Bailey snorted. “You haven’t seen him pine over a boy like I have. Believe me, he knows. He just loses sight of it.”
“Be that as it may,” Aiden said, “he may need rest as well. I am myself quite drained from today’s attempts; I can only imagine how he must be feeling. Who has not felt a bit manic after two days without sleep?”
His point was taken. Bailey felt about like that now. Or maybe three days? It was hard to say. She needed coffee and carbohydrates. Her stomach growled at the thought, as if to say, “Oh, so now you remember me?”
“Food sounds good,” she said. She took Aiden’s hand.
With his free hand, Aiden turned his phone back on—leaving it on during the kind of magic they were working was a recipe for a fried phone—and then stopped when it chimed several times to alert him to various messages he’d missed since he turned it off.
“What is it?” Bailey asked when she saw Aiden’s eyebrows creeping up.
“My teacher,” he said, “Professor Tull. Gideon, I suppose, now that we’re peers. I called him days ago, and it seems he tried to contact me while we were working. I should call him back. You can go on ahead, if you like.”
“I’ll wait for you,” Bailey said, and leaned against the edge of the Cave entrance. Idly, she pressed her senses against the stone and tried in vain to seek out some active connection. It couldn’t hurt to try.
Aiden only hesitated a moment. He was doing his best not to keep secrets, but apparently it was a habit that died hard. He tapped his phone a few times and then lifted it to his ear and waited.
After a moment, Aiden spoke. “Professor Tull. It’s Aiden Rivers... yes, forgive me. Gideon. It’s good to hear your voice, sir.” He smiled slightly. “Yes. I apologize. It won’t happen again. I saw that I missed your call. I assume you received my message...” he listened intently, and glanced at Bailey. “Yes, sir... Gideon, I mean... I’m aware of the connection.”
Bailey stood up from the cave wall when she saw Aiden’s expression, and walked closer to him.
He turned to her and mouthed, “Stonehenge” before he turned his attention back fully to the conversation. “Certainly. Well... I have my hands a bit full here. Yes, he’s my apprentice... Gideon, that tradition really is outdated—oh, no of course not, I hold you in the highest esteem, sir.” He grimaced. “It’s a very difficult habit to break, sir. I... understand. What is this to do with, though? I assure you, the situation here is quite serious, all introductions can be made when you arrive. For that matter, there is someone else I’d very much like to introduce you to and—” Aiden face paled a bit. He closed his mouth, and listened for a long moment.
Bailey waited, trying not to tap her foot or pace around. Whatever Gideon had to say, it looked like it was bad news.
“I will... see what I can arrange,” the word ‘sir’ almost slipped out of him, and the effort to keep from saying it was evident on his face. Bailey couldn’t help smiling a little, even as she worried about what had been said. Aiden said his goodbyes.
“Well?” Bailey asked. “What’s wrong? How bad is it?”
“Nothing is precisely... wrong,” Aiden said. “We should catch up to Avery, though. Better to say it once with both of you present.”
They did so, and Bailey pressed her senses out toward town to find Avery’s mind. It was thoroughly shielded—that had been one of the first things Aiden taught him—but they had worked out a system so that Bailey could catch his attention. She had a similar system worked out with Aiden as well, just in case. After Mr. Dove, they’d been making a series of ‘battle plans’ as Avery called them. Contingencies, in the event of another incursion. A moment after she knocked gently against Avery’s defenses, she and Aiden found him returning down the path.
“What’s up?” He asked. His wand was in his hand again.
“Aiden heard back from his teacher,” Bailey said. She looked at Aiden. “So?”
Aiden took a breath, and glanced between them once. “Professor Tull seems to believe he’s found something of direct pertinence to our cause. However... it is not something he believes he can successfully transport to the United States.”
“What is it?” Avery asked.
Bailey guessed. “Stonehenge.”
Avery gave a short laugh, that neither Bailey nor Aiden shared with him. “Wait, seriously? He wants our help to get it here? Like... all of it?”
