Maisie searched her memory for indications that would confirm Violina’s assertions and felt insensitive that she couldn’t find them. The elder witches had been wary of one another since the coven’s war with a shadowy group that ended months ago. Their numbers reduced, the witches needed one another more than they ever had.
The rift between the coven’s two most adept witches had to be healed. Maisie couldn’t imagine her saintly mentor, Ysabella, being the one refusing to meet on common ground, rather than the narcissistic and self-indulgent Violina. Yet here was the latter, bending over backward to make concessions and ease the burdens of the former.
Perhaps Ysabella stubbornly clung to her personal issues with Violina, and it was clouding her judgment.
“Ysabella might need time to herself. Or you might. Or we can just spend time together,” said Violina, embracing the girl like a daughter. “You’re welcome here anytime,”
* * * *
“Are you cold, Ysabella?” Hugging her, Maisie felt the smaller woman shiver. “Can I make you some tea?”
“No, dear.” Ysabella patted her arm. “I’ll have a nice bath.”
Maisie said good night and went to her room, next door to Ysabella’s, wondering how long she should wait before calling Pedro.
Was that thunder she heard? All day, the cloud cover had been like a trap ceiling descending to crush them.
Just before stepping into her room, she took a last look to make sure her mentor got in all right. Ysabella’s jacket hem disappeared past the door—which did not close.
“Ysabella?” Maisie called. “Are you all right?”
No answer.
Maisie stepped over to Ysabella’s door—and saw her collapsed on the floor.
* * * *
Thunder was usually a comfort to Brinke.
While the pilots continued to circle the plane around the peculiar storm, she had laid her head back to relax and again engage in light meditation. But this thunder, this entire storm, in fact, was too strange, too disconcerting to foster relaxation.
With the latest rumble, several passengers expressed awe, like a primitive tribe witnessing the eruption of a volcano. Something was very, very off.
Brinke looked out toward the roiling gray blanket and waited for the next lightning burst. She did not have to wait long.
Bursts of red blossomed behind the billowing density in random sections, revealing what seemed like giant, cruel faces. It was easy to understand why the passengers were so agitated.
Then, stranger still, the gray plume went solid black, as if the near-insignificant light of the stars and lights from the ground were nonexistent for a split second. It was a negative, the opposite of a lightning burst.
The maelstrom was focused on, or from, Ember Hollow. The horror there was at its greatest—and growing furiously.
Brinke’s mind raced. She had to get the plane down somehow—and asking nicely wasn’t going to do it.
She realized she was looking around wildly when her seatmate, Herve, already nervous from the storm, gave her an alarmed look. “Miss, you’re not about to get all hysterical, are you?”
“Not anymore,” she retorted. “You’re such a comfort.”
“Well, I don’t know how much more of this my heart can take,” he said. “I gotta empty my tanks.” He struggled out of his seat and stumbled toward the lavatory, unaware that he had unwittingly offered a solution, after all.
The only thing that would make the pilots and flight controllers put the plane down was a greater emergency than the storm. And failing a handy jihadist, what was there?
She waited for her seatmate to return, already improvising the affliction she would work on him, hating that it had come to that.
* * * *
After calling the church, Maisie sat and watched over Ysabella until Stella arrived, sending healing vibrations to the sleeping crone.
Self-recrimination set in, as Maisie realized Ysabella had been faltering, showing signs of illness before even the roadside vomiting incident.
Chapter 15
Magic Circle
The five-minute wait for Stella felt like a day.
“I’m so glad you were still at the church,” said Maisie, her eyes swollen.
“You got her into bed?” Stella asked.
“I had to carry her. She hasn’t moved at all.”
Stella breezed through the suite to the bedroom, well familiar with the Blue Moon’s room layout both from her work as an EMT and her brief separation from Bernard.
By the time she got to Ysabella, the old woman’s eyes were open—barely. “Oh good…It’s you.”
“No one else knows except Abe.”
Stella was relieved to feel some strength in Ysabella’s hand when she clasped it. “You understand…It’s crucial that I don’t appear ineffectual.”
“Your health is more important.”
Ysabella’s pulse felt normal, but her breathing was shallow.
Stella patted Maisie’s hand. “Bring me some cool, wet washcloths, please.”
“Maisie lacks experience,” Ysabella said, taking a deep shuddery breath. “And…judgment. I’m so worried about her.”
“She will rise to the occasion, if need be,” reassured Stella.
“Can you?” whispered the crone. “Can Emera? Candace?”
Stella once again bristled at the thought of involving her little girls. “Is there…anyone else at all?”
Ysabella gave a small smile and a faint nod.
Twenty minutes later, Stella sat down with Maisie in the suite’s front room and took her hands. “I understand why you don’t want Ysabella in the hospital. If she gets worse, there won’t be any other option.”
“I can’t lose her,” said Maisie. “We can’t.”
“Does she have any kind of condition?”
“Other than obsessive micromanagement? Physically, she’s healthier than any of us. When she brought that girl back from her skinwalk, it drained her reserves of power, which were still recovering after our previous mission. When this happens, a witch’s vitality begins to drain.”
“How long till she regains a normal level of…whatever it is that gives her power?”
“I’m afraid she’s at a point where her sisters have to prime the pump, so to speak,” said Maisie. “That’s the purpose of a coven, to support one another and pick up the slack as needed. To feed our sisters from our own reserves.”
“You and Violina could help her?”
Maisie considered her
