The cell, if it could be called that, had no bars. There were no visible means of keeping me locked inside. No walls, no anything. Just what looked like empty space all around me.

And yet when I moved too far from the little chair they had given me to sit on, I walked straight into an invisible wall or forcefield or something. Whatever it was, my nose was still sore from smacking into it.

My guard for the moment, the one with the big, sorrowful eyes, had at least tried to make it look like she wasn’t laughing at me when I did it. She failed. It was pretty obvious how funny the whole thing was to her.

“What’s your name?” I asked at one point, since there was no barrier that wouldn’t allow me to talk. The invisible walls allowed sound to go through them, even if nothing solid could.

She didn’t answer right away, sitting with her back to me with a book in her lap. So, witches read books. I would never have guessed it. Then again, in a cave, what else was there to do?

I stood, then took slow, careful steps to the edge of my cell with both palms raised in front of me to catch the walls before my face did. At least I learned from my mistakes.

“Hello? Please? Come on. I’m here totally by accident, I don’t understand anything that’s going on. The least you can do is speak to me. At least let me know I’m not all alone here.”

Never would I have guessed that being alone would someday be a problem for me. I had spent the last four years working out of my living room, hardly ever leaving my apartment except to pick up groceries and the occasional bottle of wine. I would sometimes meet up with Keira, too, at her apartment or to get a slice of pizza when she wasn’t in training or doing her bounty hunter thing.

The outside world had never held much of an appeal, and the people in it even less so.

“Are you seriously going to ignore me? You’re going to leave me in this cell and spend the rest of my life pretending I’m not here? When I didn’t do anything to deserve this?” My palms touched the invisible walls, and I honestly felt the sensation of touching something solid. If I were looking in from the other side, I would’ve seen my flesh flatten out, like I was pressed against glass.

Her head moved a little, turning toward me so I caught her quarter profile.

“I’m not supposed to socialize with you,” she whispered. “It would be better if you kept quiet and waited for Selene to come back. I’m sure she will have more questions for you when she does. Best you save your strength for that.”

“Save my strength?” I asked, not bothering to whisper as she did. “Why? She seemed fairly nice before. A little… overpowering, but nice.”

“You do not know her,” she replied. “She is fair. Honest. But harsh when the need arises.”

“There is no reason for her to treat me harshly,” I argued. I could feel panic starting to rise in my chest again, no matter how much I struggled to keep it at bay. “I didn’t do anything wrong, damn it.”

“That does not mean there is no need to deal with you.” She turned away, back to her book.

There went my panic again, bigger and stronger this time. I felt it overtaking me and was thrown back into the middle of a million memories. A million times I was bullied, or I found out I’d have to go to another home, or I’d hear the beginnings of an argument between my foster parents or them and one of the other kids in the house.

The cause of the panic didn’t matter. It was all the same in the end. My breath would start to shorten, my palms would go cold and clammy, my heart would race so fast I was sure I’d have a heart attack because of it. My head would start pounding, my eyesight would go blurry.

I was able to control it in the woods before it got out of hand, but this was bigger. Stronger.

I started to hyperventilate.

She didn’t move. Not that she would help me, anyway. I was alone. All alone. With no one to help or care. I would never see home again, I would never see Keira again. I was never meant to have a good life, a normal life. People like me ended up in caves with witches, in cells with invisible walls.

My chest started to hurt. I had to sit down. I turned and staggered back to the chair but missed, knocking it over and sending it skidding into the invisible wall while I hit the floor.

That got her attention. She dropped the book and came over to me, standing on the other side of the wall. “What are you doing?” she asked, chewing her lip.

“I…can’t…” I put a hand on my chest, panting. “Can’t…”

“Are you asthmatic?” she asked. “There was no inhaler in your pack.”

I shook my head. “Panic. Panic.”

I curled up, head between my knees, fighting for every breath of air. It didn’t matter what she thought, if this came off as an attempt at getting pity or tricking her. I was suffering.

She must have finally come to that conclusion, since she was on the floor at my side in a minute. I didn’t have it in me to flinch away when her hands came into contact with my temples.

It was the strangest thing. Like she was sucking the panic right out of my head. I could feel it going away, draining out. It didn’t happen all at once, but as it did my chest opened up, and my pulse slowed, and I could move my head without lightning bolts of pain zigzagging through.

It couldn’t have taken more than ten seconds.

When it was over, and she removed her hands, I was slow in straightening up. Not sure I believed what just happened. Like any quick, sudden movement would start the whole thing up again.

It didn’t. I felt better than I had in ages.

She was watching me intently with those strange eyes.

“Thank you,” I whispered, a little weak but at least able to speak clearly.

“Does this happen often?” she asked, still crouched in front of me.

“Only when witches hold me captive in their cave,” I replied, and I was immediately sorry for it.

She had helped me, and she didn’t have to.

“It used to happen a lot more when I was young. I would feel like I was having a heart attack—I thought I was the first few times. Went to the ER and everything. It took three trips and a lot of tests for them to finally decide I was only having panic attacks.”

“That seemed like quite a lot to go through.”

