The Society of Imaginary Friends (Book 1 of The Conjurors Series)

Chapter 14

A burst of energy exploded in the chamber, searing through Valerie like a shock wave. The symbols covering the walls of the launch chamber pulsated, glowing even more brightly. Then the air shimmered and the symbols seemed to peel off the stones, cascading closer and closer to her, surrounding her in a blue bubble of light. She floated a few feet off the floor in the exact center of the room. Bathed in the blue light and effortlessly hovering in the air, she was completely at peace, ready to be reborn.

But unexpectedly, the vibrating power of the magic that filled the room caused the ancient stones, now weakened without the magic of the symbols to reinforce them, to tremble. The whole room began to shake violently. One of the stones in the ceiling crashed to the floor and shattered into pieces. The last thing that Valerie saw before she was launched into space were dozens of rocks jarring loose as the room collapsed into itself.

Thai told her later that he saw a flash of blue light shoot out of one of the airshafts that exited the Great Pyramid. But all she knew was that one second she saw the crumbling walls of the launch chamber, and the next she was so far away that she felt like an astronaut seeing Earth from space.

Valerie stared in amazement at the brilliant blue, green, and brown planet that had been her home. No picture of Earth in a science textbook could compare to this. After a moment, she realized that Earth wasn't getting any smaller. "What's wrong with you? Why won't you move?" she yelled at the bubble. Her heart sped up in panic. "Cyrus! Where are you? You promised that it wasn't possible for me to get lost in space!"

The second that she thought of Cyrus, the bubble began to move again, hurtling her toward the dark patch in the sky that hid the Globe. She breathed a sigh of relief, realizing that the bubble hadn't been moving because she hadn't been steering it with her thoughts. Concentrating, she pictured Cyrus's face in her mind and the bubble moved even faster. The glowing equations moved rapidly in circles around her, spinning more quickly the faster that she traveled.

Because of the sheer speed at which she was traveling, the stars streaked past her, appearing as lines of light rather than individual stars. Line after line zoomed by. Was she moving faster than anything else in the universe right now?

In the distance, she saw a cluster of stars swirling around a dark hole, as if their light was being pulled into the eye of a hurricane. She was headed directly for that dark spot, which grew bigger with every passing second.

Logically, she knew that the Globe was hidden inside that void, but the closer she got, the faster her heart beat. As hard as she strained her eyes, she could see nothing in that hole but an empty blackness. She forced herself to control her panic. She would make it through this, like she had made it through every obstacle on this trip. The hole grew larger. She held her breath and squeezed her eyes shut as she was drawn down, down into the fathomless darkness.

When she finally dared to open her eyes, the darkness had disappeared. Through the blue equations of her bubble, she could see a planet that was more colorful than she had ever imagined. The royal blue and turquoise water met land that was many colors, from purple mountains to golden deserts to red canyons. "Cool," she gasped in amazement.

"Cyrus, Cyrus," she chanted to herself as her bubble sped toward the Globe, worried that she might wind up in the middle of nowhere on this strange new planet. She could see that she was coming closer and closer to a light green patch of land, but she couldn't make out specifics of the landscape as the colors blurred together from the tremendous speed at which she was traveling. Her pulse started to speed up again at the thought that she was going to crash into the Globe at a million miles an hour and be blasted into smithereens, but as if in response to her worry, the bubble immediately slowed, approaching the ground at a less alarming pace.