AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Only then did Jianyu release the light, making them both visible once more.
Ruby let out a relieved breath at their appearance. “Thank heavens,” she said in a hurried breath. “You have to come with me.”
“No,” he told her. “Cela has already been waiting too long. Harte and Esta will have expected us by now.”
But Ruby was taking Viola’s hand. “Please, you must come. You have to see this.”
“Viola,” Jianyu warned, because he could see that she was already softening. “This is not the plan. We are supposed to get her outside, remember? The whole point was to get her to safety.”
“You must come,” Ruby urged again. “Please. Come this way, and I can show you…” She was already leading Viola in the opposite direction of the exit.
“Stop,” he said. “We need to get you outside. Cela cannot wait forever, not without drawing attention.”
“But this is important,” Ruby said, pleading to Viola. “It’s the machine. Jack’s machine. It’s here.”
Jianyu went very still. “Are you certain?” There were very few things that could have turned his feet from the path they had decided upon, but the mention of the machine, the terrible contraption that Jack had designed to eliminate those with the old magic, was one.
How could they have missed something so large? “We checked the entire building,” he told her. “We found no sign of the machine.”
“You didn’t check everywhere,” she said. “Hurry. We don’t have time to waste. He’s going to use it tonight. And if that happens, everyone within a hundred miles with the old magic will die.”
Jianyu looked back toward the entrance of the Garden and then again at the large clock hanging over the main floor. Cela would be waiting for Ruby. There was no time to tell her of any change in their plans, not before the final events of the evening began. But if the machine was there, somewhere in that building, they needed to find it.
They needed to destroy it.
“Fine,” he told Ruby and Viola both. “Take us to the machine, but be quick. There is no time to waste.”
They hurried through the empty arena to a door hidden by the fabric that had been draped to cover the bare brick of the walls. It was a door that he had not discovered in all his trips to map the floor plan of the arena.
“This way.” Ruby moved back the fabric so they could enter. “It’s just down here.”
The hallway beyond was narrow and dark, lit only by the flickering of the occasional dim bulb. They followed the hall along the length of the arena, and when they turned a corner and found another doorway, he felt the cold warning and stopped.
“Quickly,” Ruby urged again.
Hair rose along the nape of his neck. “The machine is down there?”
Ruby nodded. “It’s just a little farther.”
“Well?” Viola asked, looking as uncomfortable about the cold energy emanating from the door as he felt.
“Can you sense anything?” he asked.
“No one,” Viola told him. “But then, I couldn’t sense Jack before. So why should I now?” Her mouth tightened. “We could get the others?”
They’d already wasted too much time. Esta and Darrigan were waiting on the rooftop above, and Cela was expecting him, but if the machine was there, it could not wait. Not if Jack planned to use it that night.
He shook his head. “There is no time for the others.”
“Wait here,” Viola told Ruby. She handed her the copy of Libitina that Esta had brought back from another time. “If anyone comes, you use this.” Then she turned to Jianyu. “Let’s go.”
Opening the light, he wrapped Viola in his magic, and they stepped inside. But the second he crossed the threshold, he felt a shift. Cold pulsed around him, and he heard a grinding of metal as a barred gate began to descend across the entrance of the chamber.
Instantly, he released his affinity and lunged for the opening they had just passed through, but when his hands hit the bars, he pulled back. They were cold as ice, charmed or infused with some dangerous, corrupted magic.
“Ruby,” Viola said. “Quickly. My knife.”
Ruby’s eyes were wide and unseeing. She stood, staring into nothing, the knife dangling from her fingertips.
