by Cate Martin
"Why all the spells if that was all you wanted?" Brianna asked. "Why didn't you just stop by the school and leave us a message?"
"I confess, it was a test," Patricia said. "You passed, by the way."
"Full marks," said Linda.
"Nice work," said Debra.
"I particularly liked how you worked out getting the current class of students to help you," Linda said. "That was very clever."
Brianna bit her lip but said nothing. I was sure she had the same question as I did. How did they know about that? It had happened just hours ago.
"So this has all been a test?" I asked. "Following Otto around for months was a test? Everything that happened on New Year's Eve? That was also a test? People died."
"Charlotte was always going to do what she was going to do," Patricia said. "We were just there to watch you."
"You gave her an amulet to cloak her from our perceptions," I said. Patricia just shrugged, which really made me angry. "Without your help she never would've been able to kill Thomas."
"Of course she would have," Patricia said. "She did. You can't change history, you know."
"You put a skyscraper right on the riverfront in 1928 St. Paul," I said. "That's historical?"
"No one will ever find it, so it's not ahistorical," Patricia said.
"This isn't right," Brianna said. "There are rules."
"Rules? Really?" Patricia all but snapped. "We didn't ask to be here. We didn't ask to be stuck here. And yet here we are, because of your mothers. So sue us for trying to make it just a touch more livable until we can get home."
"Back to 1968?” I asked. "That's not how the time portal works anymore."
"You know that can be changed," Patricia said. "You've even seen how to do it, haven't you?"
"I know I can destroy it," I said.
"You can do more than that," Patricia said. "You're young yet."
"I'm older than you," I said.
"Young in your powers," she amended with a smile. "But I can help you. I can teach you so much more."
"Everyone wants to be my mentor," I grumbled. "Why does it feel like a trap?"
Patricia laughed. "With all due respect, you seem to be uniquely incapable of detecting when you're actually in a trap and when you're not."
I heard Sophie suck in a breath and looked away from Patricia's icy blue eyes to see several more witches in cloaks and hoods standing all around us, wands raised. I didn't take a head count, but I was pretty sure there were nine equally spaced around the perimeter of the tower's main floor. That plus Evanora and our mothers' old classmates made thirteen.
"So you lured us into a trap," I said. "So we passed all your tests, apparently. What now? This is all too elaborate to be just another offer to be my mentor."
"But it is," Patricia said. "Well, it starts with that. I need to mentor you, but only until your power grows to be equal to mine."
"Why would you want that?" Brianna asked. "It sounds like it would be dangerous for you."
"I trust you," Patricia said. "I see your mother in you, and I always trusted her. She was my closest partner all through our school days. We drove each other to heights we'd never have reached alone. But she stepped away from magic, and now she's gone. I just want to have that same relationship again, with you."
"Why?" I asked.
"I miss it," she said. "You'll see what I mean when we start working together. There's nothing like it. But our kind of magic, time magic, it needs two witches. One witch alone can tweak at the threads that are already there. But to tap into the real power, the power to create new timelines, requires two witches working together. And there are so precious few of us around."
"That's what you want to do?" I asked. "Create a new timeline? Like, to get back to 1968?”
"That would just be the beginning," Patricia said.
"Don't listen to her, Amanda," Brianna said. "It has to be a trick."
"No trick," Patricia said, holding up her hands as if to show she wasn't hiding anything up her sleeves. "Why would I have to resort to tricks? To lie or deceive? I'm offering you a chance to master a skill of creation. Think of the possibilities."
"Juno told me that with her help I could undo death itself," I said.
"That's just one possibility," Patricia said. "Keep thinking. You'll come up with oh so many more."
"Why are there thirteen of you?" I asked. She blinked at this apparently out of nowhere question. "Thirteen, that's a number of power. Why amass all that power just to make me an offer you're sure I would never want to refuse? It seems so unnecessary."
"I confess, when it comes to magic, I like to think big," she said. She made a spokesmodel gesture to indicate the tower around us. "I had to get your attention and bring you here. Better too much than too little."
"It doesn't feel right," Sophie hissed at me through her teeth. I couldn't argue with that.
"You tested all three of us," I said, not really sure where I was going to end up, but I just had to think something through. Did they know how we flowed power through each other? How we were stronger together than just the sum of our parts?
I was willing to bet they didn't. I was willing to bet that wasn't how their particular coven worked.
"We did," Patricia said, still smiling at me.
"But you're only asking to mentor me," I said. "No mentors for Sophie or Brianna?"
"If it's important to you, I'm sure something could be arranged," Patricia said.
"But mine is the power you really need," I said.
"I don't want to take your power, Amanda," she said. "I just want the two of us to work together. To create things together."
"Sure," I said, not believing that was all of it. Not for a minute.
But she was never going to tell me what she really wanted. She wasn't going to let it slip. She had the upper hand, after all.
"If I stay, will you let the others go?" I asked.
"Amanda!" Brianna and Sophie said at once.
"No one is being held against their will here," Patricia said.
"Only there's no door," Otto said.
