Of Time & Spells

by Jennifer Snyder

  Her evil eyes bored into her, reflecting the loathing she held for us all. Whispered words said under her breath had Anna reaching for her mouth. When she spun to face my brother, I caught a glimpse of her face—she had no mouth. Smooth skin was in its place. Anna’s muffled screams filtered through, churning my stomach.

  “Relax.” Jasper gripped Anna gently by the arms. “It’s only temporary. I goofed and used a cloak to make her mouth disappear while we were fighting.”

  “Yes, thank you for that marvelous trick.” Katarina grinned. Whatever she’d been about to say next died on her tongue as Meili stopped seizing. All eyes shifted to her. The red smoke left her body to hover above her the way it had with Seraphina.

  This time, the smoke didn’t linger. Instead it seeped into the house through a crack beneath the front door, disappearing inside. My eyes drifted to Meili. She lay motionless on the porch. Something about her stillness alarmed me. Was she dead? I knew nothing about dragon magic, but I assumed it wouldn’t kill its own kind. However, as seconds passed and Meili still didn’t come to my assumption flew out the window. My gaze unfocused as my lungs fought to remember how to breathe. Meili was gone.

  Death was becoming such a prevalent part of my spring break.

  “It killed her,” Tristan whispered. “Our dragon magic killed her.”

  “It was an overload, young one,” Katarina insisted. “The magic has been building in my dear Seraphina for seven years. No dragon can withhold that amount of magic at once.” Pride rippled through her words.

  “And no witch should have ever been able to,” a familiar voice said.

  Kalisa appeared between Jasper and me out of thin air. She held silver shavings in her palm. Again, she was dressed in another flowing gown that showcased a magnitude of colors and cascaded to the ground. Her dreadlocks were pulled away from her face, and her feet were bare.

  “My dear Kalisa, to what do we owe the pleasure of this visit?” Katarina flashed a smug smile. From the glint in her eyes, I gathered the impression she felt superior to Kalisa in some way.

  “To witness your demise.” The old woman lifted her palm to her lips and blew the silver flecks nestled inside at the Vodun.

  They floated through the air on an unfelt breeze until they made contact with the three witches before us. The instant they did, the flecks of silver transformed into a liquid substance that coated the witches in seconds.

  Before I could process what had happened, three statues stood in place of the Vodun witches.

  “How is that possible?” Jasper shifted to face Kalisa. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”

  The old woman flashed him a toothy grin made up of discolored teeth. “Magic.”

  I scoffed at her comical response, but the second her eyes sought out mine, I wiped my smirk off my face. The woman was scary, and I did not intend to tick her off.

  “You shouldn’t be laughing, child. You should be thanking me.”

  “Thank you,” I squeaked.

  “Good girl.” Kalisa nodded to me. “Now, things might seem as though they’re over, but they are far from it, children. One spell has been undone, and one set in place, but two still need your attention. Both of which are the largest you will ever face.”

  Even though her words might have seemed to be nothing but a riddle to others, I knew she was right. There were two spells left to undo before this was finally over. One, we needed to break the cloak on the mirror using my blood And two, we needed to figure out how to get the dragon’s their magic back without them all ending up like Meili.

  My eyes shifted to the Asian woman. While her face wasn’t visible to me, I still thought she was the most at peace I’d ever witnessed. Maybe it was true the tormented found peace in death. It was a nice thought, and the only one that would allow me to walk away from this moment still feeling strong. Meili and I may have had a few rough patches, but the loss of her life still tugged at my heart.

  “We should do something for her,” I said the words without intending to.

  Jasper gripped my shoulders and squeezed. “We should.”

  Chi walked to where Meili lay. He bent and scooped her into his arms. “I will handle her with honor. Things will be done the way she would have wanted. You finish seeing to our magic. You must complete the mission.”

  “We will,” I insisted.

  Chi nodded and then stalked off toward the minivan.

  I didn’t know what he planned to do in order to honor Meili, but I was certain she wouldn’t have wanted us to focus on her death long. She would want us to release the dragon magic for her tribe, to continue with the mission as Chi had asked.

