Chapter 26 #4
Rage and fear flooded her senses. She wanted to get her mother and all the other magical beings out right now. Her emotions flowed into her connection to the Volta. The Volta took it…and ran with it.
Something was happening in the room where Sara was kept, but Talula couldn’t quite see it.
All she could feel was the Volta’s power surging, channeling through her like a lightning storm.
She withstood it, trusting the Volta to do whatever it was trying to do.
Her vision darkened, and her connection to the Volta snapped.
Talula gasped for breath, her body one big cry of agony.
Blue mist hung over Talula, magical miasma fluttering like anxious butterflies.
“It’s okay,” she told the Volta. “One battle at a time.”
Then she crumpled to the floor.
Talula woke up in her own bed to the smell of sweet, fried comfort food. Something heavy and warm lay on her feet. She looked down and saw a mass of gold-and-white fur. Talula wiggled her toes experimentally. The mass twitched and turned.
“You’re awake!” Simon jumped to his paws and leapt up to her. He sniffed her from elbow to ear. “How do you feel?”
Talula tried to sit up and grimaced. She ached all over. “What happened?”
“The Volta pulled every scrap of energy from you for that bit of sorcery. I’m surprised you didn’t sleep all week,” Simon explained. He swatted at her arm with a paw. “Don’t you ever do that to me again!”
“I second that.” Elegba echoed, entering the room holding a breakfast tray. “Eat, young sorceress. You earned it.”
Elegba lay the tray down, and at the sight of it, Talula’s mouth watered, her stomach groaning.
The orisha had filled a plate with fried plantains and scrambled eggs flecked with cooked onions, tomatoes, and peppers.
Talula’s favorite mug was carefully balanced on the tray, full of milky spiced tea.
She dug in. After a slight whine from Simon, she scooted some food to the corner of her plate, where he could more easily snatch bites.
“Thank you,” she told Elegba once her hunger was less of a roar and more of a grumble. “This is delicious.”
“Almost as good as your breakfasts, Talula,” Simon said snarkily.
“Don’t be a snob.” Talula poked him in the shoulder.
“If what Simon tells me about your cooking is true, it’s a compliment.” Elegba chuckled, sitting on the edge of Talula’s bed. “That was quite a hat trick you pulled last night.”
He tipped his own hat in recognition.
“But why did it work?” Talula clasped her mug of tea in both hands, its weight and warmth a comfort in her palms. “The entire Council is looking for Mom. But the cage repelled their magic. Why didn’t it repel mine?”
Simon and Elegba shared a calculating look.
“How did it feel to delve into the Volta like that?” Elegba asked.
Talula’s body shuddered at the memory of the Volta’s overwhelming power, sloshing tea out of her mug and onto her duvet.
Elegba handed her a handkerchief from his sleeve.
“The Volta isn’t just a sparkly door people pop through to get their happy endings.
That’s just the tip of the magical iceberg.
The Volta is a raw source of magical power that’s been carefully monitored by the likes of Sara and yours truly.
The blue archway in your basement is essentially a trickle of water that branches from a torrential wellspring of power in the earth.
We’ve been able to shape that trickle for our own purposes—to protect the town with the ward line and transport the vulnerable to safety through the portal. ”
“Right, just a small part of the Volta is a portal,” Talula replied with a nod. “But the rest is like a big battery.”
“Understatement of the millennium.” Simon swatted at her again. “The rest is a well of raw magical power simmering just below the surface, barely kept in check by intricate magical protections. That’s what you channeled last night.”
Talula shuddered again. “I may have bitten off more than I could chew.”
“There’s a reason those magical protections are in place, Talula!” Simon snapped. “Just a drop of the Volta’s true power created the portal. Can you imagine what the rest of the magical wellspring could do?”
“Actually, I can show you.” The orisha opened his hand. Hovering above his palm was a faint, red-tinged version of the scene Talula had summoned last night. With several changes.
One, the room was completely empty of smug businessmen and cold scientists.
