“The spring?” Wulfric asked.

  “The very same.” Gran regarded him evenly as he calculated the distance and time until sunrise.

  “Eight hours. I’ll ask Bindi to light the way, along with a few friends. When the sun comes up, I can run faster than any human in Halfway. If I wait until dawn, I can make it in three hours. That’s a one-hour net, and a greater chance of me getting there without dropping the stone or contacting it.” He spoke in a calm, factual way. Wulfric didn’t have to brag. He was Wulfric.

  “Dawn it is, then. I need you to take this bundle, unwrap it, and force it as far into the spring as you can. Do not touch the object inside, nor should you look at it once the covering is removed. The leather around it is imbued with my most complex spell of silence, and what it holds could cause a resonance in the magical remains of your spirit that would be devastating, if not fatal,” Gran said.

  “I understand,” he said, taking the object.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “A nullstone. The sooner it is out of this house, the better,” Gran said. She pointed to Wulfric for emphasis. “Dawn, or just before. Run fast but sure. There are people who care about you.”

  I was mortified by the presence of the nullstone. “You—you made one? Gran, they can kill witches. They have killed witches. Often. Why would you risk such a thing?” She’d taken a horrible risk, even for someone of her power.

  “I respect the effects of the null energy, but I’m glad you understand the risk. I don’t enter such things lightly, but that spring—even the possibility of that spring—must end. Now. For that reason, I chose to do this, and you must do the next part. I warn you, it will be even harder than forming a physical drain of living magic,” Gran said.

  “What could be more dangerous than that?” I asked, warily.

  Gran touched my shoulder before speaking, her eyes bright with worry. “You must decide whether or not to take a life, Carlie, and that is the most difficult decision of all.”

  Chapter Thirty-One: Prematurely Gray

  “Carlie, hold this,” Wulfric said, slipping something cold into my hand. It was dark, and the stars peeked through the window, a casual spray of diamond light far above.

  I froze, not from the object, but from his tone. It was the same voice he’d used when we met-- when he was a predatory vampire, roaming the forest like a wraith.

  “Tell me,” I whispered, feeling the long knife in my hand. Knowing what it was gave me a shock, but I tried my best not to jump from the bed, screaming like a banshee at whatever had come into our home. That could be the only reason for his behavior, and the fact someone made it inside the sanctity of our home sent a chill down my spine.

  “Downstairs. The door opened a second before I woke you. I’m going down to—”

  He stopped, because the lights came on, flaring into brilliance up through the hallway.

  “Hmph. Guess they’re a polite intruder?” I asked, my heart hammering against my ribs.

  “Let us hope they are not uninvited at all,” came Wulfric’s growl. He stalked down the stairs as I tiptoed behind him, holding a knife in one hand and my charms in the other. I felt more than a little badass, right up until the moment I realized Wulfric was naked, his hands held out in preparation for buck naked combat. I tried not to giggle given the situation, but even pumping adrenaline couldn’t make me fully stifle my giggles.

  “Sorry,” I said, holding the knife up with renewed fervor.

  Wulfric vanished around the stairwell, and I heard nothing.

  Then he appeared again wearing only a curious look. “Dear, may I ask you for some pants?”

  “You know our guest, I take it?” I asked, smirking at his magnificent nudity. It was a shame to cover it up, but manners are manners.

  He grew serious, then a bit sad. “No, but I think you do.”

  “Okay,” I said, making my way upstairs and grabbing sweatpants that looked like they were ten feet long. I handed them to Wulfric at the corner of the stairs, where he slipped them on and went into the living room. I followed, and then stopped.

  A man waited on our couch, legs crossed and relaxed. “Hi Carlie.”

  His voice was average, his height, above average, his age around forty or so. He was deeply tanned, if not aged by the sun, and he had the hands of a worker.

  I sat in the chair opposite him, while Wulfric opted to stand. “At the risk of seeming rude, why are you in my house?” I placed the knife on a coffee table but kept my charms warm.

