“Fine,” Mallory sighed. “I’ll prepare the IV. It’ll take a bit for the radiation machine to warm up.”

“What?” I gasped, but they both ignored me.

“How would you like her restrained?” Mallory asked Olivia, in a perfectly polite tone, like she was asking how Olivia wanted her eggs.

“The golem, of course.”

“Of course. I’ll go fetch it.” Mallory leaned on her cane and took a few steps away from me, toward one of the exam rooms. I felt her leave my radius. As she went I saw her pulling something from her lab coat pocket that looked like a paintbrush or a small stick. I was still too weak to care much. I managed to roll myself onto my butt, head between my knees, trying to figure out how to uncurl myself and get to the gun. But Olivia crouched down right in front of me, eyes searching my face, and I froze, shivering with cold and nerves. Would she see it on my face? Dammit, I was terrible at this. Bruce would be ashamed.

There was some mumbling from the exam room, and then Mallory reemerged, brushing her hands together. The stick had disappeared back into her lab coat pocket. I opened my mouth to say something—no idea what—when I heard the thudding steps coming from just behind her. And the golem emerged.

It was shorter than I would have expected—maybe five foot six, only an inch taller than Mallory. It was gray and clumsy looking, with thick, long fingers, and it had been dressed in enormous baggy scrubs that strained against its wide body. A surgical cap was perched on its head, which turned slowly in my direction. Suddenly the pain in my midsection seemed awfully unimportant. Mallory had sculpted a crude nose onto it, probably so it would appear human from a distance, and she had gouged in bizarre flat holes where eyes should be. Does he need to see where he was going? I wondered. But she hadn’t bothered giving the golem a mouth, which was the creepiest thing about it.

I imagined a halting Frankenstein walk, but the step that it took toward me was fluid and natural, if a little slow, like it was counting out paces. A bit of gray dust sprinkled down as it moved. The next step was the same. And the next. There was an aura of careless brutality about it. I wouldn’t have been surprised if it suddenly picked up a kitten and snapped it in half. Now, I decided, would be an excellent time to actually friggin’ do something. Shooting it wouldn’t work, but I was still a null. I closed my eyes and concentrated on the outlines of my power, expanding my circle slowly until it reached the clay man. I felt the buzz of the spell enter my radius—

And the golem kept coming.

My eyes popped open. Had I done it wrong? A few steps later, he was inside the limits of my regular radius, and I narrowed my eyes at him, forgetting everything else and concentrating on the buzz of magic. It felt strange too—sort of detached. From magic. Like instead of a spell, a small generator had entered my radius.

And the golem kept coming.

Sudden laughter startled me, and as the thing continued forward I saw both Olivia and Mallory chuckling happily at each other, exchanging a look of “we got her!” like I’d fallen victim to a sorority prank. More quickly than I had expected, the golem closed the distance between us, and I felt crude fingers wrap around my left upper arm. I had expected the thing to be made of wet clay, given that it was moving, but its fingers felt dry and cold against my skin. It lifted, dragging me to my feet, and the strength of that movement was petrifying. There was no give to it, no fleshiness, no jerking. It was one smooth move, like being pulled up by the Terminator. “What the hell?” I demanded, forgetting that I was supposed to be playing Meek Scarlett. “How is this possible?”

Olivia frowned at me. “I believe we’ve talked about language, Scarlett.”

I bit back what I wanted to say and forced my voice to sound contrite. “I’m sorry, Olivia. I just don’t understand why her spell is still working.”

“Isn’t it phenomenal?” Olivia asked, beaming at me. “She’s found a loophole.”

The golem shifted around behind me, grabbing my other wrist. He shifted his grip to lock both of my wrists tight against my body with his cold hands, his fingers long enough to hold my hips still along with my arms. I gasped. Handcuffs, I thought, and fought a wave of terror. Breathe, Scarlett. Breathe.

“What kind of a loophole?” I choked out, wanting a distraction as much as I just wanted to know.

Across the room, Mallory rolled her eyes and strode off to another exam room. But Olivia loved lecturing me. “The golem isn’t a normal movement spell,” she explained smugly. “Animation magic is a lot closer to physically changing an object than it is to simply moving it. Mallory uses magic to bring the golem to life, as it were, and give it a task. Then the golem is animated in its own right, until the task is done.

“Giving the golem instructions counts as magic, but completing its current task does not.” She gave an elegant shrug of her shoulders. “Like a windup doll. Your aura could stop her from winding it up, but once the windup has happened the little doll goes on its way regardless of what happens to its master.”

“A windup doll,” I repeated, dazed. The solid wall of clay behind me did not feel like any kind of children’s plaything. Experimentally, I tried throwing my weight back against it. It hurt like hell, both on my sore back and with the gun digging into my spine. Not only did the golem not rock backward, it didn’t even sway a little.

Fantastic.

Olivia’s voice rang with laughter. “Not to worry, Scar-bear,” she assured me. “It’s just going to hold you still for me.”