Chapter 26 #3
“Among other things.” Elegba grinned. “That’s why Sara asked me to meet her here.
She heard you needed to add a little something extra to the Volta’s ward lines.
” Elegba preened, dusting the shoulders of his bicolored tux.
“I’ll be so disappointed if she missed my performance. I was hoping she’d catch it.”
“Mom’s not here yet. But you’re welcome to stay with us until she gets back.”
“If you promise to refrain from any more nonsense,” Simon added threateningly, drawing himself to his mightiest eleven-and-a-half inches of height.
“Sara’s not here?” Elegba’s jovial grin was gone, replaced with a firm, worried line. “That cannot be possible.”
Elegba’s words gripped Talula’s heart in a vise. “What do you mean?”
“I set Sara on the return road to Pine Hollow. I wove it from ashe myself.” Elegba’s uneasy gaze met Talula’s. “She should’ve been here two days ago.”
An hour later, Talula sat exhausted on the café couch, dressed in freshly conjured sweats.
A dozen calls, scores of texts, and various attempts at astral projection later, and Sara was still missing.
Simon had contacted the Council, along with every magical person her mother might have seen in the last few weeks.
As far as anyone knew, Sara was headed back to Pine Hollow.
Talula pressed the heels of her palms into her temples, trying to squeeze out any new ideas for getting in touch with her mother.
Suddenly, Elegba appeared in the middle of the café. He shook his head at Talula’s hopeful look. “Nothing. The ashe road led me back to where I saw your mother two days ago, but there was no sign of her.”
“You’re sure Sara said she’d meet you here?” Simon’s tone skipped polite, somersaulted past passive-aggressive, and landed smack-dab in rude territory.
“You forget yourself, wizard.” In an instant, the orisha stood toe-to-paw with Simon, towering over the sorcerer-turned-dog. “Travelers fall under my protection. As do keepers of roads and doorways. I have my fun, but there are lines I will never cross.”
“But isn’t ashe a kind of magic?” Talula bit her bottom lip. “Mom said that the hunters had a way of tracking magical activity.”
Elegba shook his head. “Ashe is magic and it isn’t. It’s the will of the world, the fiber of the universe, the power of being. It’s in all things, magical and mortal. It was the only way Sara could travel undetected.”
“Then what happened to my mom?” Talula asked quietly.
Elegba’s shoulders visibly drooped in his tux.
“She can’t have just disappeared,” Simon said worriedly.
“Not disappeared.” Fear gripped Talula’s chest so tightly, she could barely breathe. “Hunted.”
Simon and Elegba said nothing, their silence taut with worry.
Talula leaned back against the couch, throat tight.
She felt angry and sick at her helplessness.
But if the master of doors and roads couldn’t find a way to someone, what could she do?
Talula’s arsenal contained a few basic magical skills, a nearly indecipherable prophetic cookbook, a wizard trapped in a corgi’s body, and a terrible café with a magical portal—
Talula bolted up.
Without explaining herself, Talula pushed past Simon and Elegba and darted through the Employees Only door, taking the basement stairs two at a time. The mismatched footfalls of orisha and dog padded behind her.
Talula stood before the Volta, heart pounding.
It wrapped iridescent tendrils comfortingly around her shoulders.
She smiled at it distractedly, her thoughts whirling.
The Volta could see the truth of a refugee and sift through millions of possibilities to find a perfect safe haven.
But could the Volta find someone where they weren’t safe?
Talula knew this wasn’t how the Volta worked.
Sara and the other Council members had set up its magical configurations for a specific goal.
If Talula wanted to adjust the Volta’s capabilities, she’d have to bypass those magical presets and tap into the Volta’s raw power directly.
It’d mean opening herself up for a deeper connection in order to reshape the Volta’s function.
Talula wasn’t sure it could be done, especially not by a half-rate sorceress like her.
But she’d been breaking all sorts of magical rules lately, so what could it hurt to try?
She thought back to what Dahlia had said the night before.
You have friends who care about you and want to be there for you. But if you don’t tell them what you want, what you need, they can’t help you get it.
Determined, Talula stepped closer to the portal. The Volta hummed, expectant. She closed her eyes. She could sense the runes and spellwork containing and shaping the Volta. She let her magic slip through the gaps.
“What are you doing?” Simon asked with alarm.
Talula found herself saying, “Asking a friend for a favor.”
