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Maybe there was time to go back. Maybe there wasn’t. Without knowing the time, there was no way to know. Kara would’ve murdered someone with her bare hands for a wind-up wristwatch.
“Look! I can see the scrying crystal!”
The three of them peered into the mirror, and there it was. The crystal. Glowing, pulsing, looking exactly like a ghostly representation of the crystal in the old photograph.
And then, before their very eyes? The crystal’s image was projected outward. It appeared on the table, right in the spot they’d left for it. A throbbing, swirling, almost holographic image.
“It’s happening now,” said Jeremy. “This is it.”
His voice was calm. Even. Kara went over a mental checklist. Everything was in its place. They’d done all they could. Whatever was going to happen, they’d be the sole witnesses to it. They stood poised and ready.
“Light the candle,” she ordered.
Neither of her lovers moved. She turned her head to glare at them.
“Did you hear me? I said light the candle!”
Jeremy and Logan looked at each other, and then back at her. Their next words made Kara’s heart sink.
“With what?”
Forty-one
Kara stared back at Logan, at Jeremy, at the table of spooky artifacts. The candle stood there glaring back at her. Mocking her.
Dammit! We thought of everything else!
She wanted to scream. It probably would’ve felt good, but it would’ve only made things worse.
How did we not think of this!
The room grew colder — much colder. It made Kara shudder, stippling her exposed skin. She tried to ignore it as she turned toward the mirror.
“What do we do?” Jeremy shouted over the wind.
Wind. There shouldn’t have been any wind, but there was. It had picked up while she wasn’t paying attention, and now it howled through the cellar like someone had opened a dozen windows on a cold winter’s day.
Kara began looking around. The light coming from the mirror was almost blinding now. It illuminated the entire chamber. She could see everything.
“Look around!” she shouted. “Find something to—”
CRASH!
She was interrupted by the splintering of wood, and a blur of movement. One of the heavy oaken bookcases had fallen over. Jeremy had been standing before it, but somehow Logan had moved fast enough to save him. He’d tackled him at the last second, shoving him halfway across the room to the hard, dirt floor.
That wasn’t the wind, Kara thought. Something pushed it.
She held her arm up over her face. The light was swirling and pulsing, scattering itself over the room like a living thing. It was beating now, with a steady rhythm. Almost like a heart…
She forced her eyes open, despite the searing pain. Kara saw furniture, rotting in the corners of the rough-hewn chamber. Refuse. Mold. A whole pile of decaying books took up one corner. Sconces for oil lamps, mounted to the wall…
There.
She almost couldn’t make it out, but then she moved closer. Kara took three steps into the raging wind. Four steps. Eventually she was standing before the object of her quest: a small metal tray with an ornate design, mounted directly into the wall. It was something she recognized right away. Something she’d walked past over and over again, during her time at Blackstone Manor.
It’s a match safe.
Kara lifted the lid. There were still matches inside. She pulled one out, long and thin and caked with dust. The striker was there, right at the base plate. Wincing hard against the light, she dragged the head of the match across it…
