by Harper Lin
“No. It’s a good thing she wasn’t concussed before they tried to burn her alive.” I thought about it. “Actually, I think that makes the Order real sadists.”
Bea nodded. “To save nonwitches from the horrible reality of magic, the old Greenstones always, always made sure that the sacrifice came from somebody within the coven.”
“Do you think somebody would volunteer to be a human sacrifice?”
“If everybody else in the coven treated it like some great honor, then I wouldn’t be surprised. But the way the book was written, it had to be the life of a sister.”
“Or,” I said, “a brother.” I began to panic. “They wouldn’t know how much bloodlines have to do with it, would they? They’d only see ‘sisterhood’ and think ‘brotherhood’ would be better. They lured Blake away. They captured him. They’re going to kill him!”
Bea stood up. “If that spell succeeds, this might be the least of our worries. If it fails—say they don’t have magic or something—then they’ll try again, and we need to warn Min.”
I nodded, relieved that my panic now had a direction. “I’ll call Min. You call Jake.”
I tried Mrs. Park’s number first. She told me that Min had gotten used to the bachelor’s lifestyle, so he had rented an inn room of his own. She couldn’t hide how relieved she was that I hadn’t joined him.
I couldn’t help but break down and cry. “My beloved aunt, who’s been like a mother to me, was attacked last night! A gang of thugs won’t quit terrorizing my family and our friends!”
Mrs. Park let me go on. At the end, she said, “Cath, I’m so sorry. I didn’t know about Astrid.”
“I should have warned you all,” I told her. “You’ve been friends of my family, too. You’ve got to stay safe, all right? I mean it. Try to get Min to stay over with you until the culprits are behind bars.”
“All right.”
When I hung up the phone, Bea looked bleak.
“We’re too late,” she said to me. “Jake says that Blake called the police station. They recorded the call. You’re not going to like what he said.”
A Failsafe
I bribed one of the nurses to take care of Marshmallow, and Bea and I left the hospital room for the police station.
Chief Talbot greeted us as we came in through the door. “Miss Greenstone, Mrs. Williams.”
“Is Detective Samberg safe, then?” I said, confused. “Bea only said on the way that he called for me. Why didn’t he call me directly? What did Jake mean by us being ‘too late’?”
“Come with me.”
The Wonder Falls police force, along with Nadia, was clustered around a recorder to listen in on a call.
“Only four voices in the background,” Nadia said. “I can remember each and every one of them.”
“Right,” Jake said. “Ready to play it back again?”
Nadia gave me a pitying look. Bea put her arm around my shoulder.
Jake started the recording.
“I’m calling to say that I’ve found the real power in this town.” It was Blake’s voice, but the words couldn’t have been. “It’s me. My birthright. The way was mapped by my father, and I walk it with my brothers!”
Three voices in the background whooped and roared in encouragement.
“We are beyond the reach of the law, and come midnight tonight, we’ll be the rulers and not the subjects of nature itself.”
Another voice shouted, “Help me!”
Bea and I both gasped.
“That’s Min,” I said.
Blake’s voice continued, “Tell Cath that I knew she was holding out on me. If this pathetic little wimp—”
“Pipsqueak!” said a voice in the background.
“Reuben,” Nadia said with grim certainty, identifying the voice.
“—is her idea of a worthwhile partner, then I give up. He’s not the prince, doll! He’s the damsel. Would you tell her that for me? Would you tell Cath?”
Jake’s recorded voice answered him: “You can tell her yourself. I’ll bring her in. Just give me an hour.”
“An hour? Yeah. We’ll be waiting.”
“Man, no.” That was Reuben’s voice. “They’ll figure out where we are by then.”
“That’s hard to do when we’re moving! Back down, underling.” To the recording of Jake, the recording of Blake said, “Half an hour. It can’t be hard to hurry. This is a small town. There. That’s the end of it. Move.”
“Not again!” Min’s voice sounded muffled.
Reuben’s voice objected, “I’m serious, bro. You might be some hotshot legacy member of the Order, but we’re not going to wait on your ex-girlfriend! We’ve gone too far waiting for this. If you think you can just come in here—” There was a scuffling noise, then the line went dead.
I breathed a sigh of relief. “All right. Blake’s bought us time.”
“Wait, what?” Nadia said to me. She sat upright with a confused expression on her face. “Do you even speak English? Your beau’s a traitor and a nutcase!”
“He called the police station when he could have called me,” I said, “Blake knew to get the message out to the greatest number of people with the best skills to cover the most ground. They’re on the move, right? But did you hear any vehicles, any footsteps?”
Jake answered, “No.”
I nodded. “When Blake told the others to get a move on, Min said ‘Not again!’ because Reuben had done this to him before! He put Min in a burlap sack and sent him downriver.”
“And,” Bea added, lying, “From what Blake told us of the Order’s rites of black magic…”
I completed the sentence, “Min Park is to be their human sacrifice. There’s a ritual they’re going to try to do, to gain control over the forces of nature. ‘Come midnight tonight, we’ll be the rulers and not the subjects of nature itself.’ What’s the grandest display of natural beauty and power that’s closest to this town? The falls!”
