“I don’t understand,” Steph said, releasing my hand and going to the statue of Kordelia, running her hand along the gargoyle’s arm as if that would wake her. “It’s sunset. Why…?”

“They should be awake.” Stating the obvious always sat wrong with me, but the words needed to be said in case the universe simply wasn’t aware. I frowned, but had an idea. Using my transmutation powers, I created the videogame screen I’d made to help me understand this magic, and tried to wake them that way.

No luck.

“Do you think,” Steph went from Kordelia to Ebrill, kneeling at her side on the bed, a hand on the statues, “that we won? That in spite of all that’s left to do, that was it and now they’re stone forever?”

“Of course not. First, Aerona just came to us. Second, no way would the universe let Ebrill be frozen forever like… that.”

We both stared at Ebrill for a moment.

“I don’t like this,” Steph muttered. “It reeks of black magic intervention.”

“Shisa?” I turned to the stone lion-dog that I’d previously brought to life, one of a pair, whose twin had died fighting off the enemy. I cocked my head, hoping it had some way of enlightening us.

Shisa circled, first Aerona, and then Kordelia, before finally leaping up next to Ebrill and nuzzling her in a way that pulled the sheet aside. Damn, seeing that sight—even in stone—made my mind swim with confusion and my chest ache. I quickly covered her up again, annoyed that Shisa had, apparently, decided to simply perch beside her.

“Not much of an answer,” Steph noted. At the window again, she closed the curtains. “What do we do if there’s an attack?”

“Hold out as best we can,” I replied. “To be fair, I’ve changed up the house and blocked off entrances. We have the wards in place, and now that I have access to the magic of Avalon we might be safe.”

“Shit, Jericho.” She paced the room, going to the door and glancing out as if there might be someone out there, coming for us. “This… I mean, it’s bad.”

“Maybe?” I focused one more time, trying to use my powers along with my recently acquired connection to Avalon, but nothing woke the gargoyles. When I saw she was still staring at me, I went to Ebrill, caressing her cheek. “Wake up. Please.” I frowned, then leaned in and kissed her stone lips.

“Are you seriously trying the Sleeping Beauty move?”

“Wasn’t it Snow White?” I stood, rubbing my hands together nervously. As much as I was able to play it cool, this was getting to me. It wasn’t planned, and in situations like these, that could be majorly messed up.

Steph scratched her neck, her long nails causing a prick of blood. She wiped it, looked at the blood and, sighed. “Let’s… get a bite.”

“We’re not leaving, not at a time like this.”

Her frown reminded me to calm down. Her gesture to the grocery bags beside the door made me feel like an idiot.

“Ah, right.” I stepped over and pulled out some salami and cheeses, along with a can of kombucha that Steph had insisted I try. “We can eat here, though. I don’t want to let them out of my sight.” Glancing over at Shisa, I asked, “Do you eat?”

Shisa shook its head no.

“Okay.” Steph took out some sushi rolls and a sparkling water, setting the rolls down on the nightstand. “First, we still need to find the others, right? Only…” She opened the water, pulling back with a yelp as it sprayed a bit on her arm. Licking it off, she rolled her eyes. “Only, as I was saying, Aerona was the one with the lead. We don’t get her back, we got nothing.”

“Right. And we know that Thiten is going to be hunting us down. She could find a way to be summoned again, or break into our world officially, and show up any minute.”

“Maybe…”

“You know something?”

A flicker of pain crossed through Steph’s eyes. “Bits of my time with them come back to haunt me, and mostly… it sucks.”

“Okay.” I was about to ask why, but the pain was still in her eyes, so I took a bite of salami and waited for her to speak.

She took a long sip, the bubbles causing her to burp slightly. At least that took away some of the tension. Setting it aside, she continued. “Whenever things didn’t work out perfectly for those involved, there were… repercussions.”

“Steph, I—”

“I don’t want your pity or anything like that.” She turned away, eyes cast down. “Just… I’m sharing because my point is, I don’t think they’re smart enough to strike right now. They suffered a major setback, even with Fatiha regaining her power. She’s rogue, as far as I know. So, they’ll be regrouping, punishing those they think deserve to be punished. They could show up at any minute, but… I wouldn’t think so.”

Finishing off a cheese and salami combo, then cringing at a sip of the kombucha, I nodded. My mind was working to process her words, my emotions not able to hide how annoyed I was at the idea of anyone ever hurting her. But I let it go, instead focusing on the here and now.

