Ral waits a beat, then says quietly, “I’m with Joan.”
Billy nods. “Stock’s a long shot on accepting. But he’s better than Gavin’s crowd. As always, on the bull’s-eye, Kendrick,” and I smile.
Grace shakes her head. “It can’t be me or Joan who asks him.”
“I’ll do it. I’ll wait for the right time,” Ral whispers, as the rest of us settle into our cots around him.
“Right time better be soon,” Grace whispers back. “Telling you, I sense Gunn’s gonna bring this whole thing to an end any day.”
I don’t want to fall asleep on that note, but nobody’s arguing with Grace’s forecast. So we give her the last word and surrender to the darkness.
*
We never make it to the morning. Sometime in the middle of the night, I hear a banging, a tear of a noise through the dark warehouse that shakes the walls. I jump up in my cot, look around, panicked, as a few of the other sorcerers sit up, jittery, anxious gray forms in the darkness.
There’s a scratching sound, like the wood barrier on the other side of the warehouse entrance is being lifted, and then the door is thrust open with a BOOM. Footsteps shuffle toward us. I crawl forward to Grace’s cot.
“Grace,” I whisper. “Wake up, I don’t know what’s going on—”
The pair of footsteps halts at the edge of our sea of cots.
“It’s time this experiment of mine ended. My patience is wearing thin. You can consider this your wake-up call.” It’s Gunn’s voice, though he appears as a fuzzy mirage, a floating illusion in the dark. “Everyone has five minutes. Gather your things and meet Dawson outside. You won’t be coming back here.”
Gunn leaves, but Dawson stays hovering over us, watching as we all shake one another awake and start scrambling for our belongings. Panic has wound around the warehouse, tense whispers, mumbled prayers.
“Can you sense what’s about to happen?” I ask Grace, as I shove my loose things into my satchel.
“No more than you,” she whispers.
We all grab our bags, and I reach for Grace’s hand hastily. We stumble out of the door, regroup with Ral and Billy on the other side. The October night is frigid, shocking. Dawson’s truck headlights shine across the empty lot, slaying the pitch-black forest like a pair of swords.
“Throw your bags in my truck,” Dawson orders as the rest of the sorcerers spill outside. “You all know where the clearing is by now. Gunn’s waiting for you there.”
We hurry through the woods, the eleven of us tripping over unseen roots, climbing over fallen branches.
“What do you think Gunn’s going to do?” Ral asks us, as we cut swiftly through the trees. “Force some kind of face-off? A performance duel?”
“Whatever it is, we’re going to win it, for us, and our families back home,” I tell him. I close my eyes, picture Ruby in our cabin’s kitchen, sitting on the counter singing as I whip up morning eggs. I focus on her, let her be a beacon. She will keep her home I will win I have to win—
We emerge from the forest to find Gunn waiting in the clearing. He holds a black lantern. Three identical lanterns have been placed on the ground, arranged ten feet away from one another in a long line, cutting the clearing in half. Their dim light bathes the clearing in a hazy, otherworldly glow, makes the space feel like something not of this time, or of this world. We cross over the line and join Gunn on the right side of the field.
“I’ve been studying each of you for weeks,” Gunn’s voice breaks through the silence, “learning your strengths, your shine, your magic.” The eleven of us shiver in front of him, our team in the middle, Stock’s trio on our left, the four Carolina Boys huddled tightly on our right side. “I told you at the beginning of this endeavor that I was looking for something groundbreaking—a troupe of sorcerers, seven men and women held together by magic, elevated and strengthened by magic. A group that is more than the sum of its members. But I’m tired of waiting for you to overcome your hesitations and insecurities for the sake of something greater. You’ve left me no choice but to force the issue.” Gunn motions theatrically to the wide stretch of grass on the other side of the line of lanterns. “Billy, if you will, can you please create a door?”
I feel Billy flinch beside me. “What kind of door, Mr. Gunn?”
“Any door,” Gunn says curtly, “the only requirement being that you can walk through it . . . and that we can close it at the end.”