  He leaned forward with the air of a man who has nothing to lose. His smile was worn, just like everything about him. He was a person in tatters, and I began to smell something in the air. Something old.

  Like a mummy.

  “I thought you guys wore bandages,” I said, when it was obvious he was waiting for me to speak again.

  “I did. As to other people in my condition, I couldn’t say.” He began to fidget, then folded his hands with an effort.

  “You drank from the spring, and now you’re sick,” I said.

  “Not sick, but yes, I drank from the spring. The last vestiges of a secret so grand that people would kill to find it. And here I am, unwrapped and on the edge of darkness. I have nothing left to hide. I have nothing left at all, really. It’s sort of fitting, given my history. My parents were good people, you know? Dad was a Rabbi. Mom worked with the homeless.” He shook his head, a lifetime of regret in that gesture. “I never wanted to work like they did, so I was always looking for angles. Shortcuts. I wanted to be famous, you know? And rich. Girls, too,” he said, laughing. His brittle humor revealed the stained teeth of an older man. Something was wrong with him, at every level.

  I looked a him again, and the room spun. I swore I knew him, or maybe recognized who he had been, not this decaying wreck of a man who was still, in his mind, a boy. I needed to know how as badly as who. “Makenna?” I asked.

  His skin flaked when he nodded. “She convinced me. Started with promises, kisses, so many lies. I never thought to ask why someone like her would show interest in an echo like me. Then she left me. Twice. After the first time, I was crazy to have her back, so I agreed to drink from the spring and film videos. I was her pet, like an experiment. When I started feeling—off—she pretended like there was nothing wrong until it was too late. She was convinced that real magic was just around the corner. It was Bridget who got the idea to recruit girls through the video channel, like a sisterhood.”

  “With Makenna at the top, right?” I asked.

  “Of course. Like high school cliques, but with magic that turned me into this, and made her beautiful. Made her loved.” He slumped forward even more, defeat in every bone. “Can you imagine doing something so evil for so little? Is that who we are? As people?”

  “Not all of us, but some of us.” I stared at his face again, seeing the man under the condition. He was there, in my memory. I knew it. “Who are you?” I asked him again, fearing the answer.

  He gave a rueful shrug that was just this side of desperate. “I’ll tell you, but it’s not who I used to be. You knew me as Tyler Venture, but now, you can call me Todd.”

  Chapter Thirty-Two: Blast Radius

  We spoke quietly to Todd, and it became apparent that the mummy spell was not going to let him live.

  “I know, Carlie. It’s okay. I didn’t come here for sympathy. I came here to do something good before I go,” Todd said. “Look at this way, I might live long enough to have candy one more time.”

  “Candy—oh, stars. It’s two nights before Halloween.” I bopped myself on the head, angry at how time had slipped away. Gran and I would celebrate in our way when the veil was thin, but Halfway would be alive with kids and adults all along the streets, drinking cider and sharing candy. There would even be carloads of kids from Inlet, brought over on invitation from our town to join in the fun.

  I felt fingers of cold creep around my heart at the thought of a rogue witch loose in Halfway. And on Halloween, of all nights.

  “She needs the bottles,” Todd said evenly into the quiet following my muttered curses.

  “From the spring? Not happening. Wulfric will smash whatever he sees, and the only other source of magic in Halfway is here. Or Gran’s house, if Makenna wants to make the last mistake of her magical career,” I said.

  “I called the fungi. It’s my gift,” Todd said. “She told me it was a blessing, but it’s just another part of this curse. No one could touch the spring, she said, so we needed inhuman help. That’s where I came in. I called them forth during my walks in your forest, trying to stay hidden. They would rise, and go to the spring, and dig, and then they would fill the bottles like robots. When there were enough, they brought the bottles in a clanking armload to Makenna.”

  “Where is she putting them?” I asked.

  “In her car. She’s not very imaginative. She has a root cellar back home, under the breezeway of her house. She told me about it. When she gets back with all of the spring magic she can carry, she’ll stockpile it like weapons, assuring herself of some position among the women who look to her as a kind of leader, or whatever they see.” He sighed, a wheezing noise that sounded old and tired. “I just see greed and lies when I look at her now.”

