Katie blinked. “Did my fish just?—”
The mimic exploded in midair, splattering goop in a five-foot radius. Her goldfish blinked from inside its bubble. “No idea what just happened. I think I vomited.”
Everyone turned toward the Joell-imposter as it began to grin. Its body elongated, split again, and twisted back into a form Raynadidrecognize. Her own. How dare it mimicher?
And then it spoke. “Let’s see what makes youbreak.”
Rayna stared at the mimic wearing her face.
It tilted its head, a little too far, like a marionette with loose strings. Her own smirk stared back at her. Her voice, but lower and laced with bitterness, slid out of its mouth: “What’s it like knowing you’re not the strongest anymore?”
She wanted to lunge. To punch ‘herself’ in the throat. Something. But a hand grabbed her elbow and yanked her backward.
“Not yet,” Joell snapped. “Huddle.”
The witches fell into a staggered, panting circle. They were mud-spattered, singed, and glowing with the kind of exhausted sweat that came right before considering very bad ideas.
Magda’s braid was smoking. Brianna had a cut on her temple. Victoria’s scarf was half burned and somehow still looked chic. Katie hovered at the edge, holding Bubbles like a security blanket.
Rayna blew some hair out of her face. “Okay. What the actualhelldid we just unleash?”
“It’s feeding on us,” Victoria said, voice clipped. “Every spell, every flare of power… We’re teaching it. It’s mimicking forms, thought patterns,and magic. I don’t think it was this evolved when it started.”
“We’re making it worse,” Brianna groaned. “We’re literally throwing fuel at a fire demon and asking why it’s getting bigger.”
“We should’ve known,” Sahara added. “The glyphs. The graffiti. All of it consisted of warnings, not puzzles.”
Magda spat into the grass. “Too late for regrets. We need a counteroffensive that won’t go nuclear.”
“Overload?” Victoria suggested. “A simultaneous strike. Hit it with every chaotic, clashing energy we’ve got. Maybe confuse the mimic’s reflexes long enough to trap it.”
“That’s risky,” Rayna said. “We could blow each other up.”
Katie piped up. “My fish says it might work.”
Everyone turned.
The goldfish swirled dramatically in its bubble, then looked vaguely at them and muttered, “Overdo the symbiosis. It worked before. Or maybe popcorn?” Then it hiccupped again.
“Close enough,” Rayna muttered. “Let’s take the shot.”
Magda wiped a smear of blood off Brianna’s cheek. “So, what’s the move?”
Victoria pointed toward the Joell-Rayna mimics, which had started to circle the battlefield, taunting Payne by mirroring Rayna’s voice in increasingly mocking tones. “We flank. Split into two pairs, but not directly opposite one another. Chaos spells only. No elegance. No harmonics. Justraw,contradictory power. Disruptive frequencies.”
Sahara nodded. “Disrupt the mimic by confusing the hell out of it.”
“And Katie?” Rayna asked.
Katie looked at Bubbles. “We’ll stay behind the Jeep and try not to hiccup you into the apocalypse.”
Rayna looked at each of them, wild-haired and scuffed up, ready to throw themselves into a battle with something they barely understood.
“On three,” she said. “One?—”
“Three!” Brianna yelled, and theycharged.
Magda and Brianna veered left, hurling wind and static like weaponized weather. Sahara and Victoria shot right, one casting heat ripples and the other blasting ice shards upward likereverse stalagmites. The magicclashedmidair, tangled into a roiling knot that sparked and groaned under its own instability. Lioness drew conflicting runes and symbols in the air, spelling nonsense.
