Within These Wicked Walls(65)

I leaned against the books, resting in the shadows, trying to steady my breath. And then, after a few moments, the tinkle of bells approached. Magnus came around the bookshelf, his movements tentative. “Andromeda?” His face was mostly in shadow, only beautiful hints of it where the candlelight glowed through the cracks. “Was I wrong to confess?”

“You love me?” I whispered.

He strode over and took me in his arms, and it didn’t matter that I could barely see him, his hands like anchors holding me to this earth. “You know I do.”

“Only me?”

“My darling,” he cooed, running his fingertips across my lips, “it’s always been only you.” And he pressed his lips where his fingers had warmed.





CHAPTER 25


The plan was almost too simple. Kelela would stand in front of the door to act as bait. Saba would make sure the hyena couldn’t get out of Magnus’s room. I would cleanse it. Five minutes before the Waking, we took our positions.

Saba and I stood in front of Magnus’s bedroom door, with Kelela slightly behind us. When I glanced back at her she was grey-faced. Trembling. But there was a spark of something—of will, of life, of determination. She planned on seeing this through to the end.

And the end would be quick. One hour. That’s all the time I needed to seal it.

I heard the sudden shift of a lock and pulled my knife. But it wasn’t Magnus’s door—in hindsight, a hyena wouldn’t be much good at opening one, anyway.

“Stay here,” I said, running and skidding to a stop at the top of the stairs just as Peggy opened the door.

“Peggy,” I shouted down the stairs, “the Waking is in three minutes. You need to lock yourself in a room.”

She looked up at me as if I were a nuisance, before making her way slowly up the stairs. Her room was on the ground floor; why was she coming upstairs? “I need to check on Magnus.”

I ran down halfway to meet her, getting behind her to push. “The hyena is going to be released in less than three minutes.”

She halted—the opposite of what I needed her to do. “W-what? What time is it?”

“Saba, help me!”

Saba rushed to my side, throwing Peggy over her shoulder without my having to ask.

I don’t know if Saba decided to reveal herself or Peggy thought she was being carried by an invisible entity, but she wouldn’t stop screaming, and we were under too vital a time crunch for me to do anything but roll my eyes. “Take her to my room—no, the closet. At the end of the hall. Hurry.”

“Kelela?” Peggy gasped as Saba passed, and she released a desperate moaning wail, like a banshee. “Oh God Almighty, what are you doing here? Get out of the hallway!”

Saba ran to the opposite end of the long hall, carrying the screaming woman like she weighed nothing. The closet was a petty choice when my room was available, but I didn’t want her looking through my things.

“I suppose that isn’t the strangest thing I’ve seen in this house,” Kelela breathed. Judging by her terrified shock, I knew she wasn’t talking about Peggy.

I took my position again, in front of a further-shaken Kelela, just as Saba shut the door and was running back. I could still hear Peggy shouting curses at me. She had the good sense to do it through the door.

Because the big clock downstairs was striking ten.

Dhong!

I took a deep breath.

Dhong!

A breath.

Eight more like it, and each time I breathed in courage until there wasn’t a scrap of fear left in me.

As the last gong echoed, the rush of swirling wind took its place in my ears, and with it sheets shifting, rustling. Then the click and scrape of claws on hardwood, the familiar jingle of bells with each pad.

The chalk marks sprung up in my mind as soon as the hyena’s paws hit the floor.

I flinted my welding pen and got to work.

I wasn’t even a minute in when the bedroom door rattled. Kelela yelped at the loud bang, and grabbed my shoulder, but I shrugged her off quickly. “Don’t touch me, I can’t mess this up.” Another minute went by. Another bang.

“Can’t he break the door?” Kelela asked, slightly frantic.

“No,” I said, not missing a beat with my pen.

Another bang. Kelela backed into the wall behind us. “Are you sure?”

“It only has the strength of any old hyena, and these doors are solid wood.” I said it to shut her up so I could concentrate, but hopefully it was enough to assure her, too. Because I didn’t know. Maybe demon hyenas were stronger than normal ones. Saba was stronger than any human, after all—but no. No. After all that courage I’d breathed in, I couldn’t go filling myself with doubt now.

I saw Saba move toward the door from the corner of my eye and glanced up. She looked sick. Her nose and brow were creased in a grimace, like she tasted blood. I pressed my back against the door as she reached her hand toward the doorknob.

“I know it’s commanding you, Saba,” I said. “But you have to fight the urge to obey.”

She shook her head, tears forming in her eyes and breaking away to roll down her face as the hyena slammed against the door again.

“Run down the hall and sit on your hands. Get away from here.”

It was a fragile solution, but it was all I could think of with most of my brainpower consumed by getting this amulet right. Why did I let her stay? Because I had the same concern as Kelela—that the hyena might break through the door. But now my greatest fear was Saba releasing it too soon. Magnus had said she had no choice but to obey the Evil Eye. This wasn’t something she could fight against for much longer. And I still needed at least fifty minutes before the amulet to lock the monster away was complete.