Instead, I found ecstasy.

Faye’s blond hair was strung out wildly, her mouth open and head flung back. Her skin glowed blue, as if she stood under black lights, her eyes dark pits and her open mouth swallowing down, or injecting, power. She looked like she was screaming, but her expression held fierce joy, not fear.

At the third point of the triangle, Marcia stood with her teeth bared, a terrible grimace distorting her face. But I could see and feel the power emanating from her; there was no rejection in her. From one face to another, I saw the same things. Even Garth, whose earnestness I had trusted, cried out in silent, joyful abandon, tears spilling down his cheeks.

I set my teeth together and prepared to dig down to the core of my being, and call up the power to stop this. There was a gut-level certainty in me: even if the earth itself were willing to share power with me, the effort would kill me. I wished, desperately, that I’d said goodbye to Gary.

And then, like Pandora’s Box, hope came.

Nothing outward changed: the silence still shrieked in my ears, the sky still boiled black. But theintent of the specters pouring out of the black hole we’d created seemed to change. The body-confused chill of sunburn swept up from my bones, making me shiver, making a bubble of sickness in my tummy. I swayed, and the boy next to me, more aware than I expected, put his hand under my elbow, supporting me. I glanced at him; his eyes shone with hope and excitement, even through my distorted vision.

Spirits like the ones who’d tumbled and mock-fought over Gary filled the sky. One caught my eye, a lion with tufts missing from his mane, and I wondered if the badger was nearby, carrying a tawny victory prize. More fantastical creatures, honochenokeh who were benevolent spirits; oni which had no visible form, but were life-force personified; other beings, some nearly human and some from pure legend, rolled out of the gap, chasing down their nightmare counterparts and disappearing into the sky. I looked for the thunderbird, and for Coyote, but saw neither of them in the mad rush. Even so, a sense of safety overwhelmed me.

The fire burned out in one impossible burst, swallowing the sparks it had thrown at the stars just one breath earlier. The column of power cut off, and all around me the coven members collapsed to their knees, as if they’d been supported by nothing more than the sky-rending light. The rip of blackness sealed shut, leaving twilight skies again, and suddenly I could hear distant voices.

They weren’t laughing anymore. They were raised in alarm and confusion: the overhead activity hadn’t gone unnoticed, even if our bonfire had. I stared up at the sky, trying to grasp the implications of what we’d done, when Garth grabbed my arm.

“It’s time to go,” he said in a low, urgent voice. I startled and shook him off, staring first at him and then at the other coven members, who were scrambling to their feet and hurrying away.

“What? Why?”

“Because that was way too much magic to hide. Can’t you hear people coming? We’ll get in trouble if we’re found around the smoking ruins of a bonfire in the middle of the park.” Garth was smiling brightly at me, his colors fading from inversed. “Did you see it, Joanne? Did you see what we did?”

I looked back up at the healed sky. “We let monsters into the world.”

“Light and dark,” he said earnestly. “We can’t have the good without the bad. You felt all the goodness, too, didn’t you?”

I nodded slowly. The strength of the spirit animals and benevolent ghosts still lingered beneath my skin. I remembered Colin’s snake, and Gary’s tortoise, and smiled suddenly. They’d have a lot of company now.

My vision went completely black, and I fell over.

Monday, June 20, 5:04 a.m.

I woke up around dawn, more feeling the time in my sunburned bones than actually knowing it. The ceiling above me was unfamiliar, gold sparkles mixed in with the ridges of plaster. The corners of the room seemed dim, which, after a few moments’ consideration, I realized was due to the lights being off. I thought about my whole body, from toes to the top of my head, and decided that while I needed about eighteen weeks of sleep, I didn’t hurt, so probably all was well. I pushed up on an elbow.

Like a sledgehammer crashing into the side of my skull, a headache announced its disapproval of my moving. I groaned and put a hand over my eye, trying without much focus to will the headache away. What qualified as a headache for a car? Being too cold to start in the morning? The body rusting out? I settled on the too-cold analogy and tried to think my car warm again. Absolutely nothing happened.

Faye appeared in a flurry of worry, sitting down on the edge of the couch I lay on and feeling my forehead. I groaned again, even though her hands were cold and felt good. “Where am I?”

“My apartment. You passed out last night. We were worried. I thought you might not want to go to Garth’s, and nobody knew where you lived.”

“What time is it?” I didn’t trust the internal chronometer.

“I don’t know, like five in the morning. The sun’s rising.”

Guess I should’ve trusted it. “Have you been up all night?”

“Mostly. I napped a little, but I was worried about you. We all were. Are you all right, Joanne?” Her eyebrows drew down over her puppy dog brown eyes. I tried to work up a smile, got as far as a grimace, and gave it up as a bad job.

“I—” I started, then yawned so big it felt like my head was going to split open. I groaned again. “Do you have any aspirin?”

“Sure.” She leaped to her feet and scurried to get some. I sat up gingerly, surprised to discover that my head didn’t hurt as much when I was in a sitting position. Maybe the barometric pressure was different two feet farther off the ground. Faye hurried back with aspirin and a huge glass of water. I took both gratefully.

“I didn’t sleep last night,” I said when I’d drained the glass. “Or the night before, whatever. And it was kind of a long day. I guess last night’s little powwow was too much.”

“You put an awful lot of power out.” she said sympathetically. “It exhausted all of us. But think of what we’re doing, Joanne! Think how different things will be. Maybe there’ll be no more war, once we understand better how connected we all are.”

I grinned tiredly at her. “Faye’s a good name for you. You’ve got a lot of faith.” She smiled, and I resisted the urge to pat her on top of the head. “I hope you’re right.”

“I am,” she said with confidence. “You felt what followed the nightmares last night. All the hope and goodness.”

“Yeah.” I nodded a bit, then did it some more, noticing that my head didn’t hurt nearly as much. Either it was wonder-aspirin, or I’d been very badly dehydrated. “Look, where are we meeting tonight? I’ve got a million things to do today, so I should get home.” Well, I had at least four things to do today. That was sort of like a million. I admired how much better my head felt after just a glass of water. “You didn’t put anything in that water, did you?” I asked. Faye’s eyes widened.

“No!”

I held up a hand, grinning. “I didn’t think so. It just helped a lot. Thanks. Look, how far are we from the park? I’d like to go pick Petite up.”

“Petite? Your car?”

I nodded.

“Oh,” Faye said blithely, “I drove it home last night.”

My vision went all tunnelly and red in a way that had nothing to do with the annoying inversions that had been bothering me for the last day. “You drove. My car. Here?”

“Sure,” Faye chirped. “I thought you’d like it to be here.”

“You don’t even have a driver’s license! You drovemy car,” my beautiful, wonderful, delicate Petite, “without mypermission, andwithout a driver’s license?!”

It began to dawn on Faye that she had perhaps made a tactical error. “Well, I—it wasn’t so hard—”