She inclined her head. “More or less. Very uncomfortable. Would not recommend as a mode of travel.”
I exhaled shakily. “So now you’re here. As in… here-here? You’re not going to flicker away in five minutes?”
“Time is still… odd,” she admitted. “I’m not fully independent of the under realm. If the Academy falls, I go with it. If the Wards crack completely, this anchor might fail. For now, I have… let’s say more presence than I did in the mirrors. Enough to meddle directly.”
Twobble’s voice floated faintly from above again.
“Can we come downnow? Or do we need an invitation engraved in ghost ink?”
Elira laughed.
“Send the goblins,” she called. “Someone needs to celebrate properly.”
That broke whatever careful stillness remained.
Within a minute, Twobble and Skonk had clattered down the stairs with all the subtlety of a marching band. Twobble took one look at Elira, let out a strangled yelp, and then bowed so low his forehead nearly hit the pedestal.
“Great and ghostly Grandma Elira,” he intoned. “We are honored by your—”
“Get up,” she said, amused. “You’ll break your nose.”
He popped up, eyes shining. “You’re real. And glowy. Andnottrying to curse us. This is the best day of my life.”
Skonk was already taking notes, muttering about “post-mortem partial anchor states” and “Hollows-adjacent consciousness.”
The space filled with overlapping voices of questions, half answers, half laughs, the kind of chaotic joy that happens when relief crashes into wonder.
For a few precious minutes, the looming circle, the priestess, Gideon, all of it shrank. It was just us. Our ridiculous, magical, messy little family reunited with one of its lost pieces.
Grandma Elira stood in the middle of it, letting herself be fussed over and scolded and admired in turn. She ruffled Twobble’s hair until he squeaked, flicked a speck of dust off Karvey’s shoulder, pinched my father’s cheek, hugged my mother again, rested her forehead briefly against Miora’s.
Then her eyes drifted to me, and something in her expression shifted.
The hum of the pedestal changed too. Lower. Sharper.
I felt it at the same time she did: a ripple through the Stone Ward, not from below this time, but from outside. From the edges of Stonewick.
Like a hand pressing flat against the town’s skin.
Elira’s smile faded.
All the chatter died, one thread at a time, as if someone were turning down the volume on us and up on the rest of the world.
Karvey’s head snapped up, stone eyes unfocusing as he listened outward. His shoulders went rigid.
“The ridge,” he said. “Something just touched the outer line.”
Mom’s fingers twitched, magic rising instinctively to her hands. Dad’s nostrils flared, wolf-scenting an enemy he couldn’t see yet. Keegan moved closer to me without seeming to, body angling between me and the stairs.
My butterfly mark burned ice-cold.
The anchor stone under the pedestal pulsed once, hard, light flaring, then steadied. Elira’s form flickered around the edges, as if a wind we couldn’t feel was trying to rip her away.
She grimaced, steadying herself with both hands on the pedestal.
“There,” she said through her teeth. “She’s noticed.”
“The priestess?” I whispered, even though I already knew. The temperature in the room dropped a degree, my breath puffing faintly in the air.
