"Free me from banishment," Isadora said, her voice spilling over the rocks like the rushing water. "Then I'll release the child."

"This isn't up for negotiation," I said again. "Release Steffie's spirit now."

"Free me and the child's spirit will be released." She turned her gaze to Karen. "Aren't you tired of the lies, Mrs. MacKenzie? Your daughter's soul or an insignificant town. It hardly seems difficult to decide."

Karen moved closer to me. Luke reached for her arm, but she brushed him away with her hand.

"Why should I believe you'll free Steffie if I undo the banishment?" I asked Isadora.

"Because you have no other options."

I turned my back to the waterfall, a clear dismissal of her plea.

I was glad to see Luke's cop face had snapped into place. Karen looked vulnerable enough for all three of us, and like a heat-seeking missile, Isadora homed in on her.

"We're both mothers," she crooned. "We know how it feels to love a child. I wouldn't harm your baby's spirit any more than I would harm one of my sons."

Karen took another step forward. "Listen to her," she whispered in my ear. "I think she's telling the truth."

"She's a liar," I whispered back. "She'll say anything to bring you over to her side."

"I don't care about taking sides. I only care about Steffie."

"Karen." Luke's voice was low in warning. "Chloe knows what she's doing."

Did I? I hoped he was right.

I turned back toward the waterfall and stifled a gasp. Steffie was looking out at us from behind a curtain of water.

It was more than Karen could bear. She called out, "Mommy's here, sweetheart. Everything's going to be fine," then started rushing toward her daughter.

"No!" Steffie screamed. "No!"

Luke and I saw the lightning bolt at the same time she did. Before I could react, Luke hurtled himself through the air, tackled Karen, and knocked her to the ground. The lightning bolt careened off his back, then disappeared.

"What the h.e.l.l is wrong with you?" I screamed at Isadora. "I'm the one you hate. She's done nothing to you."

"Still standing up for your human blood," Isadora said with an amused smile. "Loyalty is an admirable trait, no matter how misplaced. If more of your kind had felt that way, perhaps there would have been hope."

Luke, looking more angry than hurt, picked himself up from the ground. The back of his sweater had a large tear and some scary scorch marks but somehow he had managed to avoid major injury. He held out a hand to Karen and she struggled to her feet, looking dazed and more than a little confused.

What was wrong with me? I felt like I was working my way through cold oatmeal. Why hadn't I thrown a protective shield over them the second I joined them? I quickly remedied that omission but my own inadequacy stung badly. Was I ever going to get this whole sorcerer thing right?

I have to admit I felt no remorse as I unleashed a barrage of fiery daggers in Isadora's direction. My aim was dead-on but bounced off the banishment spell and headed back toward us.

"Look out!" I screamed as the daggers flew past us before burning themselves out.

"What the h.e.l.l?" Luke met my eyes. "They bounced right off her."

I didn't have time to explain the physics behind banishment spells. Isadora had managed to create openings from the inside that enabled her to reach out and wreak havoc in my dimension. I needed to find those openings and return the favor.

Unfortunately there was only one way I could do that and the idea scared the h.e.l.l out of me. I needed to remove the banishment long enough to expose both Isadora and Sugar Maple.

Then I had to make sure I was the one who fired the first shot.

Luke's cop face was still in place, but pain was clearly visible around his mouth and in his eyes. Lightning bolts weren't any fun. Not even when they just sideswiped you. I was reminded again of the basic fragility of the human body, and the knowledge terrified me.

Karen was a lot tougher than her tiny frame suggested, but seeing her daughter had turned Karen's judgment inside out. "You had no right to stop me," she screamed at Luke. "I could have rescued Steffie."

"He saved your life," I snapped. "You should be thanking him. That lightning bolt Isadora threw would've split you in two."

"You don't understand. That's my baby we're talking about. I have to-"

"Mommy?" Steffie's voice seemed to fill the air. "Mommy!"

"Don't react, Karen," Luke warned her. "Isadora's trying to bait you. You don't know what you're up against-"

"Listen to me, Mrs. MacKenzie." Isadora rose up from the water and floated ten feet above the surface. "I'm the only one who understands."

