mouths by the time they stumbled into the next room. Panting, she spun to look at the kaleidoscope room. It had returned to normal.
“What the hell!” she said. “You stopped the magic in the pottery room, but no’ this?”
Ian shook his head, his hands laced with tiny cuts that dripped blood. “I tried. There was a specific route to walk through the room. I stayed on it, but it didn’t work. The magic has mutated.”
“So that’s really possible?” She hadn’t wanted to believe it. She peered at the tiny cuts on her hands. They were so small that they were healing quickly, thank gods.
“With this much time? Aye. Magic is no’ my strength. We’ll still get to the vault, it will just be trickier.”
Shite. What about the rest of the museum? She looked around at the landing they’d stumbled onto. Wide marble stairs went three stories down to the main floor, with expansive marble landings on each level. In the middle of the stairwell, with the square-oriented stairs wrapping around it, was a huge steam engine from the late eighteenth century.
Boulton and Watt steam engine, the sign said, invented by the Scotsman James Watt. It was nearly thirty feet tall and thirty feet long. Its great wheel, beam, cylinder, and many pipes all looked gray and ominous in the low light of the stairwell.
“Wait here,” Ian said.
She nodded and watched him sprint across the landing to the rail surrounding the stairwell. He leaned over and pressed his palm to the side of the steam engine.
The great beam and wheel of the engine creaked, then began to spin and pump.
Oh, damn.
It was turning on, steam pouring out of the machine magically fast and beginning to fill the space. Her skin burned from the heat.
“Shite,” Ian said. “Come on!”
She ran to him. He grabbed her hand and yanked her down the stairs.
She could barely see, and stumbled at the first landing. Ian righted her.
Faster. If they didn’t make it out of this stairwell soon, they’d burn to death in the steam filling the space. By the next landing, the metal hand rail had turned hot as a stove. She yanked her hand away and flew down the last set of stairs blindly, unable to see through the steam.
Her skin felt like it was on fire and her lungs were drowning in hot steam as she stumbled out of the huge stairwell and into the main lobby of the museum.
Sudden silence and cold. Her wet clothes stuck to her rapidly cooling skin as she gratefully sucked in the fresh air of the lobby. Ian stood next to her, panting and wet.
She nodded, still unable to speak, and propped her hands on her knees. When she’d finally caught her breath, she asked, “That was wrong too, wasn’t it?”
“Aye. My touch should have deactivated the spell. But it dinna.”
Damn. Stable magic was hard to create. So now, everything was going haywire. What would be coming at them next? They were still four rooms away from the basement entrance. The expansive lobby spread out from the stairs, the glass ceiling soaring three stories above. Moonlight shone upon the marble floor.
Fiona squinted toward the big admissions desk along the wall. It wasn’t empty. A guard lay slumped over the desk, a dagger protruding from his back.
“Holy shite. The demons have beaten us here.”
“Aye. Come on, then.” Ian nodded toward the east wing. The entrance to the basement was tucked at the end, right past medieval, ancient, and geological history. If only it had been in the west wing, the one he’d blown up, the magic would all be gone. She could have sailed right though.
She cursed and followed him through the huge room, praying that the lack of artifacts in the lobby meant that there were no enchantments here to get them.
They hesitated at the entrance to the next room. Suits of armor. They lined the walls and marched down the middle of the room, metal gleaming dully in the dim light.
“These will fight us?” she asked.
“Aye. Give me a moment. And be ready to run.” He slipped into the room and approached the first suit of armor along the wall. He set his hand on its shoulder and said, “I am Ian MacKenzie.”
Fiona held her breath. The helmeted head nodded slowly, the metal shifting.
Ian’s shoulders relaxed and he nodded at her. “Should be good.”