CHAPTER 61

Dana held up a hand in awe. Thin, blue streamers stuck out of her fingers, and became bigger when she pushed them together. It was St. Elmo's fire, a phenomenon typically caused by an immense buildup of an electrical charge. Her feet were getting shocked around the soles of her shoes, and she moved away from the shed, worried about what was to come.

The shed exploded, and a bright white figure was thrown through the air. It was a woman with long, white hair, and she was completely naked. She formed a parabolic path across the yard, scorching the ground beneath her with blasts of miniature lightning.

Yuki ran beneath the newcomer, both hands blasting ice magic along the front of the house and forming a series of curved trenches. A thick snow drift formed along the roof, and the woman crashed into it, scattering snow everywhere.

The woman rolled free of the roof and landed in the ice gutter that Yuki had formed, then slid down in a giant curve until she emerged from the ice by the front door. She landed on her belly, letting out a grunt of pain.

Yuki spun around, her green eyes glowing with power as she summoned her magic into a frosty mist before her, her full attention on where the shed had been. Dana looked to see a figure with long, blonde curls and translucent wings silhouetted by a bright light standing in what was left of the portal.

"Is everybody okay?" This was from Reggie, who poked his head up from one of the bushes.

Dana looked to the others. Tink was kneeling next to Mike, a look of relief on her face. Abella landed next to Yuki, her eyes locked on the winged woman.

"Beth's fine," Abella said. "We've got this. Someone go get Cecilia."

Dana nodded, then ran up the steps. The crumpled figure moaned in agony with her hands over her face.

"Hey, it's okay, you're ho—" The words stalled on her tongue when the woman on the porch rolled over. She hadn't known the banshee very well, but it was immediately apparent that the woman on the porch was not their missing spirit.

A large, fat horn sat in the center of her forehead, and her dark eyes crackled with the fury of a thunderstorm. When her gaze locked with Dana's, she let out a whimper.

"I can't control it anymore," she whispered.

The horn was glowing white-hot now, and Dana felt the hair on her body rise up as if she had been hooked to a Van De Graaf generator. It was the static field from before, and she could feel the energy building rapidly.

She sprinted down the stairs just before a lightning bolt blasted free of the horn, the explosive force pushing her face down into the yard and ripping a hole in the recently patched porch roof, showering the yard with ice and snow. A surge of electrical energy crackled around the newcomer, and lightning cascaded across the yard and roof. The thunder was deafening, and Abella fell to the ground clutching her head, leaving Yuki to face off against the woman in the portal alone.

The lightning was blinding, and the house was struck multiple times, eventually casting the neighborhood into darkness when the power was blown.

Laughter, like the tinkling of bells, washed over the yard.

Even in her dazed state, Dana felt a sudden rush of arousal at the sound followed by a strong desire to follow it. It was coming from the silhouetted figure—who disappeared in a flash of light. The rear wall of the shed fell apart, causing the portal to pop out of existence.

The silence was piercing.

Across the yard, she could see the others as they stumbled about, clearly disoriented. Bits of wood, ice, and roofing rained down on the yard.

"I see ye met the queen," Sulyvahn called out from the shadows. "She's a real peach, ain't she?"

"You take me to the nicest places," Beth said, stepping over a small, mossy rock.

The world around them was dark, and the light from their cellphones poorly illuminated the forest floor. A breeze had formed as the cool, night air of Ireland blew through the portal into Mike's front yard. The portal had been chewed into the inner wall of a crumbling home out in the woods, obviously long forgotten.

"I do my best." He stepped over a large rock and offered his hand when she stepped over. "There's a depression on this side, hard to see."

"It's not that—"

The depression was deeper than expected, and she lost her balance. When she tumbled forward, Mike caught her effortlessly in his arms. Her feet dangled above the ground, and he quickly set her down and cleared his throat.

"Sorry. Should have warned you better," he said, then knelt down. "So how big is this fairy ring supposed to be? I can't see anything. The ground is the same color everywhere."

"Reggie said it was a short walk from the portal." The fairy ring in question was actually a ring of mushrooms that was supposed to be a portal into the faerie realm. The rats had struggled to track one down, but Reggie's best scouts had managed to find one that wasn't an hour away from somewhere they could chew a portal to. "It should be up ahead any second now."

"I hope so." He stood back up and rubbed his stomach. "That's weird."

"What is?"

"Just an odd feeling. Almost feels like a gas bubble in my stomach."

Beth chuckled. "Are you nervous to meet the queen?"

"What? No, not that." He twisted his body around and then walked in a circle. "It keeps moving. Hold on." He patted his belly, shifted ninety degrees, and patted his side, then pointed in the distance. "It's pointing me that way."

"That's not where we're supposed to go." Beth pulled up a map on her phone. Her reception was poor, so she had to wait a bit for it to load. "There's not much out that way except... oh."

"Oh?"

"Remember some of that extra land you own?"

"Not really. Too busy trying to keep up with my magic house."

She laughed. That was fair. "You've got some land holdings in Oregon, Hawaii, and here, actually. This one is interesting because it's actually a small island with a castle on it."

He paused. "I own a castle?"