“Is everyone ready?” I asked.

We were all in our places in the underground ritual room. Each of the five witches stood on one point of the pentagram surrounding the large emerald stone embedded into the floor.

I glanced at Essex, and he raised his spear, nodding.

I ran up the steps for a quick look around, just to be sure we were cleared to go through with this. A circle of demons surrounded the clearing in the woods, their collective power buzzing through the air.

Inside the circle, all of Cypress’s witches who were old enough to have been given a demon of their own stood hand in hand, anxious expressions on their faces. We were all on edge.

Rend and Azure stood at the top of the steps to the ritual room.

“We’re ready,” he said. “Let’s get this over with.”

I nodded. “Okay. Let’s do this.”

I clapped him on the arm as I descended the steps once again. Franki stood at the bottom of the steps, and she gave me a nervous smile as I passed.

“It’s one minute until three,” Mary Anne said. She took the chalice from the ritual table behind her in one hand and gripped the necklace in the other.

We all took our places and waited, watching the seconds tick by to the top of the hour.

I closed my eyes and breathed deeply. I gathered my power in my hands, preparing for the battle with the stone creatures as they came to life. Luckily, this gate, like Peachville, was located in the woods, which meant lots of trees for demons to pull our power from. I reached to a nearby tree and consumed its life, drawing the power into myself.

“Here we go,” Mary Anne said when there were only seconds remaining.

I opened my eyes and glanced at Eloise. She smiled at me and nodded. She was ready.

As the hour chimed on my phone, Mary Anne lifted her hands and prepared to speak the words that would begin the ritual.

“No! Wait!” Rend shifted and flew down the steps, Azure at his side. Before I realized what was happening, he had taken the ritual items from Mary Anne’s hands and put a hand over her mouth.

Not understanding what was going on, Essex pressed the tip of his spear to Rend’s throat.

“You will be letting her go,” he said. “I do not want to be hurting you, Rend.”

“We can’t do this,” Rend said.

He took his hand off Mary Anne’s mouth and stepped back, away from the spear. He gathered the ritual items in his hand and set them on the stone table.

“You better start explaining yourself,” Mary Anne said. “This is our chance. If that clock switches to 3:01, we lose the entire day.”

Out of breath, Rend lifted a hand to his head.

“I know how crazy this is going to sound, but just before the ritual began, I had a flash of memory,” he said. He looked to me. “Harper. She came to see me.”

“When?” I asked, my heart racing.

“In 1951,” he said. “In fact, I think I almost killed her.”

“You did,” Azure said. She glanced at me and shrugged. “It was fine. I stabbed him.”

“Wait, what? Why didn’t you tell me before now?” I asked. “You’ve known all this time that she was going to be trapped in the past? How could you have known that and kept it from me all this time? We could have saved her, Rend. What were you thinking?”

“I didn’t tell you before, because I couldn’t remember it,” he said. “I started feeling weird about this whole thing back in the war room when we first started talking about the ritual, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on what was bothering me. Standing up there just now, though, I felt nearly ill about it. It wasn’t until right before the clock ticked over to three that the memory came back to me.”

“To both of us,” Azure said. She glanced at Franki with a sad look, but seemed to shrug it off.

“I don’t understand,” Mary Anne said. “What did Harper say to you when she came to you?”

“She told me that she wasn’t the one who left these items for you,” he said. “It was the emerald priestess.”

Eloise started to cry. “She’s not really dead, is she? This has all been some kind of trick. I knew it was too good to be true. We’ll never be free of this place.”

“She is dead, Eloise,” Rend said. “Harper killed her, and she does have the master stone, but the emerald priestess set this trap for us before she died. She set it for us here in the present, just in case Jackson found the institute while he was searching for clues about Harper. She used Harper’s memories to replicate her handwriting and her style of speech. Everything.”

“What does this mean?” I asked.

“It means these items can’t be trusted,” he said. “There’s a spell connected to them that, when triggered, will open a portal so that the amethyst priestess can bring an army through to destroy us.”

My heart nearly stopped. Amethyst? What did all of this have to do with the collar Joost had found?

Mary Anne cursed and slammed her hand down on the ritual table.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” she said. “So these items aren’t even real? What the heck are we supposed to do now?”

“Rend, did she tell you anything else?” I asked. “Does she know how to get back to us?”

He shook his head. “I’m not sure,” he said. “When she came to see me, she said there might still be a portal open that would bring her home but that it would be closing soon. She wasn’t sure she’d be able to find it in time.”

“How does she even know about the trap and these items in the first place?” Mary Anne asked. “I’m guessing the emerald priestess didn’t tell her about them before she died. She wouldn’t risk us finding out.”

Rend hesitated and glanced at me, and I knew whatever he was about to say wouldn’t be good news.

“She found out about the items and the portal from the ruby priestess,” he said.

I closed my eyes and brought a hand to my head. God, hadn’t she been through enough? Now, she had to deal with the ruby priestess on her own, too? I had to find a way to help her.

“Wait, but how is the ruby priestess there with her?” Mary Anne asked.

“The ruby priestess told Harper that the portal her sister created between the past and present was still open,” he said. “She tried to make a deal with Harper. If Harper gave her the true emerald master stone, she said she would show her where the portal home was located.”

“She didn’t do it,” I said.

“How could she?” Rend asked. “She didn’t trust the ruby priestess, but not only that. She said there were about a hundred other girls there in the asylum with her. They were taken to some hospital after the fire, and Harper couldn’t just abandon them.”

I shook my head, feeling helpless to do anything about all of this.

Somehow, she had not only managed to kill the emerald priestess, but she’d also had to face the ruby priestess. And, she’d still found a way to survive it long enough to warn us about these items.

But the fact that she wasn’t here with us right now meant that she hadn’t yet found the portal and figured out how to get home. I knew Harper well enough to know that she would never just leave a hundred girls trapped in the past. Even if it meant never coming home.

“We have to find a way to get her back,” I said. “We either need to find that portal ourselves or find someone else who can open one.”

“And how exactly are we supposed to do that?” Mary Anne asked. “We don’t even know where to start. Mordecai and the others searched everywhere in that town in Ohio and didn’t see any sign of a portal. And I’ve never heard of another witch powerful enough to actually open a portal to the past.”

Azure cleared her throat, but looked away when I tried to question her.

“I don't know how, but we have to at least try,” I said. “If the portal is still open, we have to put everything we have into finding it before it closes.”

“So, we’re back to square one,” Mary Anne said. “Awesome.”

I glanced over at Eloise, who was holding her girls tightly to her. “I’m so sorry, Eloise,” I said. “No one here can be as disappointed as you are.”

She wiped the tears from her cheeks. “I don’t think I’d entirely believed it was going to happen, anyway,” she said. “I hoped, of course, but I didn’t allow myself to trust it. But I agree with you. We need to find that portal. If Harper has the master stone, we need to put everything we have into bringing her and that stone home.”

“Once we have it, we can open the gate, right?” Caroline asked.

“We need the ring, too,” I said. “As far as we know, that’s still in the Shadow World.”

“How do we find it?” Mary Anne asked. “Essex and I can go look for it while you guys are searching for the portal.”

“Harper and I got lucky finding the sapphire ring, but I can explain to you how we found it,” I said. “Come on, let’s get back to the castle and plan our next moves. We can’t afford to waste any time.”

“What do we do with these items in the meantime?” Rend asked, motioning to the fake emerald ritual items.

I glanced at the items, a plan slowly forming in my mind.

“Bring them with you,” I said. “We might be able to use them yet.”