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I just wished my stomach didn’t hurt at the thought.
I pulled the front door closed, then jumped at the sudden loud bang from inside the house. I slowly opened the door again. “That came from the library,” I said. I started to say that it was probably another book falling off a shelf, but an odd ripple of the arcane brushed me, sending a wave of goose bumps crawling along the back of my neck and reminding me unpleasantly of the encounter in the restaurant. I glanced back at Ryan, not surprised to see his gun in his hand. “You felt that?” I asked.
He nodded, brows lowered and gaze on the hallway. I looked back at Jill, with the intent to tell her to stay on the porch, but was shocked to see that she had her gun in her hand too and an utterly calm expression on her face.
“You felt it?”
She gave a small shake of her head. “No,” she whispered. “But I got your back anyway.”
I couldn’t help but grin, even as another bang sounded, this time accompanied by a harsh clatter and the sound of several objects striking the floor. I gave myself a mental smack. My gun was in my car, in the garage. I hadn’t expected to need it inside Tessa’s house. And the only way into the garage was either through the house—down the hallway that ran past the library—or with the garage-door opener. Which was in the car.
I sca
I took a deep breath and focused on pulling potency to me, concentrating, visualizing it flowing into my control. I cupped my hands before me, sensing scattered energies slowly coalescing, becoming visible as a quivering blue glow in my othersight.
Holy shit. I was doing it. I was controlling arcane power. I felt a triumphant laugh bubbling up.
Then the arcane glow sputtered out. I frowned at my cupped hands, my triumphant laugh dying out as thoroughly as the power.
“Um, Kara?” Ryan said. “What was that?”
Feeling like an idiot, I sighed and dropped my hands, then stepped over to the corner and hoisted the umbrella. “Let’s just say that I’m not going to be flinging arcane fireballs at anyone.”
I could see the deep amusement in his eyes, but thankfully he didn’t laugh outright. Good thing too, because I had an umbrella covered in giant pink flowers in my hand, and I wasn’t afraid to use it.
“You two are seriously weird,” Jill murmured.
“And yet you choose to hang out with us,” I countered, starting down the hall, holding the stupid umbrella like a sword. Ryan fell in beside me, covering the area with the mundane protection of his gun, while Jill hung back and covered our collective rears.
I cautiously peeked around the door to the library in time to catch a movement that was almost too fast to follow with human vision. Something small and rat-size zinged across the room from one shelf to behind a book on the opposite shelf. In fact, I probably would have suspected that it was a bird or squirrel, except for the fact that I could clearly see—even without shifting into othersight—a trail like arcane dust in the thing’s wake.
“I don’t think your gun’s going to be much good,” I said softly as I stepped inside the library, trying to track where the creature had gone.
“Yes, your umbrella will protect us all,” Ryan replied tartly, not holstering his gun. “What the hell is it? All I saw was a streak of light.”
“Du
The thing came whizzing out from behind the book, straight at me. I yelped and swiped at it with the umbrella, missing it thoroughly and feeling like I was back in fifth grade softball. I’d sucked at sports back then, and I hadn’t improved in the intervening years. I got a better look at it this time, though, and caught a flash of teeth and wings in a tiny humanoid form. Like Tinker Bell on crack. But Tinker Bell never had such sharp teeth and sure as shit didn’t have a stinger coming out of her ass.
I heard the whiz of wings again and jammed the button on the handle of the umbrella, snapping it open just in time for the creature to glance off. It wobbled away, letting out a thin shriek that was high enough to be barely audible.
“Holy shit,” Jill breathed.
“Jill, stay back,” I warned. “I have no idea what this is or what it can do.” Or how it got in here, for that matter.
She made a grumbling noise but obligingly stepped back. I shifted fully into othersight, hoping to find where the little bugger had gone to, but I shifted right back out, scowling blackly. There was so much arcane energy scattered about the room from all the books and scrolls, it was like putting on night-vision goggles in broad daylight.
A nearly sub-audible thrum warned me in time to duck under the umbrella as it dove at me. I had a much clearer vision of a stinger aimed for me, but I didn’t even have a chance to swipe at it this time. I was far more concerned with not getting stung. I heard Ryan give a shout as he threw himself backward, into the hall.
I couldn’t let whatever it was escape out into the real world. It was obviously arcane, but I didn’t know if it was something native to this sphere or something that had been brought through from another. But I had a strong enough feeling that it was dangerous.
“You two guard the door!” I shouted. “Don’t let it out of the room.”
“Guard it with what?” Ryan shouted back. “My charming personality?”
“No, I don’t want to kill it just yet!”
Jill appeared in the doorway with an umbrella in each hand, holding them like a samurai with a pair of katana. She thrust one at Ryan. “Here, I found them in the hall closet. It’s been working for Kara.”
Ryan jammed his gun into his holster, muttering something that sounded vile as he took the umbrella. “Oh, sure. Give me the one with the purple ducks on it.”
Jill merely smiled and crouched, opening the umbrella. Hers was orange and yellow with a giraffe head on it. “You go high, I’ll cover low.”
Ryan opened his umbrella. “What are you going to do, Kara?”
“I need to trap this thing!”
“Fuck,” he growled. “And I suppose you have to be in there with it?”
Yes. Out there would have been preferable, but that wasn’t really an option. I quickly shoved a pile of books off the table, cringing as they landed in ugly heaps with the sound of tearing paper. I grabbed a pen off the floor and inscribed a quick and crude circle into the surface of the wooden table, still holding the umbrella over me. Tessa would be livid at the damage to her table, but I didn’t give a shit at this point. I’d refinish the damn thing later. I stepped back and began to slowly pull power again, but this time into the circle. I was going to try a dismissal, but since I didn’t have the faintest clue as to what this creature was and didn’t know its name, the standard dismissal that I used for demons wasn’t going to work. Instead, I was going to open a generic portal and try to keep it small enough so the arcane creature would get sucked through and returned to wherever it came from, but nothing else would.
There were only two things that could screw this up. First, if the thing was actually a resident of this sphere, I’d be spending arcane energy to make a portal for no reason at all. Second, if the thing had been summoned by another and was somehow bound to this sphere, I would need to do a far more specific dismissal.