“We don’t have time,” Lucia said, lighting a candle beneath the newly installed but not cleaned French doors. That was east.

The normal little votive in an art glass cup gave off a heady aroma reminiscent of hot dry air, salty seas, and olive trees. I followed behind Lucia sprinkling the mixed herbs in her wake. She stepped carefully, making her arc to south perfect.

Allie sat on the foot of the bed, her hands on the crossed ankles of my girls. Phonetia began to struggle at the first whiff of burning herbs mixed to provoke a cleansing of magic.

At the south end of the room, Lucia lit another candle. This one smelled of ordinary bayberry, but there was something more beneath it. She’d done something weird to my dollar store finds.

I spread more herbs around the votive. So far she set up a pretty standard ceremonial magic milieu. “MoonFeather would have done much the same,” I commented.

“Your aunt would not allow me to delve into the darker side of the magic,” Lucia said as she lit west. I caught snow on the wind and musky animal scents from that one.

She really had done something strange to my candles.

“I don’t see a pentagram. We should draw one inside the circle before we close it.” The five-pointed star inscribed inside a circle was the basis of all ceremonial magic I’d ever read about or participated in.

“Trust me, there is a pentagram.” Lucia continued her ritual.

“But don’t we need white magic to counter the black of the original spell?” Allie asked. She’d read all the available vampire fiction and had a passing knowledge of magical theory.

Having grown up with a witch for an aunt, and having researched magic for my writing, I too knew a lot about it. That didn’t mean I believed it.

Well, sometimes I did.

“For long-term effects you may repeat the spell with white parameters. But we don’t have time. We must break the elf’s hold on his daughters now, before the sun sets or they will never take human form again.

Startled, I looked more closely at my girls. Sure enough, their skin had taken on a green tinge; their hair had begun to clump into the shape of overlapping leaves.

E.T.’s fingertips and toes sprouted poisonous berries. The digits themselves flattened and spread, taking on a green tinge.

Blackberry, Phonetia no longer, had thorns growing from her pores. Her eyes nearly shot venom at me.

“White magic works by undermining the core of evil, worming itself into every crack and crevice. That takes time. It is more long lasting. But it takes time. Years sometimes. My spell will be quick. And dirty. But it will salvage their souls and give your MoonFeather something to work with.”

Lucia hovered over the last candle on the bookcase headboard.

I knew she waited for me to give her permission to complete the circle that would bind all of our energies inside.

“We have Earth in the herbs. We have Air in the incense. We have the Fire in the candles. I presume you will need blood for the Water to complete this.”

She nodded.

“We’ll use mine,” I said with more determination than I’d felt a few moments ago. “I will bind myself to them as if I were their own mother. I will become a part of them and they of me.”

You sure you want to do this, babe? Scrap asked. He’d been strangely silent through the entire process. No backing out or changing your mind once you start. If they were your biological children you could give them up to foster care if things got too hairy. With this you can’t. Not even if you wanted to. Not even if your life depended upon it.

I had to think about that a moment. One look at my girls reverting to plants, with only a tiny bit of humanity still pulsing through them, reminded me of the face of the Green Man in folklore and in dozens of pagan artifacts. Not truly human, nor truly a creature of the forest. Lost and alone ... I knew I could not condemn my girls to that kind of wild, half-existence.

“Yes, Scrap, I’m sure. Do it, Lady Lucia. Light the candle and open my vein with the knife I know you have in your pocket.”

“Very well. You are wearing the pearls?”

I touched the strand around my neck beneath my sweater as a talisman. “Of course.”

“Good. You will need them.” She touched her lighter to the wick. The flame flared as it caught. Then it settled to burn cheerily. The scent of fresh cut pine overwhelmed my senses. Not just any pine, but an Italian Stone Pine from the Southern Alps.

The natural form of our nasty Nörglein.

Instantly, a frisson of energy coursed through my veins, burning into my heart. New awareness opened in my brain.

For a moment I was back in the audience chamber of the Powers That Be, signing my name in blood upon the contract that would ensure no demon ever again tried to wrongly manipulate the sacred, neutral space where my father’s bed and breakfast sat.

I jerked back into my own body and time with a new piece of knowledge. The crystal ball Scrap had hidden in the armory closet in the basement of Dad’s house ate away at the fabric of reality to open a new portal. It would be permanent and independent of the ball.

“Scrap, get the crystal ball out of its hiding place now!” I screamed before the heady aromas of the magic building within the circle made me too dizzy and incoherent to think straight.

A stream of arcane syllables spilled from Lucia’s mouth. She made the harsh, glottal sounds flow like a mountain stream struggling to get past sharp cascades. She grabbed my hand in a grip that brooked no defiance or escape.

She slashed her little knife across my palm. Blood welled up before I felt the sting.

Then she produced the missing pentagram. A silver medallion the size of my open palm, a five-pointed star within a circle of entwined leafy vines—perfect for the symbolism in the spell. She smeared my blood on the amulet, then slashed each girl’s palm and added her blood to the pentagram.