“We have until midnight,” Bea said. “The traditional sort of rituals that Blake told us about are very particular about it being done at a particular time.”
“All right!” Chief Talbot said. “Let’s get a move on!”
Bea caught up with Jake first. “Remember what I told you about not getting shot or killed.”
He kissed her, broke away, and strapped on his holster and gun.
I sidled up to Bea. “The spell could work,” I said. “Our police force won’t be prepared for it. They think the Order are deluded and the magic isn’t real. Even Blake still thinks so.”
Bea nodded. “We have to get there first and stop the ritual. Keep the secret.”
“This is about more than keeping the secret,” I said to her. “This is about not waking the Maid of the Mist. The other world of magic can’t cross over into this place.” I added, regretfully, “And you can’t come with me.”
“What? No.” Bea turned to face me. “Cath, your mother tried to stop something from crossing over. She tried to do that all on her own, and that killed her. That was only using the sort of magic that every witch knows to guard the boundaries between the nonwitch world and the other. This is trying to stop a big spell.”
“I’m not going to stop something from crossing over,” I said, “I’m going to stop a bunch of jerks from calling it over. The police will do the rest. Everybody knows that I’m a loose cannon and impulsive.”
“I’ll just say that you dragged me into it, that I went along to try to curb your heroism!”
“Then we won’t have a failsafe! You’ve got to take Aunt Astrid and the cats and head for high ground in some sturdy building. If I fail to stop the Order, something horrible is going to happen.”
“But you…” Bea’s sad, panicked eyes looked from me to her husband. “And Jake…”
“I’ll do my best,” I said to her. “But if my best isn’t good enough, then you’re our last hope to get that book back. That means you have to live. I’m sorry that we can’t warn Jake.”
&nbs
p; I went over to Chief Talbot. “Is there anything else I can do to help?”
He answered, “You’ve done plenty. We could use more people on the ground, though, so maybe you can take a message to the investigators at your Aunt Astrid’s place?” He hollered over to another officer. “Boone! Call everyone back from Min’s room at the inn.”
I followed Boone and his partner out of the police station, and I left to visit Min’s room at the inn on my own.
A Visit to the Inn
I thought that if Min had kept the necklace just because he thought it looked neat, then he’d have kept something that I would be able to use, too.
When I was sure that the police had been called away for a search of the area around the falls, I snuck into the inn room.
I stole a black hooded robe from Min’s luggage, which I pulled on over my clothes, and in the inside pocket of the robe, I hid Blake’s father’s journal.
On the way out, a rumble from the sky made me look up and see the storm clouds coming.
I avoided the police by sending a call out, with my mind, for every cat to either stay and help or head for the hills. The ones that chose to stay volunteered to be distractions or warnings.
That’s how I made my way through the town and then through the woods and then to a simple boat tied to a pier by the lake. I got in the boat and untied it.
When the clouds rolled past the moon, I got out the journal and flipped through the pages even though this spell had caught my eye already. “If found, please return,” I recited. “This prized possession’s tether burn.”
In my mind’s eye, invisible to any nonwitches, a perfect line of bright magic shot from the journal over to where Blake would be. I tucked the journal into the inside pocket again, took up the oar that I’d found in the boat, and paddled as fast as I could in the direction of the magic.
Midnight—the witching hour—approached.
The Witching Hour
Bea returned to the hospital with Peanut Butter and Treacle at her heels.
The nurse that I had bribed on the way out tried to stop her. “Really, three cats! Mrs. Williams, that’s too much! You can tell Miss Greenstone to keep her money and whatever favors she made up—”
“Actually, I can’t,” Bea said. “Don’t worry. We’re leaving.”
Everybody in town knew Bea as the nice one, the sweet one. The terseness surprised even the young nurse into silence.
In Astrid’s hospital room, Marshmallow sat upright and stretched when Bea entered.
“Ready?” Bea asked the cats. Awkwardly, she added. “I won’t know if you are, because I’m not Cath. I don’t speak Cat. I don’t even know if you speak Human. But I need you to make magic, all three of you, not just Marshmallow. Can you do that?”
Peanut Butter meowed and jumped onto Aunt Astrid’s hospital bed, followed by Treacle.
“I’ll take that as a yes.” Bea intoned, “Blood calls to blood, spirit to soul. This healer commands it: make my mother whole!”
A blast of magic rippled from the hospital bed.
Bea almost fainted with the effort. She steadied herself on the bar beside the hospital bed and looked towards her mother.
Astrid groaned. Beneath her eyelids, something moved.
“Mom!” Bea exclaimed.
Astrid was barely strong enough and alert enough to form words. “Don’t…take the book…”
Bea flinched. “Yeah…about that…”
Astrid opened her eyes and looked at Bea worriedly. “Where’s Cath?”
“She’s out there doing her best with whatever crazy Cath plan that only Cath can think up, let alone go through with,” Bea told her mother. “You and I need to get out of her way and out of the way of everybody who might be in Cath’s way.”
“What’s she planning? What’s she done?” Astrid groaned, struggling to sit upright in the bed.
Later, I realized Aunt Astrid wasn’t talking about me.