“Of course not,” Aiden said. “He wants us to join him there. He was unwilling to say precisely what it was, but he knows of the Seven Caves; and of the Coven. He is of the belief that what he expects to find is of direct import to our situation here.”
“And to the Coven?” Bailey asked. “What could he have possibly found that has to do with us?”
“I don’t know,” Aiden admitted. “Gideon is worse about keeping secrets than I am. He refuses to trust technology, and couldn’t have cast a Sending this far, across an ocean and several rivers.”
“Why?” Bailey asked. A Sending was a kind of hologram, as she understood it. Avery had shown her once before, though his had been barely visible.
“Running water,” Avery said, “it shorts them out unless you—”
“Got it,” Bailey said quickly, before Avery launched into a lecture. “So, when do we leave?”
“We?” Aiden asked. He shook his head. “Avery and I will go. Gideon wants to meet my pupil. It’s a... wizard tradition. Gideon fancies himself something of a grandfather.” He rolled his eyes. “I never met his teacher.”
“So it’s a boys’ club thing,” Bailey said. “That has to do with my coven and my coven’s mystical power base.”
Aiden hesitated, possibly sensing his nearness to crossing some line he couldn’t see.
“If it has to do with my people and my home,” Bailey said, “then I’m going.”
“She has a point,” Avery said.
Aiden sighed. “If you leave Coven Grove, you magic will weaken considerably,” he told her softly. “Just as it did with Martha.”
“Fortunately,” Bailey said, “it will come back when I return, and my brain will stay perfectly functional. I’m not getting left behind, Aiden. And I can buy my own ticket if I need to. We are... flying, right?”
“Portal magic is quite unreliable,” Aiden said, “and I don’t believe there’s been a successful teleportation in some two hundred years. We’ll be flying, yes.”
“Great,” Bailey said. She smiled, but it didn’t last. “Uh... now I just have to clear that with the Coven. We should go see about that. And some food.”
“Agreed,” Aiden said, and followed her as she marched up the path to town. “I believe I’ll allow you to do the talking.”
“This should be great,” Avery murmured.
Bailey shot him a dirty look, but it was mostly to cover her own nerves. Not that the Coven could dictate where she went, but... well, maybe it was best not to think about it too hard before she got there. If she did, she might lose her nerve.
Chapter 2
What nerve Bailey had managed to gather faded considerably when the three of them arrived at the Grovey Goodies—both the only bakery and coffee shop in Coven Grove, as well as the home base of the Coven itself—and found that none other than Rita Hope was already there, leaning on her gnarled cane like an ancient, nearly fallen oak. She didn’t have to be statuesque to loom with the same intimidating sense of age and power.
Not a week past, Rita and her sister, Anita, the crones of the Coven, had entered the fight with Mr. Dove and shown that age had not made either of the elder witches frail. Bailey hadn’t lacked respect for the two women to begin with—but seeing Rita now, she was suitably in awe.
“Rita!” She approached the old woman when she saw her. She lowered her voice as she drew near. “What are you doing here? Is something wrong?”
It was rare that either of the Hope sisters left the mysterious eighth cave; in part because both sisters were ancient, and that was due in part of the sustaining magic of t
hat place. She suspected that the reason they left so rarely was because the cave itself couldn’t sustain them beyond its boundaries. When Rita showed her face—Anita hadn’t been seen outside for years—it was almost always cause for concern.
Rita flicked her stony eyes past Bailey, to Aiden and Avery as they waited some distance behind, near the door. When they settled again on Bailey, they were suspicious. “Good,” she said, “you’re all here. What are you three messing about with?”
Bailey’s face heated and probably turned several shades of red. She went on the defensive by reflex. “I’ve already told the Coven our plan,” she said quickly. “They don’t approve either, but we have to do something about the weakness in the caves and if you all aren’t willing to help me do that then—”
“Not that nonsense,” Rita snapped, waving a bony, crooked hand. “Something else. Something away from the Caves. What are you planning?”
