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“Well, I can wait. I have nothing better to do.”

“Where is your mother and the other Twihards?”

“Twihards. Good one.” He didn’t even crack a smile. “They’re in the Cinnamon Woods.”

“What? Why?” She would have to send a warning somehow before Esme and her sisters surrounded the house with the spell. And before Montgomery laid down the wire.

“How am I supposed to know? I’ve been trapped in a bubble all day.”

“If it’s any consolation, you look like a goth version of Glinda the Good Witch of the North in there. Are you hungry?”

“Nah. I’m good.”

“Okay. I’m going to go find my family and get you out of here. I’ll be back soon.”

Talon uncrossed his legs and flopped backwards, making the bubble warble and shimmer. “I won’t hold my breath.”

“Charming as always,” Willow mumbled, leaving the room.

When she went outside, she waved the other four over and told them what she’d learned.

“Should we wait until they go back in the house?” Bliss asked.

“I don’t think they’re going back in there,” said Willow. “And we don’t know how long they plan to be in the woods.”

“She’s right, Esme agreed. “We need to find out what they’re doing in the woods before we decide what to do next.”

“I’m pretty sure they’re not making s’mores and singing kumbaya,” Ivy said. “Bad old witches in the woods equals little children getting eaten.”

Willow liked s’mores and decided to introduce them to Montgomery if they ever got out of this alive.

“Yeah, I’m with Ivy,” said Bliss.

“Then you two stay behind,” Willow said. “Esme and I will go check it out.”

“I’ll go too,” Montgomery offered.

“You don’t have to, you know,” said Willow.

“I’m already dead. What can they possibly do to me?”

The three of them headed off toward the woods, and not fifteen seconds later, Bliss and Ivy catch up to them.

“We never said we didn’t want to come,” said Bliss, and nobody said anything after that.

As it turns out, sneaking up on anybody with crunchy leaves underfoot doesn’t really work. Sneaking up on four-hundred-year-old witches is even more impossible. So Esme, being pretty clever, cast a small levitation under their feet. Willow thought it felt like walking on marshmallows, and now she was really craving s’mores.

They seemed to be walking for a long while, but it was probably just the effects of the levitation spell. It made you walk slower.

Then, they caught a glimpse of crimson robes through the trees, and they were illuminated by a purple light. Careful not to make a sound, Willow and her party snuck a little closer, and could just make out unintelligible gabble coming from the circle of witches. They had formed rock cairns which they each stood in front of, and the source of the purple light was on a larger rock on the ground, perfectly in the center.

It was the Hobby Lobby crystal ball. Of course it wasn’t actually from Hobby Lobby. We already established that. But Hobby Lobby is easier to remember than Orb of Gorimaan.

“What are they doing?” whispered Ivy.

“They’re priming themselves,” Esme whispered back. “Probably to wield the magic of the Nexus. It’s too much power for a human body to bear. It could kill them.”

“Well maybe we should go ahead and let them blow up,” said Bliss. And they all gave her a flat look. “Just saying.”