Tempt the Stars

you.”
    Marlowe blinked again at the implication. But then forged ahead anyway. “I wouldn’t be worried if I knew why you were there. It could hardly have been on behalf of a consul you did not even know at the time.”
    “I never said it was.”
    “Then
why
?”
    Yeah, I thought dizzily, why?
    And then the stones started to heat up again.
    No! I thought, kicking my legs, trying to get Jonas’ attention. Not yet!
    And got smacked on the butt for my efforts.
    Son of a—
    Another jerk, and this time, I was up to my neck. Which would have been an improvement, except that now I couldn’t breathe at all. There was some agitated grasping going on in a way that would have been overly familiar if I hadn’t been about to suffocate. And either the moon had just gone behind a cloud or the room was starting to dim.
    That wasn’t a great sign, and neither was the blood suddenly pounding in my ears, or the heart fluttering in my chest, or the damned moving bricks, which felt like they were trying to behead me. But the worst part was, I couldn’t
hear
.
    But it looked like Mircea had recovered, and was back to doing what he always did, soothing frazzled nerves, calming ruffled feathers, getting people to listen. And Marlowe was. The dark eyes were still sharp and still guarded, but his stance had relaxed somewhat, and the intelligent face was thoughtful. He looked like he might be buying it.
    Whatever it was, I thought angrily as darkness flooded my vision, making it impossible even to lip read. Not that I could have concentrated enough with the rocks around my neck suddenly going nuclear. I’d have screamed in pain if I’d had the breath, or flailed around had my arms not been trapped like the rest of me. Only that wasn’t true a second later, when strong hands grabbed me again, and pulled and yanked and
heaved
—
    And thump.
    And rattle and
crash
.
    And
wheeeeeeeee
, loud enough to threaten my eardrums.
    What the hell?
    I pried my nose out of a dusty stretch of carpet and saw Jonas’ grim face looking down at me for a second. And then he said something—harsh, guttural, frightening— and I decided that maybe I’d hit the floor too hard. Because it looked like the room suddenly came alive.
    “Get up!” he barked as an armoire on the far wall threw itself across the room and slammed into the door.
    And had a fist punched through it for its trouble.
    A lamp hurled after it, barely missing my head as I was hauled to my feet, only to shatter against the impressive pile of furniture piling up at the opening. Another lamp lay splintered on the floor—the rattle and crash I’d heard earlier, I guessed—like maybe I’d kicked it when I came loose. But that still didn’t explain—
    “Isn’t that a ward?” I yelled over the unearthly shriek as we ran through a connecting door into the next room, which was shifting and changing as much as the last one. And flinging its contents behind us.
    “Yes,” Jonas said abruptly, flattening us against the wall as a four-poster bed squeezed past.
    “But . . . I thought . . . you took care of them,” I gasped.
    “I did!” Jonas said indignantly. “But when one is forced to exert enough magic to level a small town, one
    tends to trip even the most inadequate of wards!”
    “Sorry?”
    Jonas didn’t even bother responding to that. He just yanked me through the middle of two overstuffed armchairs that were muscling past and out into the hallway. Only to abruptly jerk me back again.
    I didn’t understand why until the furniture around us suddenly stopped trying to fit through the connecting door and launched itself at the one to the hall instead. We dodged out of the way and then joined the stream flowing out. Only to see a wall of heavy oak pieces, almost ceiling high, trying to bulldoze a path down the hall to the office.
    Trying and failing.
    Maybe because someone on the other side was quickly turning them to splinters.
    We spun back around to see the same thing happening on the other end of the hall, alongside the fireplace room. Antique pieces and old bits of junk were working in a solid mass, twisting and dodging and trying to hold back massive blows from the other side, which nonetheless kept sending pieces flying back at us. A painting of a woman in nineteenth-century dress was getting batted around the surface of the pile, her comically open mouth looking like she was yelling for help as someone did his best to turn the mountain into a molehill.
    And