“I’m not afraid,” I say, surprised to find it’s true. I’ve been to the tonttukivi before, I’ve walked through that forest of eyeballs and faced off with the maahinen—it can’t get much scarier than that and I survived. “I’m not afraid at all, I’m just not sure I can get out.” I squint at the door, wishing I could see the strands of Mom’s spellweaving and maybe find a loose thread to pull.

“You haven’t even tried.” Ekaterina opens the door and steps onto the porch, and her shoulders visibly relax. “Well?” She taps her foot at me.

“Come on, Taika.” Aysha follows, looking equally relieved to make it across the threshold.

I approach the door and tentatively raise a hand, expecting to feel the same resistance as before.

Ekaterina grabs my hand and, before I can flinch or pull away, she yanks me onto the porch. Musti, Rekku, and Kamu, perched on the eaves, all give me croaks of disapproval.

“What?” I gasp, patting myself down to make sure there aren’t any weird side effects—that my limbs are, in fact, all still attached.

“Told you.” Ekaterina looks smug, as if this were her doing, but I think I know what broke the spell.

Mom would’ve used something as the synty, an aspect of who I am that would’ve kept me and no one else bound in the house. Whatever it was, it must’ve changed—something in me changed so the spell didn’t recognize me anymore. It could’ve been sloppy spellcasting on Mom’s behalf—she was in a hurry—but it’s the lack of nasty commentary from that little voice in my head that makes me think maybe it was something else.

Regardless, I’m free, and now I have a chance to fix things and save my friends—as soon as I put on my boots and jacket.

26

“We need to get to Lumikuuro,” I say as we head up the path. “There’s a map of all the tonttukivet on Morgan’s phone, but the battery died.”

“Watch and learn.” Ekaterina plucks the phone from my hands.

Static charge crackles along her fingers, blue bolts of electricity tangling around her hand before zapping the device. A puff of smoke escapes the edges of the phone’s red-and-black case and we all cough at the stench of fried electronics.

“See?” Ekaterina hits the power button and, miraculously, the phone starts up.

Moments later, I show them the photo of the map.

“That’s so far away,” Aysha says. “How are we supposed to get there?”

“Bus then train then—” I’m trying to explain, but Ekaterina interrupts.

“Oh please, there must be a better way, a magical way of getting there. I bet whoever took Natalie didn’t take public transport.”

“You think the chaos mage used a portal?” I mentally kick myself for not thinking of it sooner.