“You spellbind this door?” Billy calls ahead to me, pausing before closing it.
“Yeah, with a double-sided trick, in case we need it as an exit. I can link it to another door.”
“Nice.” Billy shuts it with a click.
We move across Grace’s atrium, our shoes squeaking on the newly conjured marble. Ral takes a few more steps ahead, pauses when we’re in the center of the magic-made space. He looks up to the sky. From here, in the belly of an unfolding magic manipulation, the stars look far, far away.
“This place is too visible,” Ral whispers. “Either team can surround us.”
“I thought we wanted to draw them out,” I say, “force them to deal with us. If we keep running, making new rooms, new hallways, we could bury ourselves in here.”
“Hush,” Grace says, “stop talking for a sec.”
We all fall silent, and I close my eyes, try to listen with my whole being.
“There’s a scratching sound, right over there,” Grace whispers.
“You see anybody?” Ral whips his head around.
Grace nods to the far side of the atrium. “No, but I hear a couple voices, let me amplify.” She pauses. “That wall over there, that’s actually not the real atrium wall. It’s a force field so they can spy on us. They’re right behind it.”
“Who? What are they saying?” I whisper.
“It’s . . . Gavin.” Grace closes her eyes. “At least one other . . . they’re debating . . .” Grace’s eyes fly open. “They’re going to drop out the center of the atrium floor.”
The marble floor below us sighs, creaks, cracks. . . .
A boom echoes through Grace’s atrium. The marble below our feet breaks open like the spine of a book, a deep gash racing from one point of the circular floor straight across to the other side.
“STAIRS!” I command as the ground begins to quake. “Come on!”
My conjured set of stairs erupts out of the floor step by step, building itself like a floating set of blocks—one slate of wood stacked, teetering, on top of the other. We climb onto the staircase and follow it as it races to the top of the atrium.
“Christ,” Billy near-whimpers a few steps below me. “Don’t look down.”
“Where’s this taking us, Joan?” Ral calls ahead to me.
I carefully wave my left hand, sweep it from the left side of the atrium across to the right, and whisper my words of power. Like a giant is stitching a ribbon around the top of a hat, a five-foot runner of carpet begins to run itself around the inside of the atrium. The floating staircase carries us up to the ledge of this new balcony. The four of us clamber onto it, bend over to collect our breath—
And that’s when I see Gavin and two of his cronies approaching. They’re on a bridge one of them must have conjured, a bridge that arches from what’s left of the floor right up to our balcony.
“Ain’t no use running,” Gavin calls out to us from the bridge. “My boy James is conferring with Stock’s team right now, offering our alliance as you jokers play around.” He smiles as he ascends the bridge. “You admit defeat now, and you’ll save us all a hell of a lot of trouble.”
“Bullshit,” Billy spits, as a cold fear settles over me. So Gavin’s team already got to Stock?
“Don’t believe it, if you’re more comfortable with denial,” Gavin says. “You’re dying either way.”
Gavin’s threesome laughs as they advance.
Billy mumbles next to me, “If Gavin’s right, I’m going to send everything I’ve got at him. I’m going down with one hot, brilliant trick.” He pulls his hands back, like he’s about to center his magic, throw a ripple through the universe—
“No.” I grab his wrist. “I’ve got another idea.”
I collapse onto the balcony’s floor, quickly run my finger over the carpet in the outline of a square, and whisper, “Trapdoor emerge.” My finger trace deepens into the carpet, cuts a perfect square out of the floor, as a silver handle forces its way out of the carpet.
“What are you doing?” Ral says as he crouches behind me.
“Sending us back to that hallway with a linked trick. In becomes out.” I flip the trap open, jump feetfirst inside of it—
And end up falling through the trap, magically, instantly passing through the door I’d made in the whitewashed hallway we first stepped into from the clearing. The hallway with no beginning, and no end.
“Shut the door before Gavin gets to it!” Ral orders, as the rest of my team tumbles through the same door.
Billy turns on his heel, slams the door at the same time I command, “Vanish.”
We watch as the frame of the door in the hall disappears, like an eraser’s been taken to a chalkboard. The doorknob shrinks and then pinches into nothing. And then we’re staring at a flat, limitless white wall of plaster.