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Arman couldn’t leave just yet.

Levka communicated to him, “We are all waiting to hear how it is going for you.” He sounded exasperated with Arman for not telling him what was going on all along.

“I haven’t been successful. Regina is keeping tight control of Fiona.”

“Then return to the house.”

“I will. I’m going to try one more thing.” Arman hoped it would work. If it didn’t, he would call it a night and try again tomorrow when they were all at school. For now, he perched in the tree, watching her window, the lights out, the curtains closed. He was just glad Regina hadn’t called for backup to see if someone was coming after Fiona.

* * *

The only thing scary about All Hallows Eve was her great aunt, Fiona decided as she returned to bed and pulled the black comforter under her chin.

Just before she drifted off to sleep, she had the worst urge to look out her window again, but she was afraid she would wake herself too much, and she would never get back to sleep.

Not moving from her bed, she stared at her window, straining to hear any sound. Nothing, this time. Her eyes slowly shut.

In the darkness, blanketed in sleep, she heard someone calling to her from far, far away. Just a voice without body, a figment of her imagination—had to be.

“Fiona, dearest, come out to me.”

Where had she heard that voice before? Mesmerizing, intriguing, solicitous, deep, and dark like a fathomless pit.

“I will give you everything in my power.”

Fiona turned over in her bed and hugged her pillow to her cheek. “Who…?”

“I am your sweetest dreams and your protector against your darkest nightmares. Take my hand and come away with me.”

“Where? I don’t understand. I don’t know you. I?—"

“Fly away with me. Together we will find?—"

Fiona waited for the rest of his words, longing to hear his hypnotic voice, but silence ensued. “What do I call you?” She sighed under her breath and opened her eyes.

The voice was so real, she felt as though the speaker had stood in her bedroom while talking to her. He was a conundrum, a revealer of nothing but riddles.

“Not real,” she said, and closed her eyes, but then the whispers renewed. She turned her head toward the bedroom door.

The hushed voices continued. From the living room?

After slipping out of bed, she tugged a robe over her green tank top and matching pajama bottoms decorated in whimsical frogs wearing golden crowns and silly expressions on their green faces. Her watch indicated three. At this rate, she would never get any sleep.

When she opened her bedroom door, a powerful spicy incense wrapped around her. She noticed at once that Regina’s bedroom door was open, and the voices continued to whisper in the living room.

A spy she was not. The only time she’d tried to overhear what her brother and mother fought about—him telling her she needed to leave their dad for all their sakes, and her mom telling him their dad needed her—Fiona had been caught eavesdropping.

Goose bumps trailed down her arms when she inched her way down the hall, the sound of her footsteps cushioned by the black carpeting.

“He must be stopped,” a male voice whispered.

“She must be the one to do it,” Regina said, her voice hushed.

“She’s just a child.” Fiona swore it was Clarissa, the Egyptian princess, speaking.

“You must tell her,” the man said, only this time she believed him to be Tobias.

Her great aunt gave an abrupt laugh. “She’s entirely too headstrong. She wouldn’t listen to me or believe me, and we need her cooperation.”