Scary Cool (The Spellspinners) (32 page)

Lance’s arm crept around my waist. He pulled me to him and whispered in my ear, “Just be still. And try not to think in words.”

I nodded. We couldn’t see each other, it was so dark, but we were close enough that he could feel my nod. I blanked my mind and tried to quiet my breathing. The
spellspinners
were all around us now. I sensed them reaching for us with their powerful magic, trying to pick up our thoughts.

What if they picked up my fear?
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don’tthink
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I had wanted to hide, but now t
hat we were hidden I realized hiding
was harder than I thought it would be. It was torture to stay still when every instinct was screaming at me to run.
And my mind was racing, too, fighting my efforts to make it shut up.

At least one of the
spellspinners
had paused. “Hold on,” he said sharply. He sounded like he was maybe twenty feet from us. Another pair of feet crunched in the bracken as someone joined him.

Lance’s arm tightened around me. “Think of water,” he whispered, so softly I could barely hear him.

Water? It made no sense to me, but I obeyed. I pictured a swimming pool. Put my face close to the surface. Watched the light pinch and zoom as it danced across the surface. Water. Water.

I don’t know how much time went by
. Maybe a minute, maybe two.
My brain calmed. My heart rate slowed. And I guess I confused the
spellspinner
who thought he had sensed me. I heard him mutter, disgustedly, “Nah. I thought they were around here someplace, but I’ve lost them now.”

His friend—the other pair of feet I’d heard—was female. “Great,” she snapped. “This is a wild goose chase, if you ask me.”

“Not if they can’t
skatch
.”

They left, arguing. Not even bothering to be quiet.
But why should they? They weren’t trying to hide.

“Just a little longer,” Lance whispered. “Then we’re outta here.”

I
realized that a whisper wouldn’t broadcast our brain waves in the way that shooting our thoughts at each other would. Lance is so
clever
.

I
turned my head so I could aim my words into his ear, speaking so softly that I barely heard myself. “I don’t hear anybody else.”

“Somebody might be smarter than they were. Fake us out.”

I shivered. He was right, of course.

So
I thought of water. And waited.

We traveled in fits and starts. Sometimes we would let the glamour slip, if we thought we were in a really good hiding place, to rest our powers a bit. It
was tiring enough to make our way
through the woods
in the dark
with a minimum of noise.
T
rying to maintain the illusion that we were part of the forest
, in case the hunters caught up with us,
was exhausting.

For the first couple of hours, we heard them sometimes. Once we almost ran right into
Nedra
and
a man I didn’t recognize; they were moving as stealthily as we were and, unlike some of the others, they weren’t carrying flashlights. So at least some of the
spellspinners
had figured out that light and noise would tip us off to their whereabouts. Othe
rs either hadn’t thought of this
or didn’t care. Maybe the more powerful ones were confident they would
be able to sense where we were, so figured it didn’t matter if we knew they were coming.

Lance reminded me that they had stripped us of most of our power, so they must think we were as helpless as sticks, out here in the pitch dark woods. But
they hadn’t bargained on the effect of
wholesoul
. Lance and I would never be helpless.
Not as long as we had each other.

It was
still
dangerous work. It would have been dangerous even without trying to elude the
spellspinners
hunting for us. It was worse for me, in my stupid shoes.
We managed not to walk into trees, but we both kept stubbing our toes and tripping over stuff, and I don’t know how many times
I turned my ankle—a terrible, sharp pain that usually made me fall and even when it didn’t, paralyzed me momentarily.
It was hard not to cry out when it happened. If I’d been a stick, I’d have been done for. But Lance and I united our powers to heal whatever damage I’d done and send the pain away, and each time it happened I got up and went on. I couldn’t take the stupid shoes off because they were all I had to protect me from stones and twigs and whatever else was on the ground.

I was freezing, too, in my little silk dress. Lance gave me his jacket, but my legs were bare. It was pretty awful, because we couldn’t concentrate on our escape, maintain a glamour that made our passage look like wind in the trees, and cook up a warming spell while we were at it.

Eventually, the air around us grew lighter with dawn’s approach. It was easier going, once we could make out the trees and the contours of the land, but I worried that we, too, were more visible.

Lance picked up my worry and gave me a reassuring smile. “They’re not going to catch us now, cupcake.”

Cupcake again.
He had spoken out loud for the first time all night, and he had to call me ‘cupcake.’
I winced. “What makes you so sure?”

“They haven’t caught us yet.” He held up a low-hanging branch so I could pass under. “
We haven’t heard any pursuit for a long time now.
Which probably
means they’re not trying
anymore
.
I wondered when it would occur to them that we’d be
cloaking ourselves. My guess is, they figured it out several hours ago.
No point in trying to track us. They’re probably sitting around arguing about what to do next.
”

Anxiety gnawed at me. “What do you think they’ll decide?”

“No clue. But I doubt if this is the end of it.” He pulled me over to the side of the path—we were following some sort of animal track—and stopped. “Listen.”

I listened. There was a faint rushing sound that wasn’t coming from the treetops. “What is it?”