  “Would they have left yet? They weren’t in the cabins,” I said. We couldn’t afford to search for them. We needed Makenna and Bridget yesterday.

  “Not a chance. I’m still alive, and Makenna swore I’d be dead before she left Halfway. I think she might see that through, regardless of your efforts,” Todd said.

  I wanted to cry. I was angry beyond anything I’d ever known. Todd had been a dumb kid, now swept into a toxic death at the hands of a woman who wore my religion like it was a stylish hat. “Whatever happens, she won’t leave this town, Todd. You have my oath.”

  “And mine,” Wulfric said, squeezing his giant hands together with a series of crunching noises. Even I flinched, and he shot me an apologetic look. “Sorry.”

  “It’s okay, babe. I know how you feel,” I told him. I stood, because there wasn’t much more to say. “Let’s get dressed. No time like the present.”

  We dressed and returned to find Todd standing awkwardly, staring at the front door.

  “What is it?” I asked. His face was slack, skin going gray. Wulfric nudged him to the chair, putting a gentle hand on his shoulder. “Rest. Despite your ease of entry, this house is safe, friend. You will have no trouble here.”

  “Thanks. I—just thanks.” Todd sat, folding into the chair with an exhaustion that hadn’t been present a few moments ago. The spell of deterioration was gaining momentum, like a horrid fever that just wouldn’t quit.

  “Ready?” I asked Wulfric. He rolled his shoulders like a wrestler entering the ring. I slipped my charms to hand, pulling three to the side, where they rested between my fingers like old friends. I hummed a light tone, letting a spell float on my tongue with the weight of a song.

  “Ready. Let’s go find this fraud,” I said.

  He pulled open the door and a bolt of lightning hit Todd in the chest, shattering his body with a hideous explosion of dust and blood.

  Chapter Thirty-Three: Mean and Meaner

  Wulfric pushed me back, rolling out the door and across the porch like a tiger all while grabbing a small plant stand and hurling it through the air like a missile.

  The wooden stand shattered against a floating shape, earning a scream of pain and a string of curses that scorched my ears.

  I unleashed my silent spell at the target without thinking, sending the bolt of sunlight skyward in a brassy spray. It scattered through the air, weakened by distance and a light fog that had crept in overnight.

  Makenna was flying. Or floating. Maybe both, but she was thirty feet in the air and descending slowly, her hands up in a posture that I knew too well. She was spellcasting, and the twist of her lips told me it wasn’t going to be a rainbow.

  “Wul—” I started, but he was already in motion, a blur against the mist. He leapt upward, but in a direction nowhere near Makenna, and I wondered if the spell had blinded him. Fist raised, he sailed skyward to land a crashing left hand in the midsection of Bridget, who was sweeping down at him with a staff that looked like it was alive with hissing snakes. “Two of them. Figures.”

  I crouched, thankful of the pause due to Wulfric’s good old-fashioned brawling technique, but instantly cast my second spell. With a wave of my charms, I did the only logical thing when facing two crazed witches flying overhead.

  I called to the remains of Todd, granting his body a freedom he would never know. From within my home, the dust and gore of his deadly end shot forward in a lance of grit, dashing through the thin fog to cling to Makenna’s flowing black gown.

  “Seriously?” I asked. Both girls were dressed like there had been a goth sale at Dress Barn, and their cosplay of my religion did nothing for my mood. They were corrupted by the spring, but that didn’t mean they weren’t dangerous. Todd knew, if he was capable of knowing anything other than pain in his last moment on earth.

  Makenna shrieked, flailing at her dress with hands that grew stickier with dust and blood with every frantic wave of her hands, but it was Bridget who had the head to attack. She was smiling despite Wulfric’s punch, hands slyly poised to deliver a spell as her feet touched the ground on my sidewalk, light as a cat.