Chloe frowned from behind the counter, and Frances came to join her, drying her hands on a small towel. Aria came toward them as well, but she was trailed by a customer and shooed them away. It was rare, lately, for anyone to come to the bakery. But those that hadn’t been at the Caves when Mr. Dove went full-on faerie didn’t much believe the stories they had heard. The farther away the event got, the less people dwelled on it; though, not a single person who had been there had so far visited Grovey Goodies, and some of them had been regulars.
So they moved away from the counter and gathered at the far end, voices hushed. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Bailey lied. It was worth a shot.
Chloe frowned, though, and pressed her. “Bailey... Rita’s here because Anita sent her.”
“She didn’t send me,” Rita muttered. “We discussed it and I came on my own.”
“I apologize,” Chloe said, a hint of patronizing in her tone that all present hoped Rita didn’t pick up on. She didn’t take that sort of thing well. “I meant to say, Anita had some inkling that there was something about to happen.”
“She had a vision,” Rita corrected, and jabbed a finger at Bailey. “About you. One that scared her half to death. She’s still recovering from banishing that Faerie creature. She can’t take any more of your mischief and bumbling experiments in magic. So. What is it you think you’re about to do. And don’t lie to me, girl.”
Inside, Bailey cringed. Outwardly, she folded her arms over her chest. How long ago had Anita had her vision? It had to be about the plan to meet with Gideon; there was nothing else she meant to do. But if Anita had already seen it, did that mean that Bailey was always going to make the decision to go? The implications made her uncomfortable, given that Aiden had experienced visions of the future as well—albeit less clearly than Anita apparently did—and both he and Bailey desperately hoped to avert the disasters therein.
“I... Aiden received a call from his teacher,” she said slowly. “He wants us to meet him in the UK. At Stonehenge.”
Chloe and Frances both gave small, startled gasps. Rita only looked more dour than before.
“I see,” Rita muttered. “And I take it you plan to go.”
“I don’t see how I can’t,” Bailey told her, and the other witches present. “If it has to do with the caves, and it sounds like it does, then shouldn’t one of us go?”
“Someone more experienced, perhaps,” Chloe suggested. “I could go myself.”
Bailey bristled at that. “Chloe, no offense,” she said quietly, “but between the two of us, I’ve worked directly with the magic of the caves twice before. I know it better than you do.”
“Now you listen here,” Frances grumbled, “you’ve got a lot still to learn—”
“I know that,” Bailey said quickly. “I don’t mean it that way. But Professor Turner said that the caves—all of them, everywhere, not just here in Coven Grove—are all tied to Stonehenge. If the same sort of magic is at work there, then even though I have a lot to learn about other things and magic in general, I’m in the best position to feel the difference.”
Rita was suspiciously quiet, so Bailey went on. “And besides—I can appreciate that the three of you are cautious about trying to work out the magic of the Caves, but that kind of caution is costing us time; and we don’t even know how much time we have. This is not the moment to wait or proceed too carefully. We have to do something or...” she glanced around the bakery self consciously. There weren’t many people here, but several pairs of eyes had drifted their direction. She calmed her voice back down to a whisper. “We can’t afford another incursion like before.”
“Of course we understand that,” Chloe said softly. “But Bailey... if you leave Coven Grove, now that you’ve been bonded to the Caves properly... you’re magic will wane the farther you get from them. The other side of the world is about as far as it’s possible to go. You’ll be defenseless.”
To Bailey’s surprise, Rita spoke in her defense. “Not as defenseless as you would be.”
Bailey, Frances, and Chloe all stared at Rita, who sighed. “In all this trouble and chaos, you three have failed to take Bailey through the initiations,” she said, leveling a gaze at Frances and Chloe that made them wince. “As she’s only been through the trial of the first cave, she’ll retain more of her power abroad than either of you would.”
The tone of resignation there made Bailey’s heart leap, and she leapt with it. “I can do this,” she assured the three women. “I’ll have Aiden and Avery, and even Gideon with me the whole way. And if it’s something important, I'll let you know straight away and tell you everything I know. You all can work from this end. It’s not that I don’t feel I need you; I just really think I’m the best person for this.”