Then she opened herself completely to the Volta.
It slammed into her like a five-hundred-pound magical linebacker. It was as if her very being was swept up by white-capped, ship-killing waves of power. Somewhere very far away, she could hear Simon shouting. Her atoms screamed with magic. It was too much, it was too much, it was too much—
As if sensing her thoughts, the tidal wave of magic stilled. The Volta’s magic lapped at her consciousness in firm but gentle waves, its ferocious might held at bay. For now.
Talula’s physical body ached and trembled from the first touch of that power. But she put the discomfort out of her mind.
Mom, Talula told the Volta. Show me Mom.
In her mind’s eye, the request rippled through the Volta.
It enveloped Talula in the tidal waves of its magic again.
She stifled a gasp, using every ounce of her will to withstand the tremendous power tearing at her.
As she held on, Talula felt the Volta reorganizing itself for this new challenge.
Emotions echoed through Talula—excitement, concentration, the satisfaction of testing new skills.
Was Talula sensing…the Volta’s emotions?
But she couldn’t wonder much more than that.
It took all of her strength and concentration to keep herself together as the Volta worked its magic through her.
Finally, the waves of power drew away from Talula, leaving a thread anchored to her magical core to maintain their connection. She opened her eyes and gasped.
The archway of the Volta filled with a blue-tinged image of Sara, sitting cross-legged on the floor. Her eyes were closed, her expression relaxed—Talula recognized this as Sara’s deep meditation face. The sorceress looked unharmed. Talula felt tears of relief gather in the corners of her eyes.
Slowly, the Volta zoomed out. Sara sat in what looked like a glass box, its walls checkered with mirrors inside and out.
On the inside of the box, mirrors reflected Sara’s image over and over again.
On the outside of the box, the mirrors shone outward.
A strange alphabet was scribbled on each silvery surface.
Every once in a while, the letters glowed a deep scarlet, then dimmed.
“Clever. Evil, but clever,” Elegba murmured, standing next to Talula.
“These mirrors are old magic. See those runes on the outside mirrors? They create a kind of repellent. Magic that comes searching for Sara will see itself and bounce off and look elsewhere. Like magnets. Those mirrors inside the cage? The same.”
“Sara’s magic bounces right off the walls,” Simon said, “keeping her magic contained. Meanwhile, all of our scrying sorcery is repelled on the outside. This must be where the hunters keep the magical beings they’ve captured. It’s no wonder we couldn’t find them.”
“If the hunters are using these powerful magical tools to contain their prey, I shudder to think what toy they’ve been playing with to find them.” Elegba shook his head.
Talula clenched her teeth. She could barely speak, afraid if she lost her focus, her connection to the Volta would break. “Can we go through the Volta now? Get Mom?”
“We need more information,” Simon said. “If they were able to capture Sara, we have to know what we’re walking into before we try any kind of rescue mission.”
“Can you show us anything else here?” Elegba asked Talula gently.
Talula gave a short nod. The scene zoomed out slowly, but even these subtle changes in perspective were exhausting. Beads of sweat formed on her forehead; her bones ached from the inside out. But Talula hung on.
There were more mirrored cages in the room.
And they weren’t empty. Talula spotted an enormous white antelope with gilded antlers in one cage.
In another, a mix of creatures that changed with every blink, from puma to eagle to snake to human to bobcat and back again constantly.
Another looked like an aquarium, holding half a dozen kelpies gnashing their teeth.
In another, a furious seal barked angrily, her spot pattern familiar to Talula from her summers with the selkies.
Something like relief soared in Talula’s chest. The missing goldhorn, the wildlings, the kelpies, and Mhairi were there.
They were still alive. But they were still trapped.
“These are all the remaining missing creatures,” Elegba muttered. “They haven’t begun their next hunt yet. Thank the crossroads.”
“It’s not good news until we can see what we’re up against,” Simon pointed out.
Talula sucked a breath through pursed lips, concentrating.
She worked the Volta to expand the scene even more.
People in lab coats milled about and made notes on tablets.
Coiffed men in suits sipped from crystal glasses.
Talula realized that everyone was slightly angled toward one person in the room.
The most polished man in the pack. He carried himself with the grace of a shark and smiled like he smelled blood in the water.
Talula knew that smile.
“That’s—” Simon gasped.
“Damien King,” Talula muttered. “Kiki’s ex.”