My magic snapped back into me.
“What?” Miles said.
“I swear something just reached out and tried to touch my mind.” Defense-system yarn was one thing, sentience was quite a different and unwelcome ballgame. A creepy crawly sensation scuttled over my skin. Only an idiot would go in for round two, but being trussed up like a turkey didn’t leave a lot of options. “Okay, I know what to expect. Trying again.” I shot my magic into the yarn once more and pulled as hard as I could.
The magic tasted like silk. I closed my eyes with a smile, a sharp buzz zipping through me. The most expensive whiskey was a cheap burn of moonshine in comparison to this honeyed smoothness. I drank deep, then pulled it out in a smudgy shadow, trapping it in my red forked branches.
The ropes quivered. One edge rose up in a funnel, the thick strands forming a multi-colored face with an open gaping maw.
I yelped. The section where I was shackled tore free of my magic branches, spinning to wrap me in coils. Blinded and barely able to breathe, I fought to catch hold of the yarn’s magic again, but it kept slipping away. I couldn’t tell which way was up, plunged into a relentless chaos that I couldn’t harness, despite how hard I fought.
A loud grinding noise vibrated along the yarn. No, a muted gnashing. Exactly how a mouth full of teeth made of giant knots would sound.
I thrashed pointlessly against my prison. There were a lot of things that might kill me, including the truth about my father, so some dead woman with a string fetish and Weaver magic did not get that honor.
Even if I wanted my armor back to protect me from those teeth, I was too tightly wrapped. Adding it would crush me faster. In one jerky motion after another, I was drawn closer to the mouth. Or so I assumed, since I was completely encased in yarn that abraded the skin on my face and my eyes were screwed tight.
The more I tried to hook into the yarn’s magic, the more it neatly evaded me. I had to catch it off guard.
“Miles!” I hoped he could hear my muffled words. “Burn it again!”
Knotted teeth clamped down on my right ankle and pain blazed up my leg. A change from the pain that generally shot downward from the poor femur held together by rods, courtesy of a car accident in my wild youth. The teeth ground down harder, trying to tear through the protection of my motorcycle boots’ leather.
Limp with exhaustion, I braced myself for my ankle bone to snap, but the grinding stopped.
I sniffed. Smoke. I slammed my magic into the yarn’s. Miles had provided enough of a distraction for me to once more hook into it. I could have kissed him. I ripped the magic free, snagged it into my red forked branches, and let those gorgeous white clusters bloom.
The rope disappeared, dumping Miles and me onto the ground. I swore as my ankle jostled against the concrete.
A thunderous crash boomed from the top of the stairs and I flinched, but it was just Arkady, who’d smashed the door open.
I blinked against the brightness of the lights switching on, and then Arkady jumped the stairs two at a time, his face wild. “I was kidding,” he babbled. “I wouldn’t have sent you down alone—I couldn’t break the door down.”
Miles lay on his back, winded, with a sooty streak on one cheek, but at Arkady’s agitated manner, he sat up. “Nothing we couldn’t handle. Right?”
“Right.” I flexed my ankle, getting a sharp twinge, and hissed. “Badly bruised, but not broken.”
Arkady nodded tightly, but he placed both hands on Miles’ shoulder as if to assure himself of his well-being. Miles leaned into his touch, which apparently triggered their recollection that they were pissed off at each other, because they jerked apart.
Miles laughed, a deep belly guffaw.
“Don’t snap on us now, Berenbaum,” I said.
“You still worried about a lack of a ward?” he said.
I laughed, then winced because somehow even that hurt my ankle. “Yes, because Knotface only was rigged for down here.”
“That sounds interesting.” Arkady slid an arm underneath mine to help me up.
“It was something, all right.” I leaned on him, shaking my head when he tried to steer us upstairs. “There’s one more door down here and after a welcome like that, I want to know what’s behind it.”
Miles pushed to his feet and carefully opened the door, only to be hit with a chorus of howls and the stench of urine.
“What the—” His hand flew up to cover his nose and mouth.
A quick glance to the walls revealed the room was covered in soundproofing. The sole object in it was a crate intended to house a large dog, but instead of one animal, five puppies of various breeds were crammed inside, crying piteously.
To be clear: I don’t like dogs. However, one sliver of my cold, dead heart was apparently susceptible to puppies in distress. I’d been too late to save Tatiana from the murderer and too young to save my thirteen-year-old self’s magic from my father’s schemes, but dammit, I could do something now.
Arkady helped me kneel down beside the crate. This close to the small ocean of pee, I prayed I’d go nose-blind. The cage was padlocked, but I made short work of it.
The dogs had been locked inside away from their empty bowls, so I opened the crate door as wide as it would go. “Okay, little guys, come on out.”
The animals crowded farther back.
“Miles? Could you?” I gestured to the dry dog food in the corner.
He filled them and three of us stood in the doorway, giving the animals a chance to leave the crate. The first one to do so was a tiny, sandy-colored pug. The puppies were so jammed up close that it kind of flopped forward in a half-somersault.
“Mazel
