“Proteggere!” Samantha shouted. “I hope this works, Mom.”
A blue light cradled me as I watched the other side of the bus veer into a tree and explode, just as our side fell and skidded along the ground.
It only stopped because it crashed into a house at the end of my block. I rose, wobbly, and crawled over the bus to the driver’s seat. Samantha was bloody and bruised. She was bleeding from her forehead.
“Samantha!” I shouted. “Samantha!”
I shook her, but she didn’t make a sound. The only sound I heard were the crows cawing loudly and flapping their wings, getting closer.
“Finite!” I heard a voice call from behind me.
A great bolt of red lightning crackled through the air and electrocuted the murder crows. They fell to the ground, crashing into the tree line along the way. I whipped around and squinted through the smoke and debris to see who our savior was.
It was Hilda. She was staring at us, smoke still streaming from her hands. “Well, this is a right fine mess you’ve gotten into this time.”
Chapter 53
“Don’t kill us,” I said, crawling out of the overturned bus. I pulled myself over the side and fell onto the ground, where I coughed up blood.
“I’m not going to kill you, dear,” she said. “You’re doing a fine job of that yourself.”
I rolled over and coughed again. More blood spewed out of my mouth and I felt a stabbing pain in my side.
“Why are you here?” Hilda asked.
“We’re here to stop you,” Katie said, floating out of the bus toward us.
“Stop me?” Hilda said, scoffing. “From what, saving the world?”
I pushed myself to my feet. “You’re not saving the world. You’re ending it, and we’re here to make sure you can’t.”
Hilda started to laugh, like rightly laugh, as if she just heard the funniest joke of all time. “Oh, my dear. If I were trying to end the world, there would be nothing you could do to stop me.”
“Keeping this rift open isn’t going to save the world. It’s going to end it,” Katie said. “Have you gone mad?”
“We’re not trying to keep this portal open, my dear. We’re trying to close it. Who on earth told you otherwise?”
“That doesn’t matter,” I said, curving my hands into a ball, ready to cast the fireball spell. “Why should we believe you? You kidnapped Samantha and imprisoned her.”
“We arrested her because we didn’t know what you were up to, and Grendel is still a might bit irritated at you for burning down her house, I should add. Lucky for everyone involved, I was able to reconstruct it with very little effort.”
“Her mites tried to kill us.”
“No, they didn’t,” Hilda said. “Those bugs are her guards. Still, that was a regrettable circumstance. I had no idea she was no longer using her pixies, who did a much better job than the mites.” She looked at the three of us and shook her head. “We were just trying to get to the bottom of this whole thing, and frankly, we weren’t sure you weren’t involved in helping expand this rift in the first place. After all, you lived on the same block, and you do have a ghost familiar.”
“I’m not a familiar!” Katie said. “I’m her friend.”
“Yes, the dowager Vermilda told us all about it, and how you convinced her to sell her love to you for an ounce of her dragon fire.”
“If you knew all of this, why didn’t you stop us?”
“Well, I didn’t know it until very recently now did I? In fact, not until you broke Samantha out of Grendel’s pocket dimension. Once you freed Samantha, I had to learn what you were up to, and the tracking spell I placed on her clothing did the trick to tell us where you were, and tracking you down impressed upon me that you weren’t evil.”
“Us, evil?” Katie said. “You’re the evil one.”
“Oh really?” Hilda said, waving her hands in the air, until I was encircled in a yellow glow. “Then why would I save your friend?”
“Get off her!” Katie said.
Hilda snapped her fingers and the yellow exploded, sending dust into my mouth and ears. I felt the heat inside my body, and then, a searing pain in my stomach.
“Ow!” I shouted, writhing in pain.
“Stop it!” Katie said.
Hilda help up her hand and Katie flew backwards into the bus. “Stop being such a baby. It will only take a minute.”
She was right. As quickly as the pain had started, it was gone, and I felt great. I pushed myself up again, and I felt like a million bucks.
“How do you feel?” Hilda said.
“Fine,” I said, blinking. “Amazing, actually. What did you do to me?”
“Fixed you, of course. One of the perks of witchcraft. Now, tell me, if I was trying to kill you, why would I save you, when you were doing such a good job of killing yourself?”
“If you’re not trying to kill us, then what are you doing here?”
“The Council is filled with the most powerful witches and warlocks on the planet. We spend many a day fixing rifts in the veil between our world and the Dark Place. Here we are, trying to do it again, and yet, no matter what we do, nothing can seem to close it. It’s almost like there’s another witch fighting to keep it open.”
“The only witch in this town is Frank.”
“That you know of,” Katie replied. “Frank’s been trying to help us this whole time. He’s given us the paste.”
I felt into my pocket and pulled out the paste he gave us. I held it up for Hilda to see. “He gave us this to close the rift.”
Hilda snapped her fingers and the paste appeared in her hands. She twisted off the lid and smelled it. She smiled and shook her head. “This is Elmer’s glue, my dear. It can’t even
