“Right now we need to get going. See you at Ivy House.”

Heat and light blasted her as he shifted, making her stagger back. She wasn’t long in following suit, the bag getting caught on her horn instead of her neck. It would do. In a moment, she was airborne.

A team of mages had snatched up the bar—and Jessie—under Austin Steele’s nose. There was no chance they’d just randomly stopped for food and rest. If they were this organized, they’d have a safe place to hold Jessie.

Lord help them if they couldn’t find that place.

23

I came to slowly, a hard surface below my aching body and throbbing head. Cold air slid across my face, the breeze slight but uncomfortable. Silence greeted me as I fluttered my eyes open, trying to collect my scattered thoughts.

Steel bars interrupted my vision, slicing through the image of a flat, stony surface nearly lost to the dim lighting. The bars rose all around me, bowing inward and connecting to a circular plate above me. The large, rusted chain attached to the plate connected to a high ceiling, anchored who knew how.

The ceiling stretched out until it reached a fissure. Light bled in from outside, diffuse but bright enough for me to see within the cavernous space. Something shimmered from the ceiling to the floor of the opening, as though it had plastic wrap blocking it off. Probably a protection spell of some sort, not that it was needed. The opening was much too far away for anyone to jump from it to me. Even if they managed, I was two stories down or so, out of reach.

I pushed myself to sitting, my head swimming. The platform beneath me swayed over a drop of at least a couple of stories.

A sea of spikes, each probably a person tall, good and thick, completely covered the ground below me except for one small path leading to a shadowy area that probably had an exit.

Swell.

Even if I could escape this rusty cage from yesteryear, I couldn’t jump down from that height without breaking something or dying, and if I missed the small landing strip, or hit it and bounced, I’d find myself not just broken, but impaled.

The haze cleared from my mind as I arranged my feet in a more comfortable sitting position and sucked on my lip for a moment. Obviously flying would fix several of my problems. I could safely land or even try for that opening.

What was the magic covering the opening, though? Could I handle it? Assuming it wasn’t plastic wrap, of course. And if not, would that same magic be over the exit that was sure to be at the bottom of this place?

I pushed to standing, wobbled, and reached for one of the bars. Rough, cold steel greeted me. At least there wasn’t magic on my somewhat rickety cage. That was something.

A rectangular block of steel interrupted the vertical bars, and I threaded my hand through the bars so I could feel it out. There was a keyhole in the other side. I shoved at the door and then wiggled it. Not much give, made of strong stuff, and there was no way my muscles were up to the task. Ivy House had made me stronger, but there were limits.

This was definitely a limit.

I’d likely found the prison that one kidnapper was talking about. The holding cell. Or to use a different name, the rendezvous point for the mysterious contract holder to come and collect me from whomever had managed to grab me.

“So okay,” I murmured, sticking my finger into the keyhole and wishing the door open. Nothing happened. I’d half hoped my subconscious would take care of that. “I just need to learn how to magically pick a lock, tear down some sort of shimmery magical wall, and then finally learn how to fly and get out of here. Nothing to it.”

“What?”

I froze as the voice floated through the air before waning.

“What?” I asked back.

A shuffling sound preceded a sort of large hominid character hobbling into my line of sight, long strands of matted hair hanging off its head and down its body, like an upright shaggy dog.

A few feet from its starting location, it stopped and turned, hair and shadow draping its face, and a great mustache and even more impressive beard reaching down to its chest. Only the nose was visible, a large spectacle that hopefully meant a keen sense of smell or it was just overkill.

“What?” it—he?—asked again, that single word somehow managing to sound slow and deep and ancient.

“Oh. I didn’t know you were there,” I said, pulling my finger out of the lock.

“What did you say?”

Slower, I repeated, “I…didn’t…know—”

“Yes, yes, I heard all of that. What did you say before? I missed it.”

It clearly meant when I was talking to myself.

“Nothing. I was just…taking stock of my situation.” I wrapped my fingers around the bars. “Why are you holding me?”

“I am not. I am guarding you.”

I wiggled the bars. “From whom?”

He paused, staring up at me. “They didn’t say.”

“Right, fine. For whom, then.”

“Your captors.”