  “Time is ticking, child. You must finish what you came here for,” Kalisa spoke up, pulling me from my thoughts. I shifted my gaze to lock with hers. “You are not mice trapped in a maze, remember that, children. Not all is what it seems.”

  I opened my mouth to ask the old woman what she’d meant, but she vanished as quickly as she’d appeared.

  “What did she mean?” Tristan asked. “That was the most random thing I think I’ve ever heard.”

  “Who knows?” Jasper smoothed his hands along Anna’s arms. Her mouth had come back, but she still wasn’t talking. “You okay?”

  She nodded. “Yeah, I guess. That was the freakiest thing I’ve ever felt. Promise me you’ll never use that cloak on someone again.”

  A chuckle rumbled from deep in my brother’s chest as he pulled her in for a hug. “I can promise I’ll never use it on you, but that’s it.”

  “Fine.” She rested her head against his chest and closed her eyes.

  “So, who’s stepping inside first?” Tristan asked. His gaze was locked on the front door to the massive house in front of us.

  I wasn’t about to go first, but I wouldn’t admit it either. My vote was for Liam. He’d been involved with one of the Vodun witches, which meant there was a good chance he knew his way around their house.

  “Liam should,” I offered.

  “Good call.” Jasper nodded. “Liam, why don’t you do us the honors.”

  Liam didn’t respond. Hadn’t he heard my brother ask him a question? I shifted to glance at him. Tears streamed from his eyes forming twin rivers as he stared at the space where Seraphina had once been. I swiped a few stray hairs away from my face and released a puff of air. Judging from the breakdown Liam seemed to be having, I didn’t think he’d be much help when it came to finding the mirror.

  Chapter 9

  Spit flew from Liam’s mouth as he repeated something about Seraphina being his soulmate. Somewhere in his loop of crazy, he added in something about him looking hideous now. The guy had officially cracked. He looked the same to me, just broken.

  “Shut up.” Jasper jerked Liam up by his arm, having lost his patience after several failed attempts at communication with him. The vein in Jasper’s forehead that always became prominent when he was angry throbbed. “You’d better tell us where the mirror is before I beat your ass.”

  “I can’t,” Liam answered. He jerked himself free from my brother’s grip and stood to his full height. Maybe I was imagining it, but he didn’t look as tall. His shoulders slumped forward, and there was a brokenness about him.

  “Wrong answer.” Jasper ground out through clenched teeth.

  Liam’s arms lifted to block his face. “I mean it! I can’t help you find the mirror because I don’t know where it is,” Liam insisted. He dropped his arms at his sides again. “It’s cloaked, remember?”

  “I’m aware it’s cloaked,” Jasper growled. He dug his index finger into Liam’s chest. “Doesn’t mean you don’t know where it is. After all, you are a Vodun lover.”

  Liam’s eyes darkened. “One can’t choose who they love.”

  “They can choose who they stab in the back though,” I snapped.

  Liam shifted his menacing gaze to me. “I was defending someone I love.”

  “No, you were working with someone you love against us,” Anna chimed in. �
��There’s a difference.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Tristan insisted. “You’re going in there with us, and you’re going to help us find the mirror.”

  Jasper gripped Liam by the arm again and started toward the front door. “My thoughts exactly.”

  “No, no, no!” Liam sounded like a small child, fighting against his parents. His face had gone pale, and a slight sheen of sweat dotted across his brow as his eyes widened. “I can’t go in there. That house is evil without a Vodun at your side.”

  “Everything about the Vodun is evil. It doesn’t surprise me their house would be too.” My words made me sound brave, but inside I was petrified as I thought about what he’d meant.

  A house couldn’t be evil, could it?

  Jasper pushed open the front door and shoved Liam inside. Darkness swallowed him instantly, causing the fine hairs along the back of my neck to rise on end. Now that I was staring into the mouth of the house, every cell in my body told me to run.