Excitement was thrumming through him; I could feel it. “It’s the river. We’re almost out
of
Spellhaven
. Careful, now. There’s a cliff around here. Probably right in front of us.”

The light was stronger every minute. A good thing, too, because Lance was right. The trees abruptly thinned and a steep chasm yawned at our feet, with a river snaking along the bottom of it. “That’s it,” he said. He pointed across the river. “Once we’re on the other side, we’re out. This river marks the border.”

“How do we cross it?”

Lance’s face, I could see in the growing light, was weary and frowning. And filthy. I stared at him, appalled. He was so thickly coated with dust now that it was impossible to tell what colors he was wearing. His clothes were torn up, too, from our scramble through the forest—full of little tears where brambles had caught at him. Twigs and seeds and who-knows-what
were
sticking out everywhere, including from his hair.

He caught my stare and looked back at me. His
brows lifted
as he took in my appearance. My condition was doubtless similar to his. “Wow,” he said. “You look awful.”

The sun rose behind us and lit us up as we
started laughing. There may have been a slightly manic edge to our laughter, but I still thought it was a good omen. We were dir
ty and hungry and exhausted. Our powers had been weaken
ed. We were friendless and hunted and alone.

But we were alive. And free. And laughing in the sunlight.

Lance had thought we’d be able to
skatch
as soon as we were out of
Spellhaven
proper. Unfortunately, he was wrong.  So
we
spent the day on a long, miserable hike—through the prettiest country I’d ever seen, but beauty is definitely in the eye of the beholder. The most beautiful sight to Lance and me would have been a pair of golden arches rising before us radiating the
smell
of French fries. Alas, all we got was more scenery.

Every half hour or so, we’d stop and test whether or not we could
skatch
. Lance said to try a place that was super-familiar, so I kept trying to
skatch
to my bedroom. Nothing ever happened. Lance’s two easiest places normally would have been his
skatching
stone, back at
Spellhaven
, or the well in the apartment he shared with Rune. Both places were off-limits now, for obvious reasons. So he tried various spots—a different spot every time we stopped.
He had no more luck than I did
. So we trudged on.

We were going mostly downhill, and in places it was wicked steep.
Walking
downhill, I discovered, is hard on the ankles and calves.
It was
tough going
, but I was
so giddy with relief at being out of that tube cell, I almost didn’t care. It was harder on Lance. He was deeply angry that his kinsmen had stripped so much power from him.
He couldn’t
get past it
.
To me, it had been imprisonment and all,
which was bad enough,
but
to Lance it had also been betrayal.
He was silent, brooding,
as we hauled our footsore bodies
down the mountain
toward civilization.

And then,
just as the sun was getting ready to set
, we had a breakthrough. We stopped for another rest. I tried to
skatch
, and nothing happened. Lance tried to
skatch
…and he disappeared.

My mouth fell open. It had worked! I jumped up, ready to cheer—then sat back down.
Alone.

Completely alone. In the middle of the woods. With no clue where I was.

It was a very, very bad moment. And as it stretched into minutes, it got worse.

I didn’t dare leave. Even if I’d known which way to go, I couldn’t leave
, because Lance would return here to look for me.

If he could.

My palms started to sweat. I remembered him trying to
skatch
to me in the park and being unable to, because of that crazy banishment I’d
cooked up
. I was pretty sure it was gone now, but what if I were wrong? What if it were still in effect and, in my weakened state, I had no power to undo it?

What if Lance had been able to
skatch
away, but couldn’t
skatch
back?

Why hadn’t we thought of this before?!

Too late, I realized Lance should have just tried to
skatch
a few feet away, not all the way to wherever he was. I didn’t even know where he’d gone!

I jumped up and paced. I sat down and shivered. I tried again to
skatch
to my bedroom, and failed.

My eyes had filled with tears of pure fright by the time Lance reappeared. But he reappeared. I rushed into his arms with a sob, then pounded my fist against his shoulder. “Don’t you
ever
do that to me again!”

His arms went around me automatically, but he was so happy he was laughing. “It worked! Zara, it worked.”

“Where did you go?” I pushed away,
ashamed of my panic, and
hugged myself instead—trying
to get a grip.

“I have a motorcycle stashed in the woods near a gas station in this little town—just a wide spot in the road, really—but it’s
near the Avenue of the Giants. I went to check on it. It’s still there
.
”

“Where is that from here?”

He shrugged. “Don’t know. When you
skatch
, it doesn’t matter.”

“I can’t
skatch
!”

“You wouldn’t be able to anyway, since you haven’t been there.” He was actually rubbing his hands together, he was so exultant.

“So now what?” I tossed my
tangled, nasty hair behind
me
. “You go roaring off on your motorcycle, and what do I do? I hope you brought me a map. It’s
gonna
be a long walk out of these freaking woods.”

“I don’t know where we are.” He didn’t sound bothered in the least. “I’ve just been leading us downhill, figuring we’d strike a road or a town. Eventually.”

“Great. Okay. So I’ll just keep heading downhill. No worries. Nice knowing you. Bye-bye. Have a nice trip on your
motorcycle.”
I wrapped his jacket more tightly around me and started off.