Chapter 12
The highway was a gray ribbon through the dark, the kind of nowhere stretch that made Mason wonder if the world was looping on itself. He’d been driving since before dawn, caffeine doing battle with exhaustion, both losing.
The compass rode shotgun on the passenger seat, glowing with that faint blue pulse that felt too much like a heartbeat. Every few miles it brightened, and the car radio answered with a burst of static that made the hairs on his arms stand up. At least it kept him awake.
He should’ve turned around hours ago. Instead, he gripped the wheel tighter.
“Talking to pools,” he muttered. “Now following a magic, blue neon light. You’re an idiot, Tidewell.”
The dashboard clock blinked 4:07 A.M. The last service station had been fifty miles back, and the next one seemed even more mythical.
He drove past an empty diner whose sign still flashed EAT in red neon, like a command.
No cars. No people. Just the hiss of his tires on asphalt and that faint, steady glow in his peripheral vision.
When he finally dared to glance at the compass, the needle wasn’t pointing north. It was locked on a direction, vibrating. He tapped the glass. It didn’t move.
“South-by-south-crazy,” he said.
A mist gathered on the road ahead. At first, it was ordinary fog, the kind that clung to low ground before sunrise.
Then it thickened—rolling, liquid silver.
For one impossible second, waves broke across the blacktop, white foam curling where the centerline should be.
The windshield wipers swept through empty air.
By the time he blinked, the ocean was gone.
Mason exhaled through his mouth. “Okay. Sure. Hallucinate responsibly, sailor. Get a bite to eat at the next opportunity.”
He drove on.
Crystal floated in a world made of water and half-remembered dreams. When she opened her eyes, the surface above her shimmered like glass.
Her body drifted, but she couldn’t feel the pull of gravity, couldn’t tell up from down.
The water glowed blue around her, matching the light that emanated faintly beneath her skin. Her veins. Her magic.
She lifted her hand, or thought she did, and the motion sent spirals of light across the dark. When she tried to speak, air turned to bubbles, and the bubbles formed words that weren’t entirely hers.
“He’s coming,” they whispered, their voices soft as surf.
A shape materialized in the murk. A woman formed from current and shadow. Long hair undulated like seaweed, eyes gleaming white then blue-black. The Sea Witch smiled, teeth sharp as shells.
“Oh, I know,” the woman said. “You called him.”
Crystal tried to back away, but there was no direction to retreat to.
The water folded in on itself, pressure building behind her ribs.
Images flared. She saw Mason behind a steering wheel, the compass blazing, headlights cutting through fog.
Each image rippled outward, and she felt a tether tightening between them.
“I didn’t mean to,” she gasped. The bubbles carried her words away, and the Witch caught them delicately between her fingers.
“Intent is such a surface thing,” the creature murmured. “What matters is depth.”
The current seized Crystal, spinning her through the dark until she didn’t know what was dream and what was memory.
Somewhere inside the roar, she heard another heartbeat.
Mason’s. Close, insistent. And beneath it, something else.
Heavy. Ancient. Following the same thread she’d thrown into the world without meaning to.
She tried to scream, but the ocean swallowed the sound.
“Wake up, Crystal!”
Magda shook her gently, but she continued to writhe.
“That’s not how you wake a sleeping witch…” Sahara said.
“What do you want me to do? Kiss her?”
Joell huffed and strode to Crystal’s side. She picked her up, slung her over one shoulder, and carried her down the Mansion’s magnificent staircase.
Crystal’s silver-tipped seagull familiar followed, screaming at Joell.
“Shut up, Bird.”
“I wonder why Crystal never gave her familiar a real name?” Magda asked from behind.
“I don’t know. Why don’t you ask her when she becomes conscious?”
“What are you going to do with her?” Sahara asked. “Give her coffee intravenously?”
“That’s not a bad idea,” Joell said. “But no. I’m going to sit her in a comfortable chair in our magical library and see if we can figure out why she’s not responding.”
