To Prevent Clear Paths Read online

  Magical Mayhem Part 3:

  To Prevent Clear Paths

  by Emily Martha Sorensen

  Copyright © 2017 Emily Martha Sorensen

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1: The Downstairs

  Chapter 2: The Lunchroom

  Chapter 3: The Upstairs

  Chapter 4: The Bedroom

  Next Book

  Chapter 1: The Upstairs

  Following Kendra down into the dungeons, Chronos was in a rather sour mood. She reflected on the past few days and wondered what, exactly, she was supposed to have done to deserve this.

  “Always read your contracts before you sign!” Kendra called in a singsong voice as she skipped down the stairs two at a time.

  Other than that, Chronos thought grumpily.

  Lining each of the long walls below her was a long row of ten cages. They were classic steel bars, very sturdy, clearly intended for holding one or possibly more crowded prisoners in each. Perfect for a villain who meant to keep many people restrained. Except for one small, pesky detail: all the steel bars in between the cages had been removed, which meant that each row was more like one long, enormous cage.

  Oh, yes, and the locks on all of the cage doors were missing.

  Clutter crowded everywhere. There were cute little girl outfits flung all over the floor, dirty dishes in stacks of plates, bits of gears and tools, posters papering the walls, and many other esoteric things that were most likely magical technology imported from other worlds. There was also an ordinary-looking refrigerator parked against the short wall at the far end, incongruously.

  “So these are the dungeons,” Chronos muttered, looking around on her way down the stairs.

  A little blonde head popped up from behind a tall box. It belonged to a small girl who looked about ten, with fluffy pigtails dangling from each side of her head.

  “Oh, is Baron Deathwave dead?” the girl asked matter-of-factly. “Are you my new masters?”

  Chronos was unsure of how to respond to that. “I . . . suppose . . .”

  The little girl clapped her hands, her pigtails bobbing. “I haven’t had a girl master since Dusk Anesthesia got thrown in prison! I hope you’ll be nicer than she was! She never wanted to play with me and she told me to stop talking. Do you want to meet my new brainwasher? I named him Brian!”

  “Brainwasher,” Chronos said flatly.

  Is this actually a prisoner? she wondered. Or was this a minion?

  “How can you live in this dump?!” Kendra burst out.

  Chronos glanced in her direction. The former magical girl was staring at the piles of clutter and mess in clear horror.

  The prisoner-who-was-possibly-a-minion seemed to take this as a request for a tour. She hopped to her feet and pointed eagerly all over the room. “Well, there’s a bathroom over there, I sleep in this cell here, I get my food from there . . .”

  “A refrigerator,” Kendra said flatly, standing in front of the incongruous furnishing.

  “A refrigerator that automatically restocks itself from nearby grocery stores!” the little girl cried, waving her hands excitedly.

  “Does the refrigerator also pay for the food it takes?” Chronos asked suspiciously.

  The little girl opened her mouth to answer, and then she paused. Her eyes flicked from one side to the other. “I didn’t design it!”

  Terrific, Chronos thought. That’s another point in favor of “minion.” She’s clearly an accomplice in thievery.

  It would be bad enough to inherit somebody else’s prisoner, but somebody else’s minion . . . that would be far more difficult to get rid of, and you’d have to worry about previous loyalties.

  She had been starting to consider maybe staying, but this clinched it. There was no way she was going to deal with two unwanted minions when she didn’t even want to be a villain in the first place.

  Kendra would have been bad enough. The fact that the former magical girl did not take no for an answer would not have boded well for her obeying someone she claimed she wanted as a boss. But this certainly tipped the balance.

  “Kendra’s your new master,” Chronos said, turning to walk back up the stairs. “Listen to whatever she says. I’m leaving.”

  “Hang on!” Kendra shouted indignantly. “Did you not hear what I said about not being able to lead a new team?!”

  Chronos shrugged and started heading upward.

  Kendra teleported right in her path.

