Something Wikkid This Way Comes by Nicole Peeler Read Free Book Online Page B

have to respond; the question is rhetorical.
    “This whole thing is impossible,” she continues. “I know this school like the back of my hand, as do you. There’s not supposed to be a wall there. I’m even looking at a map. No room.”
    I don’t say anything back, waiting for my chance. The missing girls have all stood up now and are pacing around Shar as if sizing her up. Some walk forward to touch her curiously. The bolder ones kiss her. Shar’s happy to keep them entertained. They’re also starting to talk more animatedly, so I chance a whisper.
    “Old magic,” I hiss, sotto voce .
    “Of course,” Moo says, still sounding remarkably calm. “Did you feel it?”
    “Against my shields. The tingle,” I whisper, under cover of chatter.
    “Well, that throws a wrench into our plans,” Moo says.
    I want to say, “No shit,” but I don’t risk it. I know we’re in trouble.
    The thing is, my ability to camouflage is a secret, but it’s not my real secret. My real secret is that, when I’m in camo mode, I’m not as vulnerable to certain types of magic as I should be. The magic Moo and I use, the magic that all of our kind uses, runs off different kinds of elemental forces. Unfortunately, it’s this type of regular elemental magic that my camo doesn’t really affect. So, if Moo threw a mage ball at me I’d probably be toast. But there are other types of magic than just elemental. And it’s the old magic—that which existed before there was my kind, the magic that I suspect is real magic—to which I’m immune. This immunity became obvious when I was a child. I’d play Find-and-Seek with our house brownie, Terk. Brownies use only old magic, and Terk couldn’t apparate me if I had my camo up. He should have been able to sense and apparate me, or make me appear in front of him, and he could when I wasn’t camouflaged. But if I was camoed, I wasn’t just invisible to him, I was also immune to his magic.
    While this power probably sounds awesome, it really isn’t. Creatures that use old magic are incredibly rare. So my having this ability is like being a human soldier who’s immune to nuclear strike, but who can still be shot or stabbed. The chances of the former happening are slim to none, while the latter is an imminent threat.
    Moo’s gone quiet, and I know she’s working through something. Finally, I hear her voice in my ear.
    “I can’t feel anything. There are no power signatures anywhere. If anything, the school is a void.”
    At Moo’s words, my inner lightbulb goes off—that special bulb that illuminates when we’ve been idiots. I swear to myself and nod my head like crazy. Moo can’t see me nod, but she can see the movement of the camera. I’m trying to tell her, “Yes, it is odd,” emphatically. It works.
    “Of course it’s strange,” she says, and she’s as close as an Alfar can get to a frustrated groan. “It’s always been a blank, but there should be something swirling around these walls, even if it’s just from elemental power in the earth and the air. The water in the pipes. But we don’t get anything from that school.”
    Moo’s nailed it. There’s something very powerful in the school. Something that doesn’t want to be found. Something that likes young women and sacrificing pigeons.
    It really is a seventies horror film.
    My attention is drawn back to the center of the pentagram, where Shar’s greeting all the missing girls. She’s doing a good job pretending she doesn’t know them, even though we have every single one of their files memorized.
    There are the first three gone missing: Laura, Rachel, and Alyssa. Their school photos show awkward young women in the sort of clothes women wear to hide ourselves: big jeans and bulky sweatshirts. But now they’re wearing an odd mélange of random sexiness. One girl’s sporting bikini bottoms with a small sweater, another has on a leather vest and men’s boxers, while another girl is wearing only a lei and a smile.