Chapter 2
Two
Northcliff
“No!” My hand slams against the wood of the door. “Ad Arcanaeum! Ad Arcanaeum! Fuck!”
No. She can’t do this. I can help her.
I turn back to the room, looking for another door, only to grimace as I take in the homely kitchen. Where the fuck am I? Fort McKinley? Isn’t that in Scotland?
Fuck. Kyrith and Eddy are literally in another dimension, and I’m stuck in the middle of nowhere.
I take a step towards the only other door, but it bursts open, revealing a middle-aged man wearing nothing but his boxers, with his grimoire out.
“GIT OOT MAH HOOSE YE DAFT CUNT!” he yells.
Behind him, a woman wielding a broom is staring at me with terrified wide eyes. Great. I don’t have time for this.
“I’m fucking trying!” I retort, pummelling the door I came through again. “Ad Arcanae—”
The door smacks me in the face as it swings open, and two bodies tumble out.
“No!”
“Lass, don’t—”
Jasper and Lambert fly into the kitchen so hard that they trip and fall. Lambert’s head hits the island with a deafening crack that breaks the marble counter top, but that’s only because his skin is currently transmuted into granite.
Jasper crashes into me, taking me down in a heap of limbs. I shove him the fuck off me, but he’s trying to do the same, and all we end up doing is pushing one another. By the time we untangle, the door is closed again.
The boxer-clad man drops his grimoire. “Jas! What the fuck—”
But Jasper isn’t listening to his father. He turns and rushes for the door.
“She’s locked us out,” I say, but he’s already rapping on it, mumbling the incantation over and over.
“Ad Arcanaeum.” His voice breaks, alongside my sanity, when it doesn’t budge.
“Boys! Boys!” The woman—who must be the infamous Mama Dee—shoves past her husband, broom abandoned. “You’re going tae break the door!”
“Doesnae matter,” Jasper says. “She’s in trouble—”
Lambert shoves him aside and bangs on the door with his stone fist. “Ad Arcanaeum!”
The wood cracks under the granite of his skin, splinters flying everywhere.
But it works.
The door opens again. My hope rises, only to come crashing down as Leo slides through.
He almost bowls us over again as we charge for the portal.
Lambert hops over him with ease, covering the distance like it’s nothing.
He’s forced to dodge a large book and a dozen sheets of paper as they zoom through, and my breath catches as he reaches the threshold, only to be thrown back.
This time the countertop splits in two under his weight, and Mama Dee gasps.
Shit.
“Boys!” His dad steps in. “Enough.”
As if to punctuate his statement, the door snaps shut.
No. Fuck. She didn’t—
But she did. Kyrith chucked us out.
Lambert’s phone is out before the slam has even finished echoing in my eardrums. The screen cracks before he remembers to release the spell over his skin.
He must’ve been in the middle of a run when all of this started, and now he’s half-naked in Jasper’s family kitchen, already shivering because we’re in fucking Scotland and it’s January. With a last look at the door, I rip off my hoodie and chuck it around his shoulders.
Even from this distance I can hear the repetitive buzz of the phone ringing on the other end.
“Pick up,” Lambert pleads.
“Who are you calling?” Jasper voices what I’m thinking.
“Dakari. He—”
“He’s having dinner with the Carltons,” I remind him, shaking my head, but it doesn’t stop Lambert redialling when he hits voicemail.
“They must’ve finished by now. He’s the one who told Kyrith to lock the place. Maybe he can figure out how we can get back in.”
“He’s not answering,” I point out.
“We can’t just do nothing!”
My hands ball into fists, and I turn back to the door. Then I catch the look in Jasper’s father’s eye and think better of it. Fuck. If knocking was going to work, it would’ve by now.
The only other person who might be able to find a way in is currently out cold on the floor.
Lambert must read my mind because he glowers down at Leo, then bends and slaps his cheek lightly.
“Wake up!”
“Leave him,” Jasper grumbles.
“He might be able to get us back inside.”
But he doesn’t even stir. The mark on his chest continues to pulse like a heartbeat. No one needs to tell me that’s a bad sign.
“Boys,” Jasper’s mother broaches. “Whatever happened, the clan will help sort it. I’ll go and wake your aunt Halinor, and while I do that, you three can repair my kitchen.”
There’s a thread of steel in the suggestion that reminds me of our Librarian, and something in my chest twists painfully.
Kyrith was in agony, and she sent us away when we could’ve helped.
I glare at Leo’s unconscious body on the floor. “If this was his fault…” I trail off.
“I’ll kill him myself,” Lambert swears flatly.