  Chronos sighed heavily. I should definitely never have given her that watch.

  “Ooh, do you have teleporting magic?” the little girl squealed from downstairs. “I wish I could do that! I would have gotten out of here aaaaaaaaages ago!”

  Reluctantly, her path blocked, Chronos turned around and trudged back down the stairs. Kendra followed close behind her.

  “I’ve been here for yeaaaaaaaaaaars,” the little girl said, flinging her arms wide. “Nobody ever lets me out. It’s really boring!”

  “I wonder why,” Kendra said, her voice heavy with irony. “Could it be because you’re a prisoner?”

  The little girl pouted. “I try to be useful. I try! But nobody ever lets me out! They’re so mean!”

  Chronos revised her opinion again. Prisoner. Prisoner who just wants to go home and is trying to make the best of a bad situation. She was starting to feel sorry for the kid.

  “Are you a born mage?” the little girl asked in a wistful tone. “I’ve always wanted to be a born mage. Then I could keep my magic forever.”

  Ha! Chronos thought. It’s not as appealing as it sounds!

  “No,” Kendra said shortly. “It’s magical technology.”

  “It’s the watch,” Chronos added, pointing at Kendra’s wrist.

  Kendra gave her a heavy glare.

  What? Chronos thought. Was she trying to keep it a secret?

  “Ooh, I love magical technology!” the girl squealed. “Can I see can I see can I see?!”

  She bounced forward, but Kendra’s spiked halo was in her hand and pointed at the little girl’s face in a flash.

  The prisoner pouted. “I just wanted to seeeeeeeee!”

  “No touching,” Kendra snapped. “Stay back. Stay over there!”

  That’s a little harshly to treat a kid, isn’t it? Chronos thought, wondering what the problem was with the former magical girl. She shook her head.

  “Can I maybe upgrade it later?” the little girl asked hopefully from her spot several feet away. A wand with a pink heart on top and many ribbons spiraling underneath appeared in her hand. “I’m very good at upgrading things. They usually still work afterwards!”

  “Stay . . . over . . . there,” Kendra growled.

  “I can fix it if it breaks, too!” the little girl said excitedly. “Just watch! BREAK IT!”

  A shattering sound came from Kendra’s wrist. Shards of glass crumbled and tinked quietly to the concrete floor beneath them.

  Kendra stared at her wrist in aghast horror.

  “FIX IT!” the little girl cried, pointing her wand again.

  The watch was immediately good as new.

  “Never do that again!” Kendra roared.

  Chronos silently cursed herself for not taking the opportunity to escape while she could have. But this raised intriguing possibilities for the future. If all she had to do was to convince the little girl to break the watch and never fix it again, that would be the perfect solution to ditch her unwanted stalker of a former magical girl.

  Assuming that Kendra couldn’t find a way to fix it afterwards.

  “You needed to see,” the little girl said, as if that were obvious.

  Chronos frowned. Why in the world didn’t she just break the walls of the dungeons i
f she wanted to escape and get back home that badly? It didn’t quite make sense that someone who had the power to break things could be held prisoner. She felt like she was missing something.

  “Can you only use that power a few times a day?” Chronos asked.

  “No,” the little girl said. “I can use it whenever I want.”

  “Can you only use it on magical things?” Chronos hedged.

  “No,” the little girl said proudly. “I can fix and break anything.”

  “Then why are you still a prisoner here?!” Kendra expostulated. “You could have escaped anytime!”

  The little girl stared at her blankly. “Where would I go?”

  Of course, Chronos realized. She doesn’t know which way her home is. How could she? On top of that, there’s no easy way to transport to and from this lair if you can’t drive. We’re not exactly in a populated area.

  A plan was starting to form in Chronos’s mind. It was a pretty devious plan, for Chronos. She would ask Kendra to teleport the little girl home, and then the little girl could break the watch while Kendra was there. Then all that had to happen was that no one fixed the watch, and Chronos would be free. It was the perfect idea.