  Jasper stepped across the threshold next and Anna was on his heels. I stared into the area they’d disappeared through, waiting for one of them to switch on a light. When no light came on, my worries got the best of me. Had something happened to them? Did they fall? Where had they gone?

  Tristan interlaced his fingers through mine, his touch startling me.

  “It’s just me.” His voice was calm and soothing, but something in his eyes screamed mischief to me. “Ready to step into the mouth of hell?”

  “Not helping,” I scolded.

  “Just joking.” He took a step forward but paused when I didn’t do the same. “It’s just a house, Piper. The witches are solid statues of concrete now. They can’t do anything to us. Let’s find this mirror so we can get out of here.”

  Even though I liked what he was saying, I didn’t believe it. There was something off about the house. I couldn’t put my finger on what, but I knew there was something. Kalisa’s words looped through my mind as I followed Tristan toward the open door: You are not mice trapped in a maze, remember that, children. Not all is what it seems.

  Coldness kissed my skin and seeped into my bones as I stepped inside the house. The darkness swallowed Tristan and me whole as we continued farther away from the front door. I searched for the others, but couldn’t manage to see my hand in front of my face, much less anything else. Tristan and I spun in a slow circle. There was no light in any direction visible. How was that possible? There had been windows outside. I’d seen them.

  As we completed our slow rotation, I realized there was no light spilling in through the open doorway we’d entered either. In fact, the door itself was gone.

  “The door is gone.” My voice echoed through the house, sounding scared and stiff to even my ears. I searched for a wall, hoping to find a light switch, but felt nothing besides cool air kiss my fingertips. “I can’t find a light switch either.”

  “Yeah, there doesn’t seem to be any walls to this place.” Tristan’s grip on my hand tightened. “Where are the others?”

  I listened for the sound of their movement in the darkness with us but heard nothing. “Jasper? Anna? Where are you guys?” My voice bounced around, echoing off walls as though I were standing at the entrance to a cave instead of in the foyer of a massive house.

  “Over here. To the right of the door,” I heard Jasper answer. “Follow the sound of my voice.”

  I did as my brother said, dragging Tristan along with me. My palms grew clammy as I cut through the blackness into an even deeper unknown, but there was no way in hell I was letting go of Tristan’s hand. He was my anchor in the void surrounding us. I bumped into something solid and heard my brother huff.

  “Found you,” I said.

  “Yeah. That was my shoulder and shin.” His voice soothed my frazzled nerves. Jasper might be a pain in my ass most of the time, but he was still my big brother, and being around him made me feel safe, especially in this situation.

  I grabbed a fistful of his shirt, wanting him to remain close to me. “Doesn’t Liam know how to turn the lights on?”

  “He might, if we could find him.” Jasper sighed. “Either he’s purposely staying quiet, or he’s already disappeared in the house somewhere. Anna and I haven’t been able to get an answer out of him since we crossed the threshold.”

  “Great.” Sarcasm dripped from my words.

  Liam free in this hellish house of horrors scared the crap out of me. He knew this place better than us, which meant he could sic anything on us. The element of surprise was in his hands, as was an opportunity for revenge. After all, I had just vanquished the love of his life.

  “Do you guys see that?” Anna’s voice was closer to me than I liked. Her warm breath tickled the side of my face. I took a step back and bumped into Tristan. He wrapped his arm around my waist and squeezed me against him.

  “Steady,” he whispered.

  An apology rested on the tip of my tongue, but it never made it past my lips.

  Six feet away from us stood an archway lit from the other side as if by candlelight.

  “There,” Jasper shouted in my ear. “There’s a stairway.”

  A slight twist of my head had me staring at a grand staircase, which seemed to have appeared out of thin air. White speckled marble shimmered in a soft glow. At the top hung a large painting of the Vodun witches trimmed in a gold frame.

  “Which way should we go?” All I cared about was getting out of the darkness.

  “I think we should stay downstairs,” Anna announced. “It seems smarter to search an entire floor for the mirror before moving to the next.”