“Okay. We might have time. Then… we…?” I was at a loss.

“Visit Rianne? See if she has any answers for us?”

I nodded and reached out for her hand.

“One sec.” She engulfed a massive bite of sushi, chewed it awkwardly for a few seconds before swallowing, and took my hand. “Ready.”

Taking her hand, I closed my eyes and reached out to that magical world. Before, it had only been accessible via dreams, but my understanding now was that it was connected to our world again.

Only, nothing came.

My eyes opened to see Steph staring at me, her lips pressed together so that they formed a thin line. Her left eye twitched.

“I need to try something,” she said, and then stood, taking a step away from me. With a lick of her lips, she narrowed her eyes, focusing.

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Nothing happened.

“Are you…” I started, but her look of frustration caused me to stop.

Again, she focused. Again, nothing happened.

When her eyes burst open, she let out a loud “FUCKKK!” and “SHITTT!” followed by throwing her hands forward in what would have otherwise been a fireball. As it was, nothing happened.

“Shit,” I said. “You…”

“Nothing.” She turned to me, shoulders back, nostrils flared and breathing heavily. “No fire, no Wraith Knights. What the hell did you do?”

“Not a damn thing.”

“Well you sure did something, because it’s gone, they—they’re gone!”

I threw my hands up, about to argue, but instead ran them through my hair, standing there like that for a moment, hands on head, thinking.

“Could it be the return of Avalon?” I asked.

“No.”

“No?”

She scoffed. “J… We just tried to connect to Avalon, and it didn’t work. Oh, shit,” she put her hand to her chest as if pained, “what if this is them? The enemy doing this?”

“Fuck me.” I blinked, rubbed at my eyes, and knelt, putting my hand to the floor. Before, I had been able to sense when the house was under attack. Oddly, when I shifted the floor around with my transmutation power, it worked. “I can’t sense anyone attacking, and I’m still able to use magic.”

This time, she looked like she was going to be sick. “So maybe… since my powers were corrupted by darkness, kind of… maybe only mine are gone?”

I indicated the stone gargoyles, shaking my head, then turned to Shisa who was eyeing us with its wide orbs of eyes. Not giving us any answers, though. Steph was staring at me, hands clutched to her chest and biting her lip as if she expected me to come up with an answer.

“If we’re being attacked, we need to know,” I said, then turned back to Shisa. “Can you… sniff out any magic that might be affecting us?”

Shisa jumped off the bed, walked to the door, and glanced around before continuing.

“That’s our plan?” Steph asked.

“Until we come up with a better one? Yeah. I can’t sense anything, but maybe Shisa can, or maybe there is an attack and at least we’ll be able to find a clue, somehow.”

I took her hand and we followed along, moving toward the back staircase that I had made while changing things around. It led down to the basement, and we kept on until we were in a large room with ancient weapons but not much else. I marveled at an especially cool double-sided axe, but turned to see Shisa moving along the walls, clearly looking for something.

“While we wait,” I said, eyeing Steph. “Back there, when you couldn’t access… them…”

“The Wraith Knights.”

“Yes. You seemed pretty shook up about it.”

“Is it ‘shook’ or ‘shaken’?” She forced a grin, clearly trying to avoid the question. When I folded my arms, she sighed. “There’s a bit of a story there.”

“We don’t know how long we have, and… it’s not like we know what else to do in the meantime.”

Eyeing me a moment longer, she nodded, then glanced over to the wall. “Make us a bench to sit on, at least.”

I chuckled as I obliged, loving that I had the power. Only, as soon as the wall moved out to form the bench, Shisa growled and darted into an opening he had found. Steph and I shared a look of excitement. Putting her story on hold, I made the opening larger and we followed Shisa in to find a drop off that led to darkness below. A growl, and Shisa fell.

“No!” I shouted, reaching with one hand and using the other to grab the wall and morph whatever was down there to grab him. Only, nothing happened.

“What?” Steph asked.

“It’s not… part of the house. Down there.”

“So?” She leaned over, kneeling at the edge to see better. “Doesn’t your power work on rock and whatnot?”

“It should,” I replied with a frown. A look around revealed stone, maybe the foundation upon which the house was built. Parts of it had crumbled away, likely due to my shifting of the house numerous times. When I tried to adjust it, though, nothing happened. “Shisa, you okay?”

A flash of light reflected as something moved, followed closely by what sounded like a grunt.

“I’ll take that as a yes,” Steph said.

