Hexbound (The Dark Elite 2)

I glanced back. The things were starting to stumble their way to their feet.

Scout cleared her throat, then began her incantation. “Silence, serenity, solitude, space. We ask for protections inside of this place. Empower this circle with magical grace, and keep us all safe . . .”

She stopped. I looked over and saw the blank expression on her face.

“. . . and keep us all safe,” she repeated, desperation in her voice. She couldn’t seem to find the right phrase to end the poem.

“Hurry up, Scout.”

At Jason’s harried tone, I looked up again. All five of the creatures were on their feet, and they looked pretty angry. There were only ten or fifteen feet between us, and they were lumbering forward, fangs bared, claws beginning to scrape the concrete like nails on a chalkboard.

“Don’t listen to them,” I told her, “and don’t worry—you can do this.”

“And keep us all safe . . .”

Michael glanced back. “Anytime now!”

She snapped her fingers. “—in this circle we trace!” She poured the rest of the sand in a line, just as claws struck out at Michael. He jumped back, but she’d finished the circle just in time—the creature was out of luck.

The bubblelike shield shimmered as the creature made contact with it, then disappeared again when it yanked back its claw with a fierce whine. The pain didn’t deter it or the rest of them. They all began to attack. We stood there and watched them claw and scrape at the energy to get at us. The shield shimmered a little every time they made contact, but it held.

“Just in time,” Scout finally said.

Jason nodded. “You did good. Now, are you actually going to transmogrify them?”

Scout nodded, then knelt on the floor and began to pull stuff from her messenger bag. “A woman’s work never ceases.”

Scout Greene was a taskmaster worthy of any St. Sophia’s professor. She folded a piece of paper from a notebook into an origami cup in the shape of a bird, and started quizzing us to find stuff to put into it.

So far, I’d offered up a chunk of granola bar and three drops of water from my bottle. Jason and Michael didn’t have man purses, so she took stuff from their pockets—sixty-two cents, a ball of stringy blue jeans lint, and a tube of lip balm. Together, all that stuff was supposed to represent our sacrifice of various bits of earth—water, metal, food, etc.

When everything was in the paper cup, she folded the top carefully again, then scribbled out what I assumed was an incantation on another piece of paper. While she drafted, the monsters poked around the bubble, looking for a weak spot. Although they weren’t successful, from what I could tell, the shield wasn’t going to last forever.

When Scout had the finished incantation in one hand and the closed paper cup in another, she glanced around at each of us. “Are we ready?”

“I’ve never been more ready to climb into bed,” I told her. Michael and Jason nodded in agreement.

“Here’s the plan.” She held up the piece of paper. “I’m going to repeat the incantation, and as soon as I’m done, I’m gonna wipe out the circle and throw the charm. If I’ve done this right, the spell will trigger as soon as the charm hits.”

Michael pulled the cell phone from his pocket.

“Really,” Scout said flatly, “you’re going to make a call right now?”

Michael aimed the phone toward the creatures and began snapping. “I’m going to take pictures of these things in the likely event Smith and Katie don’t believe what we saw.” Smith and Katie were Varsity Adepts and the former leaders of Enclave Three. They’d held the reins when Scout had been kidnapped. Good riddance, if you asked me.

“Oh. Well, good call,” Scout allowed.

Michael smiled sweetly at her. “I’m entitled to a few good ideas, you know.”

She blushed.

When Michael was done and the cell phone was tucked away again, Jason clapped his hands together. “Okay, let’s get this show on the road. Everyone in the back of the bubble. Puts more space between us and them when the circle goes down,” he explained.

When we’d stepped back, Scout glanced at each of us in turn. “Are we ready?” When we’d all nodded, she did the same. “Then here goes nothing.”

Michael, Jason, and I each put up our fists, like we were heading into a schoolyard fight.

Scout closed her eyes and held the crane in her lifted hands. “Beauty comes in many sizes, but these guys just aren’t prizes. Give them all a new disguise, and make them change before our eyes!”

She cocked back her arm to throw the bird. “And three . . . two . . . and one!” She used her toe to push some sand out the circle. As soon as it was breached, the shield gave one final shimmer and dropped away. They lunged forward, and Scout threw the paper bird into the middle of the group.

The tunnel exploded into noise and white light.

I dropped down, hands over my head, waiting for an attack—that didn’t come.

I opened an eye. The air was filled with a thousand tiny white paper cranes, all of them flapping their little paper wings as they spun around us. The creatures were nowhere to be seen.

“What just happened?” I asked.

“She transmogrified them,” Michael said, surprise in his voice.

I stood up, waving a hand in front of my face so that I could see through the cranes. After a moment, they formed a long V and flew past us down the tunnel, leaving us alone, the floor littered with bits of origami confetti.

Michael stared openmouthed at the birds as they disappeared into the next chunk of the tunnel. “This is just . . . fricking amazing! You did it! You actually did it!” He picked Scout up and spun her around in the air, just like in the movies.

I grinned at the look of total shock on her face. Considering the fact that she’d actually kissed him a few minutes ago, my math said Garcia, two. Scout, zero.

“It was teamwork,” she said, adjusting her shirt when he finally put her down again. Her cheeks were pink, but I could tell she was trying really hard not to smile. Before I could say anything to her, Scout jumped at me and wrapped her arms around my neck.

“Can’t breathe,” I said, patting her back. “Dial it back.”

When she finally loosened up, I rubbed my neck. “What was that for?”

“You believed in me,” she said simply, and then put an arm around my shoulders.

“Of course I did. Now, shouldn’t we tell somebody about those things?”