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I agreed. “There has to be another way to stop Lavinia.”

“Well, we could just kill her,” Damiel said. “That would stop her quite effectively.”

Faris nodded. “We should do it now. She cannot be allowed to perform that ritual.”

“We don’t know where she is,” Grace said. “Yet.”

Everyone looked at me.

“You’re the best magic tracker we have, Sierra,” Dad said. “Can you locate Lavinia?”

“I can certainly try.”

I closed my eyes and focused on Lavinia. It had been a long time since I’d seen her, over a decade. I hardly remembered what her magic felt like. I did remember it felt weird. All the people on her world felt weird, like they were out of phase, out of sync, with the rest of us.

There was someone else whose magic felt that way. Two someones actually. Cupid and Dreamweaver. They’d gotten their magic when my mom’s army had destroyed the Guardians’ Sanctuary. Where had Lavinia’s people gotten their magic from?

“Where are the sixteen rings?” Damiel asked.

“Safe,” Grace replied gruffly, like the question was an affront to her competence as an all-powerful demon.

I kept my eyes closed and tried to drown out their voices. I had to focus on Lavinia. I had to find her. And stop her. This whole thing was my fault. I’d activated the rings. I’d made her crazy plan possible.

Now I had to make it impossible.

“I can sense her,” I said.

I felt two hands on my shoulders.

“Where is she?” Mom asked behind me.

“She’s…in transit. Going somewhere.”

“Whereis she going?” Faris asked impatiently.

“I don’t know yet, but there’s something else. A strange presence with her. A strange power. It’s…” I opened my eyes. “It’s the rings. She has the rings.”

Faris swore. I didn’t even know gods did that.

“How did she get them?” Mom asked.

“There’s a spell book. Or maybe it’s more of an instruction manual for the rings? She used it to summon all of the rings to her. Now she has them.”

“Where is she?” Grace said. “We need to get to hernow. We need to stop hernow. Time has run out.”

“I can see her.” I shook my head. “But I don’t know where she is.”

Mom took one of my hands. Dad took the other.

“You can do this, Sierra,” he told me. “I have faith in you.”

“Ok.” I swallowed hard. “She’s in a cave. The rocks are glowing. And humming. There’s something special about them. They’re reacting to the rings’ magic. She’s going to use them to amplify the rituals.”

“Do you know where this cave is?” Mom wiped the sweat from my forehead. The strain of tracking Lavinia across worlds was intense. I was sweating everywhere.

“I think I can find it. Just one more moment…”

I felt a rough jolt, so sudden and strong that I toppled over. And I took my parents with me. We fell right through the floor like it wasn’t even there. There wasn’t anything anywhere except empty, black space. It was a void, a pit of nothingness. I couldn’t see anything, hear anything, feel anything—except for my parents’ hands, holding tightly to mine.