I’d be lucky to escape with this one task, I mused, hazy as the elven drums became my entire world. Tislan, tislan. Ta na shay cooreen na da wove through my mind, tingling over my skin, soaking in until it found my chi and sent my blood moving to its cadence. I watched in awe as the hazy presence slipping from the bottle grew, the last of it joining the rest like water. My eyes closed, and vertigo took me.

Tislan, tislan. Ta na shay cooreen na da wove through my breath, and the freed soul pulled strength from the salt, growing more substantial. Landon had been wrong. The Möbius strip hadn’t balanced the spell. It had charged the salt, and I watched the soul pull it in, becoming stronger.

“It’s close,” Felix groaned, and Cormel pressed him into the couch, keeping him unmoving. “Cormel, I can feel it!”

“I can see it,” Cormel said in awe, and Felix’s bound hand rose to his face.

“Don’t let him move!” I shouted, and the spirit recoiled at the echoes of my voice. “Hold him. It’s searching!”

“Holy mother toad piss,” Jenks swore, but the first feelings of doubt trickled through me. It wasn’t going for Felix. It wasn’t finding him. Why? I’d done it right. I knew it to be right!

Ta na shay. Ta na shay. The chant swirled through me, but I felt the soul lose interest and begin to fade as the power of the salt was spent. It was returning to the ever-after. I’d seen this with Kisten, and my panic flared, making Cormel’s eyes flash to black. It wasn’t the charm that was failing, it was me. I needed the Goddess, and though I was saying the words, my heart wished for the opposite.

Oh God, I was going to have to call on the Goddess.

“Cormel!” Felix screamed, and Cormel forced him down, his eyes fixed to mine.

“I will tear her apart, carefully held dream by carefully held dream,” he threatened. “It will not be fast, and I will enjoy every minute of it.”

Oh God, I had to do this.

Hear me! I screamed into the line, silver and pure as thought itself. See what I do! Lend me your skill. Ta na shay cooreen na da!

“Oh no,” Trent breathed, and the humming of Jenks’s wings dissolved in the thrum of the eternity bound in the cracks between worlds.

Tislan, tislan. Ta na shay cooreen na da, I begged, thinking of Ivy. I could not fail her. What happened to me didn’t matter. Ta na shay. Ta na shay, I begged, letting the line take me as I looked for the bright sparkling thoughts of the mystics.

And I found them. Very close.