adding to the thickening fog around us.
A look to the other side of me and I saw another one. And a third. And as my horror made me braver, I moved up on my knees and spotted more of the corpses around the Cairn, until I was standing and looking at the smoking outer ring that had once been a circle of living, breathing creatures.
The toadstools were gone, shriveled away to nothing more than ash. And in the center of what had once been a Cairn, stood the gnarled staff. The grass around it was gone, and in its place remained a tough, glassy covering of obsidian.
"I…I don't understand," I heard myself say. "I…I had the staff."
"Yes. You did," said an all too familiar voice to my left. I whirled and spotted Edmund Blackwood by the edge of the obsidian Cairn. Still wearing his cloak and looking a bit mussed, though his hood was off and nestled at his shoulders. "That was quite a powerful spell, Miss Hawthorne. I see you've learned to incorporate your new Arcane talents with your Elemental ones. I find that interesting."
I balled my fists so hard my nails dug into my skin. "What the hell are you doing?"
He shrugged. "It's our job, isn't it? To prevent the Other Worlds from sneaking into our own?" he held out his hands. "You can't be upset about these wretched creatures, can you? They were little nightmares. The givers of bad dreams and fear."
"That didn't give you the right to murder them," I said through a tight jaw. I felt Bastien beside me, his presence reassuring.
"I didn't need a reason," he smiled. "But then, I'm not the one that held the staff."
When he glanced to his right, I looked at my left. Dharma was there, and I sensed Grey just as she came to me.
"Where is Ivan?" I stared at Dharma as she stumbled toward me, tripping over the Boggart bodies. "WHERE IS IVAN?"
Tears cleared lines down her dirt-smeared face. She held her left arm with her right. I saw blood. I smelled it. She'd been hit. But that didn't stop me from moving to her and grabbing her shirt. "Where is he?"
"Chérie—"
"Shut up, Bastien," I said as I locked my eyes with Dharma's. "Where. Is. Ivan."
She didn't look away and I could feel despair as it radiated from her. "He—he ran out to help you. I told him to stay with me, but he said he couldn't just sit there and not help. I—I told him to just grab you, but he took the staff—"
I staggered back and into Bastien, who put a hand on my shoulder. "Ivan…Ivan took the staff…" I looked over at the smoking circle, at the charred earth, at the dead bodies. "Where…"
"Dead, Samantha," Blackwood said as he stepped into the ruined ring and touched the staff. I watched as it turned to ash and was whipped away by a sudden, cold wind.
SIXTEEN
The hole in my stomach broke wider at the thought I'd just lost Ivan. Ignoring Blackwood, I stumbled into the scorched circle and searched the ruins for remains. My Arcane flared as I sent up small suns, balls of bright yellow light, into the air to illuminate the destruction. I sent my Elementals out to find Ivan. Any trace of him—any clue that could tell me he wasn't dead.
Blackwood stepped back from my Elementals as they manifested around him. I felt and saw the surge of Arcane Power as my despair and horror coalesced into the very solid form of a glittering red angry unicorn. It turned on the Magician and stalked him, shooting yellow fire from its flaring nostrils. Blackwood backed away until he was outside of the blackened ground.
I pushed my fingers past my cheeks and into my hair and held it back from my face. "What…did you do?" My voice sounded small, but it echoed in my head. The pack was listening.
"I did my job, Miss Hawthorne. It is our duty to destroy the monsters that come into our world, isn't it?" he gestured to the bodies strewn over the ground. "These were monsters. And they came in through this Cairn."
"Our job isn't killing innocent Witches!"
"He got in the way," Blackwood said as he straightened his cloak. He looked at everyone but me and the angry horse glaring at him.
-We could do to him, what he did to the Witch.-
For once, I agreed with the voice. But I didn't want to act irrationally. "Ivan tried to protect me."
"Then it