Chapter 16
The witches always feasted before the ritual.
Not because it was tradition. Not because Ostara demanded a ceremonial cheeseboard. But because, more often than anyone liked to admit, the night of their sabbats tended to spiral into chaos. And saving the world on an empty stomach was just bad planning.
So, they’d eaten. Lavishly. And now, beneath the full silver gaze of the moon, the air pulsed with a deeper kind of hunger.
Rayna lit the altar candles with a whispered incantation and a flick of her fingers.
Ribbons of fire spiraled up from each wick, dancing like serpents before settling into a calm flame.
Crystals shimmered around the circle’s edge.
Fresh eggs gleamed in woven nests. Someone had placed a half-eaten s’more on the offering plate. Rayna left it.
“Alright,” Joell called out, clipboard forgotten for the moment. “Circle up. Let’s honor the moon Goddess, our bodies, the season, and whatever strange magic decided PMS was a nice accompaniment to impending blood loss.” The witches formed a ring around the altar.
“At least we can thank the makers of Seasonale for limiting our monthlies to quarterlies,” Magda said.
“Is that some benefit I’ll get by hanging out with you all?” Katie asked.
“Yup. For now, just relax.” Magda grinned. “We’ll get you synced up next month.”
Katie stood between Lioness and Victoria, her green robe slightly askew. Please don’t make me chant anything in Latin. Bubbles orbited her like her own slow, sentient moon.
Eli hovered at the edge of the circle, barely inside it. The glow from the candles caught the paint on his arms, now faintly pulsing like bioluminescent ink. He watched the ritual unfold with wide, uncertain eyes.
Lioness beckoned him forward. “You’re part of this now, Eli. Come closer.”
He stepped in slowly, shoulders tight, his hands twitching slightly at his sides.
Joell circled the altar, her silver staff projecting a glowing line, like a comet, over everyone’s heads.
When she finished casting the sacred circle, the witches began their chant—a low, hauntingly beautiful hum that vibrated through the clearing like a tuning fork pressed to the soul. Wind rustled the trees. Somewhere, an owl called once, then fell silent.
Katie leaned toward Eli. “You okay?”
“I remembered something,” he whispered, not looking at her. “Just now. I think I was supposed to meet someone.”
“Here?” she asked, startled.
“No. Before.” He frowned, gaze flicking to the fire. “Before the tunnels. Before the Between. Before everything. Someone was supposed to help me. They said they could read my markings. Help me finish the mission.”
Katie felt the skin on her arms prickle. “What mission?”
“I don’t know,” he admitted. “But I think I’m late.”
The wind picked up sharply, scattering petals and pine needles. Several of the candles flickered.
Bubbles swam in a tight loop above Katie’s head. “Late is relative,” it said, almost solemn for once. “But the message is still waiting.”
Rayna broke the chant. “Did your fish just ominously comment on a message?”
“He does stuff like that,” Katie said grimly.
Joell glanced between Katie and Eli, her expression sharpening. “What message?”
Eli opened his mouth to speak again, but before he could, one of the painted runes on his arm flared white-hot.
He hissed and staggered back. Joell grabbed his elbow to keep him within the circle. The rune faded a second later, dimming to nothing.
Everyone went still.
Rayna stepped forward slowly, voice calm but commanding. “Okay, kid. You're not just here for decoration. Let’s figure out what’s written on you.”
Joell moved first, pulling a quartz pendulum from her belt and kneeling beside Eli. “Don’t touch the markings directly,” she warned the others. “If they’re reactive, we could trigger something.”
“I am something,” Bubbles said loftily.
“Not helping,” Katie muttered.
Rayna crouched on Eli’s other side. “You said someone was supposed to read them. Did they say how?”
Eli shook his head. “Only that they’d know.
That the symbols would make sense when the time was right.
” He looked up, suddenly afraid. “It was supposed to be a woman, but I don’t know who.
I dreamed she had pale eyes. Like frost. She said the paint wasn’t paint at all. That it came from me, not on me.”
Victoria blinked. “You made the graffiti?”
Eli nodded. “Sometimes I wake up, and there’s a new one.”
Katie’s throat tightened. “That’s like my dreams.” Her voice lowered. “I see it as I wake up, and then I walk past it in Brooklyn like it’s always been there—but it hasn’t.”
Crystal stepped closer, eyes narrowed as she studied the patterns across Eli’s skin. “Some of this looks like sigil fragments. Not our witch sigils. Something older or not human.”
Sahara knelt to examine the boy’s arm. “That symbol there,” she said, pointing to a jagged spiral near his wrist. “I saw it on a scroll once and again carved into a stone wall near an ancient desert site. A warning. Something about a ‘threshold that could not be crossed.’”
Victoria’s face paled. “The ancient Egyptians may have come from an alien race. Do you think it could be written in their language?”
Bubbles floated lower, his voice a melodic echo. “He borrowed eyes. Borrowed ears. But he cannot borrow intent.”
Everyone turned to stare at the fish.
Bubbles blinked. “Also, we’re out of gummies. Just saying.”
Rayna didn’t blink. “Back to the part where he can’t borrow intent. What does that mean?”
“He can look like a friend,” Bubbles replied. “But he’s still just wearing that shape. Like pants. He doesn’t understand what it means to be.”
Joell looked at Eli. “These markings... Are they instructions? A message for someone? Are you real?”
Eli was quiet for a long time. The wind had dropped away again. The trees seemed to be listening. Then, softly, he said, “They’re a map. For him. The mimic. I think they tell him what he’s supposed to do. I think I’m real, but he isn’t.”
