“We gotta go,” I said, gently tugging the stuffed animal from her. Scooping up the glasses, I placed them into her palm and closed her fingers over them. “We’re out of time.”
Veronica nodded sadly, looking to be on the verge of tears, but she stood and slipped the glasses into her pocket before pulling the rook back out.
“The teleportation spell will revert once that’s smashed,” I said. “Nyxia used that to anchor the spell.”
“I know how it works,” she huffed, raising her hand high over her head.
Grunting, she swung her arm down and released the rook. The tiny game piece shot down toward the ground. I flinched, preparing myself for the discomfort of teleportation, but froze when the rook stopped dead, an inch above the ground, hovering there and rotating slightly.
I locked eyes with Veronica, who looked equally confused. Then a voice spoke from the door.
“Seems it’s true what they say. The guilty do sometimes return to the scene of the crime.”
I turned so fast, my neck actually popped. A tall man with a white beard and hair glared at us, his hand held out before him. The rook shot away, slapping quietly into his outstretched hand. He sniffed and shoved the chess piece into the pocket of his robes.
“Pro…Professor Karmody?” Veronica muttered.
His face twisted into a sneer, and three more witches stepped through the door.
“You have suchgallto come here. After what you’ve done? You disgust me.” Karmody glared at Veronica as though she was some revolting offensive thing, subhuman.
“Come with us, Veronica,” one of the other witches said, a woman of about forty with dark hair and skin. “You’ll be safe. We’ll bind you and your powers. We’ll get to the bottom of this.
Veronica shook her head, her curls bouncing. “Professor Burgess, I swear to the gods I didn’t?—”
“Liar,” the woman said, her kind tone shifting in an instant. “If it’s lying you want to do, then things won’t go easy for you.”
Veronica trembled—literally shook with fear—as I looked toward her. Her hands clenched and unclenched at her sides.
“Veronica,” I whispered. “We need to?—”
Crying out, she thrust her hands forward. A gust of gale-force wind shot from her hands, washing across the four witches before us, sending them crashing back into a heap atop one another. I blinked, honestly surprised that the middling witch had been able to conjure such a spell.
“Run!” I screamed, grabbing Veronica’s arm and bolting for the door.
We leapt over the pile of bodies as they tried to uncoil from each other. The white-haired man reached out, trying to grasp my ankle, but his fingertips only brushed the cuff of my pants.
“Stop!” one of the witches cried, their magically amplified voice making my ears ring.
Down the hallway, doors opened, and the heads of students peered out in confusion.
“Get in your rooms,” Burgess cried from behind us, and an instant later, I sensed the static crackle of energy blasting past my ear, missing me by inches. The lightning bolt slammed intothe wall beside a student’s door. The kid, maybe twenty years old, yelped and jerked his head back inside, slamming the door closed.
Veronica gripped my shirt and dragged me around a corner right as a miniature tornado of fire swept past, flames trying to embrace us in an inferno.
With the pursuing professors hot on our heels, I had no time to ask where she was taking us. I didn’t know this building the way she did, and I didn’t like it. It felt like we were running blind.
Turning at another junction, Veronica threw up her hands, and a half-formed shield appeared behind us. Even I could see it was only about seventy percent complete, the shimmering forcefield looking like it had been half devoured by some kind of magical termites.
Another professor, this one a man with long black hair twisted into a single braid, threw his hands up. A gust of fog burst from his hands, rushing toward us. As it moved, it coalesced into shards of razor-sharp ice daggers.
Fuck me.
The spell hit the barrier Veronica had created, but several of the ice shards shot through the holes in her shield. One sliced a shallow groove in her pants and cut her as it passed, and another tore a hole through the fluttering hem of my jacket. Veronica hissed in pain, and the barrier fully dropped.
“Come on,” she cried, once again grabbing me and running.
We bobbed and weaved, dodging the spells as the professors chased us down. When we reached a door, it turned into a wet, slathering mouth, complete with a black tongue that shotout and tried to lick us. Screaming in revulsion and surprise, Veronica led me to a set of stairs.