“That will be a great thing to discuss,” Bea said to her, “at the Parks’ place uphill.”
“First, I need to tell the police who attacked me.”
“We already know. The Order, wasn’t it?”
“What order?”
“Strange men led by Reuben Connors? Or did he shake off his henchmen and rob our home all on his own?”
Astrid shook her head.
* * *
The thread of magic led me to a yacht that floated between two of the three falls. A searchlight mounted on the mast swept back and forth across the turbulent waters. I let the boat I was on float into it and heard two unfamiliar voices call out above the roar of the nearby falls.
“Let me talk to him!” Blake shouted. “This is legacy business.”
I pulled the hood of the cloak down further, and I held the journal up and out into the searchlight.
“See?” Blake said. “Dexter, stand over at the starboard side. Felix, stand over at the port side. Look smart, both of you. We’re welcoming a grand master.”
I tried to stand and move in as grand and masterly a way as possible as I tied the stolen boat to the yacht and stepped off it, up the ladder, and onto the deck.
Blake was there to greet me in a black hooded robe of his own.
“Cath, what are you doing?” Blake hissed.
“I had to made sure that Min was all right. Please say you still have your gun!”
“That thug, Reuben Connors—he took it. He’s below deck with Min right now, so you can be sure that Mr. Park is not all right. What’s taking backup so long?”
“Maybe if you signaled with your handy searchlight!”
“I can’t signal without these two mooks knowing that I’m signaling.”
“Well, there’s two of us and there’s two of them now, isn’t there?”
One of the mooks piped up, “I don’t like all these strange people showing up and claiming to be from the Order.”
Blake rolled his eyes. “Silence, underling!”
“No, Felix has got a point,” said the other mook, who must have been Dexter. “If anybody should be talking to the grand master, it’s Reuben.”
I told Blake, “We’ll catch them off their guard. I’ll take Dexter.”
Blake turned to the two mooks. “The grand master would meet with this accomplished brother! Fetch him!”
As Felix made his way below deck, I pocketed the journal, strode towards Dexter, pulled his hood down, and shoved him overboard. The element of surprise—and the adrenaline rush—made up for how much bigger he was than me. He yelled much more loudly than I’d expected as he fell and hit the water with a splash.
I lowered my hood, shrugged off the robe, and handed Blake the journal. “That’s bound to draw attention.”
“I’ll keep the other two distracted,” Blake said. “Can you climb the mast?”
“Like a cat!”
“Good. Signal with the searchlight. Go!”
As I climbed, Felix and Reuben came up from below deck.
“What did you do, Samberg?”
Blake met his gaze and set his jaw. “Dexter and I got into a scuffle. I wanted to see how dexterous he really was. As it turns out, not awfully.”
“Felix says that a grand master of the Order came on board.”
Blake laughed. “Why’d you go and tell the boss a foolish thing like that? You know he wanted to have some uninterrupted time with Park.”
From the searchlight, I saw a glint of metal as Reuben drew his gun.
A shot went off.
“No!” I screamed.
Another shot went off, and the searchlight shattered into darkness.
Reuben’s voice taunted, “Here, kitty, kitty, kitty. I’ve got your boyfriend. Both of them! I’ve got your book! So you’d better come on out.”
A cloud shifted so that the light of the full moon washed the deck.
I stood behind the unlucky Felix, who’d been shot in the head. “Why did you do this?” I asked Reuben, trying to keep the tremor out of my voice.
“I wanted uninterrupted fun time with Min Park and Cath Greenstone and…” Reuben turned to look at Blake. “Actually, you can go.” He sighted down the barrel of the gun.
“Don’t you dare!” I shouted.
Reuben laughed. “Oh, come on! I don’t want you ganging up on me. I’m just one person, and there’s three of you. Bullies!”
I looked at Min, who Reuben was grasping by the collar of his shirt. Min had ropes around his wrists and ankles and a gag across his mouth.
I said, “You were always the bully, Reuben Connors.”
“Oh, yeah?” Reuben yanked Min’s gag down. “Hey, Min, buddy. Why don’t you tell Cath Greenstone what you said about me?”
“I say a lot of things about you,” Min admitted.
“When we met up as brothers of the Order. Can you remember?”
Min shook his head.
Reuben said, “Min said that the Order obviously wasn’t as elite and exclusive as they advertised, just because I was in it. How about that? My family called me a bad seed. I traveled around, tried to find the good in me, made friends in the Order…and this chink, who’s got everything handed to him on a silver platter, says that I’m just dirt.”
“You made life in this town awful for Min!” I shouted. “You make it awful for your sister! You’ve made it awful for me and my family for the past three days!”
“Welcome to the real world!” Reuben retorted. “The people who win are the ones who take power and keep it from everybody else. Don’t act nice and pretend that you don’t know it. Isn’t that what the book is about?” With a nudge of his gun in my direction, I looked down and realized that Felix had been holding the Greenstone spellbook.
“Pick it up,” Reuben ordered. “The grand master of the Order gave me a talk, you know. Exactly what Min said—they wanted better than me. I said that I was the only one who could get them exactly what the Order really needed.”