The clearing seemed to hold its breath.
Rayna stood abruptly. “Okay. New plan. No more low-key circle chanting. Let’s break out the big protection wards.”
“But the weapons—” Brianna started.
“Weapons later. Apocalypse prep with magic now,” Rayna snapped.
Joell was already digging through her pouch of emergency crystals. “We need a containment field. If those markings activate again, they could ping that thing like a magical GPS.”
Katie stepped closer to Eli and gently touched his shoulder. “You’re not the enemy here.”
He looked up at her, eyes glassy with fear. “No. But I might be the delivery system.”
Bubbles burped a tiny shimmer. “Then let us rewrite the message.”
The witches paused.
Joell blinked. “If we can do that, it might buy us precious time.”
Sahara rubbed her temples. “Technically, if the markings are magically reactive, we could overwrite them with a counterspell. But we’d need to know what language they’re written in.”
Bubbles swirled once in midair. “I’ve forgotten it. But I can hum the alphabet.”
“Oh no,” Victoria groaned. “It’s going to sing.”
And sure enough, the fish began warbling what sounded like an off-key lullaby in a language no one recognized but somehow still understood, deep in their bones. Eli closed his eyes, and every mark on his arms shimmered sequentially in time with the tune.
Katie’s vision swam. For a second, the entire world twisted. And in the middle of it all, the phrase from her familiar surfaced again: The moon is hungry.
When her vision cleared, Eli was sitting on the ground, shivering, arms wrapped around his knees.
Rayna exhaled hard. “Okay. Someone get a blanket. And maybe a snack. He’s in shock.”
Joell looked up at the sky. “The moon’s still rising. We’ve got an hour left of this ritual window. Let’s finish strong and hope the mountain doesn’t explode.”
“I like this mountain,” Brianna added, grabbing the uncorked pinot. “Anyone else need some of this?”
The other witches shook their heads, so Brianna tipped the bottle up and finished it.
Katie sat beside Eli, letting Bubbles float quietly above them. The goldfish had gone silent. Tail drifting, eyes distant.
“Bubbles?” she whispered.
The fish blinked slowly. “If the mimic comes through, he’ll wear what you love. So, look twice, Katie. Always look twice.”
“I guess I’ll have to be on the lookout for someone wearing an ironic hoodie or a t-shirt with some pithy saying.
Back in Brooklyn, the brownstone’s protective wards hummed with tension.
Michael and Daniel were in the kitchen, sorting through spell-tagged gear while Payne double-checked the ward glyphs at every window.
“Feels like we’re being watched,” Daniel muttered.
“You are,” Payne said. “We all are. It’s getting closer.”
He felt it like a pressure behind his eyes, a hum beneath his skin. Not just magic, but intent. Something out there was hunting, and it had finally picked a door to knock on.
A crash shattered the silence. The front door exploded inward. A ripple of shadow poured into the hallway, dark and fast.
“MOVE!” Payne shouted, grabbing the enchanted axe from the kitchen counter.
Daniel triggered the trip sigil embedded in the rug. The creature stumbled, just enough.
They saw it clearly now. It was tall, shifting, vaguely human, but slick with something like oil on plastic. It had no face, just a smear of flesh.
“Not friendly,” Michael said.
“Understatement,” Daniel replied, hurling a flask of salt fire.
Its scream sounded like an electric, metal-shredding wail. Then it recoiled.
“Good,” Payne barked. “Now we pin it!” He launched himself at the thing, landing hard with the axe in his hands. Finally. Something to swing at. The thought was savage, primal. No politics, just him and the thing trying to eat his people. He liked the clarity.
The axe bit deep into its neck. It shrieked and buckled, glitching between forms. Michael’s mother, Daniel’s childhood dog, Rayna.
That last one hit strong. His grip faltered for a split second. Rayna, with blood on her lips and fear in her eyes. No. Not her. Never her.
“Don’t look!” he barked, voice hoarse with fury. “It’s trying to distract us.”
Michael drove a blessed spike through the creature’s leg. Daniel blasted it again, frying its edges with preloaded magic.
The mimic shrieked, yanked out the spike, and lunged, but the wards flared, locking it in place.
“Now,” Payne growled, and began the banishment chant he’d been taught long ago.
Each syllable scraped from his throat like iron dragged over stone. Old magic. Older than he could have remembered. Druidic stuff.
Together, they shoved it backward. Michael and Daniel rammed it with the enchanted battering ram toward the splintered front door. The creature twisted, screamed, and vanished.
A momentary silence. Michael broke it. “How did it get past the wards?”
Breathing hard, Payne wiped ichor from his axe. “It’s damn powerful, that’s how.”
Daniel wiped oil from his cheek. “What do you think it wants?”
“I’m guessing it’s here for the kid,” Payne said. “Rayna texted me. The graffiti. They think it’s a message. And maybe a map. And whatever our faceless wonder is, it’s getting bolder.”
Michael picked up what was left of the door and leaned it against the frame. “So, what now?”
Payne stared out the side-light window at the quiet street beyond, heart still hammering. This was just round one. “Now,” he said grimly, “we take the fight to it.”
Daniel looked down at the ruined rug. “Think we can expense a new Persian under ‘hostile extra-terrestrial or dimensional breach’?”
Michael snorted. “That’s under ‘miscellaneous.’ Right next to coffee filters and goat cheese.”
Payne cracked his neck, grim but satisfied. “Remind me to bill the apocalypse.”