“May the Goddess Danu help us if she’s our best hope of keeping the door open,” she spat out, glaring at me. “But I will leave it to your questionable judgment. I will make preparations for the likely possibility that you fail, in which case I must set my affairs in order and decide in which world to stay forever.”

She turned on her heel, the folds of her dress snapping like a sail in the wind. Again, I heard bells chiming, but now they sounded like they tolled for a funeral.

“I’ve always wondered,” I said when Fiona had disappeared around the corner of my house, “why she’s here at all. I mean if she’s Queen of the Fairies why isn’t she in Faerie?”

“She left because her husband, King Fionn, was unfaithful,” Soheila replied. “He betrayed her with a human girl.”

“Is that why she hates humans?” I asked.

“Perhaps,” Soheila answered. “Although the first thing she did upon arrival here was to take a human lover. I believe she has stayed here to taunt Fionn with her own affairs. But now she has to choose between never being able to return and returning forever.”

“As will we all,” Ike said.

I stared at him, startled. Ike seemed such a fixture of Fairwick. Would he really consider going? And what about all the other supernatural creatures at the college and in the town? Liz had once told me that about 30 percent of the town, and 40 percent of the faculty, were otherworlders. What would the town and college be like without them?

“We must find a way to keep the door open,” I said, looking from Ike to Soheila to Diana and, finally, to Liz. “Did you really mean what you said about me having a spark?”

“Yes,” Liz said firmly. “Although your magic is erratic, you possess a great deal of it. In addition to your fey ancestry, you come from a line of powerful witches. We could train you.”

“Can I join this spell circle you’re calling?” I asked.

Unsure, Liz looked toward Ike.

“I think Brock would want Callie to be there,” he said in response. “The Norns are arriving tomorrow. We can hold the circle at our house and they can help.”

“We’ll work together to bring Brock back,” Liz said, “and find a way to keep the door open.”

Ike held out his hand and Liz took it in hers. Liz’s elegant, manicured hand seemed to disappear in Ike’s broad, calloused palm. Looking at the two of them I understood something about Fairwick I had never fully before appreciated. It had been founded as a place where fey and human could live together, but it was more than a neutral Switzerland between the warring factions of witch versus fey, human versus otherworlder. The conjunction of fey and human was precisely what made Fairwick strong. Without the fey, Fairwick would be a pale shadow of what it was now. As I watched Ike and his two companions lift Brock up and carry him to a red pick-up truck with the Valhalla landscaping logo on its side, I swore to myself that I would find a way to keep the door between the worlds open.