Free Masquerade (Creepy Hollow, #4) by rachel morgan Page A

don’t know what I’m really after, do you?”
    “I would if you just told—”
    “Enough!” He holds his hand up. “I know what you are trying to do, young trainee. Distract me by getting me to tell you everything I plan to do, after which you hope to escape and take your information to the Guild. But that isn’t going to happen. This is the point where we stop talking and I lock you up in one of those cages next door.” He pauses. “Unless, of course, you’d like to try and stop me?”
    A whip and sword blaze into existence in my hands. “Hell, yeah.” He doesn’t think I’m going down without a fight, does he?
    His lips twitch slightly. “Well, you might like to know that I have some . . . energy reserves.” He reaches into a pocket and pulls out the griffin disc. Then another, and another, and another . Oh, crapping crap. There’s more than one of those things? Angelica omitted that little bit of information. Zell’s grin is triumphant. “It’s going to be a long, long time before I run out of power.”
    He hits my shield with a blast of magic. I strengthen the shield, letting my whip and sword fizzle into nothing. I’ll never get close enough to use them. I probably won’t even be able to shoot an arrow, because the moment I drop my shield Zell will hit me with something.
    Think, think, think. Magic continues to pummel my shield, and I’m losing power just keeping it intact. I take note of what’s around me. Table, papers, chandelier, broken glass. I can use them all if I’m fast enough. I slowly move away from the door, hoping that Ryn doesn’t do something stupid like come running through it.
    Abruptly, I drop to the ground, let the shield vanish, and send the shards of glass speeding through the air toward Zell. He freezes them in midair just in front of his face. Dammit . The glass tinkles onto the ground as I roll behind the table. I send a gust of air around the room, stirring up the papers stuck to the wall. The gust becomes a gale, and the papers detach. They fly madly about, mixing with the swirl of papers blown off the table.
    Zell lets out a shriek of rage and begins wildly firing magic beneath the table. I scramble over to the wide central leg and sit with my back to it while I conjure up an invisible bubble of protection around myself. Once I’m completely shielded, I crawl out. In the midst of the tornado of papers, I jump onto the table. “Come and get me, you little faerie freak!”
    He jumps up a second later, and a jet of green flames hits the shield right in front of my face. Concentrating on holding the shield in place and keeping the wind going, I jump. I flip backward through the papers and land on my feet. Drop shield, stop wind, shoot at chandelier . My flash of magic hits the chain attaching the chandelier to the ceiling. Zell looks up just as the mass of metal, candle and flame smashes down on him.
    He lies still beneath the wreckage. Flames lick the pages on the table and begin to consume them. I run back to the room with the cages. “Did you find her?” I call, trying to figure out where Ryn is.
    I get a number of shouts in response. Looking up, I realize many of the prisoners are awake. They talk over one another. Some begin to swing their cages.
    “Who are you?”
    “Can you free us?”
    “She’s here to hurt us, don’t talk to her!”
    I look from one desperate face to the next. How can I possibly save all these people?
    “Violet, over here.” I run in the direction of Ryn’s voice. After passing a number of cages, I see him. A small figure in a nightdress is wrapped tightly in his arms, and an empty cage swings back and forth. Calla clings tightly to her brother while he kisses her forehead and then buries his face in her hair. He whispers something to her, and in that moment, watching the two of them, I feel utterly alone.
    Ryn looks up; his eyes meet mine. “What happened?”
    I clear my throat. “Zell’s down, but not for long. We have to get