“I’m sorry, Idris,” she said. “It really felt like it worked.”
He changed back just as quickly. “Maybe it did,” he muttered. “Thank you.”
“What?” asked Alison, but he was already rushing off inside.
Alison and Keir followed him into the guest wing of the dormitory.
“You saw that, right? He can’t fly,” said Keir. “So what in the name of the Gods did he mean?”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
BACK AND BACK
Leo
Armed with the spell, the doll, and the instructions, Leo took off towards the courtyard at nightfall.
The dwarf had been hanging around the yew again during the day, but he had vanished once more by the time Leo reached the spot in the middle where he’d taken the fateful measurements that sent him falling through time.
Leo lay the doll down on the grass and took a measurement with his magimeter. There was no storm in sight this time, and if he was going to try to work magic for himself again, he might as well see if he could get some decent readings from it.
Leo had never had success with magic before. As a researcher of it, he’d tried it a number of times, of course. But if he had any sort of affinity for it, it seemed to have been buried somewhere deep, likely during his upbringing, which had been filled with more kooky superstitions and silly rituals than genuine magical practice.
At least, Leo thought it had. It would be fun to go back home with the magimeter someday, if he could bring himself to do it.
Leo opened the journal and began to read the incantation under the light of the full moon:
“Break thy bond, break thy chain,
Leave ‘til only good—”
He heard the slam of a door. The dwarf was there, running across the courtyard from the library.
Leo grabbed the doll and took off in the opposite direction. He ran into the cloister and opened the door into a hall he didn’t know, slamming it behind him.
He was in the western building. In his panic, he had run directly into the one place he was trying to avoid.
He looked around. It was dark in the corridor, with little moonlight reaching through the unbroken cloister to shine into the windows. He felt around for the light switch instinctively before remembering there wouldn’t be one.
There was a sinister laugh somewhere nearby.
Leo raced through the hall. He’d seen from outside that there were other doors into the cloister. If he just kept going, he was sure to reach them—
He smelled smoke.
There was that laughter again. It was closer to him now.
Leo kept running. The doors were there. If he could just get back to the courtyard, he could maybe outrun the dwarf and make it to Ceri’s room—
The doors were locked. Leo pulled on them helplessly.
He couldn’t see in the hallway. The smell of smoke was growing stronger.
He could pick the lock, he realized. He knew how. He needed something to apply torque and something to pick the pins within it. If he bent the magimeter, maybe it could apply the necessary torque—
He could see the fire now in the hall, spreading fast.
Did the doll have something he could use to rake the pins? He was running out of time. He coughed from the smoke. How could he have been so stupid to come in here?
