DARJA
I was on my way back down the hall to find the others when Aggie materialized in front of me. I swallowed a scream and tried to smile, but I could feel the tremble in my lower lip. The smile on her face dissolved, replaced by a look of concern that softened her eyes and made me want to melt into her.
But I couldn’t melt. Not yet. Not until we got Sofi back.
“What is it?” Aggie said, looking more worried the longer I said nothing.
“It’s Sofi,” I managed to say over the lump in my throat. “She’s gone.”
Aggie’s eyebrows shot up. “What do you mean, ‘gone’?”
I shook my head, still not fully understanding it myself. “She left a note,” I said. “She’s gone to see Jared. She thinks…I don’t know, she thinks he can help.”
Aggie looked horrified. I’d expected she’d be angry at Sofi for spilling the secrets of the Vaikesti to an outsider, but the naked fear in her eyes surprised me.
“I think she…I think she kinda likes him?” I said, feeling a bit defensive of Sofi’s choice, even though I thought it was a stupid one.
Aggie shook her head. “That’s not it. Don’t you see, Darja? Sofi’s in danger. This is not something the Vaikesti take lightly.” Her eyes clouded. “They never have. Why do you think, in all these generations, not a single Vaikesti girl knew about the ceremony before the very day? Why do you think decades of missing girls have never made the nightly news? Why isn’t our town crawling with police, detectives, FBI?”
I shook my head. A creeping sense of dread was brewing deep within me, and I could feel tendrils of fear snaking up my spine.
“Because,” Aggie said, “no one who knows more than they should has been around long enough to tell anyone. We didn’t come here just to practice our little spells. We came here to protect Sofi.”
“But they wouldn’t…they wouldn’t hurt her,” I said, my voice thin and uncertain. Even to my ears, it sounded absurdly naive.
Aggie looked torn between irritation and compassion. I was pretty sure I knew which would win out in the end, but instead of prickling, Aggie drifted closer, her eyes pitying, brows furrowed with worry. The magic crackled between us, enveloping us in some kind of force field. It was us against the world. I wished more than anything that I could sink into it, that I could sink into her and forget about life and death and anything else that would disturb this delicate thread between us.
Aggie raised her hand, sweeping a lock of hair behind my ear. “Sofi is a threat to the Vaikesti,” she said softly, and I nodded, though my mind was more focused on the electricity that arced along the path her finger traced down my jaw. “That’s why she needs you,” she went on, moving her other hand up to my waist. “We protect our Bonded.”
And we did. I knew she’d done the same for Mirtel, and some faraway corner of my still-functioning brain wondered how many times they’d argued over the years, Aggie talking Mirtel down, taking the metaphorical matches when the older woman had been close to lighting a blaze.
Aggie leaned in closer, pulling me toward her. There was no breath to feel, but there was warmth against my lips. A tingling that raced through my body, and it was suddenly so much more—so much better—than anything I’d ever felt while I’d been alive. Her nose brushed against mine, and I felt my eyelids flutter closed.
“There’ll be time for this later,” she murmured against my mouth. “Once she’s safe.”
It was like I’d unexpectedly stepped into an ice cold shower. The emptiness, the lack of warmth, when Aggie pulled away shocked me into opening my eyes, bringing me back to the present. The cocoon of magic we’d been wrapped in was still there, but I could see beyond it. I had a job to do, and Aggie was right—there would be time for the rest of it later. An eternity for the rest of it.
“Right,” I said, pretending I couldn’t hear the quaver in my voice. “We’ve got to go after her.”
Aggie nodded, looking decidedly disheveled.
“Where is she?” she asked. “We need to know what we’re marching into.”
I closed my eyes and felt for the tug, ready to follow it to wherever Sofi was.
There was nothing.
I opened my eyes and looked at Aggie, who was watching me curiously. Maybe I’d just been distracted, caught up in the moment with her. I shook my head, gathering my concentration, and closed my eyes again. I could feel the familiar sensation around my waist, behind my navel, like a rope that ran around and through me. I followed it outward, knowing it would lead me to Sofi. I inched my way along the imaginary rope, willing Sofi’s energy—her magical presence—to make itself known.
