table with a hip and going out the back door without stopping.
Diana stood on the back porch, one hand over her mouth and the other pointing to a thin trail of iridescent mist sparkling in the glow of the translucent sphere. The bubble spanned their backyard and stood nearly as tall as their two-story house. Mara’s eyes widened when she realized the mist flowed from Sam, and his legs were gone. The rest of him was quickly disintegrating, seeping through the static shell of the bubble and disappearing into a large vertical rip-opening at its center.
“He’s slipping away! Do something!” Diana said.
Mara paused on the porch long enough to say, “Stay here.”
She ran over to Sam. Though most of his body remained visible, it was spreading apart as if he were losing cohesion at a molecular level. An unseen force was pulling him apart and sweeping him away. She waved a hand in front of his face, but his shocked expression looked through her.
Looking around for some way to stop what was happening, Mara could see the lines and nodes appearing and filling the interior of the sphere, but she did not see Abby anywhere. She had to be doing this. The bubble looked exactly the way it did when it had appeared in Stella Reese’s kitchen, with that odd opening at the center. It also had that smog—the remains of people abandoned between realms—polluting the blue light that comprised the bubble.
She approached the static periphery of the sphere and pressed her hands against it. The thrumming and smell of ozone brought back memories of the night on the Oregon City Bridge. Groaning with effort, she leaned into it, sending bolts of lightning streaking from her palms throughout the electrical barrier. It flashed and sputtered, spewed a cascade of sparks like a power line shorting out. The translucent wall flickered but reconstituted itself, before Mara could pass through.
“Mara!” Diana called from the porch.
She glared over her shoulder, about to say something caustic, but her mother looked horrified and pointed into the night sky. Before Mara could turn to see where her mother pointed, a blast of fire came out of the night somewhere above the transparent sphere. Flames poured down over the back wall of the house, igniting the siding and turning it black with a loud whoosh. Windows exploded and a high-pitched scream filled the air.
“Mar-ree!”
Black smoke poured off the house and rolled across the lawn toward Mara in a billowing wave that blotted out any light coming from the window. She could no longer see her mother and turned to run back to the porch.
“Mom! Are you hurt?” Mara yelled.
“I’m okay! The porch roof covered me. Stay here and help Sam. I’m running upstairs to get Hannah!” Diana yelled. Mara heard the back door rattle and then felt the ground vibrate—the trembling footfalls of the dragon. She suspected it had landed somewhere near the corner of the house, but it was camouflaged by smoke and flame. When roiling clouds parted, a dark silhouette loomed high above the ground; its red eyes glared down at her.
“I do not have time for this!” she screamed. Raising her arms above her head, she threw them forward and flung bolts of lightning from her palms directly at the dragon’s eyes. “Get out of here, or I swear your wings won’t be the only thing you lose this time.” She flung her arms forward again, sending more jags of electricity ricocheting through the haze.
A wall of wind bore down on her, driving the smoke into the grass. For a moment she could see the back of the house; now a wall of fire lapped at the roof two stories above. Looking upward, she saw the scaly tail of the dragon whip past the corner of the house as it ascended from sight beyond the light of the flames. Turning back toward the transparent sphere, Mara caught a glimpse of Sam. He was almost half gone.
She froze Time. Sam stopped melting away; smoke stopped pouring across the lawn, and flames stopped crawling up the back wall of the house. The sudden quiet was startling.
“You know you are only putting off the inevitable, dude. How long you think you can hold it, before you start to disappear yourself?” It was a man’s baritone with a lisp but a feminine lilt. Prado’s voice with Abby’s attitude.
Mara’s head turned toward the bubble. Stepping from the giant hole at the center, Abby smiled as best she could with