"Isadora will say anything," I whispered to Karen. "She knows how to push your b.u.t.tons. Don't let her know she's upsetting you."

"My freedom for your child's freedom," Isadora said. "It seems a fair exchange. You wouldn't want to lose her a second time, would you?"

This time Isadora went too far.

"Why are you doing this?" The words seemed to rip from Karen's throat. "What kind of sick, twisted woman are you?"

"Silence!" The word literally spooled out from Isadora's mouth, whipped around, then threw Karen to the ground. "I'm bored with human games." I could feel the heat rise as she turned her focus to me. "Undo the banishment now or suffer the consequences."

Apparently she'd swiped her syntax from bad costume dramas on Turner Movie Channel.

My mind was racing full-speed. My options were limited. I knew there would be no second chance to get it right.

"I'll do it." I ignored the shock in Luke's eyes. I was feeling a little sh.e.l.l-shocked myself.

"I'm waiting," Isadora said.

"I'm still new at this. I need time. I wove multiple spells around you, Isadora, and they need to be unwoven in order."

"Three minutes," she said. "Not a second more."

"What the h.e.l.l are you thinking?" Luke demanded as I turned toward him. "She's not going to release Steffie. The second you release her, it's over for us."

I inscribed a circle of protection around us, then quickly explained the problem. "As long as the banishment's in place, she can't be hurt by anything I throw at her."

"I'm not following."

"She thinks I'm giving up, but what I'm really doing is creating an opportunity."

I waited while it sank in. "You're taking a h.e.l.l of a chance," he said finally.

"What choice do I have? The banishment protects her from anything I might send her way. Right now Isadora holds all the cards."

"Maybe not."

He quickly sketched out what he'd uncovered at the library. Something about Saturn and its...o...b..t and other things I'd never even heard about, much less considered. So the ticking clock was counting down the minutes for Isadora's chances too. If we could keep Sugar Maple safe until ten forty-three, we'd be safe for another thirty years.

"One minute," Isadora announced.

"Hurry," Karen urged, sounding desperate. "Please hurry!" "Thirty seconds," Isadora called out.

"Another minute," I pleaded. Saturn . . . orbits . . . Saturn . . . orbits . . . Saturn . . . orbits . . . Saturn . . . orbits . . . There was something else there, something important that was dangling just beyond my reach. There was something else there, something important that was dangling just beyond my reach.

Isadora's laughter rang out across the clearing. "Do you actually believe I don't know what you're doing?"

The hiss began as a gentle sibilance, an almost subliminal promise of things to come. And then, at the moment I became aware of it, the hissing grew louder and I realized it was the sound of a dark purple gaseous substance slowly filling the air around us.

"What the h.e.l.l?" Luke edged in front of me.

"Oh G.o.d." Karen groaned. "Not again."

The heavy purple gas was coalescing over the boulders at the base of the falls, drifting slowly into a long shape that reminded me of a felled tree or light pole or- "s.h.i.t," Luke muttered. "What the h.e.l.l is she doing with a battering ram?"

On cue, the battering ram upended itself, sailed fifty feet or higher above the highest treetop, then slammed into the earth, sending Luke, Karen, and me flying like crumpled pieces of newspaper.

Luke knew how to brace his body against impact but poor Karen hit the ground hard. She lay there gasping for breath, and for a moment I was afraid she wasn't going to get up at all.

It was time to make my move.

"That's it," I said. "I can't deal with this anymore." I pulled myself to my feet and looked up at Isadora, who seemed to fill the horizon with her presence. "You're right. I was trying to find a way out but there isn't one. I'll reverse the banishment."

"You'll do it now."

"Yes," I said, suitably chastened. "The reversal is in three parts. The banishment spells will reverse from last to first."

"You're making a mistake," Luke said. "Don't do it."

"It's the right thing, Chloe," Karen urged. "I'll be in your debt forever."

Shut up . . . shut up . . . shut up.

