Chapter 23

"Why is no one answering?" Angelo nearly hurled his phone in frustration after failing to reach the Rosses and the Woods.

"We're going to have to do this on our own," Maya declared, finally able to swing her legs over the side of the sofa and sit up.

"Is it me, or does this feel like a test?" Sam voiced her thoughts.

She nodded. "We're being isolated."

"What, you think Clarissa is behind this?" Angelo frowned, skepticism etched on his face.

"She is the one who keeps telling us that if the Witch-Hunters were really after us, we wouldn't be ready." Sam mumbled, eyeing Maya. "And she has been known to get more physical when she feels it's needed."

Maya's hand went to her throat. "This still seems like a bit of an overkill, doesn't it?"

"Talking about kill..." Angelo let out a little breath. "If this was a test..."

Maya made a face. "We might have just killed the ones giving us the test."

Sam folded his arms over his chest. "Well, I guess you could say we passed then, huh?"

"We need to do something, tell someone." Maya stood, testing the strength in her shaky legs before making slow steps towards them. It was only after Angelo exhausted his credit calling that she remembered tonight was not only a special crusade at Jason's parents' church, but also the Woods' wedding anniversary, and Dawson had said they were spending the night incommunicado in Metropolis. That made things seem less like a test and more real. "If this isn't a test, then the others are in serious danger. There's got to be something we can do to—"

"Tattletale," Sam suddenly looked up, eyes wide.

"Excuse me?" Maya frowned, somewhat confused and insulted.

"Yes!" Angelo stood immediately before turning and hurrying towards the back, disappearing through the beads in the doorway.

"What am I not getting?" Maya turned to Sam.

"Before your magic was awakened, Clarissa had been trying to teach us a spell, she called it Tattletale." He made a face. "With it, in theory, we should be able to find out where the other members of our coven are."

"But we're not bound." Maya frowned, coming closer.

"Not officially..." Sam shook his head. "But our families have bound themselves for generations—the Burns, Withridge, and Dupont especially so." He looked up at her. "Our blood is bound."

"Harper." Maya whispered, a little hope surging despite her wariness. "What's the rub? Because there has to be a reason why this spell didn't come to your mind before."

Sam sighed, leaning hard against the seat. "None of us could actually do it." He made a face. "We were unbound, as you said, and our powers weren't strong enough. This is a group spell. One or more have to anchor the map, and the others have to man the pointer."

Group magic.

Maya took a step backward without realizing it.

She couldn't do this!

Austen had warned her against it!

She couldn't do magic with others—especially not boys!

Especially not Angelo!

He'd already gotten a taste of her magic! What if this cemented an addiction in him or something?

"So why are you even contemplating it now?" Maya demanded, stalling as Angelo returned with a couple of folded maps and a pendulum.

"Desperation and adrenaline... strong emotions heighten magic... like when we all awoke." Angelo answered, knocking things off the coffee table and throwing the maps on the sofa. He sorted through them before finding one that covered Harvest Grove, Yorkville, Metropolis, and the outlying cities. "Plus, we're going to cheat." Unrolling his selected map, Angelo secured each edge to the table with four quartzes. "Clear quartz are power stones, amplifiers."

Maya gulped, staring at the map.

"I'll anchor the map," Angelo declared, sitting down and placing his hands on the crystals on the west and east of the map. "You two are from the families most closely bound to Harper's. You should be able to use her pendulum to find where she is."

Maya cast a sideways glance towards Sam, contemplating whether she should really do this.

Sam stood, went to the sink, and undid the binds on his hands, washing the mixture of mud and herbs off. The burns were still visible but less red and swollen, and he seemed to be in far less pain. He dried his hands as he moved towards Maya.

She turned to look at Angelo.

"We can do this." He misunderstood the worry obvious on her features. "The others need us. We have to do this."

He was right. The others' lives could depend on this.

Closing her eyes and taking a deep, calming breath, Maya grabbed the chain of the pendulum and held it over the map.

Sam joined her side and reached out, placing his much larger hand over hers, clasping it tightly.

She turned her green eyes on him, finding his brown ones already fixed on hers, determined.

He nodded, tightening his grip on her, his fingers slipping slightly through hers before turning his gaze to Angelo. "Anytime, Stiles."

Angelo closed his eyes, tightening his hold on the crystals as he began to softly chant something she couldn't quite hear.

Sam's thumb brushed her skin, sending a spark between them. "Relax." His brown eyes never left hers, sensing her nervousness and the fact that she was holding back. "Just keep looking into my eyes and concentrate on Harper."

She nodded, licking her lips, staring into his browns.

