31. Run, Ramona, Run
Run, Ramona, Run
The air crackled with a sudden violence as a portal appeared, looking more hastily torn open than carefully crafted.
Ramona emerged, looking distinctly unprepared for this particular battle.
Her silver hair was disheveled, and the faint echo of other voices clung to the air around her, as if she’d been yanked suddenly away from some other (no doubt equally nefarious) task.
“What. Have. You. DONE?!” Ramona’s face contorted with fury, and her power radiated outward like heat from a furnace, distorting space all around. “Do you have ANY idea of the punishments that will rain down on you?”
Scarlett stepped forward, chin lifted defiantly as she positioned herself between Ramona and her sisters. Delilah could see the slight tremor in her sister’s hands. That’s not fear, Del thought. That’s Scar restraining her own anger.
“We did what we had to.” Scarlett’s voice was steady despite the dangerous electricity in the air. “That monstrosity was really bringing down property values.”
Ramona’s eyes narrowed dangerously, pupils contracting to pinpoints of pure hatred. “You dare jest with me?” Each word left her lips like shards of ice. “What have you done to my people?”
Delilah felt a moment of genuine doubt flutter in her chest. Did we go too far here? But then she remembered her mother’s absence, and her resolve hardened like frost on a windowpane.
“That’s exactly what we’re here to discuss.” Scarlett rocked back and forth on her heels. “You want your people back? Give us ours.”
“Where is our mother?” Delilah stepped forward to stand beside her sister, and she was pleased to hear her own voice coming out steadier than expected. “And Belinda, and the others you took.”
Ramona’s lip curled into a sneer, revealing teeth that seemed too white, too perfect. “You are in no position to make demands.” But there was a flicker of something in her eyes. Calculation, perhaps, or the first seedlings of doubt.
Luna joined her sisters, positioning herself on Delilah’s other side. “We just yeeted your entire operation to Location Unknown. I’d say that puts us in an excellent position to make demands.”
“As for where they are now...” Scarlett said with exaggerated casualness, “I voted for dropping the whole mess in the bottom of the Mariana Trench. You guys have diving suits in the casino supply closet?”
Ramona’s anger literally lifted her several inches off the ground, her luxurious boots hovering in the icy air. The air around her shimmered with heat distortion, despite the season. “You wouldn’t dare!”
Luna tilted her head, looking at Scarlett with mock concern. “Oh, Scar... I don’t know if they’ll have time for diving suits.” She turned to face their adversary. “The pressure at the bottom of the Trench is quite intense. They’re probably pancaked already, no?”
Delilah bit back a smile. Luna had never been one for confrontation, but when she did join the fray, she always brought her A-game.
Ramona’s face flushed an alarming shade of crimson. A pulse of energy emanated from her, strong enough to send dead leaves skittering across the ground at their feet. She looked to be one twitch away from a full-blown aneurysm.
“You will return our property and staff to their original location immediately,” she commanded, and her voice resonated with a sort of material power that pressed against Delilah’s eardrums.
“Sorry, no can do.” Scarlett shrugged with exaggerated nonchalance, though Delilah noticed her sister shifting her weight subtly into a more defensive stance.
“One-way trip, I’m afraid.” She took a half-step forward, her expression hardening.
“But here’s what we can do: you release our mother and the others, and we’ll give you the location.
And don’t worry, I didn’t win the argument about the trench. They’re not dead... yet.”
A beat of silence stretched between them, broken only by the distant honk of some poor tourist who couldn’t seem to find his way back to the main road.
Behind the magician, the glowing rectangle reappeared.
Delilah caught glimpses of ornate furnishings and the shifting movements of other figures through the shimmering doorway.
“You’re bluffing,” the magician’s words practically vibrated. “You witches don’t have the ability to open a portal that large.”
“Umm, those fifty missing stories behind you suggest otherwise.” Delilah gestured at a gaping void where the casino had stood.
The starlight caught on her fingers, highlighting a tiny tremor of fear that she couldn’t quite control.
“You magicians should really pay closer attention to your real estate holdings, if you don’t want to lose them. Wanna test what else we can do?”
Ramona’s eyes flicked from sister to sister, assessing them all. Delilah felt the weight of her gaze like a bad touch, cold and invasive. The magician rolled her eyes and vanished into the rectangle of light.
