“It’s 2018 for God’s sake, why am I still struggling to find a signal?” Ali’s shrill cries were coming through the walls. Carrie tried to cover her face, shutting her eyes tight. It was over quickly, thank God. Unfortunately, though, Carrie wasn’t the kind of person who rolled over and went back to bed. As soon as her sleep was broken, it was time to get up.

Carrie’s eyes opened again to see the sun had started to break over the mountains. She sat up and rubbed her eyes. “Where is it?” Carrie shouted as she ran out of the room. “Where is the book?”

“I have it,” Anatolie was standing just in the hallway, running one finger over the outside of the book. He looked to be admiring it. He handed it back to Carrie.

Carrie accepted the book with trembling hands. “Please…” her voice was shaky. “Don’t do that to me.”

“You dropped it on the floor and I just wanted to make sure that no one took it,” Anatolie grinned at her. “You’re obsessed, Carrie. And that might be a good thing. At least you’ll watch over the book 24/7. I don’t know many humans that devoted to anything.”

“I’m not a human,” Carrie said, recognizing his humor. “I’m a witch.”

He nodded. “That you are, my dear. I am headed to bed now.”

The fright of the book being gone had nearly given her a heart attack. It wasn’t until she had gotten back to the bed and sat down to take a moment to feel the leather of the cover, that Carrie started to calm down.

Carrie got back out of bed and then headed down to the main dining room where Raven was having an early breakfast. The castle didn’t have a staff. They had the guards, a group of vampires loyal to Anatolie, but they didn’t have cooks, chefs, or butlers. Everything was still set up for the party that Carrie had ruined with her ice spell.

She knew that it was going to be a while before Ali forgave her for that. To Carrie, it wasn’t that big of a deal. Ali was overreacting.

“She’ll get over it,” Raven said as she watched Carrie’s eyes looking over the decorations.

“Are you sure?”

“Well, no,” Raven teased. “I forgave you already, but she may hate you forever.”

The girls laughed as Carrie sat down and pulled a pear out of the fruit bowl on the large oak table. She sat in the high-backed chair and let herself melt into it. She could feel the weight of the world on her shoulders. She didn’t really have a plan, but she knew she wasn’t leaving the castle until they came up with one. “We should ask Helga for help,” Carrie sighed between bites of pear.

Shortly afterwards Raven excused herself and went to bed. Ali was already sleeping, Carrie assumed, because the yelling had stopped coming through the walls. The others were now on vampire schedules. They had both decided to spend their lives with vampires, and so their new sleep schedules made sense. It just made for a very lonely day for Carrie. The castle was a very quiet place, and Carrie wasn’t sure if she was going to be able to go outside the castle’s walls. Solomon had found the book once. There was always a chance he would find it again.

“So, what do I do with you?” Carrie said to the book as she flipped it open to a random page. For the first time since finding the book, she could see the words written in the pages of the book. “Oh!” She threw the book down, recoiling for a second.

“What are you trying to do to me?” Carrie asked the book as she took a deep breath and summoned the strength to lean down and pick it up again. She pulled all her courage together and began reading through it. The power of the book pulsed through her fingers, adding to her discomfort. “The Protection Spell, the Invisible Hand, the Touch of Death?” Carrie read the names in a hushed whisper. She read through a few of the spells, and decided to try one out. She hurried back to the fruit bowl.

“Luați acea pere!” Carrie said, holding her hand out and curling her fingers. She was staring intently at the pear left on top of the fruit bowl. She raised her hand and the pear moved up. She moved her hand all over the place and the pear followed her hand. Carrie opened her hand and let the pear go.

She read through the book for the rest of the day. She took the time to protect the walls of the castle, even though it seemed unnecessary considering the power already contained in the castle. “Sigiliți aceste ziduri!” She shouted the words. Carrie wasn’t sure if it helped, but she did it anyway. Carrie knew that most magic was about the feeling, and the atmosphere that you created around you.

