“Maybe we need to head back.” Corrine exhaled. “I don’t know how much difference we’re making. If we could find out more about it, where it might lead, we might have more luck.”
Mona opened her eyes—she’d been in a trance-like state, not remotely bothered by the constant whining of Aisha.
“Corrine is right. We’ve tried everything—”
Mona went silent as the tar of the portal shifted. We all looked down at its black, shiny surface. It was still. Had we imagined it? No…it shifted again, the surface jolting, like something behind it was trying to get out.
With a sludgy groan, the tar moved again. This time something burst from its center, shooting up into the air and then abruptly falling back down again, missing the portal, instantly being swallowed by the sea.
“What the hell was that?” I asked.
“No idea…I’m about to find out,” Corrine whispered.
She placed her hands over the surface of the water, closing her eyes for a few moments. There was a fizzing on the sea’s surface, white foam quickly swirling in a mini-tornado. The water rose up, reaching the tips of Corrine’s fingers. Balanced on its surface was a small, dark stone.
Corrine picked it up, and the water collapsed back down.
We all stared at it in silence.
It had a kind of reddish tint, and was almost perfectly round. Maybe it was a jewel of some kind? But it looked a little too dull for that. Before I could ask any questions, Nuriya tentatively took it out of Corrine’s hands and held it up to the light.
“Do you know what it is?” I asked.
The jinni’s face looked quizzical, but it was a few moments before she answered me.
“I think I do…” she murmured, then broke off into silence once again.
“Well?” demanded Aisha, echoing all of our thoughts.
“Long ago,” Nuriya began, wetting her lips, “and we are talking thousands of years, the jinn had an ancient practice of binding the souls of malevolent supernatural creatures into stones… stones just like this one.”
“Any creatures?” I probed.
“Yes…but there was one in particular. I can’t recall what it was, but the stone would bind them from doing harm. The stones were placed in the In-Between—there’s a star full of them, every single part of it covered with these stones, each holding a soul that’s been locked away for eternity.” She lowered the stone, handing it back to Corrine. “We need to put this in a bag. The stones are powerful things—they can send even supernaturals mad if exposed to them for too long.”
Corrine tightened her fingers around it, staring at Nuriya.
“Corrine?” I prompted, waiting for the witch to procure a bag.
“It’s powerful,” she whispered, moving the stone around in her palm.
Nuriya and I looked at one another.
Aisha leaned forward, knocking the stone out of Corrine’s hand and catching it before it fell back into the water.
“Well, that proves that theory.” She rolled her eyes and placed the stone in one of the pockets of my backpack.
Corrine seemed to shake herself awake. “That was scary,” she said, looking stunned—something I wasn’t used to from Corrine. “The stone…it felt like it was calling to me.”
“Don’t touch it again,” Mona replied quickly. “None of us touch it if we can help it.”
We all nodded, some of the less powerful witches still staring at Corrine in bewilderment. If Corrine could be swayed by its call, and Mona was warning us against it, then I didn’t have much hope of any of us being able to handle its power.
“Can we use the stones to unlock the portal?” Corrine asked. “They’re obviously powerful. If we can get enough, perhaps it will be enough power to dislodge the block?”
“It’s worth a try.” Nuriya nodded. “As I said, the stones are powerful. The energy contained within them might provide us with enough force to amplify our magic on the portal.”
“Won’t we be in danger of opening the stones?” Mona asked. “Releasing whatever’s inside them?”
Nuriya shook her head. “It’s doubtful that we will be able to open them, even if we wanted to – the stones are sealed with a much more powerful magic than ours…the stones are ancient, and whatever locked them is long lost to us now.”
The jinni looked thoughtful, and we waited in silence for her to continue.
“It would mean that we would have to travel to the In-Between. I haven’t been there in a while…” she resumed softly.
“Can we not try with just the one stone?” I asked, not wanting to leave the portal for a second when I felt that we were so close to making a breakthrough.