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CHAPTER 16
“We need to bring Felicity and Bria in on this,” Helen said firmly. “I know they don’t like the idea of limiting their powers to the town limits, they’ve made that clear, but the alternative is untenable. Surely we can make them see that.”
It was just after four in the morning in The Egg dining room, but no one seemed concerned by the hour. There was a pot of coffee and a plate of warm biscuits on a side table. Mitch smelled bacon cooking in the attached kitchen. Someone was hard at work and had been for a while. He suspected Helen had roused the cook earlier than usual and demanded breakfast for a crowd.
He had a feeling Helen Benedict always got what she wanted.
Armi needed sleep, but like him, she wasn’t able to relax enough to doze off for even an hour or two. They’d tried in their B&B room. It was miserable knowing they should sleep but couldn’t.
He shouldn’t have been surprised to arrive at The Egg so early and find Helen and her friends waiting for them, but he had been and so had Armi. She’d been ready to wake her aunt, to wake everyone if she had to in order to get the ball rolling. When they’d set out to build an army, they hadn’t expected the volunteer soldiers to be eighty and older. They hadn’t expected a lot of things.
Helen kept patting Armi’s hand in a loving, comforting way. Now and then she turned her head and wiped away a tear or two, but when she faced Armi head on her eyes were dry and she kept her chin up. Ramona and Ginger tried to remain stoic, but they looked worried, too. Very, very worried.
They’d been fine, raring to go, until Armi had told them the book was gone. When she said that Ginger gasped and whispered, “Fire.”
Was that book really their only hope? In a world filled with magic he hadn’t realized existed until well after his fiftieth birthday, how could there be nothing he could do?
The girls he’d seen waiting for him on the B&B patio a couple of nights ago walked in. They were young, pretty, and defiant. He saw the defiance in the set of their lips and the tilt of their chin.
The dark-haired girl had been crying. Her eyes were red and a little puffy.
It was Ramona who spoke first, directing her attention to the blonde. “Felicity Adams, if your mother finds out you left the house at this hour…”
“We’re here to help, though to be honest we’re not happy about it,” Felicity responded.
Ramona’s expression softened. “We were just talking about bringing you girls in on this. I shouldn’t be surprised you two showed up. You do always seem to know.” She shook her head. “So much talent for your age.”
The other girl sniffled and seemed to push back more tears. “I don’t want to be stuck here forever. I don’t want to have to leave my powers behind when I go two miles down the road. But…” More sniffling. “I don’t want to be a bad guy, either. We can’t let that wizard have his way. If he does… if he does… oh my God, he’s such a… a jerk!” Obviously she would’ve preferred a stronger word but was self-editing her language for the elders. “Do you know, he cast a spell on the whole town to make everyone complacent? Why didn’t we see it earlier?”
Mitch breathed a sigh of relief. The people of Mystic Springs weren’t lazy or uncaring. They’d been cursed.
Helen pursed her lips and gave a disgusted harrumph. “No one here is complacent.”
Felicity spoke up. “He didn’t see The Egg as a threat, so he didn’t even bother with y’all.”
Ramona smiled. “Mistake.”
Ginger nodded sharply. “Finish it, Bria. Tell us what you know.”
“It’s worse than we thought,” Bria said. “Right now there’s good and bad magic trickling out into the world. If the wizard manages to stop Armi, a flood of evil will follow. A flood! It could be so bad that even if I could leave Mystic Springs, I wouldn’t want to.” She stomped her foot. “We have this one chance, this one night, to stop the worst from happening. We need more time, but we don’t have it. It’s so unfair!”
Helen nodded. “It is unfair. Life always is. I hate that you girls had to find that out so young. Now, you two are quite powerful, but I’d like to know where you got your information.”
Bria rolled her eyes. “A persistent ghost made her way past your charm and insisted on sharing everything she knew.”
“Do you have a name for this ghost?” Ginger asked.
“Alice something,” Bria said. “Felicity told me she used to be the town librarian, before I moved to town.”
“Alice, of course,” Helen said. “I hope the information she gave you is useful. How can we stop this from happening?”
“There’s only one way,” Felicity said, and then she looked at Armi. “You’re not going to like it.”
* * *
Armi remained amazingly calm for a woman who’d just been told she was going to have to sacrifice herself to save the world.
Fighting evil bad guys with guns or swords, even hand-to-hand combat, made some sense to her, but becoming the shield over Mystic Springs, transforming from a woman to a… a what? A thing. An eternal, mystical barrier. Would she continue to exist? Would she be forever over Mystic Springs, looking down, watching others go on with their lives while she ceased to be a part of the real world.
