Page 219 of The Demon's Spell

“Then one of these doors has to lead outside,” Talia suggested.

“Or maybe it’s just an endless loop,” Chloe added.

Miles began pacing. “Let’s think logically.”

“I don’t think logic is going to get us far in this situation,” Charlotte said. “Magic got us into this mess, and it’s going to be the key out of it. The school is full of magic, and we just have to find the right tools to get us out.”

“Crystals could do it,” Nadine theorized. “We spent all semester building an arsenal to combat the Waning. If you all get your powers back, we could stabilize the spell!”

“The priestesses confiscated our crystals,” Miles pointed out.

“Those weren’t the only ones in the school,” Nadine reminded him. “The school has their own crystal storage. We just have to find a way to the Crystallary.”

A high-pitched scream met our ears. It was the sound of bloody murder, of a woman in desperate need of help.

“Please, Avery. Don’t!” a woman cried.

I felt all the blood in my body drain to my toes. “That’s Felicia!”

“Your friends caused this!” Avery yelled. “You must bear the mark of Miriam’s Chosen if you wish to be saved!”

The cats scrambled toward the door ahead of me. I hurried behind them, and I flung the door open, but the screaming abruptly stopped.

I stared into an empty hallway. My guts sank, and I felt like crumbling into a ball in the doorway. Felicia had desperately needed our help, and we hadn’t been there.

I didn’t think it’d end this way.

Agony slammed into my gut as Felicia’s last thought flitted through my mind. It had happened so fast, and there was nothing we could’ve done.

The room fell dead silent. Everyone must’ve noticed the horror in my stance and knew what had happened.

I didn’t have the luxury of freezing up right now. I forced down the lump in my throat. The only sound that could be heard was the rustle of my shoes on the carpet as I turned back toward my friends.

“We’re not the only ones who have to get out of here,” I said in a hollow tone. “We’ll find those crystals, and we’ll get everyone out.”

“Then let’s get moving,” Nadine said. “We’re not going to find the Crystallary by sitting here.”

I could hear the hopelessness in her tone. She knew as well as I did what Avery had done to Felicia. We couldn’t save her, but we still had a chance to get everyone else out.

A dark hall loomed ahead. Nadine took my hand and spoke in a shaky tone. “Stay with me.”

She didn’t have to ask twice. I wasn’t letting this girl go for anything.

We started down the hall cautiously, but it was unlike the school halls we normally walked. It was the same… but different. The ceiling was higher than it should be, and the walls were stretched out and distorted. Portrait paintings that had been mounted long before I was even born were suddenly jumbled up, and faces of old coven officials had been twisted like Picasso paintings. Their frames were no longer square, but had been stretched into odd shapes. Cauldrons were embedded in the walls, as if the space-bending spell didn’t know what else to do with them.

Disembodied screams echoed down the hall, sounding like they were coming from behind doorways, but when we opened them, there was nothing but empty classrooms. The doors were all different sizes now, some of them too small to fit through and others twice as large as they should be.

We passed by a long mirror, and Nadine and I both stopped dead. Our friends gathered around curiously, but the effect was the same.

There was no reflection.

Grant waved his hand in front of the mirror. “This definitely defies logic.”

I looked behind us, and all the paintings on the wall opposite the mirror were depicted accurately—but it was like we didn’t exist at all. “Spatially, we’re here, but we’re also not…”

Even my voice didn’t sound quite right, like the sound waves were having trouble traveling through the distorted reality.

A door burst open from the way we came. Everyone whirled around to look, and a girl ran through the doorway so fast that she slammed straight into the wall. She spun around and cowered against it.

---