If my little passive aggressive snippiness had offended her, she didn’t show it. I guessed it I was a witch with the ability to touch a person and put an end to a massive panic attack, little things like that wouldn’t bother me, either.

“It was. Is.” I looked at her hands. “How did you do that? I mean, you touched me, and it was gone. You made it go away.”

She didn’t answer right away. Instead, she set the chair right, then helped me to my feet. I sat down, still a little shaky but more with relief than anything else.

“I did not take away the panic attack. Merely the panic which caused it. I can… alter the states of those around me using touch,” she explained, hands at her sides.

“So you made it so I wasn’t panicking anymore.”

“Correct. I pulled it out of you.”

“What happened to it? I mean, you pulled it out. I felt you pulling it out.” And it was the weirdest thing I ever felt. “Where did it go, if it’s a thing you can manipulate that way?”

“It simply goes elsewhere,” she shrugged. “It’s something I’ve always been able to do. Many of us can. Some are better than others, just as some are better at manipulating other things. Energy, the elements.”

“I see.” I didn’t see. I didn’t see a single damn thing. It was all too bonkers to be believed. Witches?

She smiled. “You do not believe me. You do not believe any of this.”

“No. No! No, no, no.”

“Come, now. I am not as skilled in reading the energies and thought patterns of others as Selene is, but I can manage a bit. And I sense the fact that you do not believe me. It is all right. You do not need to, I suppose.”

I sat back in the hard chair. “I mean, you did take away my panic.”

“That I did.”

“So I guess there’s something to be said for all of this…” I waved my hands around. “All of it. I’m in a cell with invisible walls, for God’s sake. I know that I need to believe what’s happening here, but it goes against literally everything I ever thought I knew.”

“It must be difficult for you.” She folded those magic hands of hers, sighing. “I suppose we are not well-known in the outside world. Or known at all.”

“Who are you? Wait—what is your name? I asked before, but you wouldn’t tell me.”

She hesitated for a second, like there might be a problem with her sharing something like that with me but relaxed like she knew it was pointless. “Calliope. You can call me Callie. I prefer it, really.”

“Callie. Who are you? I mean, all of you. Why do you live in a cave? If I were you and I had your powers, I would live in a mansion someplace. On a yacht. Something fancy.”

She chuckled. “Something fancy. You might be surprised, but everything we need is at our fingertips here. We can bring nearly anything into existence if we wish it so.”

“But you still live in a cave. Why live here if you could go anywhere, bring any sort of home into existence?”

Another sigh, like the one just before she told me her name. “There is much more at stake than what meets the eye. Many, many centuries of history. There are good, solid reasons for why we remain secluded as we do.”

“I know I shouldn’t ask because it’s really none of my business, but you sort of made it my business when you brought me here.”

“It was not our fault that you traveled here from your home.”

“I realize that.”

“And we have not managed to survive all these centuries by taking chances. Allowing outsiders to learn about us, then turning them loose.”

All these centuries? “What do you normally do to people who find you? And by the way, you found me. Not the other way around.”

“Normally, we would have erased the memory of the person involved, but that became a bit messy. Memories are funny things. It isn’t always possible to locate memories specific to one experience and only those memories.”

“You wiped people out accidentally. Is that what you’re telling me?” I could imagine a bunch of witless, directionless people wandering around until they died from starvation or exposure.

She nodded. “Not many, in case you’re worried. Come to think of it, we rarely find outsiders anymore. There is a reason why you were lost.”

“How did you know I was lost?”

She shrugged. “Remember, we feel things. It was fairly strong, your sense of confusion.”

“Got it.” Because I was definitely confused.

“A long time ago, we decided it would be best to place a series of enchantments and shields on the entire area. Rather than risking the presence of further trespassers, we made it impossible to find us. And our friends.”

Friends. They had friends? Were there more witches just like them? I wasn’t sure I wanted to know.

I was about to ask her to tell me more about their coven when a very loud, very familiar scream ran out through the cave.

Callie gasped and hurried out of the cell.

I scrambled after her, thinking this might be my big chance, but rebounded off the invisible wall. Damn it.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing to me?”

I knew that voice. Tears filled my eyes.

When she appeared, coming out from one of those tunnels, she was surrounded by a half-dozen witches who were doing their best to subdue her. They weren’t successful.

“The spell didn’t work!” Hecate shouted. “I can’t keep her quiet!”

Keira.

Seeing her alive and in one piece was a relief, even though she was in big trouble.

It was like something out of an action movie. No matter what they threw her way, she kicked and punched and elbowed like she was in one of her MMA matches. I held my breath as I watched. There was no way she would be able to keep them off her forever, outnumbered the way she was.

But she was doing a damn good job of it.

“Enough!” Selene’s voice rang out even louder than Keira’s had, and I jumped back from the cell walls like I was afraid of getting into trouble. It was a reflex.

Something about Selene made everything stop. Even Keira stopped fighting and stood still—was she amazed? Was she scared? Or just under Selene’s influence?

The other witches might not have been strong enough to stop her, but Selene was.

The witch just about blinded me when she smiled. “I believe we found the one who is missing.”