Which sounded very bad.
Melodie said, “Temporal... You Everharts are an interesting bunch.”
“I gotta peepee!” EJ said, holding his private parts. “I gotta peepee noooow!”
“First thing, then,” Ant Liz said, giving him her usual fond expression, “is to get my favorite nephew out of the protection ward so he can go potty.”
Ant Liz never looked atherthat way. No one ever looked at her that way except Ant Jane. She should have called Ant Jane. “He’s youronlynephew,” Angie said crossly. “And I gotta use the bathroom too.”
“Alrighty then,” Ant Cia said, unwinding a ball of string and starting to trace a protective circle.
EJ muttered, “Hold it. Hold it. Hold it. Hold it. Sissy, I gotta gonow!”
“You’ll need three of us. Where do you want me?” Miz Melodie asked Liz.
“North is here,” Ant Liz said, taking that position, “so each of you to the sides in a triangle pattern.” In seconds the witches were sitting and closed the circle, the powers flaring into place with a flash of light.
“Oh my...” Miz Melodie said, staring at the small ward, then up over thehedge of thornsthat covered the house. “I’ve never seen anything like this. Do you Everharts do this kind of”—her hand made little circles in the air—“working often?”
“No. But there’s always a first time,” Ant Liz said, sounding grim. “I’ve never seen one so tangled. Cia, Melodie, can you determine the first step?”
“The strand from the top of thehedge, perhaps?” Cia said. “Except we’d never get to it.”
“No. But Angelina can reach her end. Angie,” Melodie said, studying the energy patterns. “Do you see the energy strand trailing from thehedge, one you twined into your smaller ward?”
She meant the glowing yellow strand. “Yes,” Angie said.
Miz Melodie said, “Good girl. Reach up to where it touches the top of your portable circle and, gently, tweak it loose.”
She trusted her ants but something felt wrong. Angie frowned and looked at Edmund, who nodded slightly. Scowling, Angie reached up and tapped the top of her ward, plucking at the yellow strand of energy, unweaving it with her fingers, colors and sparks shifting in the air. As she pulled the tail of the thread loose, thehedgeoverhead shivered and shook, throwing a light show of sparks and flickers of color.
—
Edmund watched the three witches. The Custer witch kept glancing at him and he wondered why, beyond the general hatred most witches harbored for Mithrans. He smelled nothing leaking from her pores. Betrayal and ambush had a foul scent in humans and witches. However, Angie still frowned at her. “Question,” Edmund said mildly, watching Melodie. “If the small ward falls, won’t the children be caught in the same temporal displacement as their parents?”
“Angie, stop!” Liz said.
Angie’s fingers stopped moving. Carefully, holding as still as a Mithran, she turned wide eyes to her aunts.
For an instant, Melodie’s lips flattened. Her pores emitted the sour stink of frustration, hot on the night air. She lowered her head and schooled her expression to concern, but he was Mithran. Even had he not caught the facial expression in the dark, he would not have missed the spike of scent change.
Edmund said, “If Angie peels away the power she is drawing from thehedge of thorns, might that also destabilize the entire ward, resulting in a release of energy?”
Cia sucked in a breath of shock. “We could have blown up the entire hillside.”
“We’d have been fine under our own circle,” Liz said, “but at the very least Ed would have been toast and the kids would have been stuck or killed.”
“I gotta peepee! I gotta peepeenow!”
“Elizabeth,” Edmund said. “What would happen if the children simply pushed their small ward through the larger one?”
“We’d have... I don’t know. Cia?”
“I gotta peepee!”
“I think... the smaller ward would peel away and the kids would be free?” Cia said. “But—”
“Good. We’re coming through,” Angie said.