“Still, we’re going down.”

“How?”

I glanced around, then back at the walls behind us. While I couldn’t adjust the rocks, I had an idea. Hand on the wall, I made the whole wall transmorph to move out and form a stairway leading down.

“After you, my lady.” I gestured, then laughed at her annoyed look. “Joking, joking.”

Holding her hand behind me, I took the lead, adjusting the stairs slightly as my first step made me worried about slipping and falling. On the third step, there was a vibration and then, halfway to the next, a loud booming sound.

“Outside, I think,” Steph said.

It was followed by more of those booming sounds, and I found my mind flooding with images of the enemy up there, breaking in and finding a way to collapse the whole house down on top of us.

“Tell me about the knights,” I said, reaching the bottom and crouching to rub Shisa’s ears. The lion-dog looked fine, with just a small chip out of its left ear and a crack on the curled tail.

As we stood and moved about in the darkness, my eyes started to adjust. We felt our way along the walls, in what was clearly once something more. For one, the room was cleared out in a way that didn’t make sense for a house’s foundations. Also, the stone of the walls was smooth, but in some places seemingly forming patterns.

“It was before I met you, of course,” Steph started. “Long before. And… I’d had a dream.”

That caught my attention. “You, too? With the dream travel stuff?”

She nodded. “Ironically, it only began when I started at your school. So… clearly connected. But, I thought they were only dreams at first. One day I was napping in the library, this guy sits next to me and I groggily wake up but am like, ‘fuck it,’ and go back to sleep. Something touched my arm, and then the dreams came. I was in a dark tunnel, taken over. Then…”

“Yes?”

“I… don’t want to talk about it. So much is a blur. So much… pain.”

Nodding, I took her hand and waited.

“They sacrificed themselves for me,” she finally said. “Every last one of them, all because this witch lady had said I was meant for greatness. That I had some role to play in their beliefs, and I think… relating to you.”

“That’s… intense.”

“It was. Is.” Shaking her head, she tried again to make the wraith knights appear, but nothing. “So, you can see why, I mean… it’s not like I was ever romantically involved with any of the knights, but knowing who they were and what they sacrificed for me…”

“Yeah, I get it.”

“They’re like my best friends. Friends I can’t really have conversations with, but… friends, anyway.”

More sounds of explosions outside, then a bunch at once, and I laughed.

“What?” Steph asked.

“Shit, what day is it?”

“I don’t…” Her eyes widened, and she laughed, too. “Fourth of July? No shit?”

“I mean, that doesn’t explain the magic not working, but at least those explosions probably aren’t us being attacked. Damn, what kind of American am I that I forgot the Fourth?”

“A shitty one, for sure.” She winked my way, gesturing around. “You are a bit distracted, though. I think that, considering what you have on your plate, Uncle Sam will let it slide.”

“That explains all the flags and hot dog carts and whatnot around earlier today.” I knelt, feeling a marking in the floor. “I mean, I thought it must be some presidential address the nation celebration or something.”

“For someone who was going off to college, you sure aren’t up to date with any of this D.C. stuff.”

“Well…” I shrugged. “Key word there is was, you know?”

“Bullshit. You’re thinking about not going?”

I looked up from the markings, waving her over. “Like you said, I have a lot on my plate.”

She pursed her lips, kneeling at my side and letting it go. “What do you have here?”

“Hard to see in this light, but…” I heaved.

“Can you…?” I asked, moving my hand as she would when doing her fire magic.

She held up her hand and moved her fingers, as she would when creating little flames to give us light. But that didn’t work—blocked. Frowning, I attempted it, watching the light of the room intensify with each blink. Sometimes my powers astounded me.

“Whoa,” we both said. Now that we could see the room, it was clear that this was much more than we had first realized. Pillars with stories carved into the stone, more runes carved along the ground in patterns like flowing water, and walls with rocks that seemed to shift in shape and hue before me.

And, for the first time, it at least made partial sense. There was so much more to do, more to experiment with down here, but for now, that would have to do.

“Come on,” I said, pulling her back toward the stairs. “Let’s see if there’re any more fireworks we can catch from the roof.”

“Wait.” She pulled me back, then in to kiss me passionately. “Okay, now we can go.”

I started off, but froze. Then laughed.

“What?” she asked.

“The magic, of course. Ebrill and the others should be awake now. We’ll take them up for the show.”

“Great idea.” She beamed, and we made our way back up, Shisa at my heels.