“I do now,” Anaya replied. Then they just went. Aisha in front, Mina behind, both still linked by that too-long handshake. Each step more like wading than anything else, and wobbly as hell. But they managed. They got to the end of the first lane still in one piece.
Then it was just a matter of jumping to the next.
A couple of feet.
Fairly doable, Mina thought. Though she wasn’t relishing a landing on the other side. Or particularly happy about what she could see when she made the mistake of looking down. That was a severed arm, sprawled across the grass. And said severed armwas still moving. It crawled slowly but steadily toward a hunched dark shape, by a corner across the way.
So of course she could guess what the hunched dark shape was.
Her stomach turned at the thought. She had to look away, atAnaya, as she got ready to jump. A little clumsy run up, and then what looked like the easiest leap in the world, and she was over.
No big deal, Mina thought, as she took a few steps back and then ran, just like Anaya had. Exactly like that, it seemed like. Yet something happened the moment her foot left the safety of the hedge. Shapes seemed to disappear into darkness. Darkness became suddenly solid. And somehow there was way too much empty air in front of her. She passed right through the place she was supposed to land and kept right on going, down, down, down, legs flailing, hands snatching at twigs and leaves, body spiraling as she went.
She actually twisted all the way around in the air.
Though that turned out to be a good thing, of sorts. She didn’t face-plant right into the grass and end up with a bloodied nose, at least. She just got a flash of pain from that bone at the base of her back, and a thump to the head, and some of the wind kicked out of her.
But even that passed pretty quickly. She managed to take a breath after a second. Another second after that and she could sit up, slowly. The base of her spine protested and one of her arms groaned, but she got there. Now all that was left was taking stock of her situation. Because the maze had shifted mid-leap pretty obviously. And that was most likely the reason people didn’t clamber around on top. But where exactly had it put her?
A moment away from Anaya? Or a mile?
More toward the beginning, or less?
She couldn’t tell at first through the gloom.
It took until something lit up the sky, somewhere above her head, for her to work it out. She got a flash of open space around her, square in shape instead of a narrow lane. Then stone beneathher, like she’d somehow landed on a sort of table. Moss riddled and ancient looking, but sturdy. She hauled herself up using the edge of it, no problem at all.
The maze must have really shifted, she thought, as she looked around, a little dazedly. But she wasn’t sure that explained why she was here. Because now it was dawning on her wherehereactually was. Not somewhere useless, not an inch from the start, not a millisecond from being expelled.
She was in the middle of the fucking maze.
She knew she was. The little square the hedges had formed just screamed it; the stone plinth almost hummed with the energy of it. A fool could have guessed this—even before she saw the person who was in here with her. Standing at the only way into this little area, back to her.
But obvious, all the same.
Those shoulders.
That hair like midnight.
And goodgod, the things he was doing. A million movies and books and best guesses could never have prepared her for what magic looked like, in the hands of a master. Even the things she and Anaya had seen—they didn’t compare. He curled his arm over his head, wand gripped in his hand, the tip of it trembling with tension. Like a conductor, urging his orchestra to even greater heights.
Then from the end came a kind of shimmering wave. It rose up, from the ground to somewhere above the hedge walls. And she got to see in great and glorious detail what rose up with it—people. Students. They simply lifted in the air like they were made of nothing. They floated and flailed impossibly.
But flight isn’t allowed, she found herself thinking.
It took her a second to realize that flight wasn’t the thing happening here. That he hadn’t gifted them with the ability to swim around in the air. No, no—it wasgravityhe had affected.He had turned gravity upside down. And now they all batted against some invisible boundary, most likely put there in anticipation of outlandish spells just like this.
Though somehow, she doubted many were capable of it.
Few here seemed anything like his equal. Someone tried to sneak in by making their body some sort of porous thing—able to pass through one of the hedge walls, to the side she and this bastard was on. But the bastard caught it. He made a series of movements with his free hand, so fast she couldn’t even make out what they were. A fist maybe, followed by two fingers straight up, and then something else, something tricky.
And suddenly the sneak had turned to stone.
He stood there, in the corner—a statue of himself.
While the first set of victims screamed from the sky. “Let us down, Harker,” they yelled. “Come on, mate, just leave it out.” And she processed two things when they did. His name, as horrible and snooty as she’d imagined. Then hot on its heels, the fact that these people, these people who he had just sent into the sky and turned to stone—they were hisfriends. They knew him; they were pally with him.
But he was ruthless with them regardless.