  “Sometimes I forget how smart you are,” Jasper said.

  “Is that supposed to be a compliment?” I heard Anna respond, but my mind shifted gears.

  “How are we supposed to search for the mirror? Liam disappeared, and Tristan can’t feel the dragon magic anymore.”

  “True, but we should still be able to feel our parents’ cloaking magic hiding it,” Jasper said. Emotion clung to his words when he spoke. I was glad I wasn’t able to see his face, it saved me from seeing the equally heartbreaking expression stretched across it.

  “He’s right.” Anna agreed. “Your parents’ cloaking magic might actually call to you.”

  My breath bottled up in my chest at the thought. Tapping into my parents’ magic had felt amazing during the spell Anna had performed; I could only imagine what it would feel like to do so with little distance between us.

  “Okay.” I let go of my death grip on Jasper’s T-shirt and pulled Tristan toward the well-lit archway with me. “Archway it is then.”

  Coldness bit at my skin as I headed toward the lighted archway. My heart pounded in my throat as the sensation intensified with each step. Images of the darkness being alive bogged down my mind, causing alarm to nip at my insides. I wanted out of the dark.

  Now.

  My steps quickened as I neared the light. The sensation of something waiting in the darkness to grip hold of me and pull me back crashed through me, sending my anxiety to an all-new high. Suddenly I was five again, making the trek from the bathroom to my room in the middle of the night. Darkness chomped at my heels, threatening to eat me alive.

  The instant my toe touched the light my muscles loosened. Warmth chased away the coldness attempting to burrow itself inside of me as I stepped further into the light. My gaze shifted around my new surroundings, taking in the soothing, light shade of green the walls were painted. The room was small, but the ceiling was high, making it feel larger.

  “The only scary thing about this room is the pea soup color of everything.” Jasper spat. “It’s everywhere—the couch, the chairs, the walls, the curtains, the trim. I’m surprised they decided to leave the freaking ceiling white.”

  “The floors aren’t green,” Tristan pointed out.

  My gaze traveled around the room before dipping to the floor. Large black and white checkered tiles made it up giving the place a retro vibe.

  “Or the firepl
ace,” Anna added.

  Fireplace. Was that where the warmth was coming from?

  Orange flames licked at the inside bricks of the fireplace. Dark wood framed it. In comparison with the color choice for the walls, the fireplace seemed rather bland.

  “Okay, okay. So not everything is green. I get it.” Jasper shifted his attention to me. “Piper, you wanna help me scope the place out?”

  My heart palpitated in my throat. Helping Jasper meant using my hands, which meant letting go of my grip on Tristan. I focused on the way his hand felt in mine. It was warm, slightly clammy, and solid. I needed to hold onto something solid, to someone. This place was already screwing with me, and we’d just stepped inside.

  I chewed my bottom lip as I stared my brother down. His brows furrowed and his gaze dipped to where my fingers intertwined with Tristan’s. I knew he understood my hesitation the second his facial features softened.

  “Finding the mirror is how we get home.” Jasper reminded me.

  Home. God, I wanted to be lying on the couch, hogging the remote with a large bowl of egg drop soup from Lucky Duck in my lap. I wanted all of this craziness to be over with, and there was only one way to make sure it happened. I had to start feeling for the magic cloaking it. The only way to do so was through the use of my hands.

  “Yeah.” I released Tristan’s hand and noticed when he wiped it against his pant leg.

  “Sorry,” he whispered. “I didn’t realize my hand was that sweaty.”

  “It wasn’t just yours,” I admitted, loving the boyish look plastered on his face, as I wiped my hand on my pants too. My eyes found Jasper’s. “Let’s do this.”

  Jasper nodded and lifted his hands to the air, palms facing out. I pulled in a few deep, measured breaths to center myself before doing the same.

  “The mirror would have to be hanging on a wall, right?” I started around the perimeter of the room.

  “Not necessarily,” Anna answered. “It’s cloaked, which means it could be anywhere, even lying against furniture or hidden behind a painting.”