Violet was in her study, reading the Gathering committee’s updated emergency exit plan, when someone knocked on the door. She looked up from the diagram and sighed—she knew it was Amos, coming to tell her it was time for the quarterly Council meeting. She looked at the stack of papers she’d been planning to reread for the hundredth time before the meeting: the profiles of the eight witches who had been caught by mutes. It would all have to wait until later, she decided, summoning the door open for Amos.
“I’ve got Iris here for you,” Amos said as the door opened, then quickly retreated.
“Regent,” Iris said breathlessly, closing the door behind her. Sneaker wedges this time. “I’m so sorry for my intrusion, but—”
Violet sat up straighter in her chair. “What, what is it?” she demanded. “What’s going on?”
“The map has malfunctioned,” Iris said.
Violet tilted her head. The Spherical map was host to some of the oldest, most powerful magic in their world, and it had never once failed. “What do you mean?” she asked, pushing away from her desk and standing. The movement jostled her mug and sent tea spilling over the desk. Violet distractedly spun her index finger counterclockwise, and the mug righted itself and refilled with the cooling liquid.
“Somehow the enchantment has been broken,” said Iris. “Sadie—”
“Who?”
“One of the junior SVT agents. She alerted me to a monumental spike in the Baseline,” Iris said. “By the time I arrived to see what had happened, the map was no longer registering changes in atmospheric magic. It’s . . . frozen.”
“What do you mean, frozen? We need the map for the Gathering.” The map was essential to keep the Gathering safe and organized—it was the only time of year they switched from a typic world view to a Sphere view. “Magic doesn’t freeze.”
“Regent,” Iris said gently, giving Violet a grave look that bordered, annoyingly, on sympathetic. “We can call in experts to do a final examination, but I think it’s safe to say that the map is no more.”
Violet walked away from her desk and back again, a cold sense of panic overwhelming her. She pressed her hand to her temple, letting out a ragged sigh. “Does the rest of the Council know?” she asked. They would be filling the Hollow any minute now.
As she said this, it occurred to her that perhaps it was the Council that was behind the sudden deficiency of the map. Was this it? Was this the attack that she’d been anticipating for decades, the attack that would finally remove her from the throne? For this to happen now, just a few weeks before the most important Gathering in decades, the Gathering that she’d hoped would garner her the popular support she desperately needed . . . Violet sat back at her desk, clamping down on a rising sense of fear and rearranging her features into a cool, neutral mask. Suddenly, Iris, with her solemn expression, no longer seemed like a trusted agent but a potential adversary, maybe an instrument for the other side.
“Well?” Violet asked Iris briskly. “The Council?”
“They don’t know anything. I wanted to inform you first,” Iris said carefully, registering the change in Violet’s tone. Violet turned to her desk, looking it over as if there were something there that could help her, but of course, there wasn’t.
“Is it the same group of witches? That spiked the Baseline in September?” Violet asked.
“I’d assume so, but there’s no way to know,” Iris said. “The map is . . .”
“Broken, I know. How could they have evaded sanctions all this time?”
“We’ve followed protocol, Regent. They hadn’t yet received five sanctions. I told you it was unusual—” Iris stopped here, and her face contorted with worry.
“What?” Violet asked. “What is it?”
“I’m just wondering about the Gathering,” Iris said uneasily. “Do you think it’s safe to go ahead with the festivities?”
“Of course it is,” Violet replied. It had to be. Canceling was not an option, and Violet leveled Iris with a look that made clear she had crossed the line. She drummed her nails on her desk as she decided how to proceed, her panic growing at the thought of a band of insolent witches, potentially plotting against her, now totally unreachable. The practicalities of bringing together an event at the scale of the Gathering (food, decorations, entertainment) were all of a sudden insignificant, and yet they too required her attention. Violet reached into her drawer for a quick sip of Soothing Solution. She thought of what her mother and grandmother would’ve done when they were in power—how they would handle a conflict that threatened the Gathering and perhaps the safety of the Witch Sphere at large.
“Call together three more teams of agents,” she said finally, opening her eyes to peer at Iris. “We’ll need to at least triple security for the event.”
“Triple?”
“Yes,” Violet said evenly. “Would that be an issue?”
Iris closed her mouth. “No,” she said meekly. “Absolutely not.”
“Good.”
Iris nodded and Violet rose, following her into the Hollow.
* * *
The facade of 33,26 was wholly ordinary. With its stately gray brick, black shutters, and outsized white columns, it looked like any other prefab McMansion. But still, when the girls arrived on the house’s front lawn, it was clear to them that they had crossed to another side. Much like Alba, 33,26, despite its normalcy, somehow asserted it was of another world. The grounds of the property extended for acres, first neatly cropped, then growing into thick woods, and everything was underscored by an uncanny energy. It was dark, and there were no other living beings in the girls’ vicinity as they proceeded toward 33,26. An eerie quiet repelled them as they approached, but there was also something that invited them despite their hesitation. They knew they had reached the right coordinate, and when the long, lanky arms of a willow began to emerge at the side of the house, they were sure.
“I feel . . .” Gabbie started as they walked through the grass. But she couldn’t finish. Even though the moment was serious, ominous, she felt a lightness—a comfort in her body she had never experienced before. She looked to Maya and Delali, who were both gazing at the tree, wide-eyed and open-mouthed.
“What if it doesn’t work?” Gabbie asked.
