Part 5

Ammie’s friends were dressed in all black, hoods thrown over their bright hair. It was a shock to her system to see them dressed so dully.

Juliette didn’t have her readers on, and Lis without at least one hair accessory looked almost like a zombie version of herself.

The blue-haired witch noticed them first, her cat’s senses keener than most. When she turned her attention towards Ammie and Five, Lis reacted.

“Oh, look, Letta!” she said, dashing away from the shadowed corner she’d been standing in. 

“Letta?” Five asked, and Ammie shrugged.

“She’s always trying new nicknames to see if one will stick.”

Lis was nearly upon them, so Ammie braced herself for an impact that never came.

“HI, FIVE!” She held her hand up, crouching before the monstrous man with her tiny height. She dipped further to the ground, still holding up her hand almost as if she was proposing.

“Oh, dear,” Ammie said, as Juliette arrived at a more sedate pace and said, “We are trying to be quiet, Élise.”

Seconds passed, and Ammie sighed loudly, elbowing the man in the side. “Just give her what she wants.”

Five’s eyebrows were raised. “Oh, I didn’t know I had to follow through. I thought the joke was it.”

“It’s never just the joke,” Ammie and Juliette said at the same time. They glanced at each other, then quickly looked away. 

Ammie tried not to fall into a giggling fit. She clamped a hand over her mouth as Five fist-bumped Lis’s open palm. 

Quiet. You need to be quiet.

Ammie hadn’t laughed in over a week, but leave it to her two best friends to rip it from her almost against her will.

Lis made a sound effect that was like a breathy “shoo,” and finally stood back to her normal, bite-sized height. “Turkey.”

Ammie had both hands clamped over her mouth now. Tears were beading at the corners of her eyes. Heavens, nothing beats the feeling of laughter.

“You really thought you guys could make it to Hamsen and deal with whatever’s there all by yourselves?” Five’s eyes could not be more skeptical. 

Ignoring him, Ammie began walking back to the shadowed spot her friends had been standing in. She let the distance cool her wet eyes and trembling lips.

Juliette matched her stride, and Ammie took the weight of her purple gaze for three seconds before she said, “I ran into him. There’s nothing I can do at this point.”

Juliette nodded, and Ammie continued, switching the subject, “Is everything in place?”

“I’m all ready,” Juliette affirmed, and Ammie relaxed somewhat. Juliette’s sheer dependability could always calm the white noise wreaking havoc through her brain. 

The shadowed spot was about ten feet behind the gatekeepers’ box. Behind it, the impressive black wall surrounding the town stood as an impenetrable mass.

It was imbued with generations of witches’ magic, making anyone on the outside look at it with more than a little envy. To regular humans, it looked like a fancy community of rich estates that weren’t even allowed to be looked upon by people who didn’t live there. 

Tonight, they would need to walk straight over it, without touching any of the invisible layers of magic that would send alerts all throughout La Ville, waking the village elders.

“How are we doing this?” Five looked up into the darkness as if his sight was so keen that even in the middle of the night, his cat vision could glean the marbled texture on the wall. 

“We’re not doing anything,” Ammie deadpanned. “The master is, so shut up and let the woman do her thing.”

Five opened his mouth to argue, but Lis tapped his arm, a finger over her lips reminding him to be quiet.

Ammie smirked at the caveman who could only narrow his eyes at her in retaliation. A sharp downward flick of his tail spread the smirk on Ammie’s face. Look at the caveman unable to control himself.

Alone with him, Ammie had felt off-kilter and swept under his sway. But with her girls, even she could tear down this man-beast. 

The three of them haloed a half-circle around the witch in the center.

Juliette closed her eyes, holding a crescent moon pendant in her hand. The night was cloudy, but as soon as her eyes closed, the moon’s rays stabbed through the dense clouds and streamed down to the one calling to it.

Ammie watched her friend’s beautiful brown skin glow to a much brighter, nearly yellow shade, as the streaming rays began at her face and spread to encompass her whole body. Even her dark blue tail and ears shined with a glowing white. A candle in the dark.

Juliette was a master at soundless casting, which was especially important for the night’s activities. Ammie had spent some time considering her own strategy to scaling the wall but had given up nearly immediately. 

She couldn’t do something this drastic without chanting. Witches didn’t need to chant for every spell, but most did when using larger, more intense magic. Like summoning the moon’s rays, a long-forgotten arcane spell.

Juliette had always been a huge reader, especially of the oldest and most worn craft books La Ville had to offer. Their teacher had even borrowed books from another community of witches, an unusual move for anyone, let alone a brand-new teacher.

Needless to say, Juliette adored Ms. Ferallis.

The spell she chanted now was from a different book, however. A darker, more mysterious tome than the bright white pages of the ones Ms. Ferallis had borrowed.

Ammie had glanced at it, but the language had been too old for her to even make out what language it was, let alone how to read it. “What is this from?” She had asked, blinking rapidly to get rid of the little spots in her vision from staring at the book for too long.