Two, her mother was no longer there. In fact, neither were the goldhorn, the kelpies, Mhairi, or the wildlings.
Three, the floor was covered in a thick carpet of broken glass.
“Were you able to go through the Volta and get everyone out?” Hopeful, Talula sat up straighter in her bed.
Elegba shook his head. “The portal to the hunters’ headquarters closed before you collapsed.”
Talula examined the image. “Then what happened to the mirrors? And the cages?”
“You did.” Elegba glowed with pride, as if he’d personally taught her the art of long-distance magical mirror obliteration. “You took the hunters’ magical mirror-powered cages and obliterated them with the Volta’s magic. Few things could hold up to that kind of raw power.”
Talula’s jaw dropped in disbelief. She shook herself, refocusing. “Did everyone get out okay?”
Elegba nodded. “We saw it happen before you collapsed. The hunters didn’t expect their safeguards to fail so spectacularly, and your magnificent mother reacted quickly. She got the captives out in seconds.”
Relieved tears welled up in Talula’s eyes. “Will they take the ashe road back?”
“Probably not.” Simon nibbled at a bit of plantain.
“After that big magical escape, Sara won’t risk capture again.
She’ll go completely dark, no magic, no technology, nothing.
She’ll guide everyone to the nearest Council safehouse and make contact once she’s there.
But there’s no telling how long that’ll take. ”
Talula’s chest ached. She thought of her mother seeking safe haven without her magic, desperately trying to protect the vulnerable magical creatures. Then, fury set in.
“She could’ve been killed!” Talula snapped. “Why didn’t the Council use the Volta the second we lost contact with her?”
“Because it’s suicide, you idiotic turnip!” Simon yelled.
Talula’s whole body stilled. Oh.
“You could have been wiped off the face of this earth in a maelstrom of magic and pain.” Elegba’s voice chilled Talula to the core as fear zipped up her spine. “You got off lightly.”
Simon echoed, “I’ve never been so scared in my life.”
“Not even when you tamed the haunted wildebeest of the sacred mung bean fields?” Talula teased weakly.
“A thousand times more scared. A thousand, thousand times.” Simon’s voice shook, his ears cowed back flat against his head. “Promise me you’ll never channel the Volta like that again, please.”
Touched, Talula scooped up the wizard and cuddled him close. “I promise.”
Simon sighed tolerantly, but she noticed the affectionate way he butted his head into the crook of her shoulder.
“Now, that’s the kind of open communication I like to see.” Elegba stood up. “This student is improving you, M.”
Simon made an uncomfortable noise. “I told you to stop calling me that! I’m Simon now, and I like it!”
Talula set Simon down. “What does M stand for?”
Elegba drummed his fingers thoughtfully on his chin, his eyes darting from a glaring Simon to a curious Talula. The orisha laughed deviously. “You know, I think I’ll let this trick play itself out.”
Talula opened her mouth to ask follow-up questions, but Simon had made his preferences clear. She changed the subject. “What now?”
“Now I report back to the Council, and we focus all of our resources on Damien King of Saif Co. Also known as the mastermind of Orion Hunts.” Elegba’s smile was patient and sharp, with all the surety of a guillotine. “Then, we remedy his existence.”
Talula was a big fan of this plan.
“Thank you.” Talula bowed her head in deference to the orisha.
“Yes, you made things only slightly worse,” Simon muttered.
“Interesting, little wizard. I always make things interesting.” With a roguish tip of his hat, Elegba disappeared. Talula gawped.
“We have no time for oohing and aahing over mysterious exits,” Simon said. He leapt down from the bed. “We need to go.”
“Go where?” Talula moved the breakfast tray off her lap and swung her legs to the side of the bed. She noticed that her soreness was subsiding. She suspected Elegba had put a little extra magic in the tea to fix her up.
“We need to find Dahlia, now.”
“Why?”
“Because the town hall meeting is tomorrow, and your mother won’t be here to save Samhain,” Simon explained. “We’re going to need all the help we can get.”