The Heart of the Phoenix by Brian Knight Read Free Book Online Page B

decided to meet the mysterious note-writer on their terms, not his, and so Zoe was nowhere to be seen.
    Penny and Katie settled into a tense silence, waiting, and a few minutes later the door creaked open one more time, admitting Ellen to the hollow.
    Ellen spotted them and seemed to relax a little. She closed the door almost prissily, winced when the latch clicked, and moved closer to the fire pit.
    “Did one of you guys send that crazy note?” She sounded somewhere between annoyed and impressed.
    Before either Penny or Katie could answer, a new voice spoke from the darkness.
    “No, that would be me.”
    The girls turned in unison, Ellen letting out a small scream as they saw a man-shaped figure standing on the other side of the creek. He was a lightless shadow figure, squat and stout, shapeless in what was a robe or long coat. The tall shadow of a hat perched on his head rang a small bell in Penny’s memory, which was silenced a moment later when she saw the wand in his hand.
    “Where is Zoe? I was expecting her as well.”
    “Zoe couldn’t make it,” Penny said.
    “That is unfortunate,” the man said, then raised his wand and pointed it at her.
    Penny dove to the side, noting that Katie had dropped down behind one of the larger boulders ringing the fire pit and Ellen had darted into the trees at the hollow’s perimeter. She felt the heat and wind of a spell that just missed her, heard the whoosh as it came close enough to blow her hair back, and she fired a spell back at the man.
    It missed him by a few feet, she heard the crack as it hit the stone beside him, and she had a moment to hope Rocky had gotten out of the way when she fired. She landed a second later, her impact causing a flaring pain in the shoulder that Turoc, the terrifying humanoid snake they had fought only a few months before, had bitten. Her wand flew from her hand.
    After a short, stunned moment she lifted her head and saw the man block a second spell, a bolt of electricity from Katie’s wand. It crackled across his shield, lighting him in a spectral blue glow, and Penny recognized him by its light. It was Erasmus, the strange man she’d met in town that day. His white cane was nowhere in sight now, and though he still wore his dark glasses, he wasn’t fighting like a blind man.
    A sudden, strong gust of wind whipped past her, rustling the canopy of willow limbs that framed Aurora Hollow like a green curtain. It danced across the creek and pulled water into it like a miniature tsunami, buffeting the man. His long jacket whipped around him, covering his face for a moment, jerking the tall black hat from his head. The hair beneath it was a tangled nest of long and thick dreadlocks. They danced in the wind as he freed his arms from the entangling coat, but when the wind died a moment later they continued to dance. One dove down the back of his coat and emerged again a second later holding a second wand.
    Erasmus shouted something indecipherable as Penny struggled to her feet and searched for her dropped wand, and something hit her hard enough to knock her flat again. Katie hit the ground beside her, and Ellen fell with a cry, deeper in the trees out of their sight.
    Grunting with frustration, Penny conjured her special power, the thing Ronan once told her he had heard only in old legends but had never seen. The Phoenix Fire that had been a gift from their old, sentient book blazed to life in the palm of her right hand, warming her skin but not burning it, and she threw it at the man.
    She watched as the wand held high by his living dreadlock began to aim, but Rocky disengaged himself from the rock wall behind him and tried to wrestle the wand away from it. The strange man’s full head of living hairy appendages attacked Rocky in turn and soon had him bound tightly and suspended over Erasmus’s head.
    Penny’s Phoenix Fire hit the man before he could raise his other wand in defense, and he was soon sheathed in the bright but harmless flames,