“Ah. I wondered when I would get to meet you.” Sarah trained the wand on Naia now. “We heard all about you from Garrett.”
“I’m not above drowning you, little witch.” Naia summoned a giant ball of water. Sarah fired a burst of magic, but it detonated inside the ball, spraying water everywhere. Naia quickly summoned it once more. “And you’re going to have to make up some new tricks if you want to make it out of here alive.”
“Water, water everywhere, and not a drop to drink.” This time, a blinding light emanated from her wand. Floating into the sky, it cast waves of devastating heat downward. The water boiled around them, and Naia’s face fell.
“Mike, you need to get out of here!” She helped him to the other side of the fountain.
“What about you?”
“Don’t worry, the water can’t hurt me.” She practically shoved Mike out of the fountain, steam already rising from its edges. Sarah was already skirting the short wall, looking for a clean shot. “But it can hurt her.” Water tendrils rose up, boiling hot and whipped at the angry witch. When they made contact, the air around Sarah flashed green, revealing a magical shell that protected her.
“Oh no,” Naia said, covering her mouth in horror. She summoned a massive water wall and sent it at Sarah, but it ran around her with no effect.
“You’re harmless as long as I stay out here.” Sarah pointed her wand at Naia, the tip of it glowing the same green as her protective barrier. “And now you can’t go back in.”
Mike looked at Naia, then at Sarah. He needed a plan, some way to get either the wand or the dagger from her. As he looked around for inspiration, he saw that someone else already had a plan—in the shape of a ball-peen hammer.
Tink burst out of the bushes, hammer raised high. When she neared Sarah, she swung the hammer for the side of her knee. The witch’s green shell flashed, knocking Tink head over heels. With a dramatic wave of her wand, Sarah lifted Tink into the sky and cast her toward Naia’s boiling fountain.
“No!” Mike screamed. Naia waved her hands to the side, and the fountain’s water lifted outward, forming a giant wall. Arms outstretched, Naia caught Tink and both of them tumbled to the marble floor.
“And now you freeze it.” The mystery orb vanished, and a blast of blue light from the wand caused the hot water to freeze and expand. The water wall was nearly ten feet high, the surface warped like a funhouse mirror, scattering oblong images of Naia and Tink in every direction. Sarah smirked, leveling her wand at Mike. “Strange. I expected to see far more of your menagerie out here.”
“You know about the creatures here?” Mike asked. Again looking around the garden for a weapon, a shield, some way out of this mess, he finally saw something that could help.
“Of course I know. Garrett spoke of them many times. We used to have them all written down in a little book, but the geas really is all powerful.” Sarah’s eyes flashed. “Time to die, Mr. Radley.”
“Wait!” Mike held up his hands. “I want to make a trade!”
“Trade what? All you have is your life, and not for long.”
“Hear me out. If you kill me, this place goes up for sale, yes?”
“And?”
“The geas takes over. Even if you kill me, you can’t go back inside the house to find the you-know-what.” Mike swallowed, hoping that she couldn’t tell how full of shit he was.
“You’re full of shit.” Sarah’s eyes narrowed, but Mike noticed that she hadn’t blown a hole in him yet.
“No really, think about it. I invited you in, right? Well, if I die, the current owner of the house hasn’t given you permission to enter. Clearly, I don’t have it on me. Therefore, you’re stuck out here, and you have to do this all over again with the next owner, which will mean waiting for years. In fact, my current will leaves everything to my next of kin, which means you will have to wait at least a couple of years while they try to dig up another distant relative.” He was lying through his teeth, but after so many days inside the Dreamscape, he felt like his logic had been sharpened to a fine enough point to convince her. “And if you kill me, that will have to wait until after the murder investigation. Unless I disappear-then it’s a seven year wait to declare me legally dead.”
“I can wait,” Sarah told him, but now he could see she was full of shit. Her thumb circled the hilt of the dagger. She was eager to move forward with the kill, yet he still lived.
“Here’s the trade. If I take you to it, you let me live. I walk away, no questions asked.” Mike nodded. “Like that, you get everything you want. I get everything I want.”
“There’s no way you walk away from all this with everything you want,” Sarah said.
“Okay, fine, I walk away with the money! This place, I sell it to the Society. You and yours mine it for its secrets. It’s been nothing but trouble for me. Look!” Mike pointed at his face, then his leg. “I haven’t even been here a week, and all I get is fucked up. Do you know how long I spent trapped inside a dream with that succubus?”
“How did you escape?” Sarah asked, instantly suspicious.
“I slept with the you-know-what under my pillow.” God, he hoped that made sense. “I moved it this morning because I didn’t want the others to know I had it. I was afraid they would use it against me.”
Sarah appraised him for several seconds, obviously trying to decide what to do. Then, “Take me to it. Walk slowly.”
“Oh, don’t you
