We gathered at Eloise’s house and went through our plan one more time. So far, we hadn’t had any contact from the remaining priestesses of the Order. No threats. Nothing. Either they hadn’t yet realized their sister was dead, or they were all in hiding again.

Whatever their reason for not coming after us or attempting to get the emerald ritual items back from us before now, I was glad they were leaving us alone.

But I still wanted everyone to be prepared today. We had no idea what might happen when the first gate went free.

“Mordecai, I want you and the rest of the demons to create a tight perimeter around the entrance to the emerald gate,” I said. I motioned to a few witches who’d been freed from the sapphire gates. “I’d like three of you to watch the main highways that lead into town. The rest of you stay hidden here in the house in case anyone comes through the demon door upstairs. If you see anything suspicious, call me immediately. Unless it’s just a single witch, don’t try to fight them on your own. Just let us know they’re coming and let the demons take care of them.”

The witches nodded and headed to take to their stations.

“Rend, you and Azure can guard the stairway leading down to the ritual room,” I said. “Franki, you stand at the bottom of the steps. If anyone attacks and manages to get through the line of demons, guard that entrance with your lives. We just need enough time to complete the ritual.”

He agreed, but I noticed that he still looked uneasy about this whole thing. Maybe he really was just stressed about the Brotherhood of Shadows, but his concern worried me, too. Something was definitely bothering him. He wasn’t himself the past couple days.

“We need five witches for the actual ceremony, so Eloise, Caroline, Meredith, Azure, and Mary Anne will all take their places here.” I pointed to a crude drawing of the pentagram on the ritual room floor. “Do you guys remember everything you need to do for the ceremony?”

They all nodded, and Eloise and her daughters clasped hands. They were excited, but nervous. As long as we could just get through this ritual, they would be free from the Order forever.

“Essex, you and I will guard the women as they begin the ritual,” I said. “These statues lining the room here and here will most likely come to life. When the creatures wake up, I’ll freeze them in place. I just need you to send your spear through the soft parts under their shell. Aim for their bellies, and we should be able to take them down quickly.”

Essex raised his spear into the air.

“I am being ready,” he said.

Mary Anne took his hand and smiled. “We can do this,” she said. “We should get moving. We only have about half an hour until three.”

I folded my papers and stuffed them in my bag. It was time. We’d been over the plan several times, and I felt like we had all our bases covered. Still, my body was lit up with nerves.

We’d performed this type of ceremony more than a hundred times when we freed the sapphire gates, but this time, there were still so many unknown factors. There were so many lives on the line here, and I knew we needed to do this as quickly as possible.

Still, something had been bothering me last night.

I picked the emerald ring from the table and stared at it.

What I couldn’t figure out was how in the world Harper had gotten ahold of this ring. The other ritual items stayed in the human world, but the ring could only be found in the Shadow World.

How had Harper gone into the Shadow World and gotten it on her own?

In her letter, she hadn’t explained how she’d gotten any of these items. Sure, it made sense that she had the master stone. That had been the one thing keeping the emerald priestess alive for all these years.

The other items were questionable.

Harper had been with us when we performed all of these rituals to release the sapphire gates. She knew from experience that we didn’t need all of the original items from the creation of the first gate. All we needed to release an individual gate were the master stone and ring. Everything else—the chalice, the necklace, and the dagger—came from that gate rather than from the priestess’s gate.

So why had she left them all inside that box?

And how had she gotten them? She couldn’t have taken them from the emerald priestess of the 1950’s or it would have changed the timeline. Without the ring in its place on the Shadow World to act as an anchor, no new gates could have been created and no new demons could have been pulled through.

So the ring had to have been in place until very recently. We knew from asking around that new witches had been initiated in some of the emerald covens right up until the day we discovered these items there in the box.

Without the ring in place, that shouldn’t have been possible.

I couldn’t wrap my head around it.

I’d mentioned it to Mary Anne this morning, but she told me I was just being nervous about nothing. She said that if Harper left those items for us, she had to have known they were safe.

I had studied her note to me, and there was no doubt it sounded like her. And I had no doubt that she was locked away in the past.

Eloise said she could feel a difference now, so that proved the emerald priestess was truly dead. I was probably worrying for nothing, but as we all made our way out to the ritual room’s entrance in the woods at the edge of town, I thought of the collar made of amethysts. Why had it been in the emerald priestess’s house? And what did it have to do with Harper?

I couldn't shake the feeling there was still something I was missing.

But what?