Billy collapses down next to me. “This is like some devil’s fun house.”
I rest my elbows on my knees and breathe into my hands, trying to center myself, calm down. “The door back to the clearing has to be off this hall. It just must be disguised, hidden by Stock’s team’s manipulation.” I look around at the blank white walls that look to extend forever in both directions.
“But it could be anywhere,” Grace says, her voice cracking, “behind either of the walls, the floor, the ceiling.”
Somewhere down the hallway, we hear the creak of wood, the turn of a knob.
“That has to be Gavin coming for us,” Grace whispers. She looks fearfully at Ral, then Billy, then me. “I think we run.”
As a door swings open down the hall, Ral turns to his right, commands the words of power, “Door emerge, conjure hallway.” Another door etches itself into the plaster wall, and a doorknob jumps out from the wood. Ral swings the door open, steps into another long corridor, and we follow and slam the door behind us.
We race down Ral’s bare-bones corridor as the hallway continues to unfurl itself, rolling forward through the clearing like a four-sided scroll. But we can’t keep running, hiding, getting lost forever—
And then the first tendrils of an idea start curling around my mind. If we can find Stock, Mama’s caging spell, sacrificing my blood, maybe I could convince him—
I need to stop for a second. I need to sort this out.
I fall to my hands and knees as my teammates stutter-step in front of me. I utter words of power, and a small trapdoor emerges on the ground. But this time, when I open the flap, I reveal an eight-by-eight-foot dark crawl space.
“What are you suggesting, we just crawl in there and hide?” Billy demands.
“You want to keep running until they catch us or we fall over?” I ask. “We need to come up with a better strategy.”
Billy shakes his head but still lowers himself down into the crawl space. Once he’s in, he lends Grace a hand, and then me. Ral closes the trap shut above all of us. I wave my hand around the perimeter of the trap to conceal it.
I crouch down, lean my head against the cool stone wall of the dark crawl space. Billy stretches his legs out as Grace and Ral slide down beside us.
Grace closes her eyes, puts her fingers to her temples, and frowns. “I hear them. They’re not far away.” We all fall silent, listen for Grace’s amplification to reach our ears. Sure enough, in a few moments I hear the pitter-patter of footsteps. Another minute, and there’s a loud chorus of approaching thuds above us. They’re close.
“Running isn’t working,” I whisper into the dark.
Ral cuts in, “If you’ve got a better plan than trying to stay alive, I’m all ears.” Ral’s never snappy, never quick, and the fact that he is now just drives his fear, my fear, home.
“We need to get on the offensive,” I say softly. “We need to find Stock, convince him to align with us.” I pause. “And I think I should go alone, while you three stay here.”
“What?” Grace whispers.
“Joan, that’s suicide,” Ral says.
I shake my head. What I’m going to attempt to do—what I need to do—I have to do alone. “I’ll move faster on my own,” I say, “and if I can manage to pull Stock away from the others, I might have a way to convince him.”
“Please, be more vague, Kendrick,” Billy huffs.
But I’m not explaining Mama’s caging spell right now. I’m not sharing that thanks to my mother’s dark, questionable blood-magic, I might be able to scare the hell out of Stock and save our skins. “You’re going to have to trust me.”
“You heard Gavin, it’s over. His team already allied with Stock,” Grace says.
I shake my head. “Promises can always be broken.”
A second, another minute more, and the footsteps that have faded become louder, as if the crowd above us is retracing their steps, homing in on us slowly.
“Let her go,” Ral finally says.
Grace balks. “What? No.”
“She’s strong enough to try,” Ral persists, without looking at me. “If Joan can’t find Stock, win him over, we’re finished. And none of us want to die inside this magic.”
I don’t wait for an answer. I lean over and squeeze Grace’s hand before scrambling into a crouched position. “Do you hear anything right now?”
She looks at me for a long while, a silent protest. Finally she shakes her head, closes her eyes, and whispers, “It’s distant. Footsteps. No one’s right above us now.”
I exhale the breath I’ve been holding on to. “Stay here. If you sense anyone coming your way, make a trapdoor within the trapdoor. And keep this one. I’m gonna need it.” I scramble to stand and spellbind the trapdoor with a linked trick, “Out becomes in.”