Indistinct murmurings drifted through the portal, suggesting she was conferring with others.
Delilah caught fragments—“impossible,” “consequences,” “retrieval”—but couldn’t piece together the whole conversation.
She exchanged glances with her sisters, raising her eyebrows in silent question.
Luna shrugged minutely while Scarlett made a little thumbs-up gesture.
When the magician reappeared, her expression was marginally less murderous, though the air around her still shimmered with barely contained power.
“Very well. A trade. Your witches for our casino.”
“It’s not really a trade,” Scarlett corrected, “so much as it is a hostage negotiation. And you’re the ones who need to pay up.”
The magician’s nostrils flared, and for a moment, Delilah thought she might actually breathe fire. Instead, she pressed her lips into a bloodless line before responding. “Fine. They will be returned.”
“That’s just item one,” Luna said firmly. She gestured toward the hill where the oak grove stood, its silhouette just visible. “The wards have to be removed.”
“And we want all that tourist crap cleaned up immediately,” Delilah added, feeling bolder with each passing moment. “And fix the forgetting spell you tried so hard to break.”
Ramona’s face twisted with contempt. “If witches had any real skill,” she said haughtily, “you could have solved all those issues easily.”
A look passed between the sisters, a silent communication born from a lifetime of shared mischief. Luna cocked her head to one side, her expression suddenly innocent in a way that made Delilah brace herself.
“You know how my sister mentioned the Mariana Trench?” Luna’s voice was light, conversational.
“Well, that was far from the only idea we kicked around. Me, I’m known as the whimsical one, so my big idea was sending your casino to the surface of the moon.
” She tapped her chin thoughtfully, eyes wide with mock concern.
“How good are magicians at holding their breath? Do you know, Del?”
“I think David Blaine does that pretty well...”
“Oh gosh, that’s right!” Luna snapped her fingers in exaggerated realization. “So, what do you say, Magician Lady? Wanna find out which one we chose?”
Ramona’s face went from red to white during this exchange, color draining away like water down a drain. A muscle twitched violently at the corner of her eye. Through the portal behind her, Delilah could see other figures moving with increasing agitation.
“All right,” said the magician through gritted teeth. Each word seemed physically painful to pronounce. “You win.”
Delilah felt a rush of triumph so intense it made her light-headed. “Fix it now,” she added. “Not eventually, not tomorrow. Right now.”
Another sudden disappearance, more conferring inside the light.
Delilah caught sight of an older man with a silver-streaked beard gesturing emphatically, his face twisted with anger.
After a moment, the magician reappeared again, her face twisted as if she’d just bitten into something rotten.
Delilah could almost taste the woman’s defeat in the air—bitter and metallic.
“Oh no,” Delilah said without an ounce of sympathy. “Did we get you in trouble with your boss?”
“Shut up,” snapped Ramona. “And step back.”
The sisters exchanged glances, then took three synchronized steps backward. Aphra and Jerusha followed their lead.
A second portal appeared beside the first, this one darker, its edges ragged.
Through it, Delilah could see a barren landscape stretching into what looked like infinite darkness.
A void between realities that made her stomach lurch just looking at it.
After a moment that felt like a lifetime, Kelly, Belinda, and three other Oak Haven witches stumbled through, blinking at the sudden change of scenery.
“Mama!” The word tore from Delilah’s throat before she could stop it, raw with emotion she hadn’t allowed herself to feel until now. She and her sisters rushed forward as one, colliding with their mother in a tangle of arms and relief so profound it felt like physical pain.
Kelly smelled like home: cinnamon and woodsmoke and that indefinable scent that had meant safety for Delilah’s entire life. She clung to her mother, face pressed against her shoulder, suddenly a child again despite everything.
“It’s all right, my darlings...” Kelly murmured, her hand cradling the back of Delilah’s head. “I’m here now.”
She looked remarkably unruffled for someone who’d been trapped in interdimensional limbo.
Her silver-streaked hair was perfectly coiffed, her clothes unwrinkled as if she’d just stepped out for a moment rather than being held hostage in some non-Euclidean nightmare space.
But when Kelly pulled back from the group hug, Delilah saw the dangerous gleam in her eyes as she glared at the magician.