Maya couldn’t answer—she was already feeling a strange feeling, something like grief, at the fact that they’d have to leave immediately after casting the spell. She wanted badly to stay.
“I don’t know,” Delali confessed.
Now that the girls were there, approaching the grasping arms of the Cradle, they felt aimless, like unchaperoned little kids on a field trip. They were vulnerable, hidden only by the dark of night and armed with a spell that was incomprehensible in its simplicity. Whatever confidence they’d had on the other side had fallen away.
“Whoa,” Maya said as they stepped beneath the tree, sweating through the thin fabric of her bodysuit. She took a step backward, thinking she had imagined the temperature change, but she hadn’t: it was at least twenty degrees warmer beneath the tree’s branches, which swung glossy and black in the moonlight.
“Kinda wish Alba would’ve mentioned the temperature change,” Gabbie said, fanning beneath her armpits. “I’m roasting.” Maya and Gabbie turned to Delali, waiting for her to chime in, especially since she was particularly inappropriately dressed in her Champion hoodie, but she wasn’t even paying attention to them—instead she was looking skittishly around the grounds as though someone was following them.
“Let’s hurry up,” Delali said finally, shivering despite the Cradle’s warmth. “We can’t linger, remember? We have to just do the spell and go.” She extended her arms, waiting for Gabbie and Maya to grip her hands, ready to fulfill Alba’s prophecy.
* * *
Amos emptied the house for the Council meeting, supervising as non-essential occupants of 33,26 transported to various destinations. Nadia slipped into the meeting at the last minute, transporting to the Hollow from the lab, where she’d been idly dismantling and reassembling a potion that would be used in next week’s AME tests. It was hard to care about it at all now that she had her hypothesis about the New York witches, but she only had four weeks left to wait. Nadia settled in her chair, eavesdropping on Councilmembers’ conversations, which were mostly about the Gathering. Her mom allowed her a brief smile from across the room.
Violet entered the Hollow from her office, her expression indecipherable. She walked to the table but did not sit, instead standing behind her chair at the head of the table, holding lightly onto its ornate wooden frame. Nadia looked to the other witches at the table, wondering if anyone knew what was going on. Why wasn’t Violet sitting? Violet waited as the room quieted slowly. Then she spoke.
“I have been informed by one of our senior agents that the map of the Sphere is broken,” Violet said carefully, looking at each of them in turn, wondering if there was another betrayer in their midst. The room was silent until Stella Hampton let out a disbelieving noise caught between a laugh and a scoff.
“Don’t,” Thistle, another Councilmember, said to Stella under her breath, and Stella threw her a look.
“Honestly, Thistle,” Stella pressed on. “Is this the kind of thing that warrants Council attention now? I mean, if we don’t have a talented witch on hand, surely a piece of tape will suffice.”
“Thank you for that detailed analysis,” Violet snapped. She fixed her eyes on Stella. “This is not a rip in the scroll or a bug in the magic. A group of witches performed an act of magic so powerful that it caused a spike in the Baseline that has rendered the map ineffective. The map attempted to register levels of magic beyond its capacity to measure.”
“What?”
Nadia clamped a hand over her mouth, realizing the voice she’d just heard was her own. Her plan to meet the witches at the Gathering had seemed foolproof—but now she wondered whether the witches had a plan of their own.
“The witches behind this act must be extraordinarily powerful, and we now have no way of knowing their next movements. That said, the Gathering will continue as planned. In the meantime Iris and the SVT will bolster security and attend to the map and there will be no further discussion of the matter.” It was only then that Violet smoothed the skirt of her robes and sat.
The Councilmembers exchanged looks, wondering if anyone would protest. But before anyone could, Violet started on the first agenda item.
* * *
“There are times when one must take / Leaving absence in her wake.”
The spell had come with no directions, but once the girls started chanting, it led them. Their voices stayed low, but, in perfect sync, their speaking sped up, until they recited the spell like a playground tongue-twister. They could feel heat rising in their bodies, leaving them weightless, bodiless. The heat encouraged them—something was happening—and they kept their eyes closed, repeating the words with meticulous concentration. Soon, they felt a tickling, electrifying sensation—ropes of light were emerging around them and wrapping around their arms. And despite the instinct to marvel that the spell seemed to be working, to open their eyes and gape at the light, they continued. The light pressed against their eyelids, the threads cutting away at the darkness around them.
“Handed to the one we trust / Use this only if you must,” the girls repeated, and the cords of light thickened, wrapping tighter and tighter still. Almost all at once, pulled by some inexplicable instinct, Maya, Delali, and Gabbie opened their eyes and looked from their linked hands to each other, before turning in concert to the house. They focused the might of their collective intention onto the veiled window of Violet’s study. The girls carried on, keeping their concentration even as a cage of light surrounded the house, the gold beams thin at first and then, like the wisps circling the girls’ arms, thicker and more dazzling. The light, gripping both the girls and the house, started to pulse in time with the frenzied rhythm of the girls’ heartbeats. “And once you choose this course is best / Say it loudly from your breast.”
The light burned to an impossibly bright blaze and the girls began one last repetition of the chant. They closed their eyes against the glow before the beams let out a final terrifying flash, disappearing and leaving nothing but darkness in its wake. The girls opened their eyes, blinking at one another. It was done.
Gabbie
Maya
Delali
Maya
Maya
Gabbie
Maya
Delali
Delali