Three minutes afterthat, they were walking. Caleb’s pulse beat hard, but he could have continued jogging easily enough (or so he told himself). Amelia, however, was stumbling on every pebble and clump of grass at his side, and he had no intention of leaving her alone out here in the wilds, vulnerable to every passing feral dog or vampire. Eventually she stopped altogether, breathing heavily and clutching her side with a pained expression. “Go ahead without me,” she urged. “I’ll catch up.”
Caleb did not bother answering such brave nonsense. He stopped too, rubbing her back as he frowned through the darkening field to the road, which still seemed an inordinate distance away. “We should have got there by now,” he said, turning to judge how far they’d come. His frown deepened, and not only from the stress of trying to do math.
“Amelia,” he said with a calm that sounded as cold as thesensation creeping through his blood. “Look.” He pointed behind her.
Amelia glanced over her shoulder, then abruptly stiffened with alarm. She turned slowly to stare back across the field to Ravenscroft Manor. The house wasn’t hard to miss, considering it stood no more than one hundred yards away, an ominous bulk looming against the storm-colored evening sky like a troll who had been watching with amusement as they tried to escape its clutches. Several of the lamplit windows winked at them. Smoke fumed from chimneys, and the gargoyles sneered.
“Oh dear,” Amelia said.
“That’s one way of putting it,” Caleb countered grimly. He himself could think of several words that would be more eloquent. “I’m no athlete, but I know it doesn’t take me ten minutes to go such a short distance, even in dress shoes. We’re magicked.”
Without further discussion, Amelia strode toward the house with the attitude of a one-woman army intent on storming it. But after half a dozen steps she abruptly stopped, staggering. Caleb’s muscles automatically tensed to catch her if she fell, although she was in fact too far away for him to do so. Steadying herself, she reached out, slapping at the air experimentally.
“Ow!” she yelped, snatching back her hand and shaking it with pain.
Striding to her side at once, Caleb took her hand in both of his, inspecting it for harm. “There’s an invisible barrier,” she told him. “We’re trapped.”
“Sh,” he said gently, brushing his thumb against a tiny scrape that looked days old. She did not appear in need of soothing, but he wasn’t going to let that stop him from doing it anyway. “Everything’s going to be all right. But you must take morecare with yourself, Meely. No matter how capable and brave you are, you can’t just go around slapping the sky.”
Amelia scoffed at this, but Caleb noticed with a little flutter in his heart that she did not take her hand from his. So he bent to kiss her fingers once—twice—What teaspoon? What magic? Why not just stay here, kissing her until his lips tired?
He couldn’t blame himself for the sweet, romantic reverie. It was Amelia’s fault, what with the way she emitted such a beautiful moon magic from her very being, magic that tasted like wine, and that would revive his flagging energy if he kissed her just one more…
Stop,growled the small part of his brain that bore the burden of professionalism. Sadly, Caleb knew that it was right. Releasing Amelia’s hand so he would not be further tempted, he turned abruptly, kicking the air.
A spark of pain flashed through him as his shoe’s tip impacted forcefully with a hard surface. “Damn!” he cursed, hopping and clutching his agonized foot. Amelia watched him with little sympathy.
“Now that you have proven in a proper, manly way what I already proved about the air’s solidity,” she said, “might I dare suggest that we’re caught in a thaumaturgic bubble? There must be an active fey line here.” Setting her hands on her hips, she frowned at their surroundings as if she could chastise the enchanted minerals out from beneath the earth.
Caleb set his foot down and attempted to look somber, or at least adult. “Perhaps. Or perhaps something else is buried out here, like the pocket watch was.”
“Why would someone do that?” Amelia asked.
“Does it matter right now?”
“Hm.” She gazed at him unfocusedly, appearing tocontemplate his idea. But Caleb could sense the panic rising within her, although she seemed outwardly untroubled, with no more than a twitch at the corner of one eye disturbing her expression. This situation was delaying them from their goal, and Amelia did not do well with being late. One terrible day, when she’d missed the train to a lecture on King Edward Longshanks’s enchanted trousers, she’d been so stressed, she’d cut a fringe in her hair. Catching tonight’s train was considerably more important than a lecture, but they now had zero chance of achieving it, and Caleb could only be glad there were no scissors nearby—unless someone had buried a pair in this field, that is.
Suddenly, Amelia jolted into action. Striding across to a clump of tall weeds, she scuffed her shoe against the ground. Caleb watched her in wary astonishment.
“What are you doing?”
“If you’re right about this bubble being caused by something magical buried out here, we need to find whatever it is and try to break its power.” Crouching, she began to dig at the earth. “The pocket watch was under a shrub, so an obvious hypothesis is that anything else would be buried under a similar landmark. We have to workfast, Caleb.”
“We’ve probably already missed the train,” he pointed out.
“Maybe.” Dirt and torn grass flew around her, and Caleb guessed that she wasn’t going to surrender her goal of reaching Staveley on time until the very last shred of impossible hope was gone. “Regardless, it’s going to be dark soon. And very cold. And there’s rain in those clouds.” Rising, she began tugging on the weeds. “A thaumaturgic bubble won’t save us from hypothermia. We have to work fast before it’s too dark to search for…”
She paused as she ripped the clump of weeds from the ground, staggering with the force of her effort.
“…whatever the hell…”
She paused again to toss the weeds away, and Caleb hastily reared back, saving himself from being whacked in the face by daisies and grass and brown wheat-like things.
“…got us stuck here,” she concluded, brushing her dirt-stained hands together.
“Good point,” Caleb said.
Amelia threw him an exasperated look. “Then why are you just standing there?”