But Sofi wasn’t there.
When I opened my eyes again, I could see Aggie’s worry, plain on her face.
“What is it?” she asked, though I could hear from the dread in her voice that she already had an idea. That same dread was creeping through me as well, a tightness that started in my chest and unfurled insidiously through my entire being.
I shook my head, not wanting to give voice to horrifying reality. Finally, I forced myself to answer. “She’s not there.”
“What do you mean she’s not there?” There was panic in Aggie’s voice, and I knew that it was because she alone understood the implication of that—of not being able to feel your Bonded.
“There’s just…nothing. When I came down the hall, I could feel her, like always, and now… it’s gone.” I looked up into Aggie’s eyes, the horror of the situation dawning on both of us. “Our bond is gone.”
Aggie’s jaw clenched, and I could see that, like me, she was fighting back an onslaught of emotions. “I’m going to get the others,” she said finally, and I nodded, feeling numb. She flickered out, and for the first time since I'd taken my last breath, I knew what it was to feel well and truly alone.
“What can this mean?” Mirtel said, wringing her hands together. Stephen was pacing the kitchen floor, frantically alternating between adjusting his glasses and tugging at his hair. Aggie hovered between Mirtel and me, as if she wasn’t sure which of us needed her more.
The truth was, we all needed each other, more than ever. And above all, I needed Sofi. I needed her safe. I needed her near. I needed to know that the other half of my soul—my sister—was not in danger.
“Is there magic that can do this?” Aggie asked, and Stephen stopped suddenly in his rounds. Without a word, he ran to the coffee table in the living room and began manically rifling through the heaps of papers piled there.
“If it’s a spell,” Mirtel said, looking at Aggie and me hopefully, “that’s good, right? It just means someone has worked magic on her. It doesn’t mean…”
It doesn’t mean she’s dead.
Because though none of us had said it, we all knew there were only two logical reasons our bond would be severed. Magic. Or…the alternative.
“Here!” Stephen shouted from the living room. We all shuffled in as he waved a sheet of paper triumphantly over his head. “I think I’ve got something.” He held the spell out toward us as we all craned in to read it. It was untranslated except for the title: Smothering Spell.
I shook my head as the rest of the spell, all the words in the old language, seemed to wriggle and squirm on the page in an incomprehensible jumble. “What does it mean?”
“I can’t find our full translation,” Stephen said, frowning down at the page as if he could guilt it into giving up its secrets. “I did this one a while ago, before we really understood the magic. But I think it’s a spell to dampen it somehow. It can’t destroy the magic, but it can muffle it, like throwing a blanket over it.”
“But I can’t feel anything,” I said, the shrillness growing in my voice.
“That’s because of the distance,” Stephen said, pushing up his glasses. “We know she left to go back to town, so she’s out of range. Normally, I think you’d be able to feel something, but the distance combined with the spell makes it almost impossible to sense the bond.”
“What do we do?” Aggie asked. “Can we end the spell if we didn’t cast it?”
Stephen shook his head, looking dismayed. “I don’t know. But even if we could, probably not from this far away. We’ve got to get back into town.”
“And what about the festival?” Mirtel said, quietly. We all turned to look at her. The festival was the last thing on my mind.
“For all I’m concerned,” I said, feeling my frustration swell up within me, “the festival and everyone near it can burn.”
Mirtel looked pained, but stubborn as ever. “There are many lives at stake,” she said.
“Sofi’s life is at stake,” I shouted, hearing the crackle in the air and feeling the charge of my anger.
Even though it wasn’t directed at him, I saw Stephen back up a step. He put his hands up in a placating gesture.
“No matter what,” he said, his voice quiet and low, “we have to get back to Vaikesti.” He glanced at Mirtel. “Without two bonded pairs, we won’t have the strength to stop the townspeople.”
