Harper pulled a communication stone from her pocket. It was glowing a bright red and she waved her hand over the top of it, activating its power.
“Harper, something horrible has happened,” Jackson’s voice said through the stone. “Aerden and I are here near Atlanta and I can’t explain it, but everything has just stopped, as if the whole world froze in an instant. The Prima’s gone.”
Harper’s face went white and she looked up at me, panic wild in her eyes.
“It’s the same thing here,” she said. “Get everyone to Brighton Manor as fast as you can.”
Harper put the stone back in her pocket and turned in circles, dropping the black hood from her long blonde hair. When she stopped turning, she looked at me, shaking her head.
“What about freezing the entire world?” she asked. “What kind of power would it take to do that?”
I took a deep breath and stared at her, wishing I had the answers. I thought again of the High Priestess and the power she was rumored to have.
“It’s impossible,” I said.
“Then how is this happening?” she asked, lifting her hands and motioning to the silent street.
“I don’t know,” I said. “But I’m going to find out.”
A Frozen Town
“Just give me a few minutes alone,” I said. “Go sit with the girl. If she wakes up, see if you can find out why she’s the only one who isn’t affected by this spell. I’ll come find you when I’m done. We’ll go through it again if I find anything I can’t explain on my own.”
Harper walked back into the Prima’s house, and I made my way into the middle of the street in front. Where to start?
If someone from the Order had physically come here to stop time, give Sophie a message, and kidnap the Prima and her family, they most likely would have come through the Hall of Doorways.
I would start there.
I followed Harper into the house. I found the secret doorway that led up to the attic. Every Prima’s house had one of these secret doors. The first room was in the shape of a pentagram with five doors. One usually led to some kind of library where the Primas kept their spellbooks and journals. Another was often some kind of laboratory where they could brew potions and stock ingredients for various spells.
But the door I wanted was the one with a symbol on the front. The symbol varied depending on the special ability or spirit animal of the family. Most Prima families had a demon on their door.
I took a deep breath and closed my eyes. To cast my power in the human world, I had to steal power from something living. I was careful not to draw my power from Harper or Sophie, since I knew they were already weakened. Instead, I reached out, searching for something I could afford to kill or harm.
A large oak tree towered over the Prima’s house. It would be a shame to lose something so beautiful that had stood for so many years, and it would leave a mark that couldn’t be explained easily if anyone came looking, but it was my best option.
I fed my power through the earth until it connected to the tree. It was like plugging in to a living thing, siphoning its energy through a thin magical thread. When I had enough, I began conjuring the scene, my mind exploring the past hour since the communication stones had gone off.
Nothing happened.
I took another deep breath and tried again, but I hit the same wall of darkness.
One of my special abilities was the power to conjure memories. The more emotionally or magically charged the event, the easier it was to see it. Usually.
I had no doubt whatever happened in this world over the past hour or so of time was caused by an immensely powerful type of magic, so the fact that I couldn’t see anything had me freaking out.
I placed my hand on the door itself, hoping maybe some physical contact with the location might help, but again my magic was denied, only darkness consuming my visions.
I raced back down the stairs and decided to try another tactic. Maybe there was something about the pentagon room that was making it difficult for me to cast.
I walked back out into the night and stood on the front lawn of the Prima’s house. I crouched low and put my hands on the ground, drawing more energy from the grass and critters living inside the earth.
I reached back farther in time. Since we had been caught up in the attack most of the night, we had no idea when things had started to go wrong here in Cypress. Maybe whatever happened had begun hours earlier?
I closed my eyes and reached back for any emotion or magic that happened here in the past twenty-four hours that I might be able to latch onto.
It worked. A memory pushed into my brain and I held onto it, like wrapping my hands around that moment in time. In my vision, the street was dark. I wasn’t sure what time it was, but it was late enough to be dark and early enough that most of the lights were still on in all the nearby houses. A car raced past me on the street.
A dark figure caught my eye, crossing the street a few houses down. She glanced behind her and walked quickly toward me. When she turned her head forward, I saw her and realized I had gone back to about seven or eight the previous night.
The girl in black was Harper, coming to see Eloise. I fast-forwarded the vision, something my father had taught me to do. Out of every demon I had ever known, he was the only one who could reach back in time and conjure memories the way I could.
I watched as Harper left the house an hour later and disappeared into the shadows between two houses. The memories firm in my mind, I walked toward the house. Sometimes moving around inside the visions caused them to break, but if I wanted to know what had happened here, I knew I needed to be inside where I could see the Prima.
Nothing strange happened for a while. Eloise cleaned the kitchen and went upstairs to say goodnight to the girls. Sophie disappeared into her room and a little while later, most of the lights in the house had gone dark.
I looked at one of the clocks, pushing forward until just before three.
But the moment the clock struck three in the morning, I hit a wall. Everything around me froze. I spun in circles as I tried to force my magic forward, but I must have pushed too hard, because the vision ceased to exist in my mind and all that remained was darkness.
