"At last, it's time for you to pay me what you owe," she said, her eyes shining like a deranged werewolf."

"No. No way. I won't do it."

"You will!"

"I can't! I can't hurt him."

"You can hurt him. And you'll enjoy it. I promise."

"As if your promises mean anything!" I spat.

"I promise to kill you if you don't do as I say. How's that for a promise? Do you think I mean it?"

I gulped. She meant it. And when she killed me, I knew she'd enjoy it. But the bigger problem was, I worried if I did as she asked, I would enjoy it even more.

As we crashed into the tip of a towering pine, time switched into slo-mo while Blade slowly slid out of my grasp. I forced all my magic into him, jagged blue zaps of power flowed from my fingertips, and Blade hung in the sky like a levitating assistant in a magic act. Sadly, I had barely a moment's relief before I plummeted, my stomach relocating into my throat, choking out my screams. And my breaths.

Maybe infusing all my magic into Blade had been a mistake.

Would I ever learn balance?

Probably not right away because at that moment, I was too busy fighting gravity, a foe famous for winning every battle. I fell, striking every branch on the way. Ouch! Ouch! Ouch! The needles hissed as they scraped my skin and shredded my gown.

A blood-curdling howl pierced my eardrums.

"Stop shrieking!" I shrieked. Then I realized I was the one shrieking and stopped. Finally, after hitting every branch, I slammed into the ground with a thud, agony radiating through my back and head. I gasped for breath when something heavy landed on top of me, pushing me further into a bed of pointy, prickly things. I bit my tongue, and more pain exploded in my mouth, along with the copper taste of blood.

My head throbbed and felt like it was stuffed full of cotton, making it impossible to think straight.

Think ... straight! I demanded, clenching my teeth.

No! My brain replied. Remove the cotton first.

How?

How do I know?

Because you're the brains of the operation.

Very funny, my brain said.

Fine! I'll do it! I have to do everything around here!

Okay, all I needed to do was answer five questions.

1. Where was I?

2. Who was I?

3. Why was I?

4. What landed on me?

5. What was making that horrible howling noise off in the distance? It sounded like a wounded animal. An enormous wounded animal.

But when answers started forming, I was pretty sure I wasn't thinking straight at all. I was thinking most crookedly.

Answers so far:

1. I was in a forest in a fairytale land.

2. I was a potential evil queen made with dark magic.

3. I was currently lying on the ground with limited brain function because I had uttered a flying spell in Latin, and everything was going fine, except right at the end when I flew into a tree.

4. Regarding what had landed on me, I had no idea. Something was blocking my vision, and I couldn't move because that something weighed as much as a minivan.

5. I had no idea what animal was hurt. Maybe a werewolf or a dragon?

See what I mean? Crooked. These thoughts were crazy. A potential evil queen in a make-believe land who thought she could fly? Werewolves and dragons? Huh?

"I flew?" I tried to say aloud, but it sounded more like "Mmmm." That super heavy thing that landed on my face impeded my speech.

There was a rustling in the grass nearby, then a squeaky reply. "You flew! That was some ride. I haven't heard of a witch flying without a broomstick for years. You've got something special there. Lucky for me, I bailed before you ... er ... landed."

I tried to see who was speaking but couldn't move my head. "Who are you?"

"Vermeil!" Whom were you expecting? The big bad wolf?

"What's a vermeil?" I said, but it sounded like, "Hm hm hm hum?"

"Oh, no. You must've hit your head. But you look a lot better than your friend."

Friend? At that moment, all the memories came crashing down. Painfully and fully. OMG! I wasn't crazy, but that would be preferable to being sane right now because that thing draped over me, limp and lifeless, had to be Blade. He must've taken the brunt of the hit against the tree. A sudden adrenaline rush gave me the strength to dislodge his arm from my face.

"Blade! Wake up!" I begged.

My heart was beating so hard it was hard to tell if his heart was working. But he was warm. Dead people are not warm. What to do? What to do? I couldn't get up. Not only did Blade weigh as much as a pregnant sea serpent, but my body seemed perfectly happy to stay where it was. Was it wrong that I loved the feel of him? The smell of him? When he was unconscious?

