The wind moaned. It could sense the thing watching them. The thing’s attention clawed over the wind, scraping its sides. The wind wound itself tighter around the woman.
Go, it whispered. Go, go, go.
She hurried forward, jogging toward a split in the shelves. She looked back and then dove to the right. The wood closed behind her. She ran, and then the wind shrieked. The shelves had shifted in front of them, closing the woman’s path.
She stopped.
A noise scraped across the floor behind them, like a claw dragging over wood. The woman spun around. Nothing was there.
She twisted her hand and threw a violent spray of boiling water. It splashed against the floor and was swallowed by the cracks in the wood. She watched the water seep away, and then a hot breath blew across the back of her neck.
The woman gasped and spun, conjuring a swirling black mass.
Nothing was there.
To the left, the shelves split and opened another path.
The woman blinked and then let the black mass disintegrate. She tiptoed forward, her eyes scanning the illuminated dark.
The wind shrieked a warning. The thing skittered behind them. The woman twisted out of its path and conjured. She threw a full-grown jackaltooth down the aisle.
“Kill!” she shouted.
The jackaltooth roared and sprang forward. Its jaws were open, its claws extended. The woman held her arms high, directing its path.
The jackaltooth leaped into the air. It hit the spot where the noise had come from, where the pungent scent was strongest, and it?—
The wind reared back.
The jackaltooth disintegrated. One moment, it was illusion made real. The next, it was a spray of blood and ash.
The woman’s face bleached of color, and she slowly stepped back. She backed away one step at a time. Behind her, the shelves shifted again. One path to the left. One path to the right.
“Jacob,” she whispered, her voice shaking. “Are you there? Jacob?”
The wind moaned.
The woman’s lights dimmed. They were a sallow, faint blue that barely lit the dark a hand’s width away. She was weakening. Conjuring a jackaltooth was hard work even for a principal, and the woman was only his heir. While she could make water mosasaurs or whirlpools all day long, conjuring a living, flesh-and-blood thing took rivers of power.
Had she already run dry?
The thing blew a pungent breath against the woman’s cheek. She ran, diving to left. The shelves closed around her. She dashed forward and dove down the right aisle. Row after row, she sprinted, trying to escape. But it was a maze, and it wanted her lost.
Finally, her limbs shaking, her lungs heaving, her legs weak, she stopped and dragged in a breath.
The wind bolstered her shaking legs and helped more oxygen into her lungs. Her heart beat with a painful, frantic lurching. There was the taste of blood on her lips.
The wind propped her legs and rubbed her arms. But what could it do? This thing wasn’t solid. It wasn’t wind. It wasn’t any sort of being the wind had ever seen.
What had the Smiths made to guard their treasure?
Where was the lyre?
The woman looked around, searching for the thing. She reached up and gripped the necklace, letting the crystal drop make an indent in her palm.
Then she stiffened as if she’d thought of something and quickly twisted her hand.
She conjured a small round mirror.
