“We have to trust them,” Bailey said. “They really are older and wiser. And Anita sees the future; or, at any rate possible futures. She might have a good reason for keeping you here.”
“To entertain Rita’s nephew,” he said bitterly. “She said as much.”
Bailey sighed, and leaned her head against Avery’s shoulder. “It’s probably not as simple as that. And in any case... of the three of us, Aiden and I are best equipped.”
“How am I supposed to even pretend like I don’t know what’s going on when I’m with Thomas?” Avery asked. “I’ll be stressed out, and he’s going to be able to tell.”
“You think so?” Bailey wondered, peering up at him. “You’re good at hiding what you’re feeling. Even from me, sometimes. Does Thomas really know you that well?”
He shrugged, and shifted his posture against the wall. “Maybe. I’ve always felt like... you know, like I can be myself around him. My real self.”
“Since I’m going into a dangerous otherworld,” Bailey said, “and may not come back in one piece, I have to ask.”
“Don’t say that,” Avery groaned. “God, you just made it so much worse. What?”
“Has Thomas ever asked you to go with him, when he leaves?”
Avery bit his lip, and watched the crones work for a moment. Then he nodded. “A few times.”
“Why haven’t you gone?” Bailey asked.
Again, he was quiet while he gathered his thoughts. When he spoke, it was very quietly. “I’m afraid to leave here,” he said. “What have I done? What have I got to offer? I’m not educated—not like he is—and I don’t really have any skills I could make a living with. I barely get by working the library. My parents never bother me about living at home but... I can tell they’re getting tired of it. And they should be. Other than, you know... getting physical... I’m not sure what Thomas sees in me. And if I’m around him long enough he might realize that it isn’t much.”
“I bet he sees some of the same stuff I do, Ave,” Bailey said gently. She took Avery’s hand. “That you’re loyal, and smart, and funny. That you’re thoughtful, and empathetic. That you have a good heart. You can go anywhere and find someone with a good job, who has some kind of mysteriously ‘bright future’—which, by the way, you have as well—but a person like you? That’s a rare gem, Ave.”
“Are you saying you want me to leave?”
“I’m saying I want you to be happy on your terms,” she said, and kissed his cheek.
Aiden approached them cautiously when the crones were finished marking out the patterns on the floor.
“Any idea what they’re doing?” Bailey asked.
“Not a clue,” Aiden said wistfully. “Witch’s magic is beyond my ken, it seems. Not that I thought otherwise, but... the geometry of the pattern itself doesn’t seem to correlate to any principles I’m familiar with and the natural locus isn’t—what?”
Bailey was smiling at him, as was Avery.
“I have an academic interest,” Aiden insisted.
“Can you protect Bailey in there?” Avery asked.
Bailey’s cheeks heated. She searched the ground for something to pay attention to instead of Aiden’s eyes when they turned to her.
“We’ll protect one another,” he said. “But there is something I want to give you.” Aiden muttered something, and gave a small flourish with his hand. From nowhere, a business card with simple print appeared in his palm.
Avery took it, and read it, his frown deepening as he did. He looked back up at Aiden, concerned. “What’s this?”
“The number to a former instructor of mine,” Aiden told him. “I’m... confident of our success, mind you but it would be prudent for you to have... a backup of sorts. Just in case.”
“This isn’t a US number,” Avery pointed out. “Is it UK?”
“It is,” Aiden confirmed, tapping the card. “Specifically, in Cambridge. Professor Gideon Tull. If you discover a need for instruction and I’m... no longer able, then you may give him my name, and request apprenticeship. He will want to know why I’m no longer able. You may tell him everything; he already knows about Creswell and, well... he’ll understand.”
Avery stared a long time at the card, and finally slipped it into his pocket. “Fine. I’ll give it back to you when you both return.”
Aiden nodded once, and clapped Avery on the shoulder. “You’re a fine apprentice, Avery Lee. You’ll make a fine wizard.”
