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My skin itched for the touch of my magic like an addict needing a hit. The throbbing gulf of anxiety in my chest ached to be filled with the familiar, comforting feel of magic. Without it, I might as well be a puppy whose teeth haven’t come in yet.
Or a beaver out of water.
I pushed open the door to the prison library and waved everyone in. The furniture Beverly had chewed up had been removed, leaving an empty space in front of the stacks. The only light was a mix of moonlight and streetlight that shone through the sole window. It left almost everything in shadow, like unspoken secrets.
Ram darted to a nearby shelf and scaled it, reaching up to grab the CCTV camera and turn it toward the wall. “That’ll buy us a few more minutes,” he whispered, and dropped to the floor.
“What happens now?” Elliot said as he and Moe placed Beverly on the carpet.
Fuck if I knew. I checked my phone to see if Juniper had texted or called back.
Nothing.
Something wasn’t right.
My nerves felt like they were drawn tight as the strings on Jag’s harp cock. Sitar cock? Whatever the fuck it was. But I couldn’t help Juniper or anyone while in prison, so I tucked the phone into my pocket.
Ram’s notes had offered two ways out of prison, and they were both completely fucking stupid. If not for Ram’s threats and poor Beverly, I wouldn’t be attempting an escape at all. He had been right about one thing though, he always fucking was.
The portals were reacting to people inside the prison.
Mainly, to me and Ram.
I hadn’t realized it at first, but the guards didn’t notice the portals. They kept showing up where I was, and the only other prisoner who had spotted them was Ram.
If the portals were truly random, a whole bunch of people would have noticed them through the windows, and it would be the talk of the prison. With not much else to do, people loved to gossip, especially about anything that could be an attempted prison break.
For a portal—or whoever was creating it—to sense and respond to people inside the anti-magic ward, it must have a matching portal inside the prison. Someone had smuggled in a live portal. It stayed open because its other side was connected to a realm free of the ward and dripping with magic.
The portal was probably minuscule because it hadn’t been found yet. I also had no idea how anyone got a portal inside the ward in the first place or if Ram’s theory was correct. But if there was one here, maybe I could find it.
If I didn’t, he’d send my oldest friend to jail.
“Alyssa,” Jag hissed. “What should we do?”
“Keep an eye on Ram and be ready to move Beverly,” I said, then wandered away from them through the stacks. I had seen a portal through the library’s window and from my cell, which was above the library. So maybe it was somewhere nearby. It was a lead as thin as a rogue pube on a toilet seat, but it was all I had.
“Remember,” Ram said behind me. “You’re connected to the Astrosmos.”
I grimaced. He thought someone had stolen the relic too.
“You’re the only one here who knows how to cast any portal magic,” Ram added. “If you follow your instincts, you’ll find a way out.”
“That Disney princess follow-your-heart bullshit isn’t going to work when there’s no magic.” I paused among the rows of shelves. If there was a tiny portal somewhere in here, it would have to be where no one had seen it yet. “Hey, Elliot? What are the least popular books?”
I heard soft footsteps, then Elliot came around the corner. “Umm… I was only a prison librarian for two days.”
“That’s enough. What section did nobody visit?”
He glanced around. “Well… crafts, self-help, and fantasy books went fast. We have a shelf of books in uncommon languages. I guess not many people read those.”
I knew the section. The thing with uncommon and so-called dead languages was that they were very common for casting spells among dark witches. I jogged over to the row near the back wall, pausing to glance at the CCTV camera Ram had turned around. How much longer until his bribery no longer covered our asses? We had already surpassed the fifteen minutes the guards had promised him.
Grabbing the first book I saw, I flipped through its pages and examined the shelf behind it.
Just paper and wood.
“What are we looking for?” Elliot whispered.