I clenched my jaw and expanded the reach of my connection, wondering if the oak tree and grass had provided all it could, cutting my magic off mid-scene. But when I connected to a cluster of pine trees lining the backyard, the scene would not return.
Frustrated, I pushed everything I had into the scene, but it was no use. All I saw was darkness.
Stopping time shouldn’t have made the memory go dark, no matter how powerful the spell. I’d conjured memories of frozen time before and had clearly been able to see the world frozen before me. Something was different this time.
My magic had been purposely blocked.
My hands fell to my side and the memory dropped from my vision. Fear knotted in my stomach as I studied the current scene. A frozen town. A Prima taken in the middle of the night. A girl left behind with a warning meant for Harper.
The witch who cast this spell had known we were coming.
More importantly, they seemed to know about my unique power to replay the past events of any place or object. Whatever they’d done after they froze time, they didn’t want me to know about it.
Other than my father, a few members of the Resistance, and the friends I lived with at Brighton Manor, I thought no one knew of my ability to conjure memories.
I looked back toward the secret doorway leading to the attic and cold shivers ran down my spine. Whoever did this had ties with someone close to me.
I Want You To Be Surprised
Sophie slept in my arms. She’d been badly scratched all over her body, but why? Had she struggled when they’d tried to put her in the cage?
This poor girl had already been through so much, it hurt my heart to think what she must be feeling. We needed to get her to my sister as soon as possible so her wounds could be healed. I hoped Cou
rtney would be able to restore whatever power had been siphoned from her inside the cage, as well.
I rocked the girl back and forth, waiting for Lea to come back.
Jackson’s words kept ringing in my ears. Everything has stopped, as if the whole world froze in an instant.
Who could possibly be powerful enough to stop the entire world?
And how could we have hope of defeating someone like that?
Lea appeared in the doorway of Sophie’s bedroom, and I looked up at her expectantly, but she shook her head.
“I couldn’t see anything,” she said. “Someone’s blocked my magic. All I can see is darkness.”
“It has to be the emerald priestess casting this magic,” I said. “We need to get back to Brighton Manor and figure out what we’re going to do about it and how we’re going to get my friends back.”
“Do you think they were the only ones taken?” she asked.
“What do you mean?” I moved from under Sophie, laying her head gently back down on a pillow I had brought over from her bed.
“I mean, there were how many other witches in this town? Hundreds, right? Cypress is slightly bigger than Peachville and there were several hundred members of the Order living there when the coven was still active,” she said. “Were Eloise and her daughter the only ones kidnapped? Or was every witch in this town taken, too?”
I whimpered and stood, holding onto the side of the dresser. “I hadn’t even thought of that,” I said. “Eloise has a list of all her members upstairs in the library, along with their current addresses. I’ll go find it. Can you stay with Sophie?”
Lea nodded and paced the room.
I found the secret door to the attic and walked up the narrow steps to the first room. Eloise had brought me here a few times before to show me some of the spells she kept in her grimoire. I opened the first door to my left and studied the shelves. There had to be at least a thousand books in this room, and I knew from my own experiences in the library at Brighton Manor that there was a system to finding the one you wanted.
A small table near the bookshelves held a golden pen, emeralds embedded in its side. I picked it up and a trail of shimmering light followed its movement through the air.
Carefully, I wrote out the word “Cypress Directory” across the air. The shimmering light spelled out the words I’d written. A book near the very top popped out of the row and floated down toward me. I opened it and turned to the most recent entries.
There were currently three hundred and twelve names listed as active members of the Cypress coven, their daughters’ names written beside them, with their age and status marked in a faintly glowing green ink.
I set the pen back down on the table and scanned for Eloise’s street name among the addresses. I needed to find the closest house. My finger landed on one just a few numbers down.
I memorized a few of the other addresses on this street and set the book on the floor.
“I found one,” I said to Lea. “I’m going to check it. I’ll be right back.”
I shifted to white smoke. I soared down the stairs, out onto the porch, and down the street until I found the house marked 1216 Murray Lane. With my heart beating quicker, I entered the house. As I passed by the living room, I saw a man sitting in a recliner with his feet up. His eyes were open and the TV was on, but he didn’t move at all and the image on the TV was unchanging, an ad for a local pizza delivery frozen on the screen.
I moved up the steps toward the bedrooms. In one, I found a young boy, sleeping peacefully but not moving.
I closed his door and opened the next. A girl’s room for sure, decorated all in pink and purple with at least a dozen Hello Kitty dolls lining her bookshelves. Her bed was empty, and my heart sank.
I remembered seeing in the directory that Sonora Wesley, age thirty-two, had one daughter. Ashley, age six. Her status had been marked with a circle. I wasn’t sure what that meant, but I’d noticed that most girls over the age of thirteen were marked with a green check, probably indicating that they were already trainees of the Order.
