The Keep (The Secret of Spellshadow Manor #4)(80)

Meanwhile, Jari was snapping back to reality. “Whoa—what happened?” he asked unsteadily.

“The wall thing happened again,” Alex explained. “You all locked me up and ran off, thinking you were being chased by monsters. I’m in the process of trying to find everyone so I can remove the fog and we can find Alypia and get her locked up. At the moment, she’s roaming free, and it’s making me more than a little nervous.”

Jari frowned. “Were you just in my head?”

“I had to get the fog out,” Alex admitted.

“When did you learn to do that?” he asked suspiciously.

“I made Demeter teach me,” said Alex.

Jari made a low noise of displeasure. “You didn’t think to say something?”

Alex sighed. “I didn’t think I’d have to use it on my friends.”

“Well, I hope you didn’t go snooping,” Jari remarked, his tone wary.

Alex shook his head. “Never.”

“Hang on, did I hit you? I remember hitting something, though I think I thought it was a massive lizard.” Jari flashed a curious glance at Alex.

Alex nodded. “You got a few good punches in. I managed one decent one,” he said, feeling for the tender skin of his cheek, where a nasty welt was slowly appearing.

“That must be why my jaw is clicking,” Jari mused.

“Well, glad you’re back in the land of the living, but we need to get going,” Alex said, once again pushing away the creeping weariness that slithered through his bones. There was no time for a breather with three more people to track down. “You coming?”

They set off through the darkness into the next corridor, which, thankfully, still had working torches. Alex was glad of Jari’s company. At least with another person by his side, the thought of Alypia springing out wasn’t quite as bad. Still terrifying, but not quite as terrifying.

As they headed into the deepest part of the keep, only a couple of floors above the entrance to Caius’s frightening pit room, they turned down an unfamiliar hallway and stumbled upon an indoor courtyard, littered with dead plants and a fountain that no longer spewed anything but lichen. Standing at the far side, lighting up the room with a very real, magical sword, was Ellabell, fending off imaginary beasts with the fearsome golden weapon, the blade glinting sharply. She let out a sudden, blood-curdling scream, thrashing the sword around in the air before her in a frenzied manner. She looked petrified, and the sight of her in such distress tore at Alex’s heart. He flashed a conspiratorial look at Jari.

“We need a pincer movement—I’ll go around one side, you go around the other,” Alex whispered. “Sneak up on her and hold her steady so I can put my hands on her temples.”

Jari nodded. “Aye, aye, Captain!”

They skirted around the room, approaching Ellabell on both sides. Jari reached her first, almost losing his head as Ellabell swung her sword at the last moment, missing him by a hair’s breadth. In a fit of panic, the softly-softly plan went out the window, Jari tackling her unceremoniously to the floor instead.

Alex ducked toward Ellabell and pressed his palms firmly against her temples, feeding his anti-magic through her skull and into her brain. He blushed as he saw himself in her memories, and felt more than a little strange watching himself through her eyes. It wasn’t quite like Jari’s hazy, romantically filtered movie scene, but there was a hopefulness to it that Alex felt guilty about trespassing upon. It wasn’t his place to feel her feelings, and yet it pleased him to see that they were on a similar track, in terms of the way they were beginning to think about each other. He lingered a moment longer on the remembrance of his arms around her, embracing beneath the stars, before moving quickly away from such personal thoughts.

She was the one whose mind most tempted him, but he returned to the task of restoring her to her usual self. It didn’t take long until all the fog and paranoia was gone, leaving Alex to recoil with reluctance.

“Get them off me, get them off me!” she screamed, throwing Jari away from her. Blinking away the last of the fog, she saw what she had done. “I’m sorry, Jari… I thought you were a demon.” She gasped, turning to Alex. “What happened? Where am I?”

“Alypia’s on the loose, big blast, red fog, golden monsters, intense paranoia, you wielding a great big magical sword that nearly took Jari’s head off, a little mind stuff to get rid of the bad juju… I think that brings you up to speed.” He forced a smile.

She frowned. “Mind stuff?”

“Yeah, he’s been fishing around in our brains again!” Jari remarked, throwing Alex under the bus.

“What do you mean ‘again?’ I haven’t fished in your brains before—I haven’t been fishing in your brains!” Alex insisted, knowing how it sounded. “I just got rid of the fog, that’s all.”

Ellabell glanced at him warily. Alex wanted to assure her that he hadn’t seen anything, and that he had never intended to use his newfound skills on any of them, but Jari cut in before he could.

“Get a good look, did you?” Jari taunted, evidently relishing Alex’s discomfort.

He sighed. “I just got rid of the imaginary monsters. Speaking of which, we don’t have time for this. We’ve still got Aamir and Natalie to find, not to mention Alypia.”