Keeper of Enchanted Rooms

Merritt’s gaze followed but didn’t linger. The dolls. They were important. Hadn’t Hulda said Silas got his magic from the people he did that to? So if they could destroy them . . .

Hulda stood; Merritt rose next to her. Owein writhed, his straps slowly turning into glass marbles . . . a sluggish chaocracy spell to free himself. Merritt pointedly kept his gaze on Silas so as not to give the dog away.

“Mr. Hogwood, please,” Hulda begged. “I know you can be reasonable. Let me strike a deal with you, just as Myra did—”

“Don’t be so hysterical.” He flung out his fingers.

Hulda retreated into Merritt, then doubled over shaking. Her skin turned cool and clammy beneath his touch. “Hulda!”

What was this? Another spell? Hysteria?

Merritt grasped her shoulders, trying to shake her out of it—

The pattering of marbles hitting the floor sounded just before a vicious growl tore through the air. Owein, free, ran for Silas and leapt, clamping his teeth down on the man’s forearm. A gasp escaped Hulda as Silas lifted Owein from the ground and flung his arm outward, slinging the dog toward the fire.

“No!” Merritt reached for the animal.

Owein collided with an invisible wall erected before the flames. He yelped and fell to the stone.

Merritt gave himself half a heartbeat to marvel at the shield he’d managed to put up. Then he turned about and charged the Englishman himself.

Still shaking off the fear spell, Hulda dashed again for the dolls, nabbing a shard of glass on her way. Merritt cried out. Hulda winced. Ran. Collided with the bars.

And stabbed the glass shard into the center of the closest doll.

Hogwood roared and arched like a gargoyle coming to life, throwing Merritt off his back. The fire extinguished, but she couldn’t be sure whether he’d lost his hold on the spell or lost it forever because the stabbed doll had been giving him that power.

Lifting her arm, she stabbed the next doll—

An unseen force slammed into her, knocking her into the wall, tearing both the air from her lungs and the glass shard from her hand. Moving stiffly as a side effect of the kinetic spell, Hogwood hunched, turned back to Merritt, and picked him up off the ground with the same spell, shoving him toward the plank with the leather straps nailed to it. As his shoulder blades hit, Merritt said, “I can hear them.”

Hogwood hesitated.

“Your dolls,” Merritt rasped as Hogwood’s knuckles pressed into his throat. “I can hear them screaming.”

A stone slammed into Hogwood, right below his neck. Merritt dropped.

Owein barked, his magic ripping another stone from the floor and hurling it in Hogwood’s direction. Hogwood used wind spells to shift that stone, then another, and another, away from him. Spells that left him gasping for air. His left hand crooked up, and the air popped as lightning came down from the ceiling and struck the dog.

“Owein!” Hulda cried, trying to push herself up. But Merritt, recovered, was faster, darting to the dog’s side.

Hogwood shifted to wolf form and barreled after him. Panic flooded Hulda’s limbs. She flew to her feet. The wolf bit down on the back of Merritt’s trousers, sending him crashing into the torn-up floor. But as Hogwood pounced, Merritt reared and flung up a protection spell that sent the wolf crashing into another invisible wall.

Merritt winced and hissed through his teeth. The side effect of wardship was physical weakness—he would be feeling his bruises acutely.

Hulda searched for a weapon. Moved for another glass shard—

Her blood dripped onto stone and earth, forming an uneven pattern that pushed an image into her mind. It was her. She ran to the doll cage. Hogwood shot a kinetic spell after her to crush her—

The future.

Ignoring the glass, Hulda turned around and bolted for the dolls.

She heard the popping as Hogwood shifted back into a man. The spell was coming. She was almost to the cage—

Hulda dropped to her stomach, bruising her knees and hips as she did so, nearly breaking her nose against the floor. The kinetic spell she’d foreseen flew overhead and struck the cage, so powerful the iron bars groaned and snapped. Two of the dolls toppled to the ground.

“No!” Hogwood bellowed. He crawled along the floor toward her. The shock of losing more magic had to be reverberating through his body.

Owein barked, and to Hulda’s horror, the dolls began jumping off the shelves, bobbing about on their mutated, bulbous limbs as though trying to escape. Hulda screamed and reeled back before one could touch her.

Owein whimpered and shook his head. Of course! He’d used a spell, just like the one that set the books dancing in the Whimbrel House library. Chaocracy spells caused confusion—Owein wouldn’t be used to suffering side effects, after having an ability to cast without cost for two hundred years.

With the dolls spreading out, Hogwood couldn’t protect them all at once.

“The dolls, Merritt!” Spinning on her hip, Hulda smashed her foot into a small one, sending it into the wall.