by Cate Martin
"That's a no," Brianna said and ticked something off in her book. Then she looked up at Evanora again and tipped her head to one side assessingly. "You know, I don't think you're even the one summoning up the glamours."
"Oh, I'm glamorous enough," Evanora said. She tried to direct her attentions at Edward this time, but I planted my feet further apart and put my hands on my hips, blocking him from her view.
She smirked at me, not intimidated.
"No, even that is a very disciplined branch of magic, and you don't strike me as particularly disciplined," Brianna said.
"She's a troublemaker," Sophie said, and Brianna's eyes suddenly widened.
"What is it?" I asked. Brianna had been throwing a bit of acting into her questions before, but this sudden realization response struck me as genuine.
"Give me your wand," she said, holding out her hand.
"What? Why?"
"Because I know what's wrong with it now," she said. I pulled out the wand, glad for the gloves I still wore, and laid it on Brianna's bare palms.
Brianna held it up, rolling it between her fingertips as she shot Evanora a triumphant look. Evanora said nothing, but there was a new wariness to her eyes.
"I know what your magic is," Brianna said, shifting the wand to hold it vertically in one hand by the very tips of her fingers. "You have a tainting magic, don't you? You darken things. Ruin them. Spoil milk, sicken cattle, destroy crops. You're that kind of witch. Aren't you?"
Evanora's eyes narrowed, but still she said nothing.
"Yes, I see it now," Brianna said, looking closely at my wand. "And I see just how to peel it away."
She ran her hand up the length of my wand, and I felt that motion like a wave traveling through my body.
It wasn't pleasant. It was like someone was pulling at all of the threads that formed me all at once. And some of them were snapping.
I startled to fall to my knees, but Edward was still supporting me. His arms tightened, lending me some strength.
I looked up at Brianna, who was watching me with concern. She hadn't meant to hurt me. But now my wand was glowing so brightly in her hand. Cleansed. Renewed. My ally once more.
And in her other hand was a mass of black ooze. I don't know exactly what the smell was that was coming off of it. Rot, but like no rot smell I had ever been assaulted with. It made me long for the freshness of that ozone smell.
Brianna grinned and tossed me my wand. I caught it. It felt so right in my hand. I swung it around, throwing sparks everywhere. Happy sparks. I laughed aloud and gestured up to the center of the peaked ceiling, creating a miniature shower of fireworks that rained down all around Evanora, hissing when they struck the circle around her.
"Mine is a small power," Evanora said sullenly. "But I'm not the one you should be afraid of. And you should be afraid. Very afraid. You shouldn’t be playing games, you little pretend witches."
"We're not playing games," Sophie said.
"This is a game. This is all a game," Evanora said then bubbled over with evil laughter.
"You're awfully cocky for someone in a trap she can't get out of," Otto said.
Evanora laughed even harder at that. "I'm exactly where I'm meant to be," she said. "Right here. Right now. Where my employer wants me to be. Where I'll be until my employer says otherwise."
"She's bluffing," Sophie said, but she didn't sound sure.
"Very well," Brianna said to Evanora. "Who do you work for?"
Evanora licked her lips, as if she found that question absolutely delicious. Then she grinned at us. "I'll never tell."
"Fine. Have it your way," Brianna said and flung the black ooze at the circle. She made a small motion with her wand with her other hand, opening an aperture in the magic circle just large enough and just long enough to let the ooze inside. "Have your spell back," Brianna said.
The ooze hit Evanora square in the face, which might have been funny until she started screaming.
Chapter 18
Back home in Iowa, I had lived in an apartment, but that apartment had been on the edge of a pretty small town. Our windows had overlooked the beginnings of farmland, some corn fields but more dairy farms. Lots of cows and a few other farm animals, but also coyotes. I only rarely caught a glimpse of one, but at night I could hear them calling to each other.
And I could hear them celebrating a successful hunt. The sound of their cries had woken me on many a summer night, and some winter ones as well.
But worse than their triumphant howling had been the dying sounds of their prey. I know it's not technically murder. They weren't human. They were hunting for food they needed to live.
But the sounds of those animals shrieking through a painful death haunt me still.
Evanora, clawing at the ooze that appeared to be soaking into her face, sounded like one of those animals. It was horrific.
"Help her," Sophie said.
"I don't know what's happening," Brianna said, blinking back tears. "This shouldn't be happening. It's her own spell."
"Can't you make it stop?" Sophie asked.
"I'll drop the circle," Brianna said, but Otto caught her wrist before she could raise her wand.
"No," he said. "It's a trick."
"It can't be," Sophie said. "She can't be acting. No one is that good."
"We can't risk it," Otto said. "Do not let her out or all of our lives are forfeit."
"He's right," I said, forcing the words past the lump in my throat. "Look, that ooze is almost gone."
"Because it's inside her," Sophie said.
But as the last of the black ooze slipped into the corners of her eyes, Evanora's screams finally quieted. She was on her knees now, slumped over so that her hair covered her face. I could see her shoulders moving as she heaved in breath after breath. Breaths that were hitching with pain. But at least she was quiet.
