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Everyone except you, she might as well say.

"I shall be confined to close quarters with my grandmama, who never misses an opportunity to point out my faults, and my infuriating brother, Tom. I promise you, it shall be a very taxing holiday." I smile, hoping to make Ann laugh. The truth is that I feel guilty for abandoning her, but not guilty enough to invite her home with me.

Ann gives me a sideways glance. "And how is your brother, Tom?"

"The same. Which is to say impossible."

"He hasn't set his hopes on someone, then?"

Ann fancies Tom, who would never look twice at her. It's a hopeless situation.

"I do believe he has, yes," I lie.

Ann stops."Who is it?"

"Ah ... a Miss Dalton. Her family is from Somerset, I believe."

"Is she pretty?" Ann asks.

"Yes," I say. We press on, and I hope that is the end of it.

"As pretty as Pippa?"

Pippa. Beautiful Pip, with her dark ringlets and violet eyes.

"No," I say."No one is as beautiful as Pippa."

We've arrived. Before us stands a large tree, its bark mottled with a thin coat of frost. A heavy rock sits at its base. We remove our gloves and push the rock out of the way, revealing the decaying hollow there. Inside is an odd assortment of things--one kid glove, a note on parchment secured by a rock, a handful of toffees, and some desiccated funeral flowers that the wind takes the moment it whips through the old oak's ancient wound.

"Have you brought it?" Felicity asks Ann.

She nods and pulls out something wrapped in green paper. She unfolds the paper to reveal an angel ornament constructed of lace and beads. Each of us has had a hand in sewing bits of it. Ann wraps the gift in the paper again and places it on the makeshift altar with the other remembrances.

"Merry Christmas, Pippa," she says, speaking the name of a girl who lies dead and buried these two months some thirty miles from here. A girl who was our dearest friend. A girl I might have saved.

"Merry Christmas, Pippa," Felicity and I mumble after.

No one says anything for a moment. The wind's cold here in the clearing with little to block it. Sharp pellets of mist cut through the wool of my winter coat, pricking my skin into gooseflesh. I look off to the right where the caves sit, silent, the mouth closed off by a new brick wall.

Months ago, the four of us gathered in those caves to read the secret diary of Mary Dowd, which told us of the realms, a hidden, magical world beyond this one that was once ruled by a powerful group of sorceresses called the Order. In the realms, we can make our fondest wishes come true. But there are also dark spirits in the realms, creatures who wish to rule it. Mary Dowd discovered the truth of that. And so did we when our friend Pippa was lost to us forever.

"Frightfully cold," Ann says, breaking the silence. Her head is down and she clears her throat softly.

"Yes," Felicity says halfheartedly.

The wind pulls a stubborn brown leaf from the tree and sends it skittering away.

"Do you suppose we'll ever see Pippa again?" Ann asks.

"I don't know," I answer, though we all know she's gone. For a moment, there's nothing but the sound of the wind scuttling through the leaves.

Felicity grabs a sharp stick, pokes it at the tree aimlessly. "When are we going back? You said . . ."

". . . that we'd go back once we've found the other members of the Order," I finish.

"But it's been two months," Ann whines. "What if there are no others?"

"What if they refuse to allow Ann and me to enter? We're not special, as you are," Felicity says, giving "special" a nasty tone. It's a wedge between us, the knowledge that I alone can enter the realms; that I have the power, and they do not. They can enter only if I take them.

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