Page 46 of Langiappe & Lost Legends

"Remember," Phi warned as we prepared to move, "our powers will get weaker the closer we get to the crystal. They're using our connection to fuel their manifestation, so we'll have to rely more on skill than magic." She glanced pointedly at my purse. "And no, Lia, chugging another energy drink doesn't count as askill."

"Rude," I muttered with an exaggerated huff.

We moved in sync with the temporal disturbances, using Phi's calculations to slip through reality's blind spots. Each step had to be precisely timed. One wrong move and we'd end up trapped in a loop, possibly reliving the same moment until someone figured out how to unstick us. The manifested Legends didn't see us coming. Their mistake.

When we reached the chapel, everything went wrong. The inside was worse than the outside. Reality was shredded, pulped, and possibly put through a metaphysical blender for good measure in the room. The darkened crystal floated above an altar. My heart stuttered when I caught sight of Dea struggling in her cage. Rage filled me and I stepped forward.

"Hey!" I shouted because sometimes the direct approach is best. "Nobody gets to use our sister as a magical battery except us!"

Not my best line, but it got their attention. The Lost Legends turned toward us. Their bodies rippled with stolen power. They smiled. All of them. With faces that weren't quite faces. "Thank you for coming," one said. "We were hoping you would."

The temporal stasis field around Dea pulsed. While we watched in horror, she was pulled somewhere else. "DEA!" I screamed and lunged forward to grab her. Reality warped around us. The Lost Legends had been counting on our arrival. They were using our connection to Dea and our presence to fuel something bigger.

"The crystal!" Phi shouted over the temporal chaos. "They're using it as a gateway!"

Rage took over, and we fought. But our magic was weaker there. They'd had time to prepare. Each time we got close to the crystal or Dea when she reappeared, reality would twist again and move both just out of reach. It was like trying to catch smoke with a broken net while riding a rollercoaster designed by M.C. Escher.

When our collective anger reached a boiling point and blew out of us, the Legends retreated. They took Dea with them. One second, she was flickering in and out, and the next, she was gone. The rift they went through sealed itself behind them.

The magic of our anger collided with the Legends’. The backlash sent us all flying. When my vision cleared, the chapel was empty except for us and the lingering corruption. No Lost Legends. No, Dea. Just the sick feeling in my stomach that we'd just played right into their hands.

"Phi?" I asked, my voice shaking. "Tell me you can track her."

My brilliant sister was already working on her equipment, but the sounds it made weren't encouraging. "They pulled her between realities. Into the spaces between moments."

"What does that mean?" Dre demanded.

"It means," a new voice said, and we turned to see Maeve standing in what was left of the doorway, "that finding her just got a lot more complicated. They're definitely trying to break down the barriers between all realities."

"And they got what they needed to do it," Kota said grimly with a pale face. "They needed our connection to the crystal."

"More specifically," Maeve corrected, "they needed to force that connection through multiple dimensional barriers at once. And now they have exactly what they wanted. One of the Six trapped between realities."

"How do we get her back?" I asked. That was the only question that mattered.

Maeve's expression turned grim. "That depends on how much you're willing to risk to save her. Because reaching into the spaces between realities? That's going to require breaking a few fundamental laws of existence."

"Good thing we've got experience with that," I said, trying to sound more confident than I felt. "So where do we start?" We had to figure out how to break into the space between realities first. No pressure. How hard could it be? ...I really needed another energy drink.

CHAPTER 17

DANIELLE

Breaking the laws of existence was definitely not covered in any of our magical training. Then again, neither was trying to track down your sister who'd been trapped between realities while simultaneously stopping a group of temporal terrorists from rewriting history. My head throbbed as I stared at the maps spread across our kitchen table. They came courtesy of Kaitlyn and Kaveh. Each one showed a different layer of New Orleans' magical grid, and none of them were giving me the answers I needed.

The emptiness where Dea's presence should be felt like a physical wound. Our sister-bond, usually hummed with energy and connection. Now it had a jagged hole that made my magic stutter every time I reached for it. I wasn't the only one affected. Lia wasn’t touching her energy drinks and her usual snark was dulled by exhaustion and worry. Kota hadn't stopped pacing since we got back, and Dre's energy was fluctuating wildly as she tried to compensate for the broken connection. Even Phi's focus was fractured. She was the organized one who kept us on track. She was out of sorts and her hands trembled anytime she scried for Dea again.

"The tracking spell failed again," Phi announced as she burst into tears. Her usually pristine appearance was disheveled, and dark circles ringed her eyes. Lia wrapped an arm around her shoulders and tugged her close. "The Lost Legends are somehow blocking our ability to pinpoint Dea's exact location between realities. It's like trying to tune into a radio station that keeps shifting frequencies," Phi continued when the tears dried up.

"How many tries is that now?" Lia asked as she released Phi and strolled to the window. She reached for the full can that she’d left there and set it back down without drinking any.

"Seven," Phi replied grimly. "And each attempt is getting more unstable. The last one nearly knocked me out."

"And me with you," Kota muttered as she paused her pacing long enough to examine a nasty burn on her arm. "Who knew tracking spells could backfire so spectacularly?"

Dre moved to heal her, but I caught the way she swayed slightly with the effort. We were all running on fumes. Our magic was depleted from repeated attempts to locate our sister and the drain from the Legends. We couldn’t stop. The ache of Dea's absence throbbed through our sister-bond like a missing limb.

Every time we thought we had a fix on her location, the signal would slip away. Being left with nothing but static and the sickening knowledge that our sister was trapped somewhere between moments was a special kind of torture. "How long can she survive there?" I asked Maeve, who was examining our latest failed attempt at dimensional triangulation with entirely too much academic interest.

---