“It’s a long way to go, Bailey,” Chloe whispered. She glanced at Aiden and Avery, who were doing their best to appear as if they weren’t trying to listen in. “And while I believe your friends will do their best to protect you... I just would prefer you didn’t need protecting.”
Rita sighed. “It’s pointless, Chloe.” She turned to Bailey, and put a hand on her shoulder in possibly the only gesture of personal concern she’d shown Bailey—or, as far as Bailey knew, anyone at all, ever—and leaned toward her until she could speak directly into Bailey’s ear. “Anita told me to tell you this: the rain is cold; you must not be.” She pushing something at Bailey—a brown paper parcel holding something soft inside it.
When that was all that Rita offered, Bailey opened her mouth to ask what it meant but saw in Rita’s eyes that she didn’t know.
The conversation seemed to be more or less at an end, and taking the cue, Aiden and Avery approached.
“So,” Aiden asked, “I take it I should acquire three tickets?”
Rita nodded, a sour look on her face. She tapped her cane twice. “Now, the two of you listen to me carefully. If anything happens to this girl, you don’t bother coming back to Coven Grove. You won’t need to. I’ll send such a spell at you that no where you go will be safe. Am I understood?”
Aiden and Avery swallowed at the same time, and both muttered versions of “Yes, ma’am.”
Rita groaned a little, and rubbed the knuckles of the hand holding the cane. “I’m too old for these outings. I need to get back and tend to Anita.”
“Is she... will she be okay?” Chloe asked.
For a moment, Rita didn’t answer. When she did, her voice was thick. “It’s yet to be seen.”
“If Aria needs to come and help—” Frances started.
But Rita shook her head. “This kind of healing is beyond Aria’s ability to muster. It’s nearly beyond mine.”
Chloe and Frances looked stricken, and Bailey knew she must have as well. Rita waved a hand at all of them, and then waved Aiden and Avery out of the way. “Don’t waste your concern on us,” she said. “There are other things that need you attention. Tend them.”
“Wait,” Chloe said, “so... are the two of you condoning Bailey’s leaving for Stonehenge, then?”
Rita gave a small, ruefu
l chuckle. “My girl, it wouldn’t matter if we did or didn’t. It never did. I didn’t come to convince her, or you, not to go. I came to deliver Anita’s message.” She caught Bailey’s eye. “You would be wise to keep it in mind.” After a moment, she leaned heavily on her cane. “As for my own advice... be careful what you go digging up, young lady. The difference between a treasure and a trap is often slim; you may not like what you uncover.”
She left them with that, the end of her cane tapping over the hardwood floors of the bakery until the door closed behind her.
“Well,” Avery sighed, “that was... disturbing. What did she say?”
Bailey looked up at him, and then shook her head slowly. “I think... it was meant for me.”
“It almost certainly was,” Frances said curtly, and shooed Aiden and Avery away. “Now you two shuffle off and make whatever preparations are needed, and mind your own business.”
Aiden gave a stiff nod, but before he left them he kissed Bailey on the cheek and the forehead in front of the two witches. Neither said anything, but both cast their gazes elsewhere for a moment. “I’ll let you know the details when I have them arranged.”
“Okay,” Bailey told him, and smiled before he left as well.
Once they were gone, Bailey turned defiantly to regard the witches, daring them to say anything. Neither did, thankfully. But Chloe turned and removed her apron. “Alright,” she said, “come upstairs. Let’s make you as prepared as we can.”
“You’re not angry about me going?” Bailey asked as she followed Chloe behind the counter and toward the storage room, where a staircase led up to the attic.
Chloe snorted. “Would it make a difference?”
“No,” Bailey admitted.
“Then,” Chloe said, turning at the base of the stairs; she still had her apron in one hand, and wrung it with the other, “I will have to settle for being worried about you until you come back.”
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