Sebille turned to my uncle. “Archie?”
He shook his head. “It’s not a void. Maybe it’s some kind of portal.”
I reached toward the thickening air. Unless… My finger touched the spot. Pain ripped through my core as my magic was torn violently from me. Energy flooded the cloudy spot on the air but stayed within the oval-shaped parameters.
I screamed, doubling over as the magic seared my cells on its way out.
Almost as quickly as it started, the magic siphoning stopped. My knees buckled and I hit the ground, taking deep, calming mouthfuls of air into my lungs.
“That’s the mirror,” Sebille finally said. She reached out again, shoving her hand into the center of the object hanging unsupported about a foot above the ground.
I looked up and saw what looked like the back of the wooden communication mirror in the artifact library at Croakies. I shoved painfully to my feet, my body feeling like it had been bludgeoned.
The space between the aged wood frame was gray, as it was when it was opening for a new communication. Something shifted at the bottom of the mirror. I grabbed Sebille’s arm and tugged her backward. “Watch out!”
We took a step back and the mirror cleared.
A small, gray shape with a snapping tail and irate orange eyes jumped through the mirror. “Meow!”
“Mr. Wicked!” I scooped him up and held him close, kissing the top of his soft head. “What in the world?”
He bit my cheek. “Ouch!”
Wicked shoved against me with his tiny feet and earned his freedom. He stalked back to the mirror and stopped, looking back at us over his angrily whipping tail. Then he turned back to the mirror and jumped through. Disappearing from sight.
“A portal it is,” Archie said, sounding relieved. Without another word, my uncle followed Wicked through the mirror.
The rest of us went quickly through after him.
As I stepped onto the cool, concrete floor of the artifact library, the first thing I noticed was the horrible sulfuric stench.
Then I noticed the sounds of crashing and thumping beyond the dividing door.
But it was the blood-curdling screams that finally started me running.
Eddie reached the door first. He threw it open, and a sliver of metal slashed through the air, mere inches from his head. The tiny arrow embedded itself into the wood of Shakespeare’s desk behind Eddie and quivered there.
Eddie ducked sideways and ran toward the bookshelves.
“Watch out!” Lea screamed.
Shimmery green energy flashed past me as I ducked through the door.
The sprite cannonballed past in her bug form. She immediately started firing energy at the fat little attackers divebombing everyone in the room.
Meow! Wicked ran past me, leaped onto Slimy’s terrarium and sliced his claws at any cherubs that got too close.
Inside his glass home, Slimy hunkered near his sunning rock looking bug-eyed.
So, basically normal for him.
I flung a ribbon of Keeper magic into the air, the energy coiling rapidly toward the library.
Eddie lifted his arms and flapped his hands together like discordant wings. Energy flared away from his hands and flapped across the room, growing as it moved and spinning like strange whirligigs.
Two cherubs divebombed Narina. She flung up both arms and fired powerful gusts of wind at them, sending them butt-over-belly across the room to smash into the wall.
The exterior door opened as they hit the wall. Several more cherubs flew through.
There looked to be dozens of the nasty things in the bookstore. And there were arrows flying everywhere.
I spotted Lea hunkered down in the center aisle of the bookshelves. She was covered in a shimmery aura of magic, and there was a pile of arrows on the floor around her and sticking from the wooden shelves and books. Her cat Hex, Wicked’s littermate, was perched on top of the bookshelf nearest Lea, slashing at cherubs like her brother.
The air behind me sighed and I threw up my hand, catching Blackbeard’s sword as it barreled toward me. The hilt of the magical sword softened and warmed beneath my palm, fitting itself to my hand as the magic it carried worked its way through my system.
Three cherubs with hate-filled eyes descended from the ceiling and they were on me, almost too fast for me to respond. But the sword knew its work. It rose to meet the attack, my body settling into a familiar fighting stance. The blade flashed─slash, slash, slash─quicker than the eye could follow.
Three cherubs burst into dust and I spun to meet three more.
The room was cloudy with the leavings of spent energy and cherub dust. It clogged my nose and stung my eyes. But I barely noticed. I was lost in the dance of the blade.
Slash, slice, lunge, sweep, sweep, sweep. Two arrows clanged against the blade and dropped to the carpet.
A ragged form barreled into the room, dropping red and green feathers on my head and along the floor as he burst clumsily into the battle.
“Argh! Rough seas and demon’d skies. The diapered curs have swords that fly.” SB flapped his wings and squawked as arrows flashed in his direction. Quick as a wink, he shot forward and stabbed the nearest cherub with his beak, snagging another one out of the air as the first one turned to dust. He swung the screaming cherub in his steely claws and flung it onto my blade.
Poof! Dust filtered to the ground.
SB fluffed his feathers and danced proudly on the air. “Bwawk! Ye bilge-sucking dog of a wicked mum, whose pride for ye be small, ye’ll succumb to Blackbeard’s mighty bird, ’fore yer mum’s tears of shame can fall.”
Energy flared and burst all around me. The floor was littered with dust, my shoes kicking it up all around me as I fought.
Finally, the bookstore was free of cherubs. We collapsed into exhausted, boneless piles on the dust-covered carpet, panting.
Lea dropped her shield and staggered toward me. “I thought you’d never get here.”
“Sorry. We ran into some trouble.” How was that for an understatement?
“Did you get the serum?” Lea asked, her expression grim.
Sebille lifted