"Oh, silly me," Patricia said. "Linda can show you the door." Linda nodded and trotted past the three of us to where Otto and Edward were standing near the wall. Otto still had a firm hold on Edward's arm and shoulder and I wondered how many times he had had to restrain him while my back had been turned.
Linda swept her arms up over her head then brought them back down in a slow fanning motion, as if she were doing an interpretive dance about a rainbow. The wood-paneled wall shimmered then became a revolving door of glass with shining brass fixtures.
"You're not staying with them," Sophie said.
"I need you to get Edward and Otto out of here," I said.
"I don't believe for a moment that you're just buying us time," Sophie said. "I know that look in your eyes. I've seen it before. You want what she's offering you."
"You know it's a trap," Brianna said. "You know it."
"But what if it's possible to change things?" I asked. "What if we could go back to 1968 and see what really happened? What if we could change it? What if I could have a childhood with a mother who could actually talk to me?"
"Amanda," Sophie said. She sounded as if my words wounded her.
"I can fix things. I can fix everything," I said.
"Nothing is broken," Brianna said. "Time isn't broken. It just happened the way it happened."
"What a lovely argument against using magic from the one among us who uses it the most, and for the most mundane of purposes," Patricia said, looking around the room as if to see how many of the witches around us agreed with her.
"Amanda, we need to stick with our mission," Sophie said.
"Protect the time portal?" I asked.
"No," Sophie said. "That's Miss Zenobia's mission. I'm talking about our mission."
Her eyes were pleading with me to understand. She didn't want to spell it out with all of the other witches around us, listening in.
But we didn't know anything they didn't already know. We knew far less, if truth be told. The blonde girl in front of me knew far more about my own mother than I ever would.
Our mothers. That was the mission Sophie was talking about. Patricia and her friends knew exactly what happened that day in 1968 and in the days after. But would they tell us the truth?
And how would I be able to tell if anything they said was the truth or not? My eyes shifted from Patricia to Debra. She was the one who had taken our memories, who had wiped the memories of every police officer who had known about the wardrobe and the murder victim from the wrong time. What more could she do?
"You knew my mother better than I ever will," I said to Patricia, who looked saddened by my words.
"I'll tell you all about her, I promise," Patricia said. "She was my closest friend."
"Maybe she was, once," I said. "But for some reason, she turned on you, didn't she? And I don't know why. Maybe I never will. But I know she did. And you know what? That's good enough for me."
Then I blinked into the world of webs and I started pulling threads.
Chapter 20
My triumphant moment was cut abruptly short. I was not alone. And Patricia, despite being younger than me, had spent a lot more years studying magic. The moment I sensed her before me, I knew she knew things about the web of threads I had yet to discover.
Because while I knew she was there, I couldn't see her. I only saw the effect she was having on the threads around her. And I was pretty sure I only saw that because she wanted me to.
I stayed near my physical form, nervous that she could do something to the connection I shared with it here, but also that something might happen to it back inside the tower. I tried to think of something else I could do, some way I could shield myself then carry on fighting.
Too late, I realized that Patricia's warping of the threads wasn't random, and it wasn't some way of drawing in power that I didn't recognize. She was weaving, making new nodes between threads around me, then drawing them tight.
She was catching me in a net, and it was closing in around me. I tried to move the threads, but they didn't respond to me. I was trapped.
And then she started cutting. I had been worried she might sever the connection I had to my own body, but she wasn't.
She was cutting me away from the entire world.
The net tightened further, the threads biting into me despite neither of us having a physical form in that world. More tightening, more burning. I did the only thing I had left to do.
I went back into my own body.
But the world around me was in chaos. There was a loud cracking noise and flashes of strobing light, over and over, and I was pretty sure if I hadn't already fallen to the ground I'd be in danger of having my hair catch on fire.
Evanora was yelling something, but I couldn't make out the words over the popping sound.
Then I felt the net tightening again, invisible lashes burning into my flash. I cried out.
The popping suddenly stopped, and I could hear Evanora still yelling, "it's only fireworks!"
Then Edward was at my side, trying to help me up, but my body was writhing.
"Amanda!" he said, panic in his voice.
"Patricia!" I said, or tried to. I don't think I got all the sounds out. But he looked up and saw Patricia hovering over us, arms out, pointed toes several feet above the soot-stained marble floor. Her eyes were rolled back, so nothing showed but the whites, and I was sure she was still in the world of webs.
As if she heard my thoughts she tightened the net again, and my vision started to darken.
I was losing my place in the world.
"We have to get out of here!" Sophie yelled. She and Brianna were standing back to back hurling spells at the witches that circled around us like a hurricane of cloaks and hoods. "Can you carry her?"
"Yes!" Edward said, but rather than bending to pick me up he got to his feet. I heard a hiss and then saw him throw another string of firecrackers straight at Patricia's head. She screamed and fell to the floor, pulled nastily back into the real world.
But my body was still trembling, as weak and incapable of responding to my commands as a newborn's.