Other younger girls had been marked with an x, and I wondered if that meant they didn’t possess any magical abilities? Or if the Order had chosen some other method of rejecting them. What must a mother feel when her daughter was marked with an x? Relief? Or disappointment?
I guessed it depended on the type of mother she was. If I’d had a daughter, I would have prayed for the Order to pass her by and let her live her own life.
Sonora’s daughter had not been so lucky.
I found her mother’s room and confirmed that Sonora was also missing.
Just to be sure, I quickly checked the houses of several other witches nearby. At the next house, an elderly woman had been boiling water for tea, but the bubbling liquid and the woman were frozen in place, her hand holding a tea bag by its string. Her daughter, a twenty-eight-year old witch named Bonnie, was gone.
In every house, I found the same thing. Anyone not listed in the directory or marked with an x was still there, but all of the witches who were either members, trainees, or marked with a circle were gone.
The Order had kidnapped all three hundred and twelve members, plus their young daughters. What could they possibly want with that many witches? If the same thing had happened in each of the six towns who had allied themselves with us, that meant over two or three thousand witches had been taken in an instant.
But where? And more importantly, why?
I shivered and pushed back the tears that sprang to my eyes. This was my fault. These witches had joined our cause and trusted me to keep them safe and to guide them. Now, they were prisoners of war.
The fact that this happened just hours after a large-scale attack on my father’s kingdom in the Shadow World made me sick to my stomach.
In my dreams, someone had been trying to warn me about all of this. Somehow the emerald priestess was involved, but was she really so much more powerful than her own sister? Priestess Winter had been the oldest of the five sisters who started the Order of Shadows. I had hoped that also meant she was the strongest and most powerful.
If we put an end to her, we had hope of also destroying her sisters.
But this? An army of hunters in the Shadow World, strong enough to bring down my protective dome and nearly destroy my city. A spell powerful enough to stop possibly the entire world in its tracks.
How the hell were we going to get out of this?
I started up the stairs to Eloise’s house, but a glint of green stopped me in my tracks. There, on the swing right on the front porch, was another small emerald stone. I could have sworn it wasn’t here before.
I glanced around, wondering if someone was here with us, watching us.
I sat down and took a deep breath before picking up the stone and holding it in my hand.
Once again, my vision went black and the woman’s face appeared. This time, she was smiling.
“By now, you’ve realized that every witch in this town is gone,” she said. “Including your precious friends. For every hour I don’t have what I want, one of these witches will die, a sacrifice to the spell that’s holding the world suspended in time. I need something to fuel it, after all, and what better way than the death of traitors? Their deaths are on you, Harper, which I just know is going to eat you alive inside. And don’t bother wondering what it is I’m after.”
A thin smile stretched across her lips.
“I want you to be surprised.”
An Agenda
“They’re all gone,” I said to Lea when I went back up to Sophie’s room. “I didn’t check every house, obviously, but there’s no doubt the witches listed in the directory are missing, along with all of their young daughters listed as trainees or possible future trainees.”
“We have to assume that’s happened in every demon gate town,” Lea said. She shook her head. “I don’t know how this is possible. Stopping time in a specific place for a short period of time has been done, but I never dreame
d anyone was capable of stopping time in several places at once.”
“We need to get back to Brighton Manor to talk this out,” I said. “And we need to figure out just how much of the world is affected.”
She nodded and lifted the sleeping girl from the floor. I reached to help but she motioned me away. “I’ll carry her,” she said. “You need to save your strength.”
I moved toward the stairs, but Lea stopped me.
“We’ll use the Hall of Doorways,” she said. When I raised an eyebrow, she said, “They already know we’re here.”
We both shifted to shadow and flew up the secret stairway and into the long corridor of doors. It had been a long time since I’d set foot in the Hall of Doorways, and goose bumps rose on my flesh. Just the thought of all the witches beyond these doors and their collective evil being used to manipulate everything in this world from fame to politics made my skin crawl.
Somewhere, behind one of the doors, was the home of the witch who had cast this spell and kidnapped my friends. Where was she keeping them? That was something else I needed to discuss with the others. Where could you possibly hide thousands of people? One home wouldn’t be large enough to contain so many, even if they were sleeping or frozen in time.
After a few minutes of searching, we found the Peachville door, marked with a demon’s face.
We stepped through the door and when we’d reached the second floor of my house, I felt overcome by fear.
I’d felt safe here for months. We’d all worked to restore the house and build a life here. When the sapphire gates fell, I’d had Willow and some other powerful casters come to place a protective barrier around the entire property. It protected the house, and more importantly, it protected the secret portal to the domed city in the Southern Kingdom.
No one could enter the barrier without being accompanied by someone who lived here. Not even the postman.
But after what had happened to the dome in the Southern Kingdom, I knew we weren’t safe. We might at least have some warning of an attack, but I was sure it was coming.
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