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We were standing in our foyer. The lights were off, and I could barely see, but I knew my way around this place intimately. I had been sequestered here for most of my life, after all. There wasn’t an inch of this house I didn’t know how to get to or get from, besides the vault. I headed for the nearest light switch and flicked it.

The foyer lit up instantly, the light fixtures in the walls springing to life. I took a deep breath. It smelled fresh, and clean… but not like home. There was a noticeable chemical tinge in the air, a subtle stink that hadn’t yet dissipated. The remnants of a clean-up job, I thought, grimly.

Memories of that night, memories I thought I had buried, or at least suppressed, came rushing up. Not images, exactly, but sounds. Lights. Feelings. I remembered the shriek Carla had made as she fell. The sound of her magic as she… I shut my eyes and fought it all down like bile.

“I’m alright,” I said, finding my composure once more. “Let’s do what we came here to do before we run out of time.”

“Which way is it to the vault?” Lucien asked.

I nodded down the hall. “This way.”

Lucien followed Max and I as we made our way to the basement stairs, skirting past and not even looking into the dining room where my parents were killed. I knew their bodies weren’t there. I didn’t know where they were, but I knew they weren’t in the house. I still didn’t want to look, and neither did Max.

Though their bodies were gone, the ghost of that night still haunted this house. I doubted if I would ever be able to come back here after today. I didn’t think I would ever want to. I had spent my whole life here. The thought of spending another minute more than I had to made me sick to my stomach.

We headed downstairs, into the dark and damp of the basement. I had been here a hundred times, but I had never noticed the ring of sigils etched into the wall toward the back of the basement area. I found it strange that there was no glow, no eerie lights, no magical humming. To anyone who walked past it, if they didn’t know to stop and look for the markings on the stone wall itself, they would’ve overlooked it every time.

Just as I had.

“This is it?” Lucien asked, staring at the ring of faint sigils against the stone wall.

Max pulled a couple of boxes out of the way so that we could see it more clearly. “This is it,” I said.

“And how does it open?”

“It doesn’t,” I said, opening my palm and displaying my aunt’s amulet. “Not without this, anyway.”

Responding to the amulet’s presence, the markings in the wall gently shimmered, as if a light had shone across them.

“What is that, really?” Lucien asked.

“A key that unlocks this door.” I approached the wall, and the markings began to glow. They formed a large ring, big enough for a person to move through. It didn’t look like a doorway, but more like a circle that only just touched the floor at its lowest point.

That was because this wasn’t a door at all, but a portal.

Mason Diaboli had threatened to blow a hole in this wall so that he could get to the other side of it and enter the vault. I hadn’t been lying when I told him he would never make it to the vault if he did that. He would’ve ended up destroying the only way in.

The sigils around the edge of the portal began to move, to rotate in a clockwise direction. The closer I got, the more this motion sped up. Right at the center point, a small opening appeared. It was shallow, and circular, matching the amulet’s dimensions perfectly.

Giving one more glance at Max, I placed the amulet in the center of the wall. As if drawn to it by a magnet, the amulet pulled itself into the little indentation. When it was flush against the wall, the sigils spinning around the edge of the circle began to spin faster, and glow more brightly. The wall swallowed the amulet, and then something incredible happened.

The wall began to shimmer and fade, becoming transparent right in front of our eyes. Before long, all that remained was the impression of a stone wall; even the amulet looked translucent. This ghostly visage then shifted further, the image in front of us swirling as if it was being pulled around by the rapidly circulating sigils.

Before long, the wall pulled itself apart like a curtain to reveal a room on the other side of it. Already I could tell there was something about this room that was different. It was vast, and deep, and as we watched, flaming sconces lining the walls lit themselves up, only the fires weren’t orange—they were pale green.

“Woah…” Max said.

“What is this?” Lucien asked.

“The Ether,” I said. “My father’s creation.”

Lucien looked over at me. “Your father’s?”

“He wanted the vault to be inside the Ether, but he also didn’t want it to be accessed by the creatures that live there, or other mages who could’ve had power in the Ether. So, he created a kind of pocket realm out of Ether stuff. This place is totally cut off from anywhere else in all of existence.”

Lucien nodded. “That’s… badass.”

“My father was pretty cool,” I said, a soft smile gracing my lips. “Anyway, the engine is in there.”