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“Wouldn’t kill you to turn the heat on,” I said to the old man. He had stopped before me and was talking to a thin gentleman in an old-fashioned suit. The thin guy gave me an imperious scowl. A butler, really? Was he really a mouse too, like the thugs who’d grabbed me before had been? Lambert was freaking Cinderella. That thought made me laugh.
Both men glared at me before returning to their conversation.
I felt like I’d crossed through some portal to another world. I swallowed. Maybe that’s why the castle was invisible from the outside. A portal like the ones the aquarium used took us away from Silver Springs to wherever this was.
“Now, my dear,” the old man said, turning to me. He wore a thick coat and a top hat like some cartoon wizard. “I have a short time to answer five of your questions, but then we must get to work. So what do you want to know?”
I couldn’t believe he was actually going to answer a few questions. Guess he didn’t just look like a cartoon villain. Still, I didn’t know how many I had, so I tried to think of the most important ones. His comment about “getting to work” really worried me, but I couldn’t let myself get distracted. “Your name is Lambert, right?”
“Yes, my name is Lambert, and I come from an ancient line of magicians,” he said.
“So you’re a witch?” I bit my lip. Kind of a waste of a question.
“No,” he growled. “I’m a magician. We also work with magical forces, but we are much more powerful.”
I tried to think of what to ask next. He’d said that Phoebe was alright, so I knew there was no use asking things like where she was and if he’d let her go. “What do you want with the aquarium?”
He rubbed his chin. “Interesting that you went there and not to what do I want with you. They must have really affected you.”
I kept silent. I could hold my tongue when I needed to.
“Tripp owes me.”
“Owes you what?” I blurted and then smacked myself. I really should be worried about the trouble I was in, not the aquarium.
Lambert scowled. “He was my pupil, and I taught him and shared my resources with him for years. Then he suddenly grows a conscience and leaves me?”
I opened my mouth to ask something else and Lambert cut me off.
“That’s all the questions. Into the lab with you now.”
“But you said five . . .”
The magic dragged me down the hallway after Lambert.
Lambert spun back to me and lifted a bushy eyebrow. “And what part of this meeting told you I was a good guy?”
Nothing. The dark hallway led to even darker stairs that went round and round into a basement room. The room was a rectangle with cages clustered at one end. In the center of the room was a carved circle with various runes along its edges, and there were several tables around stacked with a mixture of books and scientific equipment—beakers, test tubes, and bunsen burners.
Phoebe was lying in one of the cages, her eyes closed. “Phoebe!”
She moaned but didn’t lift her head.
“See?” Lambert said. “Perfectly fine.”
“What did you do to her?”
Lambert didn’t answer but started thumbing through a large, dark book on the table. The outside was decorated with black vines, just as Tripp’s had been.
The magic dumped me in the middle of the runic circle. I looked around, hoping to have a brilliant idea for escape, but I didn’t see one. If the magic released me, then I could take off my medallion and get Phoebe and me out the door. But the magic didn’t let go.
Instead, Lambert snapped his fingers and a blue flame rose, trapping me inside the circle.
“What do you want from me?” I asked.
“Your magic,” Lambert said.
“Well, hell, you could have just asked,” I muttered. “I never wanted it.”
