Oh my god. "I rent a room from a witch in Concordia, and this is her Cloak of Cloaking. Don’t look at me like that, I didn’t name it. She uses it to smoke in her office at work. It should help me avoid detection."
My roommate abandoned crocheting after this disaster. Marlow's right, this thing deserves to stay hidden, and fortunately, the magic flowing through the cloth handles that. I intentionally revealed myself to Marlow, but the cloak will mask me and my scent from everyone else. Since I’m supposed to be on vacation and all, my pack can’t pick up a fresh trail from me while they’re hunting an escaped prisoner.
“Okay,” Marlow says. “That eyesore will shield you. How do I—oh.” The answer to how he’ll escape and avoid detection becomes clear before he finishes talking, and he looks down to watch as his physical form starts changing, going from solid flesh to hazy and transparent.
The bars and walls are magically fortified to resist attempts to break free. The best solution isn’t to fight the magic but go around it entirely. Well, gothroughit.
"Whoa," Marlow breathes, holding up his hand and watching as it fades before his eyes. The look on his face, there's this wonder in his expression that catches me off guard.
I didn't expect that reaction. Didn't expect the way fascination softens the sharp angles of his face. He’s awed and looks—fine. Awe looks fine on his face. No big deal. Whatever.
"Ready to go?" I ask.
"Yeah, sure." He's still staring at his arm until he notices me waiting and snaps out of it. "Sorry. Never seen myself like this, not this side of me."
This side? "What's that supposed to mean?"
"Uh, nothing." He waves an insubstantial hand. "Don't worry about it."
He’s intangible, untraceable, and hard to see. From what I remember, this is as good as it gets.
My ex-girlfriend Ava brewed this intangibility potion. Her magical specialtyisn’tin potions, but she didn’t want other witches asking questions. A real potions master could extend the duration longer than thirty minutes and grant total invisibility instead of almost invisibility, but at night we should be okay.
Ava didn't trust me. So she drank the potion, phased through my bedroom wall, and searched for whatever evidence of infidelity she'd convinced herself existed. Except she forgot one crucial detail: incorporeal hands can't actually grab anything. Can't open drawers. Can't flip through journals. After I discovered her, she gave me the rest of the batch as an apology for her crazy behavior. I never thought I'd have use for the potions, but I was glad for the whole experience because it showed me that I needed to cut ties.
“Here goes nothing,” Marlow says, drawing me from my thoughts.
He steps up to the bars and I hold my breath. He walks forward, right through the bars of the cell, and stands beside me. The gargoyle follows along, squeezing through the bars.
Just like that, the demon is free from his prison.
It worked. We're really doing this. I freed him and either made the best or worst decision of my entire life.
Either way, we need to get out of here.
We have thirty minutes to get as far as possible before he becomes solid again.
8.The Wolf You Can't Run From
Marlow
"Down here," Wynn says. That's all the warning I get before he jumps down into a ravine, totally oblivious to the fact that not all of us can see in the dark.
Escaping is hard work. It always looks so much cooler in the movies. Not this, stumbling blind through an endless forest in the middle of the night. The darkness so complete I can barely make out Wynn's silhouette ahead. I’d be running into everything and leaving my scent everywhere if I were in the flesh.
"Hey, let's slow down."
"Later," he says without pausing.
"It's fine," I insist, but he's not convinced.
"You don't know that. For all we know, your escape has already been discovered."
I roll my eyes dramatically. It's a pity he misses the sight. "We've got a few hours until they find out I'm not in the cell. You’ll hear it if an angry pack of dogs are chasing us."
"Wolves," he corrects prissily. Amazing, how can he pack so much irritation into one word while sprinting through the trees in a hideous disguise?
He’s leading me deeper into the woods that belong to his pack, away from the city and the inhabited part of theIron territory. Towards the mountains that border this side of Concordia. I’ll circle back and figure something out once free.
