boundary.'
Another failure for Leader Amelia. Maybe this one wasn't my fault. But on the other hand, I remember Quentin telling me the spirits were shy. He could not even fly when people were watching. Nothing would happen while there was a big group here.
Even if he had a staff.
Vanity said, 'What causes magnetic anomalies?'
Colin and I stared at her curiously. It seemed an odd question. I said, 'What do you… ?'
Victor said, 'Any electromagnetic power of sufficient magnitude to—'
Colin interrupted sharply, 'Hey! Stupid people! It was a demon! A thing! It went to get help! Time to run away! Which direction? Give the order, Dark Mistress!'
I said, 'East. Run. Hold on to each other! Last time they used a magic spell to split us up!'
It is really not that easy to run holding hands, and I am sure it looks quite silly. The hilly terrain did not make things any easier, and the hills were getting steeper as we pulled to the East.
Ahead of us in the moonlight, I could see the cliffs of the Downs, treeless and barren, raising sides of chalk and limestone, pale as cloud, against the stars.
I was doing fine for a long, long stretch. Vanity was soon out of breath, and Quentin was not doing much better. Colin was gritting his teeth and puffing like a steam engine, but seemed to be keeping up the pace by sheer willpower. Victor did not seem tired at all.
We were all pelting down a snowy slope, which did not seem steep at all, when suddenly (to me, it seemed sudden) the slope was much sharper than it had first appeared, and I was sliding. When I fell, I pulled down Vanity with me; she let go of Quentin's hand.
1.
We two slid and slithered down the hillside, and when Quentin tried to jump after us to get us, he tried to yank out of Colin's hand, who was apparently unwilling to let go. Their feet went out from under them.
It would have been funny if it weren't so dangerous. I fell and slid about fifty yards, and Vanity skidded to a slow halt a few yards beyond me.
We were still among the barrows. There was a huge mound, larger than the others we had seen, in the dead center of a smooth and perfectly round depression like a crater. It was down those crater sides we had just fallen, as if pulled inward toward the barrow.
This mound had a stone doorway, half the height of a man, set with pillars and lintels of unfinished stone: a half-buried henge.
It would have seemed eerie and unearthly, except that there was evidence of modern man here. There were tarps and crates off to one side. Lights had been rigged around the stone door. There was a small diesel-powered generator under an ice-coated tarp. Nothing was on; nothing was lit. It looked as if the archeologist and his assistants had packed things for the holidays, and expected to be back here digging in a week. There was even a flatbed truck with wide, oversize off-road tires parked not far away.
I climbed to my feet. 'Vanity—!'
She stood, slid another few feet downslope, stood again. 'Fun. Let's do that again. Kidding! Just kidding!'
'A spell made us rash and stupid last time. Tell me if you can feel if we are being watched.'
She looked left and right. 'Where are the boys… ?'
They had fallen farther down the slope. Indeed, they were almost at the stone entrance to the barrow.
I did not like the look of that. Like the tumble that had split us up when we approached the seashore, this had all the markings of a trap being sprung. I did not want to shout, but I saw Colin get to his feet, and without bothering to look back to see if the rest of us were hurt, he started to walk slowly and stiffly toward the black square entrance to the mound.
His motion was stiff, doll-like. Quentin was rising to his feet also, walking with sleepwalker steps after him.
I bit my lip. No shouting. I stooped, gathered a snowball, and let it fly at Colin. I have a good throwing arm, and managed to knock off his hat with a plop of snow. Colin shook himself and turned around, angered and startled.
I pointed furiously to where Quentin was walking stiff-legged toward the waiting stone door. Colin squinted at him, looking angry. He jumped forward in three long strides, put out his hand and yanked Quentin roughly; the younger boy stumbled and went to one knee.
I said, 'Vanity! Report!'
She closed her eyes, raised her hand, pointed upward. Her other hand lifted and pointed down.
Her eyes snapped open. 'Overhead and underfoot. Two of them.'
I looked back up the slope. I could see Victor's slender silhouette in the moonlight, a shadow against the brighter snow behind him. He was stepping sideways down the slope, carefully and quickly placing one foot after another.
A shadow passed across the face of the moon. I looked up.
It was Dr. Fell, levitating.
The tails of his white lab coat floated and flapped around his legs. He had neither hat nor overcoat, as if cold meant nothing to him. Like a shark diving through cold, black waters, he dropped feetfirst out of the night sky, heading toward Colin and Quentin.
He was a hundred feet up. I saw a blue spark appear on his brow. He had opened his third eye.
An azure beam darted from the eye, stabbing down. Somehow, impossibly, Colin moved faster, and threw