“It’s Mippolese,” Juliette had said casually, as if she hadn’t named one of the three oldest civilizations to ever exist.

Ammie had nearly flown the book away from her. “What! That’s--like--fourteen-thousand years old! How is this not in a museum somewhere?”

“It was in a museum,” Juliette had said calmly, “but it’s not anymore.”

Looking now at her glowing friend, Ammie smiled to herself. There was a fifty-fifty chance Juliette had stolen it from a museum.

Scratch that. She’d totally done it.

The moon’s rays had now spread all along Juliette’s body. Ammie felt the moment her friend’s concentration steadied. There was a flurry of movement, an unnatural wind that tugged at all of their clothes and hair, then nothing.

Stillness. 

The moon retreated fully back behind the clouds, and the world seemed to take a breath.

Juliette opened her amethyst eyes.

Lis gasped. Five flinched backward.

Ammie, having seen this before, smiled triumphantly. 

Juliette’s eyes were pure white saucers. Her brown skin seemed to swirl with the moon’s added light, almost making her face into a watercolor portrait of different hues.

With a quick twirl of her wrist, Juliette’s cue for summoning her weapon from thin air, a purple-jeweled staff appeared in her hand. Unlike Ammie, both Juliette and Lis had combat magic at their disposal.

Casually, Juliette held the staff behind her, as if she didn’t need her eyes to see where she wanted to concentrate her magic.

White light shot out from the staff’s jewel, and the moon’s rays filled in layers, starting on the ground and working around and around like frosting a cake until a layer of glistening white stairs ascended into the sky and down over the other side of the wall.

Without hesitation, Ammie began climbing them, “Let’s go.”

Five dashed forward, gripping Ammie’s hand. His feet remained fully on the grass.

She looked at him over her shoulder. His eyes were dazed and frantic. “What?”

Five swallowed. 

Ammie continued, “Are you scared of heights or something?”

Five shook his head, mouth opening and closing several times. He eyed where Ammie was already standing on the moonlit stairs. 

“Are you sure we can trust this to not give out?” He finally asked.

Ammie snorted. “I’m sure. These aren’t Juliette’s first magical stairs I’ve tried. Trust me when I say I can tell the difference between a solid spell and a weak one.”

Five paled at her words, and Ammie delighted in it. Anything that would make him uncomfortable was good for her.

“This is nothing,” she purred. 

“What do you mean?” He asked, already fearing the answer. The wince was already in place for the final push. 

So Ammie pushed.

“Juliette made the stairs. Lis’s power is too intense to control precision spells. You’re pretty much useless… 

“So guess who’s gonna make the invisible carriage for us to ride in for two hours?”

“No,” Five shook his head. Ammie’s grin grew into a fully-fledged smile of pointed teeth.

“Yes,” Ammie began climbing, dragging the large man with his outrageously large music case behind her. She gripped his hand tightly, making sure he had to keep up with her.

The view of La Ville would’ve been prettier if the sky hadn’t been overcast, but the rush of adrenaline hit Ammie all the same. 

How many witches could say they had walked on stairs made of moonlight right over La Ville’s impenetrable wall, effectively fooling all of the village elders since time immemorial?

However, going down the other side was more difficult with the heavy backpack pushing her forward. 

“Careful,” Five had recovered at some point, much to Ammie’s annoyance and now helped to balance her. “I’ve got you, now.”

Refusing to thank him, Ammie just quickened her pace. Once her feet hit solid ground, she tried flinging her hand out of his grip. 

“Let go,” she glared at him.

“Oh,” Five looked down to where he still clung to her hand. His dwarfed hers, which was why she struggled so futilely to get out of his hold. “My bad.”

Pushing her sweatshirt’s sleeves up her arms, Ammie let Juliette take care of getting rid of her creation and instead focused on her own task. Unearthing the red, jagged full moon on her right hand, Ammie tried her best not to look at it.

“Ammie,” Lis whisper-yelled.

“What?”

“We have to move. There are people out here,” she pointed to a group of straggler humans dipping and careening around outside the gate.

Ammie sighed. “They’re clearly drunk. When they sober up, they can just chalk my magic up to a weird dream.”

Five stood alert. “They’re acting weird.”

“They’re drunk,” Ammie crossed her arms over her chest. 

But Five’s eyes were riveted on the group. His back was rigid, hands stuck straight at his sides like two hanging blades.

“They really need to change the illusion for La Ville to look less rich. What if they’re con artists trying to get something from us? What’ll happen if they realize we don’t have any money?” Lis shivered, and Ammie let out a little breath.

“We’ll go down the block a little way,” Ammie said, looking back at the shadowed figures. 

It wasn’t out of the ordinary for humans to be out at all hours of the night, but she had to admit, the dim lighting and darkened clothes made Ammie’s vision see things that probably weren’t there.

Cats were notorious for seeing things.

They’re regular people, Ammie reminded herself, and turned away from the haunting gaits and seemingly curlicued limbs. 

Get a grip.