"She's not going to tell us anything," Otto said. "And the longer we're here, the more likely the others will find us. Are you ready for that fight?"
"No," Brianna said, still looking sickened from what she had just done to Evanora.
"So what do we do now?" Edward asked. "If we don't let her go, what other options are there?"
"We can't move her," Brianna said. "The spells are bound to place. I could come up with spells that would hold with the car, but that would take time."
"Where would we even move her to?" Sophie asked. "We can't bring her to the school. We can't dump her on the students there now."
"Maybe we just leave her here," Brianna said. "She can't get herself out."
"The rest of her coven could free her," I said.
"It would take time. It would buy us some time," Brianna said.
"No," Otto said. "She's a threat. We have to end that threat."
"The coven is the threat," Sophie said.
"Which we'll end one witch at a time," Otto said. He drew his gun, but this time, it was Sophie grabbing his wrist and keeping him from raising his arm.
From inside the magic circle, Evanora started to make some sort of choking noise. It took me a moment to figure out she was laughing at us. Then she sat back, tossing the hair out of her eyes to fix her gaze on Otto.
"I'm not afraid of you," she said to him. "I'm not afraid of death. But you should be."
"Sophie, let me go," he said.
"No. It's too bloody. It'll lead back to you. You don't need that kind of trouble," she said.
"No one will ever find her body," he said.
"Sophie is right," I said.
"Then you do it," he said, pulling his wrist out of Sophie's grasp and putting his gun away. "You can do it and never leave a trace. I know you can."
"No, Otto," I said. He stepped closer to me to whisper close to my ear.
"I'll take Edward out of here first, if that helps," Otto said.
"I'm not leaving," Edward, who was still standing close behind me, said.
"I can deal with her," I said. "But I'm not going to kill her. What I did bef
ore, I'm not doing that again."
"What did you do before?" Edward asked, but none of us answered him.
"What are you thinking, Amanda?" Sophie asked.
"I can bind her," I said. "I can remove her from the flow of time. I've seen how it can be done. I understand it. I can do it."
Evanora, sitting on her heels, was watching me with great interest. I waited for her to say something, to perhaps tell me that she didn't fear me any more than she feared Otto's gun, but she held her peace. She was just watching me.
Everyone was watching me.
Then Sophie and Brianna traded a long look.
"Do you mean like Juno bound to the time bridge?" Brianna asked. "Or like Mina Fox bound to the crystal ball?"
"Either," I said. I looked down at my hands, flexing my fingers. "I've seen the way to manipulate the threads. I know I can do it."
"You've seen it because it was shown to you," Sophie said. "But we don't know by who or for what purpose. For all we know, it could've been her mysterious employer."
"It wasn't shown to me," I said. "I figured it out myself."
"When you were flooded with power," Sophie said.
"This is my power," I said. "I'm not under anyone's influence. I know I can do this. Everyone will be safer if I do this."
"But can you undo it?" Brianna asked. "If you trap her outside of time, can you free her again? Because we can't get Mina back out of that crystal ball. And Juno is so deeply a part of that time bridge we can't even perceive her unless she chooses to reveal herself to us."
"I think so," I said. "I'll be able to figure it out if I keep working the problem. But why would we ever want to?"
"Because if you remove her from time and we can't ever bring her back, that sounds like a fate worse than death," Brianna said. "Is that what we do?"
"If we let her go, or if we leave her here until her coven frees her, we put everyone here in danger," I said. "Otto and his entire organization, Edward, the students at the school, maybe even Coco and her family."
"We'll find a way to protect them," Brianna said.
"How?" I asked.
"I don't know, but we'll figure something out. It's what we do," Brianna said.
"We figure out what our mothers knew," Sophie said. "The thing they don't want us to know. The thing that's probably the key to how to defeat them."
Evanora was snickering again.
"Do you have anything to say?" Brianna demanded, pointing her wand at Evanora, who just kept laughing.
"I don't like this," Otto said. "It feels like a trap. She's stalling us."
"The others can't get near without us knowing," Sophie said. "We warded the whole building. This was our trap, remember?"
"And I was the bait," Otto said. "Only now it feels like maybe she was the bait. She followed me knowing it was a trap, and now she's holding us here."
"Are you bait?" Brianna asked Evanora.
"You three aren't as clever as you think you are," Evanora said.
"That's not an answer," Sophie said. "Are you holding us here? Are you stalling?"
"It's not my fault if you three don't have a plan," Evanora scoffed. "I suppose you could make me answer every one of your questions, but you'd have to torture me to get me to talk. And you don't have the backbone for that."
Now I was the one brandishing my wand as I stepped up to the very edge of the magic circle. "Who do you work for?" I demanded. Edward tugged at the back of my coat, trying to pull me away from the circle, but I brushed him off without taking my eyes off Evanora.
"Are you going to make me talk?" she asked me, almost purring as she spoke.
"I don't think I have to," I said. "I think I can just read the answers in your threads."
"Try it," she said. "Go ahead. Read my whole life story. I'll wait."
I was vaguely aware of a whispered conversation behind me, of Otto trying to convince Edward to go wait in the car. Otto seemed to think I was about to unleash my darkest powers. But I wasn't. I didn't have to hurt Evanora to get the answers. I just had to look.