  “Kendra,” Chronos said, “can you take her back ho—”

  “No,” Kendra said immediately.

  “Then I’ll take her ba—” Chronos began, holding out her hand for the watch.

  “Do you think I’m stupid?!” Kendra asked incredulously.

  There seemed to be a slight wrinkle in the perfect plan.

  “What are you, anyway?” Kendra demanded, whirling on the prisoner. “A magical girl?’

  “Actually . . . I dunno.” The little girl put a finger to her mouth, tapping it thoughtfully. “I haven’t transformed in years.”

  “Have you tried?” Kendra asked.

  The little girl shrugged. “It doesn’t work anymore.”

  “Then you’re probably a verge,” Chronos said.

  “A whaaat?” the little girl asked. Her mouth opened in bafflement.

  “A verge,” Chronos said. “It’s short for ‘on the verge of losing magic.’ It refers to a magical girl who can’t transform anymore, but still retains some of her powers. Like Kendra.”

  “Wrong,” Kendra said.

  “That’s why you still have the ability to fix and break things,” Chronos explained. “Kendra still has some of her powers, too.”

  “Wrong,” Kendra said.

  “Of course, you won’t have any powers you used to have to transform to use, which is why Kendra being a verge isn’t as obvious, but in your case —”

  “Stop calling me that!” Kendra exploded. “I defected!”

  “Yes,” Chronos said dryly. “In order to save the world.”

  “That doesn’t matter!” Kendra screamed. “My powers are gone!”

  Chronos glanced down at the spiked weapon in the annoying lunatic’s hand. “Then how come you still have your halo?”

  Kendra started to speak. She stopped. She started to speak. She stopped. She stared at the spiky halo with huge eyes.

  “Right,” Chronos said. “If you’d quit, it would have crumbled. Instead, it changed form. I’m guessing you can’t transform any longer, but it’s possible you still can. If you just go back home —”

  “No!” Kendra shouted.

  Chronos sighed.

  “No,” Kendra grated, squeezing the golden halo with each of her fingers between two spikes. “I can’t go back home. I have to stop that future.”

  Chronos started to speak, to remind her with exasperation that that future was, in fact, gone — but then a shiver ran down her back.

  I can’t see any futures I’m involved in. How do I know whether that future really is gone forever, or whether it’s only missing from my power because I would now be mixed up in it?

  It was a horrifying thought, and she could find no comforting certainties to lean on as reassurances.

  She’d thought she’d stopped Cream Angel from changing into the frightening Avenging Angel forever. But what if she’d just triggered Avenging Angel’s existence in another way?

  I have to get away from Kendra, Chronos thought, her heart racing. I have to be so far removed that her futures will be clear to my sight again. Only then can I be sure we’ll be safe.

  But how could she do that when the former magical girl was determined to involve her in every possible future? Even if she did manage it, how could she ever be sure?

  “Maybe you should try to transform,” Chronos said. “Maybe we should find out for sure.”

  “No,” Kendra said. Her knuckles were white as she squeezed the golden halo in the places between the spikes. “My magic is gone. I’ve never had powers I could use while not transformed. I never saw the point.”

  “I saw the point,” the little girl said. “My masters always said to stop transforming because it was really loud and took forever and it drove them crazy —”

  “So what does it really matter?” Kendra went on, talking over top of her. “So I’m a verge. So what? What does it really mean? Nothing. It means nothing, that’s what.”

  She gripped the halo even more tightly. She didn’t even seem to notice that the spikes were digging into her flesh.

  It means that you can summon your focus item, Chronos thought. It means that any powers it had, it probably still does. It means that you can never lose it. That’s not nothing.

  She wasn’t sure if Kendra’s focus item was an heirloom. Probably not — but if it had once belonged to another magical girl, and been passed along to a new one before the original had lost her powers, it would permanently retain some of the magic from the original magical girl. Heirloom focus items were uncommon in the West, but they were considered highly desirable in Africa and Asia.

