“I don’t know.”
She tried to summon another vision, almost terrified of what she would find, and while it wasn’t as bright or painful as moments before, all she saw was a fizz of white.
“I’m blinded,” she said.
“What are you talking about?” Mateo asked.
“I saw a flash of light.”
He stiffened beside her. “Like you were dead and going toward the light?”
“No, I don’t know. I can’t see anything else but that. It’s fizzing every circuit I have.”
“What is it?”
She shook her head. “I don’t have any idea.”
He took a deep breath. “Do we abort? I can have you on a plane and far away from this in an hour. Or less if I call another helicopter.”
“Where the hell would they land?”
He spun in a circle. “The middle of Main Street. I don’t care.”
For half a second, she considered it, but their bigger problem remained. Her family was still planning a mass murder, or was it murder if you were only trying to kill animals? Slaughter? That wasn’t better.
“No, I’m fine,” she insisted. “Whatever it is, it’s not happening now.”
“But it could later?”
“I don’t know, so we’re just going to stick with the plan. It was a good plan.”
“I hate the plan,” he grumbled.
“It’s your plan.”
“I know.”
He took a deep breath, dropped his hand from her shoulder, and melted away. She almost cried out at the loss of contact but told herself she was going to have to live her entire life without it, and she had better get used to it now.
She also had to move. She couldn’t stand on the street outside her house for the rest of her life.
She considered the front steps and thought about all the booby traps between here and the front door with a gulp. They were set against wolves, not her, but they could keep out a witch, too.
“Only one way to find out.”
She took the first step. Nothing happened. She jogged up the steps. They hadn’t locked the spells on her.
She hesitated again at the front door, not because of another existential crisis, but because she didn’t know whether to knock.
It felt ridiculous to ask for permission to enter her own home, but it also felt impossible not to.
“The point is to make them happy,” she reminded herself and knocked. She was a chastened and lonely kid returning to the bosom of her family.
She heard shouting from inside the house and then stomping feet and barking.
She heard one person say, “How come nothing went off?”
“Ducky, you’re useless!”
