She mumbled something from behind her duct tape gag, but of course I couldn’t understand her. I was a little reluctant to take the tape off, afraid Tom would come back up to check on us. If he had any idea I could get free, our situation was going to get even worse than it was now.
Al’s eyes opened wider, and the mumble was louder. A shock of static electricity sparked on the back of my hand. No, not static electricity: magic. It was gone before my brain had a chance to process what I’d felt, but hope surged through me. I picked at the corner of the tape, then stuck my face in hers so she was forced to look into my eyes.
“Don’t yell, okay?” I said in an urgent whisper.
Al blinked blearily, but nodded. I wasn’t entirely sure I trusted her, but I didn’t have much of a choice. If Al could use her magic, I was confident we could get out of here pretty easily and this whole rotten adventure would be over.
Holding my breath, I yanked off the tape. Al made a high-pitched squeal, but she kept her mouth closed, trapping the sound inside. My pulse did a little salsa dance anyway, but I didn’t hear any footsteps on the stairs.
With hands that shook just a little, I undid the zip tie holding Al’s hands together. I had to help her sit up— not a good sign—and she kind of sagged against my shoulder.
“Come on, Al,” I urged. “Stay with me.”
“Trying,” she murmured sleepily.
I needed her more conscious than this if I was going to engineer an escape, but I didn’t know what to do to help her. Another static shock pinged against my skin, as ephemeral as the last. Al groaned.
“Can’t . . . hold it,” she said, panting. She was still sitting on the floor, leaning on my shoulder, but her head was hanging lower now. She was fighting the drug with all she had, but I feared it wouldn’t be enough.
“Magic, you mean?”
She nodded. “Need to . . . burn off . . .” She sagged, and I had to put both arms around her to keep her semi-upright. Her eyes closed, and I swallowed a string of curses.
I couldn’t hold Al up indefinitely, so I lowered her back to the floor as gently as possible. My heart was racing, and my ears were straining for the sound of footsteps. There was no reason Gary or Tom should be coming to check on us again so soon, but if they did and they found us like this, we were doomed.
“Please, Al. Wake up.” I shook her and patted her cheeks again, and
eventually her eyes opened. She looked confused and disoriented. “We need to get out of here,” I reminded her. “You were saying something about using magic to . . .
burn off the GHB?” She hadn’t said anything quite that clear, but it seemed like a logical assumption.
She dipped her chin in a half-hearted nod. “Gather . . . for me.”
I frowned, trying to make sense of her telegraphic messages. “You want me to gather magic for you to use?” There were two steps to using magic: gathering the magic to you, and commanding the magic to do your bidding. I was really, really good at the former. The magic loved me. Unfortunately, it was rarely interested in doing what I commanded. The only spell I’d ever been able to cast successfully turned Fae into mortals, which I supposed could come in handy if I were on the verge of being separated from Al, but otherwise didn’t do much good under the circumstances.
I’d heard that the Fae could channel magic to one another in a pinch, though I’d never seen anyone do it.
“Um, I don’t know how to channel it,” I told Al doubtfully, not at all sure I was capable of such a thing.
“Just gather. I’ll use.”
Figuring it couldn’t hurt to try, I began to hum under my breath, which was my peculiar way of summoning magic. Magic is an almost sentient force, and it had always seemed to “like” my voice. Almost immediately, I felt it coming to my call, prickling over my skin. I didn’t know how much magic Al needed to cast her spell, but I figured the more, the better, so I kept humming. Al’s eyes were heavy lidded, and I was afraid she was going to pass out again, but I kept humming.
Eventually, Al drew in a deep breath, then murmured the word “out.”
The magic dimmed like a flashlight with a dying battery, and Al’s back arched. I stopped humming, knowing she’d already cast her spell and didn’t need it anymore. Al dragged in another deep, gasping breath, then turned over on her side and puked her guts out onto the floor. I winced in sympathy and tried to keep her hair out of her face. I closed my eyes and prayed Gary and Tom couldn’t hear the noise.
My prayers were answered, and after a round of dry heaves, Al groaned and pushed herself into a sitting position. Her face was greenish pale, her pupils were still dilated, and there was a sheen of sweat on her skin. She was clearly more alert than she had been, but she was a long way from all better.
“How are you feeling?” I asked her, then shook my head at my dumb
question. “Can you do magic on your own now?”
A tiny prickle of magic skittered over my skin, gone in the space between one heartbeat and the next. Al shook her head.
“I’m very weak,” she rasped. “And my head’s spinning.”
“Do you need to do another detox spell, or whatever that was you just cast?”
She shook her head again. “I suck at healing magic. That was the best I could do.”
Fae magic users tend to specialize in certain kinds of magic, and I
remembered Al telling me her specialty was illusion magic, which probably meant it was lucky she’d been able to heal herself at all. Of course without her magic, I wasn’t sure we had much chance of getting out of here. We were certainly no match physically for Gary and Tom. Not to mention that Al still looked pretty shaky.
“Can you walk?” I asked her, biting my lip anxiously.
Al tried to get up, but quickly fell back. My heart sank.
“I’ll need your help,” she said, heaving a sigh.
I was happy to help her up, but it seemed like a waste of energy until we came up with a concrete escape plan. I had thought earlier about trying to escape out the window, but even if Al weren’t too weak to walk without help, the plan seemed insanely dangerous, with a high likelihood that one or both of us would end up splatted on the pavement. The fall from this height might not kill us, but I was certain bones would break. But we couldn’t exactly go out the front door as long as Gary and Tom were keeping watch downstairs.
Which gave me an idea.
“If I gather the magic for you, would you be able to cast your invisibility spell?” I asked Al.
“Only if I stay still and don’t have to hold it too long. I’d never be able to hold it long enough to get us downstairs in the shape I’m in.” She looked around.
“This is the attic we’re in, right?”
“Yeah. And we don’t just have Gary to get through now, we have his
house-mate, too.”
“I know,” she responded with a nod. “I came to for a bit when he was pawing me.” She shuddered.
“You won’t have to hold it for long,” I assured her. “Just sit tight and gather your strength.”
“I’m not going anywhere,” she said with an attempt at a rueful smile.
When I’d rummaged through the attic before in search of a weapon, I’d seen a rickety wooden chair in one corner. Walking carefully, trying not to make the floorboards creak, I picked my way through the darkening attic until I found the chair, then wedged it under the doorknob. It was way too flimsy a barrier to keep Gary and Tom out, but it might delay them a little. Then I groped my way over to where I’d found a half-empty can of paint and hoped it was heavy enough. I lugged it over to where Al was sitting and squatted beside her.
“What’s the plan?” she asked me, her voice still hoarse and raspy from puking.
I held up the can of paint. “I’m going to use this,” I said, “to break the window. Tom and Gary will come running. When they get the door open, they’re going to see the broken window and a couple of empty zip ties sitting on the floor, and they’re going to assume we got out somehow. But of course we’ll just be invisible. They’ll go running outside, and we’ll slip out while they’re looking for us.”
What we were going to do when we got out—assuming we actually
managed to pull this off—I didn’t know. In Al’s condition, we wouldn’t exactly be moving fast, and I wasn’t about to take the time to go looking for our cell phones—or Al’s money—before getting out of here. This probably wasn’t the safest neighborhood for a pair of teenage girls to go wandering around in after dark, but surely being out