(Yeah, pretty sure that was wrong. But don't hate me. I can't help it! I'm evil! Also, FYI, if he was alive, I was the one who had saved his life.)

Except you're the one who zapped him out of the sky, my brain piped up.

Shut up, I told my brain. But before I could reprimand my brain fully, from above came the flapping, screeching sound of a thousand death moths, followed by the echo of footsteps running through high grass. "Rowen! Are you all right?" Olivia said, her voice shaking.

"I'm fine, but Blade's not okay. I can't get up."

"Rowen, you're a witch."

"Hey, now's not the time for name-calling!"

"No, I mean, you have magic. It's beyond me why you never think about using it! And you, Vermeil! You're supposed to help her."

"Hey, I'm just a rat."

"You're a familiar. Do your job!"

"Okay, okay," Vermeil squeaked. "Let's do it."

"We have to be careful if he has a neck or spine injury," I said.

I reached in my memory for the Latin phrase for 'gently raise the boy and lay him on the ground.' "Puerum leniter suscitat, et prosternit eum in terra," I encanted.

His weight lifted from me, and my body felt suddenly cold and slightly bereft. I scooted away as my magic slowly turned Blade onto his back and laid him on the forest floor.

A cry strangled in my throat at the sight of him. Blood, hot and sticky and smelling of metal, oozed from his forehead, and his neck didn't look quite right. I placed two fingers on his neck and felt a weak pulse. His chest rose and fell slowly.

"It's just a little blood," Olivia said. She pointed to Doryu, still in dragon form, about a hundred feet away, breathing hard. "Blade'll be fine. Probably. But we won't unless we get out of here before the dragon regains his power of flight."

"I'm not leaving Blade."

"You must."

"Olivia, it's my fault he's hurt. I am going to fix him. With my magic. The magic you're always nagging me to use."

She glanced toward Doryu, hundreds of feet away, and his bellow ramped through the clearing. "It's a mere flesh wound."

"I won't leave him. So, you can go without me or take both of us to see your fairy godmothers. I assume she's got some healing skills?"

"You're going to ask her to heal Blade?"

"Yes."

"But then you'll be in her debt."

"So?"

"A wise person is never indebted to a fairy."

"Technically, it'll be Blade who's in her debt."

Olivia threw her hands into the air. "What? Are you a lawyer or something?"

"I've seen a lot of lawyer shows on TV," I said.

Olivia cocked her head. "TV?"

"It's like a two-dimensional holographic projector of stories you can enjoy in your living room. Now, can we go? Blade is looking kind of green."

"So he is," Olivia said, and minutes later, we'd returned to the sky, Vermeil back in my pocket and our little gang aboard the carpet of moths. Yay. Moth transport! My favorite. (That was sarcasm.) I held Blade's head in my hands to keep it from moving, even as my hands grew sticky with his blood.

My eyes practically bulged out of my head when we flew out of the thick fog, and Castle Brittlebane loomed ahead. It seemed like we'd been flying for days. Were the moths taking us in circles for the heck of it? "Why are we here?" I asked as we buzzed the garden and flew dangerously close to the moat, where Nellie's head popped out of the surface.

"Ho, Nellie," Olivia said, extracting a trout from her pocket and tossing it. Nellie breached like a humpback whale and caught the trout in her toothy maw, barely missing us, before splashing down and dousing us with disgusting moat water. I tried to shield Blade as best as possible in case there were horrible flesh-eating bacteria in that water.

"Why are we here?" I said.

"Couldn't help it," Olivia said. "We're close to my fairy godmother's place, and I wanted to say hi to Nellie. She's just the cutest."

Olivia liked Nellie? Thought she was cute? And I thought I was the crazy one.

"But aren't you afraid of us being seen?"

"By the time the alarm sounds, we shall be safely away," Olivia said. "Hold tight. We're almost there!"

Now soaked, we gained altitude, flying almost straight up, then leveled off.

