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Brooxie nodded gravely. Her expression was oddly sad. Ruby, on the other hand, radiated an uneasy awe.

“That’s it,” Brooxie said. “The Gift of Orrin. You have it, all right.”

“Unless it was a onetime thing,” Ruby said.

“It wasn’t,” Willow said. But what did she know? She hadn’t summoned the crack. She wasn’t even sure she’d slipped into it. It was more like it had sucked her in.

Brooxie groaned and pushed herself to standing. She was wearing great wide khaki pants, and the fabric swished between her thighs as she made her slow way toward the hall on the opposite side of the room.

Ruby stood, too. She gestured for Willow to follow.

“Let’s see if you’re truly meant for this path, or if what happened in Hemridge was a fluke.”

~

They passed down the narrow hall, the flooring changing underfoot from linoleum to a bare wood staircase that took them down below the house, the air growing cooler with each step. At the base of the steps, the space opened into a low-ceilinged room dug straight into the earth. A root cellar.

The air smelled earthy and wet, the scent of soil that had never seen the sun.

Brooxie tugged on a string, and a lightbulb came to life, illuminating crude shelves lined with Mason jars.

Willow saw pickled beans, wax-sealed tomatoes, floating ghost-pale peaches.

Propped against the wall on the other side of the room were tools: rusted shears, empty bushel baskets, and a hoe with a warped handle.

At the far end of the cellar was a door made of stone.

Willow didn’t understand. Stone doors belonged in crypts or castles, not in the root cellar of a crumbling mountain house. But there it was, set clean into the packed dirt wall as if it had always been there. Stranger still, there was no knob. No handle. No hinges Willow could see.

She looked at the sisters. “Why are we here?”

“Our world is full of cracks... or so I’ve heard,” Brooxie said. “Thin spots. Places where reality wavers.”

“It’s one thing to stumble on such a crack,” Ruby said crossly. “To seek a crack on purpose—and find it—is something else entirely.”

“Ruby, be nice,” Brooxie said. To Willow, she added, “When my sister’s a sourpuss, it means she’s scared.” She bobbed her head from side to side. “Not an unreasonable response to magic, I suppose.”

Magic. Willow was in a root cellar with two women talking about magic, and neither Brooxie nor Ruby seemed to find it the least bit strange.

Brooxie ate mayonnaise straight from the jar, true—but everybody had an odd quirk or two.

Juniper refused to let her peas touch her mashed potatoes.

Willow’s mother refused to use wire clothes hangers.

And Ash? Ha. Ash was a toilet paper tyrant.

She flipped every roll she encountered to “over, not under.” Even in other people’s homes. Even in restaurants.

But quirks like that wouldn’t get you institutionalized. Brooxie and Ruby were both adults. Both seemed to have their mental faculties intact. Yet here they were, discussing magic in the same tone they’d use to discuss canned corn.

Ruby took Willow by the wrist and pulled her across the root cellar, stopping in front of the door.

“There you go,” she said. “That’s your test.”

“Test?” Willow said.

“Can you pass through it, pet?” Brooxie asked.

Willow furrowed her brow. “Pass through it?”

“If you’re worthy of the Box, you’ll have no trouble,” Ruby said.

Willow gaped at her. Then she let out a disbelieving laugh. “You want me to walk through a stone door. Just... pass right through it.”

Ruby’s expression didn’t change.

“If you can’t, there’s no reason to continue your search for the Box,” Brooxie said. “It would be a waste of time—yours and ours.”

“Why?”

“Because the Box doesn’t let just anyone in,” Brooxie replied.

“The Box doesn’t let most people in,” Ruby added. “Hasn’t happened once in our lifetime, has it? Hardly seems likely it’ll change its mind now.”

“But it might,” Brooxie argued good-naturedly. “And Ruby’s right—proof of magic is a good place to start.” She tilted her head at the door. “Give it a try. Why not?”

Why not? Um, because walking into a slab of stone was a good way to break your nose? Not to mention the damage Willow’s ego would suffer when she hit the stone and bounced right off.

But. The Box. Both sisters were acting like it was a real thing, as real as the stone door in front of them.

“You do know it, then,” she said. “You know the Box I’m talking about, and you know where to find it.”

“Amira knows where to find it,” Brooxie clarified. “We know where to find Amira.”

“And you’ll take me to her if I...?” She spun her fingers at the stone door.

“We’ll arrange a meeting,” Brooxie said. “Yes.”

Right. Okay. Willow eyed the door with a scowl, sizing it up. She rolled her neck and rotated her shoulders.

“No problem,” she muttered. “Just walk straight through the stone. Easy-peasy.”

She stepped forward and pressed a palm against the stone, which was solid and cold. It rippled, and Willow gasped and jerked back. The stone went still.

Behind her, Ruby sighed.

“ Ruby ,” Brooxie warned.

Willow brought her fist up to her mouth, tapping her lower lip with her knuckles. In Hemridge, the world had cracked open for her of its own volition... unless what happened had been triggered by Willow’s panic, her desperate desire to escape.

Could she call those feelings up again? Use them to summon the Gift of Orrin?

Ash’s words taunted her: You talk big, you dream big, but you don’t actually do anything. You never will.

Willow threw back her shoulders, lifted her chin, and strode forward.

“Ow!” she cried when the impact threw her backward.

“You didn’t pass through. You’re still here,” Ruby said.

Willow glared at Ruby. “Yeah, funny thing, that.”

“Try again,” Brooxie urged. “Feel for the spaces others can’t find.”

Willow turned to the door, her jaw tight. This time, she didn’t think about Ash or Orrin or even the thick slab of stone in front of her. Instead, she thought about where she wanted to be, which was anywhere but here.

The lightbulb hanging from the roof of the root cellar flickered.

A silver thread formed in Willow’s mind, and when she closed her eyes, she found she could reach out and grab it.

She tugged on it, and the boundaries of her body unraveled, until all that remained was Willow.

.. and the stone... and Willow-in-the-stone, just like the Willow-in-the-mirror she’d described to Ruby and Brooxie. There and not there.

She stepped forward, and a gray sky stretched and expanded behind her closed eyes. A pinprick materialized, a tiny dark shape with wings. Was it a falcon? An owl?

No, it was a dragon. It looked like the smoke dragon she’d seen from the bus, but this dragon wasn’t made of smoke.

It was solid. Real. It beat the air as it flew closer.

Whoosh, whoosh, like bellows stoking an ancient fire.

The dragon was huge now, its eyes as luminous as emeralds.

They widened, then snapped tight, pupils narrowing into vertical slits.

The air buckled, and bright white light bloomed in Willow’s chest. A swirl of energy consumed her, and everything was pinpricks and sparkles and the oddest pop-pop-popping, like the sound Juniper made when she twisted a sheet of Bubble Wrap.

Except the popping sound didn’t come from Bubble Wrap. It came from her.

The popping stopped—and Willow fell. Cold ground caught her hard, her legs collapsing beneath her. She lay there for several disorienting moments, sucking in air.

Then she pushed herself to sitting and lifted her head. In front of her was the door. Still there. Still shut. But the sisters were absent. Willow was on the other side.

An amazed laugh broke from her lips. “I did it! I really and truly did it!”

A slow clap echoed through the shadowed room.