"Amanda!" Sophie cried out just as my eyes were about to close. "Don't do it!" She edged herself between me and the magic circle, forcing me to take half a step back.
"No, this is the best way," I said. "I'm not going to pull her out of time or hurt her at all. I'm just going to see what's really going on here."
"Don't," Sophie said. "Look at her. Look how badly she wants this."
I looked past Sophie to Evanora still kneeling on the floor. Her eyes were shining brightly with more anticipation than a roomful of kids on Christmas morning.
"She wants you to do this," Brianna said. "She wants it very badly."
"But why?" I asked. "What would she gain? It makes no sense."
"Just do it," Evanora said to me, still looking like the cat who ate the canary. "Just blink yourself to that other world and take a look around."
"That's the trap," Otto said. "It's not for all of you. It's just for Amanda."
I wanted to object again. It still made no sense to me at all. But before I could put any words together, I saw Evanora throw up her hands.
"I give up," she said to the room at large. "I did give it my best shot."
"Gave what your best shot?" I asked. But she just got back to her feet and made a big show of brushing the dust from the floor off of her cloak and dress.
"My way would've been easier," she said. “But whatever.”
And then the warehouse around us started melting.
Chapter 19
We weren't inside an abandoned warehouse. We had never been inside an abandoned warehouse.
I watched in horror as the illusion of dusty tiles dried up like puddles on the floor, revealing a gleaming marble floor of white with veins of gold. At first, I thought it was glowing, throwing up light that burned away the cobwebbed shadows, but as the shabby brick walls became gleaming marble columns and panels of wood the color of golden honey, I realized that light was merely a reflection.
I looked up. And up. And up. The warehouse had been all one space but as tall as a two-story building. Whatever we were in now just kept going, level after level, balcony after balcony. Every level had more columns, the columns adorned with art deco light fixtures that all added up to an almost overwhelming brightness.
I couldn't count how many floors there were between where we were standing and the glass ceiling above us offering glimpses of the night sky, but it was a lot. We had to be standing in the tallest building in St. Paul. It had to be taller than anything in Minneapolis in 1928 too. I wouldn't have been surprised if it was taller than anything in either city in 2019.
It simply couldn't be real.
And yet, as much as my brain was insisting that the warehouse was real and this was the illusion, my gut didn't believe it.
"What is this place?" Otto whispered.
"This is home," Evanora said.
And then she stepped out of Brianna's magic circle as if it also had never really existed. Brianna gasped.
"Get back," I said to the others as Evanora stepped up towards me. "Get back!"
Sophie caught Brianna's arm and pulled her back towards where the door used to be, but judging from Otto's swearing, it wasn't there anymore.
"We meet again, little witch," Evanora said to me with a smile. I raised my wand, but her smile never wavered. There was the sound of a scuffle from behind me. Otto was wrestling with Edward.
"Keep him safe for me, Otto," I said without turning.
"There is no safety for any of you here," Evanora said. "You just waltzed straight into the center of our web. You wrapped yourselves up and presented yourselves as so much spider food."
"Come on," I said. "We both know I didn't do what you wanted."
"You haven't yet," Evanora said with a shrug. "But you will."
"No. You can't make me," I said.
"Evanora has her talents," someone else said, her voice echoing throughout the tower's interior, bouncing up to the t
op then back down to the bottom so that it sounded like this one woman was surrounding all of us. I searched the space around me, trying to look behind every column and decorative plant, around the benches and over-stuffed chairs. "She is not the least of us," the voice went on as I took another step back from Evanora, trying to look everywhere at once, "but she is far from the best."
Evanora stepped back with a little bow, and finally I saw the other woman. She was walking towards me, flanked by two other women. They were all wearing cocktail dresses in pastel colors. The clothes and the confident way they were walking, they looked like they'd just stepped out of a late 60s spy film.
But they were young. The elegance of their clothing made them seem older at first glance, but when I looked more closely, none of them could be much more than eighteen. And yet that voice had carried a power not to be taken lightly.
"You're Patricia Dougherty," I said to the one in the middle. She still wore her long blonde hair straight and loose. Except for the clothes, she looked exactly like the photograph from the school.
"And you're Amanda… well, I guess you call yourself Clarke," she said with a sneering smile. "You look just like your mother."
"Don't use my mother to taunt me," I said, still holding my wand raised although I had no idea what I could do with it that would be of any use.
"I would never," Patricia said, putting a hand over her heart. "Your mother and I were dear friends."
"That's not the picture I've been getting," I said. "You tried to make us forget our mothers. Why?"
"But you didn't forget, did you?" Patricia said.
"We did. If not for random chance, we'd not remember them now," I said.
"Random chance. That always comes up at some point, doesn't it? One can almost count on it," Patricia said.
"What are you saying?" I asked.
"I'm saying the point of our spell wasn't to make you forget so much as to make sure you took a really close look at what you remembered," Patricia said. "What you remembered, and what you didn't. Because you were never told."
I looked back at Brianna and Sophie to see what they thought of this. They came closer to stand beside me.