“Oh, good idea,” Sahara said, and then she helped Joell lie Crystal along one of the sofas.
Candles guttered in their sconces as the mansion shivered. “That’s a surge,” Joell snapped, stabbing a finger at the glowing map spread across the library table.
“I think she’s between planes,” Sahara said, as she quickly filled the scrying bowl with water and placed it on the table.
Magda crouched beside the ley-line diagram chalked on the map. “It’s like a ripple of displaced current. A pocket dimension made of seawater and magical intent.”
Lioness leaned against the doorframe; sketchbook balanced on her knee. “Translation for the art majors?”
“Trap,” Magda said flatly. “And she’s the bait.”
Sahara closed her eyes, palms hovering above a bowl of water that vibrated without touch. “The current carries more than her signature. Something rides inside it. Something warm-blooded.”
“Not possible,” Joell said. “I think?” Her tone made it a question.
Sahara’s lashes fluttered as she scried in the dark water. “Human. Male.”
Lioness’s pencil snapped in two. “Oh, hell. He didn’t.”
The central mirror over the mantel flickered, misting like breath. Slowly, it cleared to reveal a blurry image: headlights carving through fog, a solitary car barreling down a deserted highway.
Joell rubbed her temples. “Mason. Of course.”
“Guy’s got commitment issues with safety,” Lioness said, grabbing another pencil. “I could draw him a map labeled Don’t Go There, but he’d still go exploring.”
“Focus,” Joell said. “The compass he found weeks ago… if it’s resonating with her, he’s basically driving along a ley line straight into our coordinates.”
Magda looked up. “Then he’s going to arrive whether we like it or not.”
“Exactly,” Joell said grimly. “We need a soft net, not a hard barrier. I want him alive, not vaporized.”
Sahara rose, water sloshing over the rim of her bowl. “The mansion already feels him. It’s shifting to meet his trajectory.”
Outside, thunder rolled once, even though the sky was clear. The floor vibrated. Lioness started drawing an opening in their driveway. One just large enough for a person.
Joell spread her hands over the map. “All right, ladies. Let’s catch ourselves a sailor.”
“And hopefully, nothing else,” Lioness added.
By the time Mason hit the Tennessee state line, the compass was humming audibly. The mountains rose like black walls against the stars. He’d lost all radio signal hours ago, but he didn’t need it. The needle guided him like radar.
When he turned onto the dirt access road, the fog closed in again. Not normal drifting fog. Intentional fog. It moved around the Jeep, thick as milk. The engine sputtered once, then died.
Mason stepped out into silence. The air felt charged, full of static and humidity. His boots sank into soft ground that shimmered faintly with concentric circles, like the surface of a hidden pond.
“Okay,” he whispered. “This is officially weirder than Afghanistan.”
The compass needle locked straight ahead.
He followed. The forest gave way to a clearing, and there it was…
the L.A.W. mansion. Massive. Elegant. Every window was blazing gold as though a hundred candles waited for him inside.
The fog glowed silver around it, breathing in time with the low thrum he felt beneath his feet.
He took one step closer, and the compass in his hand flared white-blue.
Then a voice rang out of the mist, crisp and unmistakable. “Don’t move, sailor. You just crossed a boundary you can’t see.”
Mason froze, instinct kicking in. “Copy that,” he said automatically, though he couldn’t tell where the voice came from.
The ground pulsed. Rings of pale light spread outward from his boots, rippling through the fog. The air itself shimmered, bending around him. He could feel eyes on him, more than one pair if he wasn’t mistaken, and the low hum of the mansion deepened into something almost like a heartbeat.
“Yeah,” he muttered, pulse hammering. “Boundaries. Got it.”
He stood there, in the mist, compass still glowing like a captured star, while unseen voices whispered across the wards, deciding whether to let him in.
Somewhere inside her mind, Crystal stirred. The water around her brightened, and she felt a tug at her core. He was close. Too close. The tether she’d made shimmered with tension, drawing him toward her even as something vast and cold followed in his wake.
