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Chapter 1
October 4th—
Voices echoed like fading wind chimes in the swirling vortex of my mind.
“Cassie!”
“Sweetheart, where are you?”
“Our little Raven is in danger.”
“Cassandra!”
“Answer us, pet!”
So lost.
I spiraled downward in a kaleidoscope of colors, each more brilliant and blinding than the last. Flashes of white light burst sporadically, and I closed my eyes against the sudden barrage. Falling through the air, I distinctly remembered watching Alice in Wonderland with Gypsy as Alice fell through the rabbit hole in a terrible television production of the beloved book. How remarkably uneventful my own trip had become compared to her wondrous adventures.
I landed with a thump on the cold and unforgiving ground, holding back the moan I wanted to release from my chest. The soil was frozen solid as I stood up and brushed thefadedust from my jeans.
It didn’t take a genius to figure out where I’d been sent.
TheEther.
In witch lore, theEtherwas the one place where dreams and reality collided. A separate or alternate plane that could access the past, present, or future. Not to be confused with thefade, referred to as thein-betweenorupside down, a twisted reflection of the present. Thefadewas home to the veil that kept the spirit world from encroaching upon the mortal (or human) realm.
I’d already breached thefadeon the way here. Luckily for me, I wasn’t stuck in limbo and forced to fight back to my realm. Unfortunately, my luck took a turn for the worse when I hopped on an express ride to theEther.
Flicking my fingers, I chanted a little protection spell and added one of my favorite illumination ones right after.Lumos. Alright, I stole the word from Harry Potter, but it worked surprisingly well. Most witches got a kick out of the fact that Harry and his friends used spells and incantations that were real.
Sighing, I obviously wasn’t happy to be entering theEther. Nothing about this place could be considered normal or predictable—quite the opposite.
Cautious, I made my way through the pitch-black void, keeping within the edges of my meager light, and hoped I could find a door to enter home. Since this plane was a combination of reality and fantasy, it was possible to find doors or loopholes to return to the mortal realm. It was tricky. These didn’t exist where you would typically think.
Doors in theEtherdidn’t always lead home.
Lost in thought, I rammed right into a waist-high object that resembled a wooden dresser with spiked protrusions. One of the spikes jammed my leg at my knee. Rubbing the sore spot, I decided the worst part about theEtherwas that it was so black you couldn’t see a damn thing.