Avery didn’t respond. Instead, he hugged Aiden, and then let him go, his eyes wet.
“If everyone is done wasting precious time,” Rita called to them, “I recall some foolish plan to save a little girl from Faeries?”
Bailey hesitated only a moment before she pushed off the cave wall and approached the old woman. Rita pointed with her cane toward the door. “You and the wizard stand there. The door will open for only a few seconds—we can’t afford to leave it open longer than that.”
“It will close behind us?” Aiden asked.
Rita stared at him like he’d asked her to stand on her head. “Well of course it will,” she snapped. “Why on the green earth would we leave it open?”
“So we can come back through?” Bailey suggested meekly.
Rita shook her head. “You’ll have to find a different way back in.”
Bailey shared an alarmed look with Aiden, and they watched the door for a moment together. “Isn’t this whole system meant to keep our worlds separate?” she asked. “I mean... if they can’t come through, then how can we?”
“What makes you think they can’t?” Rita asked darkly.
Bailey had a sudden recurrence of her vision before, when she’d traveled into the astral world. The dark shapes flitting about Coven Grove. Perhaps it was true; that nothing truly prevented the Faeries from crossing into this world but if that was the case then how—
“Time’s wasting,” Rita said gruffly, breaking Bailey’s chain of thought. She tapped her cane on the floor, loud enough to startle Bailey’s heart, and then waved again at the door. “Go. You can still back out if you want.”
“We’re going,” Bailey said.
“Agreed,” Aiden said.
Chloe came to them before they could move, and took Bailey’s hands. “Open up,” she said.
Bailey did, focusing on Chloe’s presence. Her mother’s mind was open and waiting, full of love, and fear, and guilt, and desperation. It hit Bailey so hard in the chest that she nearly broke down, but in a moment she managed to weather the sudden tide of emotion.
“I love you,” Chloe said. “Be clever, be strong, and be safe.”
Bailey hugged her mother, possibly with more fierceness than she ever had, and accepted Chloe’s kisses on her cheeks and her forehead.
A moment later, the connection waned, and the two women withdrew from it. Bailey wiped her eyes. “Thank you,” she said. “I’ll come back. I promise.”
Rita tapped her cane again. “Don’t mind me,” she sighed. “I’m just an old woman for whom standing up this long is only a minor agony.”
Aiden and Bailey apologized quietly, and approached the drawing of the door.
Behind them, the chanting began. Rita at one stone, Anita at another, and Frances and Chloe with joined hands at the last. They began to walk the perimeter of the cave, exchanging places as they did so that Anita passed by the door and then back.
The circle walking wasn’t continuous—the witches stopped, returned several turns, and then reversed again. It looked, to Bailey, something very much like the working of a combination lock.
Except with each turn she felt something change in the atmosphere. There was a strange sensation of being turned herself—she had the strangest sensation of not really looking forward anymore, but in some other strange direction that wasn’t any of the six she was accustomed to.
Aiden took long, deep breaths, and she assumed he was feeling the same thing. Perhaps they all were.
It took some time—how long, Bailey coul
dn’t say, but it wasn’t swift. The sense of wrongness in space grew, though, until she felt almost ill from the imbalance of it.
Then, very abruptly, the chanting halted.
The lines of the door drawing became somehow harder, and then grew dark. The darkness seeped into the boxy shape of the door gradually.
Bailey looked over her shoulder at Avery, and her Mother—they were frozen there, as though time had stopped. All sound had ceased as well. Even the sound of Bailey’s own breathing was inaudible, and she couldn’t hear her heart beating in her ears although she felt it pounding away in her chest.
She looked at Aiden—he wasn’t frozen, but he had noticed the change.
Before them, the darkness from the edge of the door consumed all of it, until there was a large vaguely rectangular spot of sheer, unreflective blackness where that section of cave wall had been. Either Faerie was a dark place indeed, or the door itself only served as the event horizon.
