Eli rolled her eyes.
“I’m Cam,” he said.
She didn’t answer. They drove in silence for a few minutes.
“Do you want me to drop you off downtown?”
She hesitated.
“Or somewhere else?” He sounded nervous. She didn’t blame him.
“Downtown,” she said. “I have to go back and report in.” The thought filled her with dread, a slow poison in her stomach. She didn’t want to go back. Failure was not tolerated. But she had nowhere else to go.
“Okay.”
He pulled up outside City Hall, a building so like and yet unlike the Coven. Tall and imposing, built to withstand storms and centuries. But somehow empty and dead, where the Coven was alive.
She hesitated. Took a breath. Prepared to face her punishment.
“If you need anything, I’m here to help.”
“Says the hired hand.”
“Well, I do get paid.” He shrugged. “But that’s not why I do this. Mercenaries don’t last long in my position. I want to help.”
“I already said I don’t need help.”
He didn’t say anything.
“Okay. I’m going.” She opened the door and climbed out. She hesitated. “Thanks, Cam.” Then, her hand still on the door, “I’m Eli.”
He gave her privacy to do the dirty business of summoning a hole between worlds.
Twelve
Eli closed her eyes and stretched out her arms. She felt for the lining of the world, where the fabric thinned, where she could move from the human realm to where the witches ruled. She fumbled for the seam.
All she felt was smooth sky and sparks of magic like electricity tickling and teasing her fingertips. She frowned, reached farther, sent her mind out. Stretched her thorn-and-flesh body to the land of its birth.
I am one of yours, she told the magic world in the sky. Come for me. Please take me home. Take me away from here.
She wondered how long it would take the cops to find her.
She wondered if going back was a mistake.
She wondered if there were other human operatives watching her right now.
She wondered if she was a mistake.
No. Keep your concentration.
She took a breath. There!
The seam split, an opening in time and space. Finally, she was in the Vortex, surrounded by silence. Taking her away from motorcycles and madness, and a boi with eyes like liquid gold. Taking her home, where the rules were chaos and power, everything lived and breathed magic, and the exchange of knowledge was everything. There, Eli knew what she was worth, and she could bargain. She had a place and a purpose.
Didn’t she?
Was that enough?
In the human city, she was no one. A lost girl with desires and needs that had nothing to do with calculation and planning. Jazz and leather jackets couldn’t save her. Maybe she hadn’t chosen this life, but it was hers. Eli would leave the dreaming girl behind.
The Vortex froze.
Eli was suspended, caught between worlds. Hanging like a fly in a web. Held up with strands of magic.
She was nowhere.
Terror rattled her heart. Eli tried to turn her head and realized she was frozen in a block of black ice. All she could see was the darkness, but it had solidified and trapped her inside it.
Time seemed to stop. Eli couldn’t tell if only a minute had passed or an hour. She didn’t know how the two worlds were aligned. What if she was stuck here while a generation passed? Would she return to find Kite gone forever, just a floating voice in a white chamber? Would she have a home? She thought of Tav and Cam. Would they wonder what happened to the girl with crocodile eyes, tell stories about her to their grandchildren? And would she be the hero or villain of the story, or just a monster used to frighten toddlers into good behaviour?
Why had she been created? Was it truly to hunt down ghosts, to protect the human world, and to keep the witches’ world a secret, as she had been told?
Was her entire existence a lie?
A much younger Eli had thought herself a vigilante superhero, protecting the human citizens from the haunted echoes of witch blood, the sinister and sneaky souls who had crossed the forbidden boundary. Those creatures had used their last magic on a human-like glamour, hunting prey of flesh and blood to feed their existence and replenish their disguise.
Now she was less sure.
Tears filled her eyes and froze. Everything was black ice.
Eli was going to die in this magic coffin.
After what felt like hours, Eli heard a new sound, like metal being torn apart. Again, she tried to move, but her muscles were trapped. Through the ice, she saw a bright turquoise light, pulsing faintly. It reminded her of an iridescent jellyfish in the ocean.
She smelled saltwater and knew that Kite had come for her.
Eli had never seen Kite’s true form. Witches were pure magic pushed into bodies to meet the demands of the world they were in. Eli had long suspected the world they now occupied wasn’t their original home — or was only one of many.
Kite’s formless light was so beautiful that Eli wanted to cry. As Kite floated nearer, moving through the darkness, Eli saw tendrils of light reaching through the ice toward her. She realized she could shift slightly, that the solid block was melting. She reached out, her hand trembling, toward the essence that was her best friend.
Suddenly, another smell blocked out the familiar seaside aroma of Kite’s skin. Burnt sugar. Cigarette. Lavender with an undertone of cinnamon. Kite’s essence recoiled and Eli’s hand froze reaching outward, grasping for something, anything.
Another essence moved, stuttering and sparking through the darkness, a redorange flame like Mars moving through the galaxy —
Circinae.
With a shriek, the blue planet threw itself at the red. The two shapes danced and fought brilliantly, fiercely, folding over one another in an intricate pattern, leaving sunspots on Eli’s eyes until she couldn’t see the battle.
Had they come to save her or to kill her? Had they come alone, or had the Coven sent them? Which one was the killer and which one the saviour?
Circinae and Kite fought tirelessly over the suspended girl drifting out into the cosmos in a block of ice. They fought like gods, their magic sometimes shaping itself into great swords and spears only to collapse into the other body and re-form into its home sun.
Eli didn’t know whom she wanted to win. Her mother was selfish and, like all witches, valued power and purpose over sentiment. But Kite, too, was growing into her destiny. Each had strong ties to the Coven. Each, in their own way, loved her.
On the edge of the universe, the only two people Eli cared about hurled themselves at each other again and again.
A crack of thunder shook Eli’s tomb as great arms of blue lightning split through the red mass. With a sigh of pain, the red faded, receding into the black. In an instant, Kite’s essence was back, cutting through the ice.
Eli was free.
A tendril of light reached out. Take my hand, said Kite’s voice — only deeper and richer, like the sound of a shell held to an ear. An ocean sighing over the mortal body.
Eli saw again, in her mind’s eye, the glorious rust-orange planet going dark. She looked into Kite’s essence and saw nothing of her friend, only a magic core that glowed as bright as the Coven.
She flinched away from the beating heart of raw power.
In that moment, the dark behind Kite turned cloudy and red, like a sandstorm. It swept over Kite and Eli and turned everything to pink dust. Circinae’s voice filled her head — Finish what you started, daughter — and then the essence of her mother pushed Eli forcibly back into the human world.