Someone pounded on the door to the bedroom, and I opened my eyes to harsh sunlight streaming through the curtains.

“Harper,” Brooke shouted.

Something slammed against the door, and I sat up, immediately grabbing my head. For a moment, I couldn’t remember where I was, but the instant the memory of last night’s visit from the ruby priestess came rushing back, I jumped out of bed and pulled on the heavy wooden door.

It was stuck, no doubt held closed by some magic cast by the witch when she left.

“I’m here,” I shouted to Brooke through the door. “I think the door is locked with magic. Hold on.”

I placed my palms against the wood and summoned my power. Unlike yesterday, the connection to my magic came easily. I concentrated on a vision of the door opening, and whatever magic held it closed suddenly released.

Brooke rushed into the room, her eyes wide.

“What happened?” she asked. “I’ve been trying to get into this room for fifteen minutes. I was pounding and screaming like a lunatic. I was terrified something happened to you.”

I stepped away from the door and gripped my head again. It felt like my brain was throbbing against my skull.

“Are you sick?” she asked, placing a hand on my shoulder. “What in the world happened?”

“I don’t even know where to start,” I said, pacing the room. “Did they have Excedrin back in the fifties? Because I need a gallon of it about right now. My head is killing me.”

“You’re exhausted,” she said. “You used way too much magic yesterday, but what happened to the door?”

“When I came into this room last night, the ruby priestess was here waiting for me,” I said.

Brooke gasped and brought the back of her fist to her mouth. “Oh my God, Harper, did she attack you?”

“Not exactly,” I said, still trying to make sense of everything she had told me. I did my best to explain the conversation to Brooke, but the pain in my head was excruciating. I had taken myself to the limit of my abilities before, but maybe the months of torture had been too hard on my body.

“Come on,” Brooke said. “Let’s check all the bathrooms and the kitchen for some aspirin or something. Then, we can figure out what we’re going to do. At least now we know there’s an open portal somewhere. There’s still a chance we can go home.”

“I don’t have time to search this house,” I said. “We either need to find this portal and figure out a way to get all the girls out of the hospital so they can come with us, or I need to figure out a way to warn Jackson from here.”

“You could leave another message somewhere,” she said, pacing alongside me. “Maybe bury another note with a rose at the house in Peachville?”

I shook my head. “The house is gone, remember,” I said. “Burned to the ground. Jackson would never go back there now. The ruby priestess said he was already back at the castle in the Southern Kingdom, but I don’t have any way to get there. The rose portal by Brighton Lake wasn’t put there by my father until much later.”

“Where, then?” she asked. “Where else would Jackson go?”

“I thought about Cypress, because that’s most likely going to be their first target,” I said. “But I still feel like burying a message in the ground at this point is just going to be leaving it all to chance. He might never see it in time, or he might find it way before he’s supposed to. I have to figure something out.”

“I can’t think of anything else we could do,” Brooke said. “Short of having someone hand deliver it to him at a specific point in time, I can’t imagine how you’re going to be sure he received a message like this.”

Goosebumps broke out across my arms, and I stopped pacing. “That’s it,” I said, hope fluttering through my heart. I started rummaging through the drawers, looking for anything I could wear on a road trip. “Brooke, you’re a genius.”

“I am?” she asked. “Wait, how are you going to find someone in the fifties who would still be able to deliver a message to him without disrupting the timeline? Didn’t the ruby priestess warn you about interfering too much with the past?”

I turned to her and smiled. “I’m going to get cleaned up and dressed. Then I’m going to visit a friend. Would you mind going downstairs and seeing if there’s any food in this place? I need all the energy I can get right now. It’s going to be a long day.”

“Of course, I’ll do whatever you need,” she said. “But I still don’t understand. Where are you going?”

I grabbed a dress that looked promising and set it on the counter in the bathroom as I started to undress. I didn’t have a second to waste.

“I’m going to Chicago,” I said, the buzz of excitement starting to ease the pain in my head.

“To see who?” she asked.

I smiled. “I’m going to see a vampire named Rend.”