“I don’t know, but… thanks, Iris. This is really sweet of you. Hi, Binx.”
“Hey.” Binx crossed her arms over her chest and gave a chin-nod. She seemed more subdued than usual. Maybe she was still upset about their argument? But Greta couldn’t handle a reprise of that right now—all her energy, mental and otherwise, was taken up by Gofflesby. Maybe the two of them could have a heart-to-heart later, after he’d returned.
“Hey, Greta?” Binx said. “Did you think any more about the…”
“The what?” Greta prompted her.
“Never mind. Not important. Come on, let’s go find your little furball.”
“Yes, let’s.”
They had to focus on Gofflesby. Greta led the girls upstairs and into her room, where she’d already set up for the magical ritual. Behind them, she closed the door and turned the lock. Her father was at the bookstore, and her mother had taken Teo to his therapy appointment, but she wanted the sense of privacy as well as the sense of security.
“Wow. This is your room!” Iris exclaimed. She swept her arm in a wide arc and accidentally bumped her hand against the dresser. “Ow! False alarm, I’m totally fine. Is that a dream catcher above your bed?”
“Yes, although it doesn’t get much use.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’ll tell you later. Okay, so we need to cast a circle. Binx, did you bring your Pokémon cards?” Greta suddenly felt motivated, efficient; her witches were here, and Iris, too, and there was business to be done.
Binx held up her deck. “Need you ask?”
“Do you have more of Gofflesby’s hair? We could add that to the ritual,” Ridley suggested.
“Of course, I almost forgot.”
Greta hurried over to her dresser, picked up Gofflesby’s grooming brush, and pulled away a soft, fragile nest of golden fur. The look and feel of it derailed her for a second, made the tears well up again… but she took a deep breath and centered herself.
“Have you tried sortis yet?” Iris asked Greta, who nodded. “Okay, well… whenever Jadora’s familiar, Baxxtern, goes missing, she uses this special spell to find him. I could look it up for you; I think it’s called Location Lock.”
“Yeah, but that one’s not as good as Transcend Time,” Binx replied.
“True! Wow, so you play Witchworld, too?”
“Yeah, a little.”
“Nice!”
The four witches sat down in a circle. Greta briefly explained to Iris about the calling of the quarters, since this was her first time. She handed Iris pieces of amber, tiger’s eye, white-quartz, and lapis lazuli to use to correspond with the fire, earth, air, and water elements.
Iris handed back the lapis lazuli. “I’ve got the water element covered. I have this!” She touched her smiley-face moonstone pendant.
“Wonderful!” Greta said.
After calling the quarters, they began the spell. Greta had closed the curtains and dimmed the lights. A dozen candles flickered in the half darkness. Amethyst, rose quartz, and other crystals had been arranged inside the circle along with her scrying bowl. Greta didn’t always use the scrying bowl, which was actually one of her mother’s black pewter soup bowls; sometimes she preferred to use the vintage mirror she’d picked up at a garage sale instead. Or neither. She often made her choice based on a gut feeling, and today, her gut was telling her to use the bowl.
Now she held Gofflesby’s fur a few inches above the bowl. She noticed Iris watching her every move intently, as though memorizing the steps.
In a quiet voice, Greta recited her own version of a time-transcending spell:
Dear Goddess who watches over what is lost
Cast your glance across the universe, let the hours rewind
Land, sea, sky, fire, moon, sun
Return to me my familiar whom I must find.
“Love and light,” she added under her breath.
She repeated the spell a second time as the others tried to follow along. By the third time, they were able to join in.
When they’d finished, silence resonated through the air. The water inside the bowl was very still. Greta closed her eyes and drew in the energy of the group to help her see whatever answers the Goddess might offer.
Something told her to open her eyes. When she did, she saw that the water inside the scrying bowl was slowly changing color: from clear to blue to green to red to clear again. It had never done that before. What was happening? She held her breath, afraid and excited at the same time.
Binx and Ridley and Iris were staring intently at the water, too. Iris’s jaw had practically dropped to the floor.
This magic was new, different, more intense.
“Gofflesby, is that you?” Greta whispered.
The surface of the water trembled, and a second later, a cloudy image began to form. It dispersed, drew together, dispersed again, drew together again.
It was an image of a house. Actually, a half-built house, part wood frame and part stucco walls, with stacks of lumber and piles of gravel strewn across the bare brown yard. A red pickup truck was parked nearby.
“Do you see Gofflesby? Is he there?” Iris asked eagerly. “I’m sorry, are we allowed to talk during… I don’t know the rules… Okay, I’ll shut up now. Sorry, sorry, sorry!”
“It’s okay.” Greta leaned over and studied the watery image. Worry furrowed her brow. “I don’t see him. Do any of you guys recognize this place? I don’t.”
Ridley leaned closer, too. “I’m not sure, but there’s a new development near my house, and a bunch of the houses look like that. They’re under construction, I mean. Although I suppose there’s lots of houses under construction in Sorrow Point?”
The water began to tremble again, and the unfinished stucco house trembled along with it. Then grew smaller. Then exploded into a rainbow of colors. It was insane, like magic on steroids.
An animal darted in front of the psychedelic house. A cat. A golden cat.
Greta gasped. “Gofflesby?”
The cat stopped and blinked at her with its emerald eyes.
The image vanished, and the water was still again.
“Gofflesby!” Greta cried out.
She jumped to her feet and glanced around wildly, as though her familiar might materialize
