"We need to get the girls away from here-"
Lizbeth was surprised to hear fear in Tem's voice as he ran up the path toward them. His eyes were on Thomas as he spoke, but he came right to Lizbeth and the girls, his hand grasping Lizbeth's shoulder.
"What's happening?" Lizbeth asked, trying to keep her voice neutral so she wouldn't scare Marji and Ginny.
"It's coming," Marji said, matter-of-factly.
"What're you talking about?" Lizbeth asked her.
Marji shivered.
"The bad thing. It wants you, LB. And it wants me and Ginny, too," she said. "If it can get us, it will."
Tem gripped Lizbeth's shoulder harder and began leading her away.
"We won't let it get you," Tem said, still looking at Thomas.
Thomas nodded.
"No, that's not going to happen. But I don't think going back to the Red Chapel will protect us."
"All right," Tem said.
"At least, not the Red Chapel here in the dreamlands," Thomas added.
"You think it's safer in the real world?" Lizbeth asked.
Thomas frowned, surveying the landscape ahead of them.
"Dealing with The Flood, in some ways, is easier than with the darkness here."
"Then let's go," Tem said.
"But Mama's coming," Marji said. "We can't go. Mama's here. I can feel her."
Tem and Thomas exchanged a look.
"You can feel her?" Thomas asked Marji-but it was Ginny who spoke up.
"Marji feels stuff sometimes, and if she says Mama's here she means it."
Thomas patted the small girl's hair.
"You're a good sister, Ginny," he said, then turned to Marji. "And you're lucky to have her and she, you. Stay together always. No matter what happens. Stay close to each other."
Ginny nodded and reached out to take Marji's hand.
Thomas returned his attention to Tem and Lizbeth.
"I wanted to keep the girls here because I felt like it was safer, but I was wrong. Tem, you feel it coming and so does Marji. I trust the two of you and your instincts," he said. "Do you feel Devandra here in the dreamlands?"
Tem closed his eyes. To Lizbeth, it looked like he was dreaming, his eyeballs flicking back and forth underneath his eyelids-but then he opened them and shook his head.
"I feel something, but it's being blocked by the darkness. It doesn't want me to know," he said. "So I assume that means someone is here to collect the girls."
"Then we stay and wait as long as we can," Thomas said. "And when we can't stay any longer, we go.
The girls stared at Thomas with round, wide eyes. They seemed to understand that he was giving Dev, and anyone else with her, a chance to find them.
"Eleanora and Hessika will know what's happening," Lizbeth said to Tem. "Can you reach them?"
Tem shook his head.
"It's as if I'm reaching out through murky psychic waters, pet," he said, giving her a sad smile. "The darkness is close and it's insistent about keeping us out of the loop."
"Why has it taken so long for it to find us?" Lizbeth asked, uncertain about the wisdom of staying put.
Tem looked at Thomas.
"There was witch blood spilled here at the Red Chapel in the recent past, and the energy released by the slaying can be drawn upon to cast a protection spell-"
"Which is what Thomas did as soon as he arrived with Marji and Ginny," Tem finished for his brother.
"But we knew it would only last for so long," Thomas said. "And now the time has come to move on."
"Thomas really did make a spell, LB," Ginny said. "It was magic!"
Thomas grinned down at Ginny.
"The girls helped me," he said. "They said a magic spell while I worked."
"Moon shadow fall on me, protect all the important things you see," Ginny said, emphasizing the rhyming quality of the spell. "We had to say it a lot, LB."
"I bet you did," Lizbeth said, then mouthed a Thank you to Thomas. Obviously, he'd given the girls a task to take their minds off all of the awful things that had happened to them.
"It was an important part of the spell," Thomas said, as if to dispel the thought he'd given the girls a mindless job to do. "Less about the words and more about the intent, correct, Marjoram?"
"Yes, sir," she replied, smiling shyly back at him.
"Shall we play a game while we wait?" Tem asked, guiding Lizbeth and the girls away from the lake. "I bet if we wish very hard, we might be able to find a lovely yellow bag of Bananagrams somewhere inside the Red Chapel."