  “Did your focus item itself have any powers?” Chronos asked.

  “Boomerang,” Kendra said tensely. “It always came back to my hand, even if I didn’t actively summon it.”

  “See if it still does,” Chronos said.

  Kendra hesitated, but she threw back her arm and flung the halo across the room. It whirled in a bladed blur, swished in an arc, and whooshed back to Kendra’s waiting hand.

  “Ouch!” Kendra shouted. She held up her hand, which had a mild slice across her palm. “Stupid villain weapon!”

  Chronos bit back a snort of amusement. This wasn’t the first time she had seen a villain injured by their own spikes.

  “FIX IT!” the little girl said hopefully, but the hand didn’t heal. A line of blood welled up from Kendra’s palm.

  “I take it that’s not a healing power,” Kendra said acidly, squeezing her hand into a fist to stop the bleeding.

  “It used to be, when I could transform,” the little girl said sadly.

  “It’s fine,” Kendra snapped, squeezing her hand tightly. “I’m fine. It’s no big deal. I’ll find a bandage or something.”

  “Oh, Bailey the Band-Aid Box is over there,” the little girl said, pointing.

  Kendra marched off in that direction, her lips set in a grim line, not looking particularly hopeful at her chances of finding the item in this huge mess. That left Chronos alone with the prisoner. She tried to think of a topic of conversation.

  “Did anyone ever try to get ransom for you?” Chronos asked at last. She was wondering why the kid was still here, if she’d been here for years.

  “Strykewell Strykefast tried!” the little girl said. “He accidentally got killed by his own gun.”

  “Nobody else?” Chronos asked.

  “Dusk Anesthesia threatened to, but then she accidentally got caught and thrown in prison.”

  A chill ran down Chronos’s spine. She had a rising sense of misgiving that those two accidents hadn’t been accidents. “So why have your previous . . . owners kept you alive?”

  “’Cause I build great weapons, and I’m only slightly annoying!” the little girl announced proudly.

  “You supply villains with weapo
ns?” Kendra roared, marching back towards them. She now had about six band-aids plastered across her hand.

  The little girl shrunk away. “The first one asked nicely!”

  “Kendra . . . she’s been raised by villains,” Chronos said. “Of course she’s corrupt.”

  “I’m not corrupt!” the little girl exclaimed, her voice rising in high-pitched horror.

  Kendra turned and gave the little girl a flat stare.

  Chronos, who was starting to get suspicious, did the same.

  The little girl’s eyes filled with tears, and she sniffled pitifully. She held out her hands in a plea of abject misery.

  Both flat stares continued.

  “Well, all right, maybe,” the little girl conceded, pinching her fingers together. “Just a little. A smidge. A teensy-weensy, tiny-winy, itty-bitty smidge —”

  “You built a brainwasher!” Kendra shouted.

  “It sounded like fun!” the little girl defended.

  Chronos clutched her forehead. Help . . .

  Chapter 2: The Lunchroom

  Looking around the lunchroom, Florence’s stomach lurched to see Felicity at their usual table, opening a brown paper lunch bag.

  How can she sit there? Florence wondered. How can she sit there without Kendra?

  The most impossible thing in the world had happened — Kendra had quit being a magical girl. Not only that, she had quit before either of them, in such a mind-bogglingly insane way that it still didn’t make any sense in Florence’s head.

  Why had Kendra done that? Why had Kendra left? Where was Kendra, anyway?

  Florence’s grip tightened on her lunch tray. She breathed in and out.

  It’s been three days, she told herself. If Felicity can act like everything is normal, so can I.

  She headed for the table, pushing determinedly through the crowd of other high school students emerging with trays, and reached the back table in the corner covered in graffiti that the three of them had sat at every school day for the past two years.

  “Hi, Florence,” Felicity said, her eyes glued somewhere across the room. She shifted off to the side to get a better look while she pulled a plastic-wrapped sandwich out of her sack. “What’s new?”