“Probably.”
“Do it while I carry the string around the back of the vortex. Don’t let go of the string and don’t say the last word until I’ve reached your side.”
“Wait,” Bathin said.
“No,” Xtelle hissed. “No more waiting. You’ve thrown your lot in with these people. So suck it up.” She nodded at me, and I nodded at her, and for a fleeting moment it felt like she and I were on the same page.
She pranced, a hop from hoof to hoof, one hoof held crooked up against her body as she moved. Her head was high as she slowly hopped to one side of the vortex. “Da-doo, Da-doo, song this sing, ladies Camptown!”
I took a breath and began the rhyme: “Please be strong and do not fail, twinkle twinkle, little spell.”
I paused, straining to hear Xtelle over the roll of the tide, the gusty racket of the wind, and the plod of people closing in on us.
“With this turnip fresh and spry…” I didn’t have a turnip. I glanced at Bathin and he shook his head.
“You need a token,” he said.
I patted my pockets and came up with the bag of chips. “With potatoes crisp and fried.” Bathin nodded. “Stick a needle in its eye. Close this vortex into Hellllll…”
I waited a few beats and then Xtelle rounded the vortex and prance-hopped double time, doo-dahing for all she was worth.
“Please be strong and do not fail,” I sang.
“Night all sleep, gonna!” Xtelle warbled, “Day all sleep, gonna!”
“Twinkle, twinkle little spell!”
She came up between Bathin and me and finished her last, first line: “Song this sing, ladies Camptown!”
She tipped her horn, hooked the string in my hand, looped the string in Bathin’s, and whispered, “By the binding of their hearts, let the fated never part.”
“Wait!” Bathin shouted.
But it was too late.
I could feel magic zinging through the string, cut by Death’s blade, wrapped in a unicorn’s horn, released from a toilet (okay, that part probably didn’t matter), looped between a Reed and a demon.
And I could feel Ordinaryshift, as if the sand under my feet moved oneMother May I? Yes, You May, scissor-step to the left all at once.
The world snapped.
Thunder cracked the sky.
A blinding blast of light sliced the air and caught fire to the vortex.
I turned my back to the vortex, guarding the girl with my body, holding her head against my chest so she wouldn’t look into that blaze.
A scream went up, and it was not from the people who had suddenly stopped their zombie march. That scream came from inside the vortex, the hole. It was an angry roar that was nothing like the demon spawn we had dealt with before.
I craned around to see if the vortex was actually closing or if we’d just unicorned ourselves into an even bigger mess.
A single pair of eyes stared back at me.
No, not at me. At Bathin. Yellow with hatred, shining with fire. There wasn’t a drop of humanity in them, there was only fury.
“I. See. You.” A voice roared from that portal to Hell.
Then the thin, simple string—super-charged with magic, with song—became a cleaver, a blade of lightning, that shattered the vortex into shards burning, burning into smoke and ash.
