Alicia swore. I froze, immobilized by the blackness around me. As much as I appreciated any attempts to slow Alicia down, I was kind of at a loss myself.
I felt Adrian's hand grab hold of mine, and without a word, he tugged me farther into the living room. I followed quickly, relying on his superior vampire eyesight to guide us. I could already hear Alicia chanting and was sure some light-giving spell was coming soon. Either that or something that would magically fix a fuse box.
"Careful," Adrian murmured. "Stairs."
Sure enough, I felt my foot hit a wooden step. He and I hurried down as quietly and as quickly as we could, descending into a basement. My eyes still hadn't adjusted to the darkness, and I wondered if I'd just entered some secret dungeon. Yet as he wound us through stacks of boxes, I realized the basement was just used for ordinary storage. There was a lot of junk down here. After seeing Ms. Terwilliger's already messy house, I wondered what more she could possibly own.
Adrian finally stopped when we were in a far corner behind some oblong boxes stacked nearly as high as me. He pulled me to him, keeping me in his arms so that he could speak softly in my ear. My head lay against his chest, and I could hear his rapid heartbeat, a mirror for my own.
"That was a good idea," I said in as low a voice as I could manage. "But now we're trapped down here. It would've been better if we could go outside."
"I know," he whispered back. "But she was too close to the door, and I didn't have time to mess with a window."
Above us, I could hear the floor creaking as Alicia walked through the house. "It's just a matter of time," I said.
"I was hoping it'd give you a chance to think of something to get us out of here. Can't you use that fireball? You were pretty good at it."
"Not inside. Especially not in a basement. I'd burn this place down around us. And we don't know where Ms. Terwilliger is yet." I racked my brain. The house was small enough that there weren't that many places Alicia could have stashed Ms. Terwilliger. And I had to assume she was stashed somewhere, if she hadn't come to our aid already. Alicia's language made it sound like she hadn't sucked away Ms. Terwilliger's power yet, so hopefully she was just incapacitated.
"You must be able to do something," said Adrian, tightening his hold on me. "You're brilliant, and you've been reading all those spell books."
It was true. I'd consumed tons of material these last couple of months - material I wasn't even supposed to have learned - but somehow, in this one terrified moment, my mind couldn't focus on any of it. "I've forgotten everything."
"No, you haven't." His voice in the darkness was calm and reassuring. He smoothed back my hair and pressed one of those half kisses to my forehead. "Just relax and focus. Sooner or later, she'll be coming down those stairs after us. We need to take her out or at least slow her down so that we can escape."
His reasonable words centered me and allowed the gears of logic that ran my life to take over again. A little light was coming through from the basement's small, high windows, allowing my eyes to finally adjust and make out some of the dark shapes in the basement. I could still hear Alicia moving around upstairs, so I crept away from Adrian and walked over to the staircase. With a few graceful hand arcs, I chanted a spell over the steps and then hurried back to my corner with Adrian, slipping back under the shelter of his arm.
"Okay," I said. "I think I've got a minor delay ready."
"What is it?" he asked.
Just then, we heard the door at the top of the stairs open. Light spilled down, though we still remained in the shadows. "You're out of options," I heard Alicia say. "No place left to - ahh!"
There was a loud thump-thump-thump-thump as she went sliding down the stairs and hit the bottom with a crack.
"Invisible ice on the stairs," I told Adrian.
"I know I'm not supposed to say this," he said. "But I think I love you more than ever."
I took his hand and tried not to think about how happy his words made me, even in this life-or-death situation. "Come on."
We left our hiding spot and found Alicia sprawled ungracefully on the floor, trying to get to her feet. A silver orb of light hovered in the air near her, bobbing along faithfully with her movements. Seeing us, she snarled and waved her hands to cast at us. I'd anticipated this and had an amulet ready. I swung it on its silken cord and said a few quick words as we passed her. A brief, shimmering shield flared between us and her, just barely absorbing the small glowing darts she hurled our way. The shield was similar to the one Ms. Terwilliger had used at the park but had to be summoned on the spot and didn't last long.
I didn't know what Alicia planned on doing next, but obviously, something bad was coming. I cast a preemptive spell I'd never used before, one of the ones that Ms. Terwilliger had told me not to bother with. It took a lot of energy and was powerful if used correctly, yet was deceptively simple and elegant in its effects. I merely blasted Alicia across the room with a wave of power just as she was about to stand. She flew backward, into a stack of Christmas items. A box of ornaments fell down, shattering near her on the hard floor.
Casting the spell left me dizzy, but I managed to keep moving. I summoned a fireball when we reached the stairs but held it in my hand, keeping it low as though I were going to roll a Skee-Ball - though my intent was simply to carry it. I prayed it would melt the ice, and after my first few steps, I knew I was right. "Careful," I warned Adrian. "They're wet."
We made it to the top, but Alicia had already scrambled after us. From the bottom of the stairs, she used the same spell on me that I'd used on her, throwing a wave of invisible energy at Adrian and me that knocked us to the floor. I'd been holding on to the fireball, despite Ms. Terwilliger's warnings about how doing so would drain my own power. When Alicia knocked me down, the fireball flew from my hand and landed on Ms. Terwilliger's couch. Considering it looked as though it was covered in some cheap fabric from the 1970s, I wasn't entirely surprised that it lit up so fast.
On the bright side, the fire solved our darkness problem. On the downside, it meant the house was likely going to burn down around us after all. The callistana, who hadn't been fast enough to keep up with us when we'd gone downstairs, came scurrying over to my side. I had only half a heartbeat to make a decision.
"Go look in the rest of the house for Ms. Terwilliger," I told Adrian. "I'll stop Alicia."
The growing fire created weird shadows on his face, highlighting his anguish at this. "Sydney."