. “Do you want to, or me?”

  I opened my mouth to tell her that I couldn’t do that, either, but that wasn’t entirely true. I had jump-started the truck of the not-so-crazy guy in the woods outside Green River, yet I had no idea if I could do it again, and I wouldn’t be able to do it reliably.

  My skillset was becoming increasingly difficult to explain, even to myself.

  “Have at it,” I said with a wave of my hand toward the cab. “Randall should drive. He’s our getaway person, it seems.”

  Randall tipped an imaginary hat.

  I nudged Fiona with my elbow, and she started toward the back passenger seat.

  At least I could kickstart something.

  With a sigh, I trudged after her and slid open the side door. Inside provided two rows of seats, giving us a total of five places to sit, and the rest of the interior had been gutted, apparently to make room for the grandiose portrait.

  “Guys, what do we do when we get the mage back into the picture?” I peered at Sasmita as she crawled into the back row from the opposite side. “You said you don’t know where the vault is, right?”

  She shrugged one shoulder. “Not a clue, but I appreciate your optimism.”

  I rolled back through what I had said, and then sighed. “There’s only so much reality I can take. Now I will march cheerfully toward my death.”

  “Your chariot awaits, ma’am,” Randall said from behind the steering wheel, looking at me.

  I realized everyone else was loaded up and waiting. Without another word, I closed the door and took my place in the passenger seat.

  Sasmita pushed up from the back and leaned between us to tap her finger against the ignition. A little blue magic sparked, and the engine rumbled to life.