Page 2 of Spirit Storm

"Define everything," Orion says.

"All five of us. Same moment. Different angles." I turn to face them. "Spirit, shadow, plant, strength and⁠—"

"Devastating charisma?" Asher offers, flashing me one of his sexy smiles.

I laugh. “Or you could try to transport it somewhere.”

He blinks at me. “Where exactly should I try to send it?”

"I don’t know. Get behind the pedestal, and if we knock the bloody thing off its base, send it somewhere. The enchantment locking us in here is seated in the orb. I’m sure of it. If we get rid of the orb⁠—"

"The spell destabilizes." Wylder is already moving to his position along the left wall, drawing up a slow, coiling green from the floor, moss and thin vines threading up through the grout between the cobblestones. "That could work."

Rowan doesn’t look convinced, but she's already rising from the floor, shadows gathering at her shoulders like a cloak pulling itself on.

Orion says nothing. He simply rolls his neck once, and when he looks back at the orb, his pupils have gone narrow and vertical, silver-blue catching the torchlight.

"On my count," I say.

Asher pops up off the floor, bounces once on his heels, and disappears with a quiet crack of displaced air.

I gather what I have, spirit magic building inside me like the rising of a tide. The orb seems to register our intentions, and the amber deepens toward red. “It is recalculating.”

“Then let’s do this quickly,” Orion says.

Rowan throws the shadows. Wylder's vines detonate upward around the pedestal’s base. Orion grabs hold of the orb, and I hit it with everything I have.

A crack splits across the orb's surface like it’s been struck with a hammer. Fractures run through the amber glow in spiderweb patterns.

The grinding of stone intensifies as the ceiling falls faster.

The orb screams.

There is no other word for it. A high, sustained magical shriek rattles the torches and sends dust crumbling from the ceiling.

“It’s dropping faster!” Rowan shouts.

I curse. “Asher, get that thing out of here!”

Orion growls, and with a Herculean force, rips the orb right off the pedestal and sends it flying.

It hits the cobblestones once and bounces into the air. Amber light breaks through the cracks, shooting through the fractures and lighting up the room like a spotlight on a spinning disco ball.

Asher dives full-bodied through the air, and then it’s gone.

The five of us freeze, then look around.

Rowan is crouched low, wide-eyed. “Is it over?”

There’s a low click somewhere in the wall, and then the ceiling starts to rise.

All five of us stand in the abrupt, ringing silence, and I look around. “I can’t believe that worked."

Mitch is waiting for us in the anteroom with the expression of a man who has been listening to things go wrong for nearly an hour and has run out of ways to pace. He's twenty-something, sandy-haired, with ink stains on his left hand and the particular look of a person whose ambitious idea has just been escorted off the premises.

"Oh, thank god." He surges forward when the door opens. "I'm so, so sorry—the adaptive matrix, it wasn't supposed to—it keeps rewriting itself and I can't reach the kill switch from outside⁠—"

"Mitch." I hold up a hand.