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And then suddenly she let go.

She flew backwards, end over end. Floating, twisting, falling…

BRRRIINGGG!

A sound reached her ears, ringing out over everything else. It was clear, loud, concise. Strangely beautiful…

There was another loud crash, followed by a high-pitched tinkling sound, and then suddenly everything stopped at once.

Kara sat up and groaned.

The wind, the noise, the cold — all of it was gone. Kara found herself sitting in the middle of the dirt floor, at the base of the table. A thousand shards of the broken Venetian mirror lay scattered around her, fanned out in an explosion that originated at the mirror’s frame.

“What… what happened…” She rubbed her eyes. Looked up.

Jeremy and Logan were standing over here. Both looked utterly and completely relieved.

Logan, she noticed, was holding the tiny silver bell.

Kara shot up and flung herself into his arms.

Forty-two

“So you’re telling me that all of this went down, possibly the most definitive visual confirmation of a portal — not to mention a nether realm — to date… and not a single one of you asshats got even a half second of footage of it?”

Kara sat up straight in one of the Averoigne’s high-backed chairs. She was dirty and disheveled. Physically she looked like a bomb went off. They all did. But no one looked worse than Xiomara.

“Answer me!”

“Yes,” said Kara. “I mean no,” she amended quickly. “I mean—”

“You had cameras! Sensors! Thermal imaging equipment!” The old woman’s face was twisted in a storm of anger. “Micro-cassette recorders! Air ion counters!”

“Those never worked right to begin with,” Jeremy cut in. “And I’ve always doubted the validity of—”

“I gave you everything except a fucking Ouija board!”

Kara struggled to keep a straight face. Inside, she was beaming. She knew, to an extent, that Xiomara was too, and that most of the beratement was just an act. The ass-chewing they were to receive for not having recorded anything was obligatory. Just like they were required to endure it.

“Maybe I should’ve sent a camera crew!” Xiomara was saying. “Refreshments! Makeup artists, so you looked good!” On the video screen, she was still pacing back and forth. “You all look like hell, by the way. Have any of you even showered?”

Logan started to shake his head. This time it was Jeremy who kicked him, off camera.

“Sweet Christ!” Xiomara swore. “And you’re telling me your phones were dead too? All three of them? At once?”

What they’d accomplished had been incredible. Beyond anything the Order had seen in decades, perhaps within the last half century. A smirk wound its way along the corner’s of Kara’s mouth. She hoped to hell Xiomara couldn’t see it from her end.

“A ten-year old blogger would’ve been better prepared! Or some random You-Tuber. At least one of them would’ve gotten some footage!”

They let her wind down for a bit, finish with her initial onslaught. When the Head of the Order eventually stopped to take a breath, Kara jumped in.

“We cleansed the hotel,” she pointed out. “Undid an egregious wrong.”

“Solved a century-old mystery too,” Logan offered. “Don’t forget that one.”

Kara shot him a look that said ‘chill’. He chilled.

“You got lucky,” Xiomara went on. “All of you.”