"Here we are." She pointed to a grassy knoll, like one at the Familiar Zoo, except without the fireflies, magical creatures, and extensive topiary. As we approached, I could feel the crackling electricity of magic, but slightly different. Covering the knoll were thousands of spiky white flowers that glowed silver in the moonlight and reminded me of bleached bones. I shivered.

The carpet of moths dove for the hill.

"We're going to crash!" I yelled. I squeezed my eyes closed and prepared, for about the ten-millionth time, for death.

"It's okay. The knoll is only a glamour," Olivia said. "Look."

I opened my eyes, and sure enough, we flew straight through the grassy surface of the knoll. We finally slowed down as the moths carried us through a tunnel of earth, the ceiling lined with gnarled roots that snaked through cracks as if the underground realm was alive. Beneath us was granite dotted with mica that glittered with an ethereal glow and gave the impression that we were flying over stardust. As we went deeper, my body decided this was the right time to test out what it would be like to be claustrophobic. An image of the walls caving in, burying us, flashed across my brain.

Deep breaths.

Deep breaths.

Calm down! Blade needs you! You can dabble with claustrophobia another time!

Just before I was going to throw up despite all the deep breathing, we came to an abrupt halt at the end of a cavern, where thousands of iridescent stalactites dangled like knives overhead. The moths lowered us to the tunnel floor, then flew back the way we'd come. I lay Blade's head down gently, then stood, my wet gown dripping on the stones. The air was cool, carrying with it a hint of moisture tinged with a faint aroma of ripened grapes bursting on the vine. "Where's your fairy godmother?"

Olivia pointed at a wall of hard-packed earth. "In there. She likes an entrance. What can I say?"

I gritted my teeth and stomped my foot. "We don't have time for her theatrics. Blade needs help, now!"

The room shook. Stalactites quivered, tinkling against one another in a discordant lullaby, and a few plummeted to the ground, shattering. One narrowly missed Blade! "This isn't an entrance! It's an onslaught!"

"There she is now!"

Colors flashed over the wall like a rainbow had exploded. The once solid wall rippled and folded until the wall was no more, and instead, there stood Tyra in a silver gown the size of the Hindenburg, hands on hips, a bitter smile on her face. "At last," she complained. "I'd almost given up on you."

"Tyra," I hissed, my fingers crackling with magic. "What are you doing here?"

Tyra laughed. "Oh, Rowen, you do amuse."

"Tyra's my fairy godmother," Olivia said.

"Are you kidding? She's no fairy godmother," I said. "She's the enemy."

"One person's enemy is another's fairy godmother," Olivia said.

"What do we have here?" Tyra said, approaching Blade, still unconscious and barely breathing.

"He's hurt," I said, but the words 'Can you help him?' died on my tongue. I had a terrible feeling that my claim about Blade being in debt to Tyra instead of me would not work in a fairy court of law. But what choice did I have? It was to let Blade die or possibly save him and owe Tyra something horrible, like a lifetime supply of pedicures. At least it wouldn't be my soul, as I'd already promised that to my old demon pal, Xiri. "Can you help him?"

"Oh, so now you want my help?" Tyra grinned like a villain savoring the blood of her enemies.

This was a stupid idea. "Ummm ... never mind," I said.

Tyra bent over and sniffed Blade. She frowned. "I smell Death. I see him waiting."

I spun, searching for a guy in long black robes wielding a scythe. "Well, tell Death to get out of here. Because if Blade dies, I'll kill him," I said.

Vermeil poked out of my pocket. "Kill who? Death or Blade?"

"Both!" I snarled.

"You cannot kill Death," Tyra purred. "Nor can you kill someone who is already dead

"Watch me!" I said. Then I realized I was acting like an idiot. "Please save him."

"Knees," Tyra said.

"Huh?"

"Beg properly, witch! On your knees."

I knew one day I'd totally regret this, but I knelt.

Woot! We're getting ever closer to the end of the story! I'm so excited for you guys to see everything I have in store for you!!! It's going to be a wild ride!

As always, thank you for leaving (millions of) comments, votes, and for reading my story, of course. What would I do without you? Hugs!