The only difference I could see was that my necklace had become partly imbedded in the clay thanks to my gyrations on the floor. Only it wasn’t just a necklace, was it? It was a talisman. Like the control crystals the golems had but mine hadn’t, because it had shattered and broken when the demon left.
I was so proud of myself for figuring this out that I forgot there were two dark mages headed my way, until I saw the utter panic on my own half-frozen face.
Shit.
I grabbed the necklace off my body and shoved it harder into the clay. And then tried to draw my wayward left leg, which was still trying to do its own thing, back inside my smelly suit. And felt it click back into place.
And this time, it moved under my command, although my coordination left something to be desired. But I managed to get my new big feet under me anyway, and stood up. And found the body to be amazingly light, no heavier feeling than mine, maybe even less so.
Maybe clay was a decent choice, after all.
“What happened?” one of the mages demanded, advancing with his hand on a holster.
“Nothing,” I said as my leg tried to poke out the side again. “Don’t—don’t come any closer.”
“Why not?”
“Uh, it’s a trap,” I said, feeling around inside the golem’s leg with my wayward one, which didn’t seem to fit. Maybe because the golem was something like seven feet tall and I wasn’t. But no, no, no, you’re a soul, I reminded myself. You don’t have a size anymore.
But my brain didn’t believe it, and my brain kept insisting that I didn’t fit. And the second mage had now joined the first. And both were looking at me suspiciously as I juddered around, doing the golem equivalent of the hokey pokey.
“What kind of trap?” the second mage demanded, from beside his buddy.
“That kind,” I said, and knocked their heads together.
It felt like I’d barely touched them, but their skulls sounded like melons hitting pavement, and they went down in a heap. I swallowed, feeling sick, but then my head jerked up at the sound of fighting coming from the main hall.
And damn it, Armageddon had just broken out, and I had to go.
There was no doubt at all that another me and a trio of dangerous witches were now in the house, and would soon be thundering through the second-floor hallway somewhere over our heads. And a moment after that, they would be gone, when the girls escaped and the past version of me disappeared. And a moment after that, the house was set to blow up.
I grabbed Billy and ran.
Chapter Thirty-nine
I stumbled into the stairwell and over the mage’s body, up the stairs and around a bend. And damn, this thing didn’t corner well! But it was fast, like, faster than I was, if you didn’t mind hitting the wall a couple dozen times on the way. And right now, I didn’t, despite the fact that my lolling body was starting to look a little worse for the wear by the time we burst out into the hall.
And straight into a bunch of mages tearing out of Agnes’ old rooms, weapons at the ready.
Because, of course—they’d heard the commotion, too, hadn’t they?
For a second, everything stopped. I looked at them and they looked at me, and nobody said anything. I would have swallowed, but I couldn’t currently do that, or frozen in fear, but that hadn’t been working so well lately, either. So after a moment, I just straightened my massive shoulders.
And walked right through the middle of them.
Because we were on the same side now, weren’t we?
It might not have worked under other conditions. But with the chaos from downstairs as a backdrop, they didn’t stop to question me. They took off again, flooding by on either side, heading for the fight. Forcing me to wade through a leather tide to reach the door of the suite again, only to stop and stare.
At the last thing I’d have ever expected.
My time spell was gone, along with maybe half the mages. The rest were clustered over by the safe, where one of their number was hard at work on the wards. Rico was by the sofa, frozen, with a hand raised and a snarl on his features. Fred was still missing.
And Rhea, little Miss Meek Voice, little Miss Whatever-You-Say-Lady, little Miss We-Wear-Grandma’s-Nightgown-and-We-Like-It, was standing in the middle of the room, wand out and leveled on the redhead. And screaming, “Did you know?”
“Oh, look,” the acolyte said. “The coven witch is going to curse us.”
“Did. You. Know?”