The others eventually woke up and started moving around the castle. The sun had gone down and they were ready to help Carrie find a solution to her problem. “We need to head into the woods,” Raven said. “We can’t hide the book in here. It’s too obvious.” Ali agreed with Raven but Carrie wasn’t convinced it was the right move. The two women fought with her until she finally relented under one condition.

“I’ll go if Anatolie comes with us,” she said. She was a bit disappointed that she was having to leave the walls that she had just taken the time to protect. It felt so much safer on the right side of the protection charm. “I just feel like I need someone indestructible near me.”

Anatolie grinned at her. He had been rendered indestructible by the book, and the actions of his grandmother Greta, the creator of the book. There was no guarantee that he could protect the others, but Carrie thought it couldn’t hurt to have him along beside them.

The witches left the castle quietly, moving down the front stairs on silent feet, moving toward the woods with stealth-like precision. Deep inside, they stumbled onto a clearing in the woods that was nearly a perfect circle. Normally they would’ve sat down right then, but Carrie decided they needed an extra layer of protection. She had brought a box of salt from the castle. “Anatolie, I need you to build a ring of logs on the outside of this ring.” Carrie started to pour a ring of salt around a stump. The circle was just wide enough for the witches to sit around the stump.

The girls each gave thanks to the spirits of the woods as they sat down inside the circle. The circle was when the coven was at its strongest. They could feel their powers moving through the roots and the plants that surrounded them. Anatolie stood outside of the rings of salt and wood. Carrie felt better knowing that he was watching over them.

“What are we doing?” Ali said after a moment of silence. “I thought I knew, but I need to know what to focus on.”

“We need to ask the universe for a solution to our problem,” Carrie suggested, but her voice gave away her low level of confidence in her plan. The others looked at her, and then each other. They all shrugged and then Carrie had a thought. “What if we ask Helga?”

Helga was the leader of their coven. She was the one who had planned their spring break trip to Romania. A trip that had turned into months of vampire and werewolf laden mysteries. A trip that had nearly ended all three of their lives at one point or another. Helga had pulled back from the coven and been less than helpful since the girls left home.

“She hasn’t been very forthcoming with information,” Raven said as she looked at the stump. Helga was Raven’s grandmother, and though the others didn’t blame their friend for her grandmother’s actions, she was having trouble processing the betrayal.

“We can ask her,” Ali said. “We don’t have to take her advice and she can always say no, but if she is willing to help, we’ve won that battle.” Carrie and Raven nodded and they all closed their eyes and called out to Helga. They could feel her presence, but she wasn’t answering their question. They could tell that she heard them, but she wasn’t saying anything.

“I can feel her using the energy,” Carrie said as she tried to break the hold Helga was using to suck in the power. “I can’t stop her.” The others weren’t responding and Carrie opened her eyes to see that the others seemed to be screaming at her as well. They were all moving their mouths, but there was no sound. Their hair was moving around, and blowing in a breeze that Carrie couldn’t feel. Her hair seemed to be moving as well.

Carrie turned to see Anatolie fighting to get through the protective barriers, but he was stuck on the other side of the logs and unable to help the witches as they seemed to be locked in a spell. Carrie could see the protective walls of the ring as Anatolie struck at the air. Out of the corner of her eye, Carrie saw a blast of pink and orange rise out of the stump.

“My girls,” Helga said as she broke the spell’s hold on her students. The energy stopped flowing, their hair stopped flapping in the unfelt breeze, and Anatolie fell over the logs he had been trying to charge past.

“What the hell was that?” Anatolie yelled as he brushed the leaves off of himself and got back to his feet.

“How did you do that?” Raven asked as she got up to hug her grandmother. She wasn’t sure how she would feel about seeing Helga again, but she couldn’t stop herself from loving her grandmother. The last time they had talked, Helga had been a magical projection. Seeing her in the flesh was a different feeling altogether.

“I need you to help me,” Carrie said as she watched the heartfelt scene unfold. She had tried to wait to ask, but she just couldn’t hold off her curiosity. “What am I supposed to do with Greta’s book?” Helga’s shoulders dropped and she got down off the stump. Helga was at least a thousand years old, and yet she had the appearance of a sixty or seventy-year-old.

