It landed on the rim of Jonah’s ear.
Jonah barely managed not to scream out in pain. He jerked his right arm up and shoved at the burning ash—he missed it on the first swipe but got it the second time. He sent the tiny bit of ember sailing across the room, into the darkness, and his ear immediately felt better.
But his arm, flailing out to shove the ember away, had struck the leg of the man standing before him.
ELEVEN
“Eh?” the man said. “What the …”
Now he bent over, holding his torch down low, closer and closer to Jonah.
Jonah scrambled out of the way. Since Katherine was sitting on his left, he dived to his right. At the last minute, catching a quick glimpse of a shadowy outline, he remembered that Chip was on his right, so he rolled forward, barely managing to pull his legs back so he didn’t kick the torch man, too.
Jonah checked over his shoulder—now Katherine and Chip and Alex were struggling to avoid the swinging torch, with its dripping flames. They ducked down low, dodged right, then left, then right again. …
The man paused his torch, midswing, and called back to his fellow guards, “Might there be rats in these chambers? Rats big enough to hit a man in the knee?”
Jonah heard an answering chuckle.
“Rats that crawl out of a bottle, mayhap,” someone called back.
Jonah relaxed a little, sprawled across the floor. At least if he’d had to hit someone, he’d evidently picked the man that nobody else would believe.
And then he had to roll out of the way again, because the man was stepping back from the wall.
“William,” he called. “Come and look at this.”
“Did ye find the corpse of one of your giant rats?” another man replied from near the bed. He had mockery in his voice.
But seconds later it was his feet Jonah had to squirm around, his steps Jonah had to dodge.
“Show me,” the man called William demanded.
The first man began waving his torch near Katherine and Chip and Alex again, sending them into another flurry of dodging and darting and shoving out of the way of the flames. Jonah watched, paralyzed with fear. Could the man see Katherine and Alex and Chip somehow? Even if he just sensed their presence, was he clever enough to reach out and grab them? Was that what he was planning as he waved the torch back and forth so hypnotically?
“See?” the man said. “See how the flames turn the wrong way?”
Jonah saw what he meant. Every time Katherine or Chip or Alex darted out of the way of the torch, they sent up a tiny burst of air, distorting the direction of the flames. Jonah squinted, dimming the light coming into his eyes, so he couldn’t really see his sister and friends at all anymore. And then it truly was eerie, watching the flames jump with no apparent reason.
“There’s an evil wind along this wall,” the first man said.
“I say ’tis evil we’re out in the middle of the night looking for princes who should be snug in their beds,” William replied.
“Princes”? Jonah thought. Not “king and prince”? What does that mean?
But he didn’t have time to ponder that, because William began swinging his torch along the wall as well, sending Chip and Katherine and Alex back into their frantic motions. They couldn’t just spring out from the wall because both men were moving erratically now; jumping away could easily mean slamming into a man or a torch. So they dodged right and left, narrowly avoiding first one torch, then the other.
The first man stopped his torch midswing, barely an inch above Katherine’s shoulder.
“Do you think there’s a secret chamber somewhere, where the princes are hiding? Do you think the wind’s coming from there?” he asked.
“I think it’s dangerous when the likes of you tries to think,” the other man said.
The first man didn’t move his torch. He seemed to be waiting for an errant flicker, something that would lead him to his suspected secret chamber. The torch burned steadily, the flames flaring evenly in all directions.
One of the flames licked down toward Katherine’s shoulder. It wasn’t on her shoulder—she didn’t need to move yet. Jonah could see by the agonized expression on her face that she was trying not to move, trying not to arouse the man’s suspicions even more. But her ponytail was flipped over that shoulder, near the torch. Some force—static electricity, maybe?—was making the individual hairs reach up toward the fire. While Jonah watched, horrified, one of the flames from the torch leaped over onto one of the tiny hairs.
Katherine’s hair was on fire, and she didn’t even know it.
Jonah rushed forward, heedless of the men. He shoved Katherine down. Stop, drop, and roll, he thought crazily. The rush of air made the flame flare up. No time for stop, drop, and roll. No space, either. He slammed his arm against Katherine’s shoulder, smothering the flames with the sleeve of his sweatshirt.
He looked back at the men, hoping they hadn’t noticed anything.
They were stumbling backward, looks of terror spread across their faces, which looked even ghastlier in the torchlight.
“W-witchcraft,” the first man stammered.
“Sorcery,” the other agreed.
“Or—ghosts?” the first suggested.
Jonah realized that, to them, the smoldering hair would have looked like a flame suddenly appearing from nowhere, floating in midair, and then disappearing just as abruptly.
Jonah had experience of his own with strange appearances and vanishings, out of and into thin air.
The first man turned and called over his shoulder in a slightly shaky voice, “There’s nothing to see in this corner. Nothing.”
He and William backed away, their eyes trained on the spot where the flame had vanished.
“We’re done here, too,” a man called from the other side of the room. “Back to the courtyard?”