Aiden took her hand. She took comfort in the solidness of it. His lips moved when she looked up at him, but she didn’t hear anything. It was easy enough to tell what he was saying, though.
“Let’s go.”
She took a step with him, felt a kind of thickness around her, a friction with the world itself as it tried to hold on to her.
Together, they crossed the threshold.
It was like falling in every direction at once.
And then... it was like stepping into downtown Coven Grove.
Bailey gasped, her lungs burning as though the seemingly near-instant transition had, in reality, taken several minutes in which she’d been unable to breathe. Aiden sucked in air as well, and they both held on to one another as they recovered.
When they had, Bailey looked out across the strange sight. Aiden joined her, but neither spoke right away. They were both too shocked for words.
Down to every detail—even the cracks in the sidewalk in front of Grovey Goodies which was where, Bailey realized, they had emerged—was identical to the real Coven Grove. There were even cars parked along the sidewalk.
And yet...
“It’s... not Coven Grove,” Aiden whispered, “is it?”
“No,” Bailey said. As close as it was everything was... different, somehow. Not entirely solid; like watching a movie with a set that has been expertly crafted but is still just a set. “It’s an illusion.”
“To confuse us?” Aiden wondered. “It must be.”
“Confuse you?” Someone said, a familiar voice though there was a strange accent to it. “Why, certainly not.”
Bailey and Aiden turned quickly to see, impossibly, Bailey’s father standing behind them. Except...
No. There, his nose was just a little too straight. His ears had just the faintest point to them, and his eyes were the wrong color brown—like eyes that had been rendered in watercolor instead of growing naturally into a real human eye.
“Who are you?” Bailey asked. “You’re not my father.” She swallowed when the being’s eyes narrowed just slightly, and then tried to relax her straightened back. Polite. Rita and Anita had told them the rules. They were to be polite at all times.
“Please accept my apology,” Bailey said, as respectfully as possible. She even bowed a little. “I was startled, and didn’t mean any offense.”
There was a beat in which the being didn’t respond. Then, finally, he smiled congenially and bowed in return. “Apology accepted, of course. Newcomers often have a bit of a bumpy road. Everyone gets one.” There was an ominous emphasis on the word ‘one.’
“You are very gracious,” Aiden said. “If I may ask, this place appears to be our own home country. That is rather surprising, as we are far from home. Where is this place? What is it called?”
“Why,” Ryan’s doppleganger said, waving a hand grandly at the town, “isn’t it obvious? This is Coven Grove. Ah, and look! Someone else here to greet our prodigal children.”
From behind her, Bailey heard a voice that cut deep into her heart.
“Bailey-Bee!” The woman’s voice said, full of fondness and compassion, just as it had always been.
Bailey turned slowly, carefully controlling her expression, her body language, even her breathing.
Wendy Robinson smiled brightly at her, and opened her arms. “Oh, sweet girl!” she said warmly. “Welcome home.”
Chapter 10
IT HAPPENED FAST. ONE moment, Avery felt the twisting current of magic reach a fever pitch and thought that he might be sick—he shut his eyes tight against the feeling and when he opened them Bailey and Aiden both were gone.
The magic died down, and for a split second he saw a patch of black on the cave wall where there had been a drawing of a door only seconds before. As quickly as he noticed, it was gone. He rubbed his eyes and stared at the cave drawing.
“Right,” Rita said, weary and sagging onto her cane. “It’s done. Everyone out.”
Avery held his breath a moment, and looked from one crone to the other. “That’s it? We just... leave?”
“What else would you like me to do?” Rita asked archly. “They’re through. Whatever they find on the other side is theirs to deal with. They will or they won’t. Hanging around in this dank cave isn’t going to make a difference to them.”
“But—”
“Come on, Avery,” Chloe said, reaching for his shoulder as she approached. “I’m worried, too. But she’s right. We can’t do anything for them here.”
“I should have gone with them,” he said. His chest was already beginning to ache, his stomach souring with guilt.