“We need to get to work,” Helga said as she threw her grey hair up in a messy bun. “There is a lot to do if we’re going to get this book to the guardian and seal it away.” Helga walked out of the circle and the girls looked at each other. Helga wasn’t stopping, and they all ran to catch up with her.

“We need to get to the Monastery of Corbii de Piatră,” Helga said, “but it’s not going to be easy. Solomon knows that we’re going to find the guardian.” Helga led them out of the woods and back inside the castle. “The monastery was cut out of the side of a cliff, and deep in the heart sleeps the weapon we need.”

“The weapon sleeps?” Raven asked, but everyone else just kept walking. “Am I the only one who has a problem with this?” No one responded and Raven sighed heavily, trudging along behind them.

They walked into the huge throne room, which had rows and rows of golden bleachers on either side for the lords and ladies who once sat there. “I guess that’s a yes.” Raven grumbled, eyeing the back of her grandmother’s head.

“What are we supposed to be doing?” Ali asked as Helga pulled out several maps and held her hands over the sheets of old paper. Helga stayed silent and closed her eyes. Her hands were shaking, but the maps were also shaking, and there were marks appearing on the paper.

“This is the path that we have to take,” Helga said as she traced a line with her finger across the map. The path was the lone blue line in a sea of red marks leading through the mountains to a small village. It was the only mark from the original map that had survived Helga’s spell.

“Tell us why,” Ali snarled the words. Carrie knew that Ali was still upset about the misinformation she had received when they first came to Peles Castle, and the village of Sinaia. She and her beloved Anatolie had nearly died, and Anatolie had been cut into little pieces at one point. Everything had worked out in the end, but everyone had agreed that Helga had known more than she was sharing.

“We need to get the book into Poenari Fortress,” Helga sighed as she looked around the room at all of the angry faces. The old witch had been around long enough to know when she had lost the favor of the room. “It was built by Radu Negru, when he created the independent principality of Wallachia. It was the first step to Romanian independence.”

“Thanks for the history lesson, but what does that have to do with this book?” Carrie knew that she had to be missing something. “I get that Romanian independence was important from a historical perspective, but how does it apply to our current situation?”

“It is also where he locked away the most powerful weapon the world has ever seen,” Helga said. A smile slipped slowly onto her face as she watched the younger witches lean in closer. “The sword that knocked Balaur from the skies and the sword that is said to still hold his soul.”

“I’m lost, to be honest,” Raven said.”But it sounds like the place we probably should hide the book. When do we leave?”

“Tonight,” Helga said as she looked at her watch. “There isn’t much time. This path is one of the few places not being monitored by Solomon. As soon as he has all of his people in place, we won’t have a chance to get through to Radu.”

“We have to wait for Matthias,” Raven said, glancing through the window to the night sky beyond. There were so many stars. It amazed her. She was hoping to see Matthias coming in through the large windows at the south end of the throne room.

“I have told him to stay in Corvinus Castle,” Helga said as she put her arm around her granddaughter. “Vampires cannot be trusted around this book, at least not the vampires turned by Solomon.”

“Anatolie has broken Solomon’s hold,” Ali reminded her.

“But he is still susceptible to the lure of the book,” Helga said as she pointed at the throne. “This is his seat of power, and it needs to be filled while we are on this mission. We will be facing Solomon alone this time.”

Helga looked back at her maps. With a somber face, Ali rushed into Anatolie’s arms and he wrapped them around her, lowering his head to rest it against hers. Carrie looked away. She didn’t want to see Ali cry. She berated herself. This was all her fault. She should have been more careful. She was the one who had gone after the book. She was the one who wanted to learn more, and now her friends were suffering.

Carrie’s heart softened for Raven. She walked over and pulled her into a warm hug.

“I’m sorry he can’t come with us,” Carrie said, but her friend only nodded and stood rigid as a stone.