Edward threw me over his shoulder and ran to where Sophie and Brianna were backing towards the door. I couldn't see much past the back of Edward's coat, and what I could see was upside-down and tended to spin for no reason. But I was pretty sure I wasn't seeing Otto because he wasn't there.
"Hurry!" Brianna yelled. "She's closing it!"
"No, she isn't," Sophie growled. I heard a smack like someone taking a punch followed by a yelp of pain. Then Edward was running again. My head lolled back and forth, but out of the corner of my eye, I just caught the sight of Linda on the floor, trying with both hands to contain a vigorously bleeding nose.
Then we were back out in the darkness. Even in the dead of winter, the smell of spoiled garbage and old urine was strong.
"Otto?" Brianna said.
"There," Sophie said, and we were running again, out of the courtyard. I could hear the sound of an engine roaring and of metal scraping on brick, then a squeal of tires on a road.
"Come on!" Otto yelled, and I was watching the alley rush past me. We reached the car and Edward dumped me into the center of the back seat, he and Brianna piling in on either side of me. Sophie slid in the passenger-side window but remained sitting on the door frame rather than getting into the car.
"Amanda?" Brianna said, taking my head into her hands to look into my eyes. I couldn't make my mouth work. "What did she do to you?"
"Is she going to be all right?" Edward asked. The fear in his voice broke my heart.
I couldn't even blink my eyes, but I didn't need to. My consciousness really wanted to be in that other world. For a moment I was afraid if I went there, I'd never be able to come back. But I had no choice.
I kept myself anchored close to my body, not sure what would happen when Otto slammed on the accelerator. I anchored myself to threads from the car itself just to be sure. Then I took my first close look at my own self. Not my physical body, which seemed unharmed despite all of the pain I had been feeling. My actual self.
It's hard to explain. There was nothing to see, not visually. And it took a bit of work to really be aware of myself. When I finally got it in focus, it was all I could do not to cry.
I was in tatters. Threads were torn or snipped and left dangling. Delicate intersections had become knots pulled too tight.
But I knew how to fix it. The minute I thought about what I should do, I was instantly sure it was the right thing.
Briefly, I remembered that Sophie thought this knowledge came from somewhere, from some entity not to be trusted. But in that moment, I had no other choice.
I repaired myself. I loosened the knots so that they functioned as a meeting of threads with give and take again. Then I fixed the broken threads themselves. Nothing so inelegant as tying the torn ends back together. No, it was more like I could create a new thread by rolling the cut threads together. When I was done, it was like they'd never been snipped at all.
I came to in the car and sucked in a deep breath of air.
"She's back!" Edward said. He was leaning over me with tears in his eyes but a big grin on his face. "You stopped breathing. How are you now?"
"Good," I croaked, then rolled my head to look at Brianna, but she wasn't there.
Or rather, she wasn't sitting on the back seat next to me. Now she was sitting like Sophie, her entire top half out the window.
"What's going on?" I asked.
"They're chasing us," he said.
Otto swore and spun the steering wheel, turning the car without slowing down. I felt the left side of the car lifting off the ground. Edward grabbed onto the window frame to keep from crushing me, but I was sliding away from him.
We were going to roll over. I could feel it.
Then something banged on the roof, and we slammed back down onto f
our wheels.
"How are they chasing us?" I asked, sitting up and turning to look out the back window. My whole body hurt, but at least I could move it around. I'm not sure I ever appreciated that fact enough before.
"They've got cars," Edward said.
I counted three cars behind us, weaving from one side of the road to the other, occasionally dodging some other unfortunate soul out driving the residential streets of St. Paul late on a Sunday night. I couldn't tell one witch from another in the darkness, but I could see the flash from their wands. Then we passed under a streetlight that lit up their faces for the briefest of moments.
They were hanging out the windows like Sophie and Brianna. They were also standing on the running boards. One was even sitting cross-legged on the roof of one of the cars.
"I can't outrun them," Otto said, shouting so that Sophie and Brianna could hear him.
"I can lose them," Sophie shouted back. I couldn't see what she was doing, but I could guess, especially when the cold February night air that was blasting through all the open windows became a gentle breeze. Warm. Smelling of beignets, coffee, jasmine, and something else.
Ah, Antoine. I had never noticed that undertone in her magic wind before. But that was definitely his own unique smell.
"Turn again," Sophie said. "Slower this time. No hurry."
Otto grumbled under his breath, but when he turned down a side street, we were only briefly on two wheels and required no magical intervention to keep from rolling over.
I looked out the back window again and watched the three cars continue down the road we had abandoned.
"Hiding from witches," Sophie said as she slid into her seat and rolled up her window. "The very first thing I learned how to do and the most important."
"I'm not sure you bought us all that much time," Otto said. "They know where you're going."
"It'll be enough," Brianna said as she too got back inside the car and shut the window.
"Enough time for what?" Edward asked.
"To get away. To get back home," she said.
"But where's home?" he asked.
Brianna looked at me, leaving that answer up to me.
"A different time," I said. "A different world. You know we don't really belong here."
