There was another laugh, but this was a different laugh entirely. Older, male. An orc, maybe, or a dwarf.
“Who else is there?” asked Idris. He should have seen this coming. The children’s curse alone shouldn’t have been able to keep the door shut against the power of Idris’s magic.
Unfortunately, Idris had just used a ton of it to try to break free. He was immediately exhausted to the point of needing to sit down. He leaned against the shelves to avoid collapsing.
“My friend likes to play with me. You said you wanted to see.”
“Idris?” Rinka’s voice was muffled on the other side of the door. The enchantment let little through. “Are you in there?”
“In here—” began Idris, but his voice was cut off.
There were hands around Idris’s throat. At the exact same moment, the silk lining of the case that had held the lighter burst into flames.
“You wanted to see,” said the child’s voice. “Can you see now?”
Idris thrashed against the invisible hands. In the flickering of the fire, there was little to see in the room but sinister shadows. A pair of them, dwarf and human child.
“Idris? I can’t get the door open,” cried Rinka.
Idris heard the knob turning back and forth. Then there was a crashing sound of something colliding with the door: she was trying to break it open.
He couldn’t respond. The hands were cutting off his air. He didn’t have long.
He stumbled to his feet and threw himself across the room at the fire. He slammed the case shut.
The doll’s case caught fire instead.
Both dwarf and child laughed.
“You’ll play with us soon,” said the child in a sing-song voice. “Soon…”
There was a creaking sound from the shelves Idris had just been leaning on. Something was moving.
It was likely to be whatever physical presence the dwarf or the child had taken. Idris pushed against the hands around his throat with what was left of his power, freeing himself to take one more painful gasp.
He thumbed a hidden latch on a tiny case behind him. In it was a single silver coin. The curse on the coin was so slight that he rarely even kept it in its case—the coin always came up tails, no matter how many times you flipped it.
In Idris’s hands, it was no mere silver.
He had so little power left though. Could he stretch it into a sword without passing out from the effort?
The shelves stirred. There was something behind there.
He had to take a chance. He concentrated on the coin, and then—
The shelves swung open, blocking the door back into his office.
“Idris!” shouted Alison.
He dropped the half-formed sword. It hit the ground as the coin it had been and bounced, finally landing on tails.
He gestured desperately to his neck.
“He’s not breathing,” said Keir. “Alison!”
Keir took Alison’s hand, and Idris felt the incredible power of their combined magic smack into the room.
The hands around his neck were gone in an instant.