I rattled the door, ripping off the connection to my team so I could get their locations. To my horror, nothing registered. I couldn’t feel any of them.

I used my magical Morse code.

“Ivy House?”

“Who are my captors?” I said through clenched teeth, waiting for a response.

“The people who put you in there.”

Silence greeted me, not even a wash of feelings from home base.

Panic slithered across my mind.

“Are you trying to be difficult?” I yelled, losing control.

“No.”

I leaned my head against the bars, willing patience. “Who are the people who put me in here?”

“Mages. Women. Very brusque, if you ask me.”

I was going to ask for their names, or who they worked for, but at the moment it made no difference. I had to get out of here. The question, as ever, was how.

“How long will I be in here? What are they going to do next?”

“Yes, that is a good question. It has been a long while since I have been solely in charge of this mountain, and for the last…oh, many years, this holding cell has been nonoperational. I agreed to guard it because that was my job of old, and also because they surprised me with the task, but…” He scratched his hairy stomach with his furry hand. “Well, I never really cared for this job. My home is in the wild. In the woods. There are no woods within the mountain. Besides, I don’t much like the problems of the magical world. Very dramatic. Did you know…” He tilted his head back up to me, and the hair on his face moved, as though he were smiling. “They think I am one of their Bigfoots. Absurd, I know. That’s just a made-up creature. But…” He nodded at me, his hand still resting on his belly. “I’m something of a legend around here. Maybe not as big as my cousin up north in those redwoods, but I have a nice little following around here, hunting the trees for me, trying to get a peek. Sometimes I show them a little leg, as it were. Maybe dart between the trees, too fast for a photo. You have to be quick in this day and age, though. Their little cameras are so fast. Much faster than those old upright, standing cameras. Remember those? Better picture, too. I have to be on my game. It keeps me busy. Kind of slow in the winter months, though.”

My knuckles were white on the bars. “You are welcome to haunt my woods. They’re glorious, and I have a diligent groundskeeper. If you let me out, you can roam to your heart’s content. I’ll even let you flash the locals—whatever you’re into. Or money. How about money? I can give you—”

He shook his head. “I have no need for money.” He spread his arms. “I don’t wear clothes. Woods, though, huh?”

“Acres and acres. Have you heard of Ivy House? Down in—”

“Oh yes, Ivy House. Now there’s a name out of my memories. Ivy House, yes. Lovely woods, there. Enchanted woods, my favorite kind. I like the way the magic feels on my—”

“No, no.” I pushed my hand out through the bars. I was worried he might start talking about his begonias.

He knew of Ivy House, though. We couldn’t be too far away. Given his predilection for the woods and the size of this cave, we might be in the Sierras. Not far at all, in the grand scheme of things.

Not that it mattered if I couldn’t get him to let me out.

“Lots of enchanted woods and lovely gardens,” I pushed.

“I do love the taste of flowers. They are scarce this time of year.”

“We have lots of flowers! Our groundskeeper, he’s a vampire—”

The creature sucked in a breath.

“You don’t have to talk to the vampire,” I rushed to say. “You don’t even have to see him. He’s a little crazy anyway. I get it.”

“Vampires are not the right sort. I used to try to capture them so I could pop off their heads and bowl them through the rest of their kind.”

“Right.” I grimaced. That was gruesome. “Well…he’s pretty tame. He’s really old. He got kicked out of his—”

“But I do so love flowers. Magical woods produce the best-tasting flowers.”

“Yes. We have lots and lots. The…groundskeeper wins the local festival every year for his gardening. That’s how good he is.”

The creature dropped his hand from his belly and looked back at that shadowy area. “My duty is to guard the prisoner. I cannot go back on my duty.”

“But”—hand still pushed through the bars, I stuck out a finger—“if you don’t get paid for it, is it really your obligation? You don’t even like the job. Maybe you should break the mold, let me out, and go back to—”

“I do love flowers,” he murmured, still looking at the shadowy area. “I’m salivating even thinking about them.”

“You could just free me and go.” I shrugged. “We have trespassers on Ivy House that you could scare, and then you could feast on all the flowers. Bring me down, and—”

“Oh no. They might hear. The crank is very rusty. I nearly went deaf trying to get you up there.”