I felt the spell wrap around me and sink through my blood and bones. Revulsion made me shudder.
Jenny had better be right about this.
“Noah. Sophia. Get over here and untie me before Jenny gets back.”
“. . .”
“I know you can hear me. R’gngyk isn’t going to starve if you leave the portal for thirty seconds to loosen some knots.”
“. . .”
“Come on. I don’t have the leverage to break free myself.”
“. . .”
“Noah? Sophia? Hello?”
CHAPTER27
Jenny
Alex’s spell was still burning on the wall. Within the triangle of green fire, a crack split the old limestone from floor to ceiling. Cold air belched out, making me shiver.
The thralls ignored me, and I did my best to ignore them, even as their mere presence made my stomach cramp and my blood burn. Reconnecting with Artemis had strengthened my awareness of the unnatural. Their stink filled my lungs. I heard every squelch of their limbs. I even heard the flickering blinks of all those eyes.
“We can do this,” I whispered to the house. “You shift yourself around every day. You made a whole new bedroom when Ronnie got here. You built a room for a cat. This is nothing but blocks of old limestone.”
A shard of stone broke away and clattered to the floor. Not a promising start.
“You can’t stop it,” Alex said from the weight bench.
“Do you know how many times I’ve heard that?” I double-checked to make sure his ropes were secure. I’d bound his legs at the ankles, knees, and thighs. His arm was tight against his side, tied at the wrist and elbow. Additional ropes held his torso flat on the bench. He wasn’t going anywhere.
I pointed to the two kids. “How do you control them?”
“I don’t. Not anymore. They serve R’gngyk, not me.” He grimaced. “Not that it matters. The more R’gngyk feeds, the stronger I become. I’m his champion and Hunter. I’ll be free soon enough.”
I was starting to regret not being able to punch him in the face.
“All this because you’d rather bring a world-devouring forgotten god to our doorstep than go to therapy.” I turned my back on him.
Heal the wound.Easy for Artemis to say.
I was EMT-certified and up to date on my training, but none of that training included the magical healing of a semi-sentient house.
But I’d worked on plenty of other nonhuman patients, and the basic rules were the same. Before you could stitch up a wound, you had to clean it. That meant removing Alex’s thralls. Without harming them in any way, thanks to the contract I’d accepted. Or looking at them for more than a couple of seconds at a time, which was all my mind could handle.
“No problem.” I approached a bare patch of wall. Artemis said I could do this. I touched the stone. It was warm and damp and slick like seaweed. “Come on. Drop chunks of stone on them. Open a sinkhole in the floor. Take whatever strength you need from me. Just dosomethingto fight back.”
Nothing.
“I know it hurts,” I said. “I know you’re weak. I know you’re scared for Temple. I am, too.”
The house’s response was so faint, I almost missed it. Amidst the foulness and the stench and the cold, I felt a feather touch of comfort: the familiarity and coziness and security ofhome.
“We need to get these two out of here.” No, we needed to move them up into the now-empty guest bedrooms. The wainscoting of Morgan’s and Sage’s rooms had been warded to block out Ringo and Alex. “Any chance you could help me carry these things upstairs?”
The house didn’t answer. Even if it was strong enough to install a magical cargo elevator, there was no way I’d be able to maneuver the thralls into the elevator car, then drag them to the guest rooms. I couldn’t even pry them off the wall.
