I wasn’t going to have a choice. I was going to have to risk the Gray Between. I was going to have to bend time so I could be fast enough to fight the arcenciel.
But the Gray Between would allow all similar creatures to see me working outside of time, and again, that might result in other arcenciels showing up to help the juvie rainbow dragon. I hesitated. Eli walked through the living room and into the little-used laundry/storage room on the back of the house, behind my bedroom and bath. He leaned to see out the windows.
And I heard Angie’s voice, coming down the stairs. “Hey. You’re pretty. All sparkly. Wanna come play with me?”
Before Eli or I could move, Alex was flying up the stairs. His flip-flops came off and bounced down the stairs. Eli and I raced up after him and into his room to see Angie Baby standing outside, on the second-floor gallery, her body outlined in the ward’s light, the arcenciel’s huge head reared back, only inches from her. The light dragon was horned and frilled, its long hair copper and brown, and this time, traced through with red and a hint of sapphire. Its teeth were longer than my hands, sharp and pearled and glistening like the opals for which it was named.
And Angie was gripping a small steel knife in one hand, holding it behind her back, where the arcenciel couldn’t see it.
Alex skidded out the long, narrow doors of his own room, out onto the gallery, and grabbed Angie up under his arm. Dragged her back inside, one hand ripping away the knife. Slammed the French doors closed and twisted the finger latch.
Angie struggled in his hands and tore herself away. “No!” she shouted, her face hidden by shadows, her hair standing out in a halo of static power. She snapped her left hand at Alex and screamed, “Tu dormies!”
The Kid’s knees folded, his body dropped, and Alex was instantly asleep. As he fell, Eli snatched the tumbling knife out of the air and glared at Angie. Alex’s head bounced on the rug at the foot of his bed.
“Angelina!” I shouted, furious. And frightened. Angie shouldn’t be able to do that. At all. Angie was supposed to be bound.
Angie whirled on me, her white nightgown furling around her. “I’ll put you all to sleep if you don’t let me talk to the shiny lizard!”
“Angie. No,” I said, trying to find a calm tone. If she put us to sleep, she would be all alone with a creature who could kill her in a heartbeat. “Angie. Baby, please don’t.”
“I tolded you that the scabertoothed bones was calling to it,” she screeched, her hands fisting in front of her like a boxer. “You didn’t listen.” Magic coiled out of her fists, not as strong as before, but clear and bright, a blue laced with black that looked scary in ways that magic had never looked scary to me before. She took a step toward me, and her voice lowered. Slowly she said, “And you let Mama and Daddy put me to sleep.” Angie sounded furious and dangerous.
I had never seen her act so badly, not since . . . I stopped, trying to remember. What had I smelled? When Molly first arrived. Flowers and lemongrass and that awful perfume . . . “Oh no,” I whispered.
“Yes!” Angie shouted, raging. “I’m a big girl, not a baby! I can kill my own snakes,” she said, using a phrase Molly used sometimes.
“Angie,” I said, “you can’t kill this snake. That’s not what that phrase means.”
Angie whirled and beat the bed, her fists pounding into Alex’s pillows and rumpled covers. “No, no, no, no, no!” she screamed, her words muffled in the covers.
The house boomed again, as I tried to figure out what to do. And again. And again. The old timbers were creaking and the windowpanes of the French door behind us shattered. A fireball burned through the door and into the house, the flickering flames momentarily brightening the room. Angie flicked her fingers at it, the way she might if she was flicking water off her hand, and it stopped, the fire snuffed out in a puff of black smoke that stank of flaming rosemary. It all took maybe two seconds. In Beast-vision, Angie’s magics floated around her like a diaphanous veil, brighter and hotter than only a moment before. Holy crap. Just . . . holy crap.
I looked back at the French door and the circular hole that was burned through it. Molly was throwing fire spells at the arcenciel, and one had bounced off and come back inside. And Angie had broken the energies of the working as if she were popping soap bubbles.
Fire wasn’t Mol’s strong suit, but it was all she had left unless she loosed her death magics. And if she did that, and if Angie tried to grapple with that form of magic, she would die. We might all die. And that would kill Molly as surely as taking a gun to her own head.