Sharply, fiercely, she thrust it first onto Phonetia’s forehead, then onto E.T.’s.

More ritual words invoked chills and searing heat that coursed through my veins as she smeared our commingled blood on the tops of their heads, brows, mouths, throats, heart, belly, and pubis.

The seven chakra points. When all were opened, they gave a doorway into the soul. Afterimages of the pentagram glowed red where it touched each of the girls.

Then she repeated the ritual on me. The pentagram left a searing impression. Seven times it branded me.

My limbs spasmed, convulsed, and cramped. I felt myself curling in on myself and falling, falling.

My back opened with wounds reminiscent of those inflicted by the blackberry vine whip. Again and again it lashed me through time as it had lashed my girls.

My mind tore open to admit seedlings of alien thoughts. The Nörglein sent barbed hooks into my mind, gleaning information and asserting control. Through him I accessed all the fear and humiliation he heaped upon Phonetia and E.T.

My soul ripped out of my body and fled from him in terror.

All Hallows Eve, the night when the barriers between worlds thinned and became vulnerable. I punched through a whole series of them, desperate to stay ahead of the dark elf. His all-consuming avarice followed me easily.

Down I passed through the shadowy illusion of the condominium complex. Past the basement, into the dirt. Rootlets reached for me, trying to snag in my hair and penetrate my skin, make me a part of the green ecosystem. Worms and burrowing beetles peered at me in curiosity, thought about feasting on what was left of me, changed their minds, and went about their business.

I became the being I feared most for my daughters, a wild thing, so much a part of the forest that I could never be human again. And yet I yearned for human contact. Any trace of language, or the touch of a hand, or shared experiences.

Isolated. Alone.

The water table flowed around me, threatening to drown what breath I had left.

And still I drilled deep, deep, deeper into the Earth, fleeing the elf mind that sought to consume me.

Darkness crowded all my senses. I had nothing to anchor myself to, if I even knew who I was anymore. Then I became aware of the pearls blazing around my neck, lighting a path of sorts for me to follow.

“I can’t fight both you, evil Nörglein, and the Earth at the same time,” I whispered in my mind. Exhausted, I covered the pearls with my hand and melded with the darkness. I drifted.

Which way was up? Where was home? Who was I?

“I can’t do it anymore. I give up.”

“Not yet, babe.” Scrap reached out a pudgy four-fingered hand and grabbed hold of me. “I’m not ready to give up yet, so you can’t. If you die, I die. If I die, you die.”

He manifested as tall as me, solid, and reassuring. He spread his wings to enfold me in a protective blanket.

I halted the downward spiral.

“Was this what it was like for you when you were imprisoned inside the Goblin Rock by the Guardians of the Valley of Fire?” I asked him.

“Yeah. But I was alone. You do not have to be.”

“What saved you?”

“I thought about what your life would be like without me. Not alive but not dead either, powerless to fight the evil that would target you the moment you became vulnerable. So I found the right answers to save us both.”

“Is that what you are doing now?”

“Sorta. Come.” He took my hand and led me on a new journey. Like Peter Pan leading Wendy to Neverland.

I felt like we flew sideways. But the Earth gave way to air. Tangled roots became a tapestry of branches. Leaves flowed out of me to bind themselves to barren limbs. Shadowy trees flitted past us. Insubstantial deer and rabbits peered at us curiously then returned to their browsing. And still I shed the greenery, giving it back to the original owners. I caught glimpses of sunlight, heard echoes of birdsong.

None of it real.

Except the pearls lighting our path like a fragile glow stick in the hands of a toddler on Halloween night.

I grew cold. My teeth chattered but I couldn’t hear them gnash together. The landscape grew barren, devoid of green things. A frozen wasteland.

“Imp Haven,” Scrap whispered, as if afraid of rousing his mum if he spoke too loudly.

More imps joined us—tall ones, short ones, young and old. Rainbows flashed across their magnificent wings. They appeared less substantial than Scrap, more present than the icy lumps of the garbage dump.

They chittered and squealed in high-pitched conversation I couldn’t understand. I knew they talked about me, scolded Scrap for bonding with me as an unworthy.

One word of their tirade penetrated my understanding. Pearls.

“Thank you for being my friend,” I told Scrap. “You’re a pain in the ass, but I love you as much as I do any of my family.” I couldn’t remember what my life had been like before I wandered into the Citadel in a lost ravine on the high desert plateau of the Columbia River Basin in a fever delirium. The fever had opened new pathways in my brain to allow me to see and hear Scrap.

He was just a scrap of an imp, the runt who shouldn’t have survived. But he was my imp. My heart filled with love.

She’ll do, the other imps whispered among themselves. Her strengths outweigh her taints. And she is the only human who could control you, Scrap. You are the only imp who can curb her instincts. They escorted us out of the wasteland, through the shadow forest, and back into ...