  I watched her head tilt and knew that it was she who was most dangerous. Makenna was a monster, but Bridget’s lips were curled in a sensual smile. The spring had twisted her, and now, it wanted something back. Bridget was only too happy to oblige. Her magic landed, a silvery coil of dark energy wrapping around Wulfric like a constrictor, binding his arms tightly enough that he staggered, raging against the spell with quiet power. The tendons in his neck and arms bulged as he fought back against the implacable magic, designed to crush the life from him without care or consequence.

  Wulfric dropped the chair he was holding, reaching toward something unseen. His face was a mask of pain as the invisible fingers continued crushing the breath from him, but I saw his chest heave like a bellows, forcing some air in to keep him from passing out. His power was incredible, but I had to act.

  “You’re a lot of woman for someone so small,” Makenna remarked, landing and casting a bolt of black energy at me with a casual flick of her hands. It missed, but came close enough to make the hair on my head stand up. I ran an irritated hand over the cowlicks as they returned with a vengeance. First, they try to kill my love, then they messed up my hair. These were truly evil women.

  “I’m more woman than the two of you bitches put together.” I rolled, cowlicks flying, and sent a downburst of frigid air over the top of the sisters, forcing them all the way to the ground. Wulfric’s eyes caught mine and I knew he had minutes to live, but freeing him only to turn my back on such vicious creatures was a short trip to a long nap. I had to fight for me, but I had to win for him.

  “I’d like to say there’s a grand plan here, but,” Makenna said, pouting prettily. “Got tired of fighting with production companies and all of the lies.” She waved, unleashing yet another spell that cracked the sidewalk and sent tingles of something bad through my feet. When I rose, I was damp from the lawn and sporting leaves in my hair, a nice development since I figured she’d gotten me. As an experienced witch, I have some magical resistance.

  As a witch on my own turf, I’m also kind of lucky.

  Makenna skittered to the left while Bridget hovered, her own face frozen in the sneer of someone who has let their fake boredom steal the joy from their life. These were women empty of soul or justice but filled with bad magic and a desire for something other than their own lives. Why they chose Halfway, I had no idea, but they were both going to die, and soon.

  I lifted my hands, throwing a curtain of shadow that oozed against the sky, oily and slow. I didn’t care if it hurt them; I wanted to get to Wulfric. I dove toward his struggling frame, turned his lips to mine, and filled him with a series of breaths that restored some of the color to his stricken face. He nearly grinned, and I saw that his feet were free. Whatever spell had him, it couldn’t last forever. A seasoned witch would know that.

  The sisters from hell did not. They weren’t skilled. They were just mean.

  Bridget shook her staff in small circles, sending a spray of venom toward me that scalded the air with deadly effect, but I turned it with my hand, escorting the spell into the quiet earth. I sent a harried prayer to the earth, thanking it for accepting something so foul, and received a rumble of laughter. I smiled despite my condition, because I hadn’t expected an answer. Bridget’s face contorted again as she looked at her staff accusingly; she’d clearly been counting on that spell to kill or wound me, and it had failed.

  “Shoulda studied harder in your strip mall, girls,” I hissed, lifting myself up with arms spread wide as Wulfric’s legs came free. I shouted something unformed and raw, launching my own counterattack toward Makenna, not Bridget, because I knew she was the weaker of the two. Remove one problem, solve the rest.

  It seemed simple.

  Makenna cast an appreciative eye over Wulfric’s body. “I think we’ll like it here,” she remarked in a casual way. “We can learn to share. Nothing but clean air and country living for us now. And Wulfric. Of course.”

  Bridget tsked from ten feet away as they closed in on me, their dresses artfully flowing in the nonexistent wind. “We’ll have to get rid of the old lady.”

  “And the kid. I hate kids,” Makenna said.

  “Right. But we can learn to share. We shared a room growing up. With her, can you imagine that? Two hours to do her hair, every single day,” Bridget said.

  “You couldn’t understand. I have curls,” Makenna said, laughing as she scorched the air between us with another random spell. She wasn’t even trying to pretend she knew what would happen. It was magic in the most dangerous form; a raw, unfocused use that was like throwing gasoline on a fire.