Mirtel’s face crumpled, and I thought she might cry. I knew she didn’t want any harm to come to Sofi, but I also knew she’d been fighting her whole life—labeled the town crazy lady, shunned and ostracized—to save the town from itself. I felt pity well up inside me, but it wasn’t enough to squelch my anger.
“We can’t do this without Sofi,” I said through gritted teeth. “If she isn’t safe, none of us are.”
“If we go now,” Aggie said, “we’ll have time before the festival. We already know she was going to see Jared, so if we find him, she’ll be there.” She sounded far more confident than I felt, and I was grateful for it.
Stephen nodded. “You’re right,” he said, “we need to leave right now. If she went to see Jared”—he spat out the name as if it tasted bitter on his tongue—“she might be at the jail. We need to give ourselves time to work on an escape plan. Mirtel, I’ll pull the car around, if you want to grab your stuff.”
Mirtel nodded, still looking morose, and disappeared down the hall to her room. Aggie and I waited in silence. I wondered if she’d be upset with me for taking a harsh tone with Mirtel. If she was, I knew I’d hear about it. I took her quietness as a good sign.
Mirtel emerged from the hallway a few moments later, threadbare bag and spell binder in hand, and we moved toward the front door. Before we reached the entryway though, Stephen bounded back in from the garage.
“I’m an idiot,” he declared, picking up random objects he’d scattered over the kitchen island, obviously searching for something.
“What is it?” I asked.
“Sofi took the car,” he said with a brittle sort of laugh. “I don’t know if I was thinking she just teleported herself back to Vaikesti or what.”
“So what do we do?” I asked. “Can we even get a cab this far from civilization?”
Stephen huffed another mostly humorless laugh. “We can barely get an ambulance out here,” he said. “A discovery I made right around the same time I learned I’m highly allergic to bees.”
“So what are we supposed to do?” Aggie said.
Stephen sighed. “I don’t know. Maybe the two of you could phase back to Vaikesti and—”
“And what?” Aggie said. “We can’t make ourselves visible without a bonded, we can’t drive a car—we can’t even talk to anyone.”
“Great plan,” I said darkly. “Besides, if Aggie and I use up our energy getting back to Vaikesti, we’ll be worthless later. With both of us out of commission, we won’t stand a chance.”
“I know that,” Stephen said, yanking open drawers and pawing through the contents. “Just…give me a minute, okay?”
We waited impatiently while Stephen tore apart the kitchen, finally resorting to upturning drawers and dumping everything from utensils to potholders on the floor. Finally, we heard a clattering sound, and Stephen scrambled under the island to fish out whatever had skidded beneath it.
“There we go,” he said, holding up a set of car keys. He got to his feet and looked at the rest of us expectantly. “Come on,” he said, “and cross your fingers.”
I hadn’t realized that in addition to the massive garage attached to the side of the house, there was also a sprawling outbuilding on the property. “It’s the guest house,” Stephen mumbled, obviously embarrassed, as he led us around to the back of the building. There was only a single garage here, and instead of a fancy voice-controlled opener, Stephen crouched down and inserted a key into a rusted latch. With some effort, he hoisted up the door, and we all peered into the darkness.
A few dusty slats of light from a high window illuminated the…car? Beast? Hulking heap of metal that crouched menacingly in the depths of the garage.
“What. Is. That?” Aggie said.
It might have been cool, at one point. But, fifty years past its prime, it was more rust than paint, and the gaping engine compartment looked like a better home for an evil goblin than a motor. Pinning our fate on this scrap metal hellspawn seemed like a risk.
“It’s my dad’s project,” Stephen said with a wry grin. “He loves this thing more than he loves me.”
“God, what did you ever do to him?” I said. Stephen’s cheeks went red.
“Well, it’s certainly some…jalopy,” Mirtel said, tossing her bag in through an open window. She turned back to Stephen. “How many horses does she get?”
Stephen and I stared at each other, while Aggie rolled her eyes.
“I, uh,” Stephen stammered, “I have no idea.”
Mirtel held out her hand and looked expectantly at Stephen. “Keys, please,” she said after a long moment. “I’m driving.”