She tried to scream a warning, but only bubbles rose, dissolving before they reached the surface.
Above her, faint and far, the ocean roared.
Crystal gasped and bolted upright. Water dripped from her hair, salt on her skin. The library swam in candlelight and motion; Magda was kneeling beside her, Sahara hovering just behind.
“Easy,” Magda said softly. “You’re back.”
“Back from where?” Crystal whispered, her voice hoarse. Her head throbbed as images flickered. Waves, darkness, and a cruel smile that wasn’t human. “I saw her. She’s real.”
“The Sea Witch?” Sahara asked.
Crystal nodded slowly, pressing a trembling hand to her chest. “She connected us. Mason and me. I tried to warn him.”
“Warn him about what?”
“I don’t know,” she admitted. “It’s gone. I can’t… hold onto it.”
Her familiar landed on the arm of the sofa and shrieked once, glaring at Magda as if this were somehow her fault.
Magda exchanged a look with Sahara. “Joell and Lioness went out to intercept him. You must have sensed that. The mansion shifted the moment you stirred.”
Crystal swallowed hard. “Then he’s here?”
Sahara brushed damp hair from her forehead. “Rest. Whatever connection you forged, it’s still open. We’ll need you steady before we try to sever it.”
Crystal leaned back against the cushions, eyes unfocused. The library felt too bright, every candle breathing in rhythm with the mansion’s pulse. “He shouldn’t have come,” she whispered. “It’s not safe.”
The sound of footsteps on the grand staircase broke the heavy quiet.
Rayna appeared first, barefoot and scowling, her dark red hair pulled into something that might’ve been a bun before she gave up halfway.
Brianna trailed behind in flannel pants and a T-shirt that read Hex, Nap, Repeat.
Victoria followed last, flawless as always, though her stiletto slippers clicked unevenly—an admission that she, too, had been roused from beauty sleep.
“Okay,” Rayna said, after a long yawn. “Who tripped the magical alarm system?”
Magda straightened. “You three might want coffee before we fill you in.”
“Already ahead of you,” Brianna said. “I have it brewing.”
“Joell and Lioness are missing, and I can feel the mansion humming like it just swallowed a battery. I’m guessing this is not a drill.” Rayna said.
“It’s Mason,” Sahara said quietly. “He’s coming.”
Rayna blinked, processing that through the fog of sleep. “As in our Mason? The mortal one?”
Victoria groaned. “The dangerously loyal one who thinks common sense is a myth? Fantastique.”
Crystal stirred on the sofa, her voice rough but steady. “It’s my fault. I dreamed him here.”
Rayna crossed to her and crouched down. “You dreamed him across several states? You must’ve really missed the guy.”
“Not funny,” Magda said, though her tone softened. “She’s been in contact with the Sea Witch too. Possibly through the tether that compass created.”
Victoria set a hand on her hip. “So, let me summarize: our resident mermaid whisperer accidentally calls her boyfriend into a magical danger zone, and we’re what—hosting brunch?”
“Joell and Lioness went to intercept him,” Sahara said.
“Good. Because if that man gets himself vaporized on the front lawn before sunrise, I’m not cleaning it up. I’m off to the kitchen for an extra-large mug of coffee.”
Rayna smirked. “You heard her, Sahara. Add ‘corpse disposal’ to the chore wheel.”
Sahara muttered something in ancient Egyptian. Handy, since no one else spoke it, especially when she wanted to insult them without injury.
The mansion gave a low, answering rumble, as if it shared their exasperation.
Magda shot them all a look. “Enough jokes. The ley lines are active, and the wards are shifting. He’s close.”
Rayna sighed, rubbing her eyes. “Then let’s make sure he has something to come home to.”
Outside, thunder rolled again. The windows trembled in their frames. Crystal had the horrible feeling that something was using Mason to surf its way in.