At first, Lia’s awareness only registered an old-fashioned maid’s quarters, small, bare and empty, with shreds of tattered wallpaper hanging on the walls, a scuffed wood floor and a tiny window overlooking a backyard space and a thick privacy fence.
On the floor, someone had sketched a pentagram in colored chalk and lit a candle at each of its points. Thick piles of herbs and multihued crystals reinforced the boundary, but it seemed like an empty shape, flat as the markings on the rental apartment’s walls.
Then something shimmered. It looked like heat rising from a highway, thick, black and tarry, but it wasn’t. She gasped, drawing back against the wall. Using all the tricks Clarissa had taught her, she focused her third eye, drew on her abilities, and screamed.
In the center of the pen