The thumb he continued to caress her hand with began to lull her, soothe her, and Maya could feel her magic beginning to slowly ignite, much like the sparks of magic from his skin on hers. It wasn't the same feeling as when she attacked Clarissa with wordless magic; this magic seemed much calmer, much more hesitant, and definitely less fierce. A part of her wondered at the difference in it sometimes, but she forced back anything that wasn't a desire to find Harper from her mind.

Her hand grew extremely warm and warmer still, yet she didn't care to look at it. The warmth spread from the pit of her stomach to the rest of her body. It was like a soft fire warming her from within, making her feel somewhat sleepy, her eyelids lowering slightly so that she was gazing at Sam through her eyelashes.

His grip on her hand tightened.

"Focus," he whispered, his thumb still stroking her skin. "We've got this."

Instinctively, Maya copied Sam's movement, her thumb beginning to caress the skin of his hand.

"They're still in Harvest Grove," Angelo hissed. "Don't move!" He quickly grabbed another map, replacing the previous one on the table and fixing the crystals once more.

Maya didn't look away from Sam, and he didn't look away from her.

Suddenly, their breath left them as if they'd been punched in the gut...

...and then they weren't in the Brew anymore; they were in the middle of a cornfield. A symbol was etched in a circle around three crosses, with three empty ones nearby. On the crosses, their friends were tied.

Maya's eyes widened, and she tried to pull away.

Sam tightened his grip on her. "Don't."

"But—"

"This is like what happened before when I picked up your iPod but a hundred times more intense. It's being magnified by our bound blood, Angelo, and the crystals." Sam took in everything around them. "Don't let go of my hand, or this will go away. This is our best chance to figure out what's going on, where they are, and how to help them."

Gulping, Maya nodded, vaguely realizing the pendulum was no longer in her hand. Instead, her fingers were intertwined with Sam's.

The two walked towards their friends, Maya barely suppressing a gasp when she saw hooded figures emerging from the cornfields.

"Whatever that dust is, and that stone, it's keeping them from using their powers," Sam's voice brought her gaze back to the three on the crosses.

Jason, Harper, and Dawson were all trying different spells, struggling to get free, but nothing was happening. They looked weak and in growing pain.

"This has to be the work of the Witch-Hunters," Maya whispered, narrowing her eyes at Dawson's gaze, which was fixed on a hooded man standing slightly apart from the others, just watching. "Sam."

Sam followed her gaze. "The leader?"

"I think so." Maya shifted her focus from Dawson back to the hooded man.

"Cut off the head, and the body dies, right?" Sam sneered.

Maya shot him a look. "I don't think it'll be so easy just to do that. If he's in charge, it's because he's the strongest."

"Not necessarily," Sam countered, eyeing the others around. "Angelo and Dawson are the strongest physically, but they aren't the heads of our unofficial little coven."

"I mean magically," Maya clarified, glaring at him.

"That's my point," Sam returned his gaze to her. "Harper's not the strongest magic-wise in our group either, but she's still our leader because of the established hierarchy."

Maya was intrigued by who Sam thought was the strongest power-wise but knew it wasn't the time to ask. "Any idea where we are?"

He nodded. "Miller's Field. It's near Miller's Bend."

She turned to him, shocked.

"There's a pond a little ways back there, close to the tree line." He gave her a sheepish shrug. "I used to spend my time there catching bugs."

"Right," she nodded slowly. "I'd forgotten you used to be Bug Boy."

He gave Maya a glare. "Anyway, at least we have an idea where they are and how they are," his eyes narrowed as one of the hooded figures walked behind her in the vision. "And who has them."

The vision around them began to ripple.

Maya looked around, her eyes widening. "This happened last time too?"

"It was never this clear before," Sam mumbled, watching the scene warily.

Suddenly, they were back in the Brew, still holding the pendulum's chain, though the pendulum itself was gone. Angelo stood over the coffee table, spraying a fire extinguisher at the smoking remains.

"The heck was that?" the quarterback snapped, finally stopping and turning toward them.

"What happened to the pendulum?" Maya stared at the chain hanging from their hands.

"It exploded!" Angelo threw the empty fire extinguisher aside. "And right afterward, the map caught on fire!"

Sam moved closer to the coffee table, his hand still clenched around Maya's, pulling her with him as he leaned down over it. "Look."

Angelo came closer, eyeing it as well. "Damn."

There, on the metal surface of the coffee table, was a scorched image of Miller's Field, six crosses, and hooded figures. It showed a blonde and a brunette holding hands, another blonde with his hands on clear quartz, cornstalks, crosses with three teens tied to them, and the hooded figures surrounding them.

"This...this is what we saw," Maya whispered, her voice trembling with a mix of fear and determination.