I couldn’t replicate the statue spell on my own, but I’d heard the mirroring spell enough to feel good about that. I spoke the words and felt the magic engage in me. Alicia’s eyes widened in alarm as she attempted to move out of the way of the rebounding spell. What she hadn’t seen, however, was the herd of Chihuahuas running into the room with Wolfe. He’d spoken a word to them and pointed at her, and they swarmed around her feet, causing her to stumble and preventing her from moving away quickly. The statue spell seized her, and suddenly, she was as frozen as Eddie, except far less graceful looking. He was like some noble warrior, ready to strike. She was mid-fall, staring in disbelief at the yipping pack of Chihuahuas swarming her frozen feet.

“Would’ve been here sooner,” growled Wolfe, calling the pack off with a quick gesture. “But that bitch tied me up. Had to wait for the dogs to gnaw through my ropes.”

“Quickly!” I said, running toward Eddie. “Help me get him out of here.” I coughed from the thickening smoke and glanced at Alicia, her pretty face frozen in a snarl of dismay. “Help me get both of them out of here.”

Between Wolfe and me, we managed to drag the frozen forms out before the building came down. We got them to Wolfe’s main house as the fire department showed up, followed almost immediately by Adrian, Trey, Ms. Terwilliger, and a few of the witches from the lake. Adrian pulled me into an embrace.

“Are you okay?” he asked. “When Jackie called me, I didn’t know what to expect.”

I rested my head against his chest, reassured by his touch. “Fine. I got lucky. Really lucky. But Eddie—”

One of the witches from a coven I didn’t know produced some dried flowers that she spread over Eddie as she chanted a Latin spell. Moments later, Eddie came to life again, still in mid-jump. He stumbled as he landed, looking around in surprise when he wasn’t where he expected. Adrian and I astonished him further by sweeping him into a group hug.

“You’ll have to unfreeze Alicia too,” I said in dismay. “We need to find Jill.”

Ms. Terwilliger frowned. “That’s unfortunate. This is actually a very neat way to deal with her. You didn’t get any indication where Jill was beforehand?”

I shook my head and released Eddie. “No. She admitted Jill was alive ‘for now’ but didn’t elaborate.” I thought back, trying to replay each word amid the chaos. Although it had been nice to hear Alicia confirm Jill was alive, we’d already gotten a sense of that through our spells. It wasn’t as useful as I’d hoped. “And she said something about Jill listening to psalms.”