“You’re needed here,” Anita said.
He and Chloe both looked at the old woman, but she only turned away and walked toward the back end of the cave. Rita joined her, and for a moment it was difficult to look at them—and then they were gone.
“So that’s it,” Avery said slowly. “They just hand down the mandates and we listen?”
“We do,” Frances said. She pointed a finger at Avery. “You may not like it, but right now you’re in witch territory. You’d best leave it be. The crones know their business; they’re older, wiser, and smarter than any of us. That’s how they got to be what they are. And besides”—she glanced at the direction the crones had vanished into and rubbed her hands slowly together as though cold—“if Anita says you’re needed here...”
“We should keep our eyes open,” Chloe finished. “Anita rarely speaks directly about what she sees—she knows better than to muddy the waters—but she’s never wrong.”
“Great,” Avery sighed, and finally ran his fingers through his hair as he calmed himself. It helped, almost.
“It’s late,” Chloe said. “You should get some rest.”
If ever there was a good piece of advice, it was that. Avery nodded, and accepted a brief hug from Bailey’s birth mother.
It was strange. Since Chloe had revealed the truth about herself to Bailey, Avery hadn’t gotten very many of his intuitions. Perhaps that was because he’d been working with Aiden, learning to access and direct his magic. With no previous way out of him, maybe it had manifested itself however it could.
But now that he knew who she was, it seemed somehow obvious. Like he’d always known, although before it came out he had only been certain from the depth of himself, that Bailey’s mother was close.
What did he feel now? He searched, but found nothing except a sense of... foreboding.
“You’re right,” he said softly. He sucked in a breath, and gave Chloe and Frances both a weak smile. “I’ll catch up with you tomorrow. I should... see Thomas. Apologize for sending him away.”
“Good night,” Chloe told him.
Frances waved a hand dismissively, shooing him out of the caves.
He was nervous driving up to Rita’s house—her official house, outside of the strange, ancient cave—and tried to come up with a story to tell Thomas. It was exhausting just to think one up. Halfway there, he pulled over to the side of the road and tried to determine
whether or not he should even go. It would be easier to just pull away. Thomas would be gone in a week, and then Avery wouldn’t have to lie.
It was the age old argument that he had with himself every time that Thomas was in town. With or without magic to complicate things. How close did he dare let Thomas get? How close did he dare let himself get to Thomas?
In the end, he started the car again, and finished the drive.
There was a light on in the house when he arrived, and he found Thomas inside, sitting at the kitchen table and reading a book. He looked up when Avery let himself in with the key that Thomas had given him years before.
“Did you find the girl?” Thomas asked. There was none of the irritation in his voice from before, when Avery had sent him away. Thomas was like that.
“No,” Avery said. “We didn’t. Aiden and Bailey are... still out looking.”
“You decided not to stay with them?” Thomas asked. He closed the book and laid it on the table, turning in his chair to watch Avery walk toward him.
Avery sighed, and sank into another chair, and then laid folded his arms on the table top and laid his head on them. “No,” he said. “They wanted me to come back, get some rest. Maybe take another shift or... something.”
His eyes were closed, but he heard the shifting of fabric and the creak of the chair before Thomas’ fingers stroked Avery’s hair. “Are you okay?”
“Not really,” Avery said.
“Let’s go to bed,” Thomas said.
Avery nodded, and pushed himself up straight. Thomas took his hand gently, and led him upstairs.
A night’s sleep didn’t do much for Avery’s mood, but it made him feel somewhat less drained. In the morning, he and Thomas showered and dressed, and left Rita’s old, creaking house for breakfast. Avery suggested the bakery.
They opted to walk—it was only a mile or so into town—and found Coven Grove’s streets surprisingly busy, given the circumstances; although it was still very quiet.
“So much tragedy has hit this town lately,” Thomas said as they approached the bakery, glancing at the people milling about town. “It’s got to be taking a toll.”
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