“Get back to the castle,” I told Rend. “Check on Mary Anne and Essex. If they’ve recovered the emerald ring, reach out to me through the communication stones. And let me know if there’s any word from Andros about my brother.”

With any luck, we’d all be back together by morning.

“I will,” he said. “Jackson, please be careful.”

“I promise,” I said. “Hopefully next time you see me, Harper will be standing at my side.”

Rend nodded and backed away as I prepared to shift.

It took only a few hours to get to New Orleans, and by the time I pulled up to the old Victorian mansion marked with the numbers 1912, the sun was just starting to set. I landed on the back steps of the house and took a deep breath.

I hadn’t been here in years, but I knew I could count on the demon inside to help me. He was an old friend, and I trusted him with my life.

I knocked on the door, my heart pounding.

Please, let him be home.

He answered quickly, and his face broke out in a smile as he pushed the door open to welcome me inside.

“To what do I owe this honor, old friend?” he asked, holding his hand out to me.

“Hello, John,” I said, clasping his hand and meeting his eyes. “I’m sorry to show up like this unannounced, but I need a favor.”

“Anything for you,” he said. He offered me a cup of coffee, but I shook my head, my heart racing at the thought of what I was about to do.

John Pierce was an ancient demon. He’d come to the human world a century before me, and he knew this area of the country better than anyone.

“I need your help,” I said. “I need you to take me to see Sabine.”

The cup in his hand crashed to the floor, and a girl came running in from the next room.

“John? Is everything o—”

She stopped mid-step, her eyes locked on my face. She wore a glamour that had turned her hair brown and her features plain, but I could see through it to the real woman beneath the trick. Her blonde hair hung in curls around her face, and her blue eyes lit up in surprise.

“Hello, Allison,” I said, a slight smile touching my lips. I was glad to see she was alive and well.

She touched her hair. “How did you know it was me?” she asked.

“He can see through glamours,” John said. “It’s one of his many talents. Not the least of which is knowing how to scare the crap out of me. What do you mean you need me to take you to see Sabine? No one goes there willingly, Jackson.”

“I have to go,” I said. “As soon as possible. I need her help.”

“She won’t help you,” he said. He waved his hand over the broken cup and it rose into the air, piecing itself back together as if it were brand new. “Not without a price.”

“At this point, I’ll pay anything she asks if she can help me get to Harper.”

He shook his head. “She’s a trickster,” he said. “She plays the long game, Jackson, and if she does agree to help you, she’ll ask way too much in payment. It’s not worth it.”

I looked from him to Allison, easily seeing how much they cared for each other. I had known this demon a very long time. Long enough to know that whatever he felt for her was different this time. He truly cared for her. Loved her, maybe.

“What if someone took Allison away from you?” I asked. “What if you knew she had been tortured beyond what anyone should have to endure? If you knew that at this very moment, assassins were being sent to seek her out and kill her? Would you risk a trip to see Sabine?”

Allison sat down at the large oak table that took up most of the kitchen. “Oh God, Harper,” she said. “You still haven’t found her?”

I shook my head. “I know where she is, but I can’t get to her without Sabine’s help, so unless you know someone else who can open a portal into the past, I’m out of options.”

Allison sighed, and a tear rolled down her cheek. John went to sit at her side, running his hand along her back.

Allison had been in Harper’s class at Peachville High School, and even though Allison had not openly joined our fight against the Order back then, she had been smart enough to get away from Peachville when the gate was closed. She’d been on the run from the Order ever since.

Most of the recruits from the sapphire gates had been rounded up a few months ago by the emerald priestess and killed in a mass-sacrifice so Priestess Evers could cast the spell that had kept the entire world frozen in time. Allison was lucky to be alive, and from the way he was looking at her now, I was sure John understood the kind of fear I was currently facing.

“John,” I said. “Please.”

He whispered something in Allison’s ear and she nodded. She took his face in her hands and kissed his lips softly. “Be safe,” she said.

“Where’s the fun in that?” he said, laughing.

She sighed and stood up, making her way over to me and wrapping her arms around me. It was so unexpected, I stiffened before finally hugging her back.

Allison and I had never known each other very well, but she obviously cared about Harper, and that made her a friend to me.

“Be careful,” she said.

She touched John’s arm tenderly as she passed by him, and then she walked out of the room. A few seconds later, I heard her footsteps on the stairs.

John stood up and grabbed a set of keys off the kitchen counter.

“You’re crazy to do this, you know,” he said. He glanced toward the hallway. “But you’re right. If it was Allison who was missing, and I felt I had nowhere else to turn, I’d pay whatever price the fairy asked just for a chance to get her back.”

“Thank you,” I said.

“We’ll see if you’re still thanking me in a few days,” he said.

I followed him out to his car, and he drove me far outside the city limits of New Orleans. I watched the landscape change from concrete and skyscrapers to wetlands and deserted backroads.

Two hours later, he pulled down an overgrown path and stopped just shy of a thick forest. The trees here were covered in dark green vines that wrapped around them like blankets, their roots were drenched in swampy water.

“We have to walk from here,” he said. He laughed and studied his shoes that I was sure cost more than my entire closet combined. “I should have changed clothes first.”

We travelled a rough pathway through the trees, standing on solid ground at first. As we got deeper in though, we had to trudge through water as deep as our knees with nothing but the moon to guide our way through the dark swamp.

“Should I be worried about getting my leg chomped off by an alligator?” I asked, stepping carefully.

John laughed. “Not here,” he said. “The gators don’t dare come this close to the Swamp of Nightmares.”

“What?” I asked, a chill running through me.

“That’s where Sabine lives,” he said. “Nice name, huh?”

I definitely didn’t like the sound of any place with nightmare in the name, and I wondered exactly what I was getting myself into. There was no turning back now, though.

About two miles into our walk, a shimmering light appeared in the distance.

“This is as far as I go,” John said. “Just follow the light.”

I nodded, my heart racing as I stared at the entrance to the Swamp of Nightmares. “Thank you for bringing me here. I owe you one.”

“I’ll wait for you as long as I can,” he said. “And Jackson?”

“Yes?”

“Whatever you see in there, it isn’t real,” he said. “She’ll try to get into your head and find your worst nightmares. She’ll do everything she can to break you open and tear you apart. Don’t let her win.”

“I won’t,” I said, shivering as a strange wind blew through the cypress trees.

“Good luck, my friend.”

I nodded and turned toward the shimmering light, walking slowly toward the unknown. From what John had told me on the drive over here, many people—demon and human alike—had come to this swamp, seeking Sabine’s help in desperate times. Most of them never found their way out.

I had no idea what I would face once I passed through the light, but I knew that I was willing to face anything for the hope of finding Harper before she was lost to me forever.

As I stepped closer to the entrance, its sparkling rays within my reach, I turned to look at John Pierce. He raised a hand, and I waved back, then stepped through the portal into the Swamp of Nightmares.