“Have Jamius cast every remaining duplicate he has to act as a buffer, a diversion.”
“Right.” Yaritza nodded. “Jamius’ duplicates are organic. The size manipulation won’t work on them.”
“Then, you three get to safety.” I flew through the skies of Chicago, locking my telepathy on Yaritza and propelling myself as quickly as possible. With so much focus fixed on my students and moving faster, the minds of damn near everyone else fell silent. “Milo and the others are almost there. You’ll be fine. You just need to get away and hold out for a few minutes.”
It wasn’t entirely a lie. Milo and other enchanters were likely very close; the buzzing minds of enchanters converged from every direction onto our point. And I was even closer. A few minutes from now, I’d arrive at the scene. It didn’t matter if thatwitch had a thousand enchantments to shield himself from my telepathy. Once I made physical contact, I’d drop him as quickly as I did The Sisters Three.
“This is all a good idea, but…” Yaritza’s mind popped with numbers and measurements at a dizzying rate. “I have a better idea.”
“You have an idea?” Jamius croaked, turning back to Yaritza, who’d finally calmed down enough to think.
“He decreased his size so he could speed up the effects of his magic on other objects,” Yaritza explained. “So, we need to make him bigger. Based on what I’ve seen, once he exceeds ten meters in stature, his casting significantly decreases. Probably a few seconds’ lag for every meter in size multiplied by the distance of the object he’s shrinking. Or enlarging—but we don’t need to worry about that since he wouldn’t enlarge something targeting him.”
“What are you talking about?” Melanie asked.
Dammit. I pushed myself faster. Yaritza wasn’t sticking with my plan. She was plotting a counterstrike.
“Jamius, you’re gonna use your copies to engage and enrage.”
“Meaning?”
“Taunt him till he grows.”
“That I can do.” Jamius nodded. “How big do you want him?”
Melanie snorted. “Oh, come on. That’s a little funny. A little dirty.”
“We could all die, and you’re making dick jokes?” Yaritza shook her head. “You’ve been hanging out with Gael too much.”
Melanie blushed, her thoughts fizzling toward the class clown she missed. Christ. She could very well die, and all her mind didwas fixate on how she missed hooking up with the world’s most irritating person.
No. They wouldn’t die. None of them. I refused to let something so horrible happen. I needed to move faster.
“Melanie, I need you to take hold of Enchanter Ortiz’s stray flames,” Yaritza said. “Do you think you can make them bigger?”
She chuckled again, then finally composed herself. “If I mixed in a bit of standard fire, but it won’t hold long. His fire’s finicky.”
“Exactly,” Yaritza said, recalling a slight delay in the alteration of the flames compared to other enchanter strikes. “It’s harder for Winston to manipulate. We can use that to our advantage.”
“So, what is this big plan of yours?” Jamius asked.
“You’re gonna make him grow, that’ll slow down his size manipulation ability. He won’t worry about staying smaller since he’s already dealt with Enchanter Ortiz and the other first responders. Melanie is then gonna hit him with as much blinding firepower as she can. By the time he removes the flames, I’m going to hit him with a star shower unlike any other.”
“Won’t he just shrink it like everything else?”
“This will be huge,” Yaritza explained. “Based on the size and distance correlation, if my measurements are precise, it’ll be too big for him to stop in time.”
Melanie and Jamius both stared skeptically.
“Trust me, I know my numbers.”
And she did. Yaritza regularly counted out her pebbles, scattered rocks in the auxiliary gym when we trained, and anywhere she found herself in the city. It seemed that checking her surroundings to ensure she had full access to her branchbecame second nature to her. That, and her joy for math, which she didn’t brag about much to anyone. Not even herself, hence why it rarely rose to the surface of her mind.
“Alrighty, let’s do this.” Jamius summoned every duplicate he could muster and sent them into the fray.
Despite their best efforts, their taunting did little to force Winston’s hand. He had the advantage in telekinesis and physical combat. Every time his duplicates moved in close, Winston propelled them, destroyed them, or took his time slapping them around.
“I could move in with my flames,” Melanie suggested, a bit queasy watching the many copies of Jamius get pummeled while the sadistic witch cackled at the fraught fight.