I couldn't listen to them. I couldn't listen to anything but my own instincts. Once the banishment spells fell away, I would have minutes, maybe only seconds, to strike, and this time I couldn't miss.

Her powers were awe-inspiring. I could see why her place among the Fae was supreme. If I hesitated for an instant, I would lose. The moment she entered our dimension, I had to be ready to summon up everything I'd learned from the Book of Spells and Sorcha and Janice and Lynette and Luke and everyone else who was important in my life, and turn it against Isadora before she took me out.

Because that was where this was leading. I wasn't just fighting for Sugar Maple anymore.

I was fighting for my life.

30.

KAREN.

I couldn't believe it was finally happening. I wanted to shout with joy. After all the talk about her responsibility to the township, the debt she owed the villagers, Chloe had come down on the side of freeing Isadora and saving my daughter.

I watched as she closed her eyes and started chanting. It was a combination of English and a language I'd never heard before, a strange rhythmic string of words that seemed to float in the air in front of me. I couldn't actually see them, but I swear to you I could feel their presence.

Luke was standing stock-still to Chloe's right. He was wearing jeans and a sweater Chloe had knitted for him, but he might as well have been her knight in shining armor. It was clear he would lay down his life for her, and I felt a twinge of jealousy. We had loved each other but not with that kind of "across time" pa.s.sion. I wasn't sure I would have known what to do with it if we had.

Maybe we hadn't really gone wrong. Maybe this was the destiny he had been searching for all his life, and I was surprised to discover I was honestly happy he had found it.

My last gasp of bitterness evaporated on the cool spring air, and I felt happy for the first time in years.

Luke was motionless. Chloe's lips barely moved as she continued the chanting. The vision of Isadora-or illusion or manifestation or whatever term you want to use-still blanketed the horizon. My Steffie still looked out at us from her prison within the waterfall.

And me? I was barely breathing.

It seemed too good to be true. Chloe had been so adamant about her position. This sudden change of heart seemed out of character for her. But then, when you see the man you love struck down by a bolt of magic lightning, a woman might change her mind.

I wanted magic powers of my own so I could push time forward to the moment when my little girl's spirit would be freed and I could tell her what was in my heart. I longed to touch her, to brush her hair, to inhale the smell of her skin right after her bath, to listen to her laugh, to watch her grow up into a beautiful young woman, to be there when she fell in love and started a family of her own.

I knew it could never happen. I knew it was only a dream. But my heart, my soul, yearned for my child, and that yearning made it hard to pull breath into my lungs.

I'd heard all the warnings. Stay back. Let Chloe do her thing, whatever exactly that meant. Don't draw Isadora's attention. Remember it was all illusion, that none of this was real. The Isadora I saw was nothing more than special effects from a Hollywood movie. Even Steffie's spirit was only random particles of memory and dreams reconstructed for our human eyes.

What was most real in this world (or any other, I suspected) remained invisible.

"That's it," Chloe announced. "The banishment should be gone."

"What happens next?" Luke asked.

"I don't know," she said. "I've never done this before."

At first nothing changed. We stood there at the edge of the pool of water created by the Falls and we waited. Would there be fireworks? An explosion? Shooting stars zooming through the night sky? This was Sugar Maple, where even I knew anything was possible.

I could feel the tension coiled in both Chloe's and Luke's bodies. For me it was more antic.i.p.ation. Strangely my fear of Isadora and her dark powers had vanished, and in its place was nothing but grat.i.tude to Chloe for making this happen.

I wasn't crazy or any of the other things people had whispered behind my back. I was just a mother who loved her daughter more than life. There was an explanation for the phone calls, the dreams, the visions. Steffie had had been trying to contact me. She did have a quest to complete. She needed our help, and this time we had managed to be there for her. been trying to contact me. She did have a quest to complete. She needed our help, and this time we had managed to be there for her.

"She's disappearing," I said, pointing toward the waterfall. "Both of them are!"

Isadora no longer filled the sky. She was shrinking, narrowing, growing smaller and smaller until she was nothing more than a point of light that flickered, then went out, taking Steffie with her.