Oh, my… It’s working!
Ben
“Is that all we have?” my father asked wearily.
I nodded with the same fed-up expression. We had been researching for days, but hadn’t come up with anything that might even hint at a supernatural power emerging somewhere on Earth. The only stand-out event had been a hurricane, but it all appeared perfectly normal—it had started in the Atlantic Ocean, drifting over to Miami, and hadn’t caused any great devastation other than a few fallen trees and some miserable holiday-goers.
“Is there nothing further you can tell us, nothing at all?” my father asked Sherus for what felt like the millionth time.
The fae shook his head. “I wish I could, but I have nothing more to go on. I had hoped that more would reveal itself, perhaps even in a dream, but there has been nothing.”
I tried to hide my irritation. I believed the fae that something was headed our way, but right now we also had family members stuck in another dimension that we knew nothing about, and I felt like both mine and Dad’s efforts would be of better use helping Rose and Caleb and the rest of the witches.
“I don’t have much,” my mom said as she entered the room, holding some printed papers aloft. “A slight rise in Assault and Battery charges, street arrests slightly higher, and a spike in young people being sectioned under the Mental Health Act in coastal areas, which I actually thought might be of interest to Rose…it reminded me of those Murkbeech children.”
“We should inform her,” my father agreed. “But I think right now they’re at the portal, and nothing else sounds like it’s going to be helpful to us.”
“No.” My mother shook her head. “It’s pretty quiet all over the world.”
“What portal?” Lidera asked sharply.
I glanced at her, belatedly realizing that we had filled Sherus in on the situation with the GASP kids, but not his sister.
“We have reason to believe that some of the kids who were sent off to a summer camp have been taken into another dimension—there’s a portal in the North Atlantic that they’re investigating. It’s locked, but jinn have been called in to assist the witches in opening it.” I gave her the shortened version of the story, hoping that we could skip past it and get the meeting tied up—if there was any way we could help Mona and Corrine get it open, I wanted in.
Lidera’s eyes narrowed as soon as the jinn were mentioned.
“Doesn’t this portal sound like it could have something to do with the signs Sherus is experiencing? Do we even know what’s contained within it, where it leads?” she asked.
“Perhaps,” I replied. “We’ll know soon enough, they’ve spent all day trying to open it.”
Before I could say another word, Caleb entered the room, his usually controlled appearance transformed into agitation as he stalked in, frowning at the two fae.
“Derek, Ben—I need to speak to you,” he announced, his brown gaze still fixed on Sherus and Lidera in deep disdain.
“Go ahead, Caleb,” my father replied, looking curiously at his son-in-law.
“The jinn took us to the In-Between, to visit a planet containing stones that we needed to access the portal. When we arrived, we came face to face with creatures that the jinn call the Shadowed—fae who live out their lives on the planet as punishment, being slowly driven insane by the power of the stones. They have become pitiful wretches of the creatures they once were.” He turned once more and glared at Sherus. “It is inhumane, an abomination. We cannot help those who hold their own people’s lives in such disregard.”
My father and I turned to Sherus in stunned silence. Was this true?
I expected the fae to deny it, but instead he rose from his seat with a look of horror on his face.
“What makes you think that the stones will open the portal?” he asked in a whisper.
“So you do not deny it?” Caleb retorted.
“Tell me about the stones,” the king insisted, ignoring Caleb’s accusations.
“One emerged from the portal. One of the jinn said she recognized it, and that more of them might hold enough power to overcome whatever bound it shut,” Caleb replied, his temper draining in the face of Sherus’s ambivalence to the charges being laid at his door.
“And you are opening the portal now, with these stones?”
“Yes.”
Caleb’s reply was terse, but I knew him well enough to know that he was starting to question their actions.
“You FOOL!” Sherus slammed his fist down on the table in anger. “The jinn used those stones to lock in the most evil and dark souls. The In-Between became a dumping ground for jinn undesirables—and you have just opened a portal using the very same stones? You have no idea what might be contained within that dimension! No idea of the horror that might be unleashed! It could be full of the creatures that the jinn held bound—and held bound with good reason!”