Eddie picked up a piece of broken glass and came running toward her, wielding it like a knife. “I swear, if you’ve hurt her—”
“Oh, honestly. As if I’d waste my time hurting her.” Alicia took out a pinch of powder from her pocket, throwing it at Eddie and shouting an incantation I didn’t know. I wasn’t able to intercept this one in time, and the magic seized Eddie. Like that, he froze in place, midstride and holding the glass shard menacingly in his hand.
“What have you done to him?” I cried.
“Relax, Sydney,” Alicia said. “He’s still alive. Just like your little Moroi friend—for now.”
“Take me to her!” I demanded.
Alicia laughed. “Sorry, Sydney. You’ll never see her again. She’s going to have to suffer through a few more psalms . . . and you? You’re just going to suffer . . .”
The floor under my feet rippled. I staggered and fell to my knees but was able to throw a fireball at Alicia before I completely lost my balance. My aim was spot-on, but she lifted her hands to cast what I suspected was another shielding spell. The incantation she spoke was Greek, one I hadn’t heard before either. The fireball hit another unseen wall, but rather than shatter, the flames rebounded and came back toward me in exactly the same path. I yelped and managed to get out of its way just in time. I was spared, but the fireball hit a cabinet instead, engulfing it in flames. The fire spread quickly, making me wonder what kind of varnish Wolfe used. At the same time, the alarm finally stopped blaring.
“Mirroring spell,” Alicia said gleefully. “Very useful. Be careful what you cast.”
She meant it as a taunt, but there was truth in it that made me hesitate before I planned my next course of action. It was too long a delay, as she soon cast what I recognized as the same spell that had frozen Eddie. That one was too complex for me to fully follow, but it gave me the opportunity to dodge and block it. I then opted for a different kind of freezing—a literal one, as I sent a wave of ice her way. It wasn’t nearly as lethal as a fireball, but it also wouldn’t add to the already-spreading fire. Alicia responded with the mirror spell, sending the ice back my way. I ducked, and the ice landed in part of the burning room beside me. Rather than diminish the fire, however, it simply made the smoke grow thicker.
“You must be getting tired,” she teased.
She was right. I still had plenty of magic in me, but this active combat was exhausting. Ms. Terwilliger’s words came back to me: She wants an easy fight. That’s what Alicia was doing, trying to wear me down with magic so she could cast the spell that finished me. With the stolen life and magic she had, this battle wouldn’t exhaust her as quickly.
“Alicia, we don’t have to fight,” I said. “Please. Let’s stop this and get out of here before this place burns down. Tell me where Jill is, release Eddie, and we can be on our way.”
“Stop this? After you tried to kill me?”
“I only—”
Not caring about making the flames worse, Alicia hurled another fireball at me. I was tempted to try the mirroring spell and send it back to her, but she was too close to Eddie for my comfort.
“You’re too much of a threat, Sydney,” she said as I neutralized the fireball with a water spell. “I can’t allow you to leave. I’m going to let this building burn down around you, just like you left me to burn in that house.”
The floor rippled beneath me again, causing me to fall once more. She began speaking a complicated incantation, one I recognized as the start of the spell that had frozen Eddie in place. That was her plan. Make me into a living statue and leave me in this burning building, paralleling what I’d done to her. Desperately, I scrambled to my feet, needing to get out of the way of the spell. As she finished speaking, I saw something incredible: Malachi Wolfe, standing in the doorway to the burning room. His eye patch was on his right eye (it changed from day to day), and there were pieces of rope around his wrists and ankles as though he’d been bound.
I couldn’t replicate the statue spell on my own, but I’d heard the mirroring spell enough to feel good about that. I spoke the words and felt the magic engage in me. Alicia’s eyes widened in alarm as she attempted to move out of the way of the rebounding spell. What she hadn’t seen, however, was the herd of Chihuahuas running into the room with Wolfe. He’d spoken a word to them and pointed at her, and they swarmed around her feet, causing her to stumble and preventing her from moving away quickly. The statue spell seized her, and suddenly, she was as frozen as Eddie, except far less graceful looking. He was like some noble warrior, ready to strike. She was mid-fall, staring in disbelief at the yipping pack of Chihuahuas swarming her frozen feet.
“Would’ve been here sooner,” growled Wolfe, calling the pack off with a quick gesture. “But that bitch tied me up. Had to wait for the dogs to gnaw through my ropes.”
“Quickly!” I said, running toward Eddie. “Help me get him out of here.” I coughed from the thickening smoke and glanced at Alicia, her pretty face frozen in a snarl of dismay. “Help me get both of them out of here.”
Between Wolfe and me, we managed to drag the frozen forms out before the building came down. We got them to Wolfe’s main house as the fire department showed up, followed almost immediately by Adrian, Trey, Ms. Terwilliger, and a few of the witches from the lake. Adrian pulled me into an embrace.
“Are you okay?” he asked. “When Jackie called me, I didn’t know what to expect.”
I rested my head against his chest, reassured by his touch. “Fine. I got lucky. Really lucky. But Eddie—”
One of the witches from a coven I didn’t know produced some dried flowers that she spread over Eddie as she chanted a Latin spell. Moments later, Eddie came to life again, still in mid-jump. He stumbled as he landed, looking around in surprise when he wasn’t where he expected. Adrian and I astonished him further by sweeping him into a group hug.
“You’ll have to unfreeze Alicia too,” I said in dismay. “We need to find Jill.”
Ms. Terwilliger frowned. “That’s unfortunate. This is actually a very neat way to deal with her. You didn’t get any indication where Jill was beforehand?”
I shook my head and released Eddie. “No. She admitted Jill was alive ‘for now’ but didn’t elaborate.” I thought back, trying to replay each word amid the chaos. Although it had been nice to hear Alicia confirm Jill was alive, we’d already gotten a sense of that through our spells. It wasn’t as useful as I’d hoped. “And she said something about Jill listening to psalms.”