Page 59 of Hunted

I shoved open the door to the spare room inside of which my grandmothers had placed their teleportation rune. Only as soon as the door swung open, I knew, something was wrong. I stopped in my tracks, eyes wide, my heart now wedged in my throat and beating hard and fast against the sides of my neck.

“Oh no,” Tallin said. “There are boxes in here. Why are there boxes in here?!”

“And there’s another door in the back, there,” I said, shaking my head. “This isn’t the right room.”

“How can that be?” asked Valerian. “This is the only other door on this floor!”

“It’s the creature,” I said, “It has to be.” Valerian was about to take a step into the room. I grabbed him and stopped him. “Wait, don’t!” I yelped.

“Why?” he asked. “Maybe the rune is on the other side of that door.”

“Or maybe we’re only going deeper into this thing’s maze. Look around. We’re still in the living room, with the fireplace, the kitchen, and even the ex—” I stopped mid-sentence. The fireplace was there, and so was the kitchen, but the front door had disappeared; it had been replaced by a solid stone wall.

“How did it do that so fast?!” I yelled.

“Maybe your grandmothers’ runes weren’t as strong as they thought,” Valerian said.

“Or maybe it’s gotten more powerful?” Tallin asked.

“We need a way out of here,” I said.

“It’s not like we have many options,” Valerian said. “If the front door is gone, and this room has changed, it may already be too late to get out of here.”

I scanned the living room again. Everything was as it had been a moment ago; from the fireplace to the couch and the blankets on it, all the way down to Tallin’s small bowl of chocolate milk. The front door was gone, replaced by a stone wall, but next to it was a small table, and on it, that telephone my grandmothers had used to call us on.

“Can you get that thing working?” I asked Valerian. “Can you contact my grandmothers?”

“I can try… why?” he asked.

“I may have an idea.”

“I don’t like the sound of that,” Tallin said.

“If you have any suggestions between now and thirty seconds from now, feel free to chime in. Otherwise, stay away fromthatwall over there.”

“Oh my Gods…” Tallin said, and he moved behind the couch, across from the wall in which the fireplace stood.

I positioned myself in front of it, standing on the rug Tallin had been relaxing on moments ago. I didn’t know if I was going to be able to make this work, but I was going to have to dig into this newfound magic I had been practicing and use it to get us the hell out of here.

Somehow.

Valerian reached the phone, picked up the handset, and started dialing the numbers on the piece of paper underneath it. He looked over at me once the last number had been keyed in, and even though it looked like he had found a signal, he wasn’t sure if that was going to work either.

If my grandmothers didn’t know what was happening to us, and they assumed everything was fine, they would return to this cabin tomorrow to find it empty—assuming I could make this work, and we were able to escape. Otherwise, they might show up to the cabin to find three half-frozen corpses.

I didn’t want that for them.

I didn’t want that for us, either.

“Hello?” Valerian asked. “Is that Helen?”

“They answered?!” I shrieked.

“Helen, the creature is here. We are going to try—yes, I don’t know how it found us—please, listen to me. Amara is going to try to get us… hello? Hello?!”

Valerian pulled the handset away from his ear, slammed it against the phone, and then picked it up again. He looked over at me, his expression made of stone. He shook his head. “I don’t know what happened,” he said. “The connection ended.”

“It has to be the creature’s doing,” said Tallin. “We need to get out of here. Right now!”