Desidonna's house looked more like a monster taking the shape of a house rather than an actual house. It was longer than it was tall. Some of the dirt-caked windows sported broken green shutters and heavy tan drapes. The walls sagged atop a despondent roof with low hopes of getting its shattered shingles repaired The wooden porch had turned a sick gray-green color from years of neglect. 

The porch itself fit Jippity's description: feather-feather jingly bells. Hanging on rusty hooks from the porch's ceiling dangled at least thirty wind chimes and dream catchers. Bright, colorful feathers were dull as they fluttered in the wind. Bells strung onto the end of forks, socks, and mugs jangled among the fray. Every square inch of the porch's surface was covered in odds and ends: gutted couches devoid of stuffing, overturned wooden chairs, mesh tanks, banana peelings, clocks with shattered faces, cotton swabs, old paint swatches.

Lilly and Max exchanged a glance when they got to the foot of the porch stairs.

"We have to try," Lilly said, partly because Max's expression said Are you sure?  and mostly because she was absolutely sure. "She's our one shot." 

"What makes you think you can get her to talk?"

"A lot of luck and an award-winning smile."

"I'm just here to make sure she doesn't eat any of your body parts, lobster-smelling abomination."

Lilly had learned through her study sessions with Wyx that psychics were not the most appreciated people in the Shifter World. The Bloom looked down on them, but because they didn't have the elemental magic that identified Shifters and were powerful, extraordinary beings with an armada of different clairvoyant magic, the Bloom wouldn't touch them. Lilly remembered scoffing when she had read this. "But they'll kill me just because I have different elemental magic than fire, water, or earth," she'd said. 

Wyx had replied, "While the Stem and half the higher-ups in the Bloom despise anyone who doesn't have Shifter magic, the Bloom only cares about Shifters without the classical elements and Acids. Acids want to take over the Bloom, most Shifters want a better Bloom, and everyone else operates out of their own government. So yeah, the Bloom wants to kill you because you run the risk of compromising their perfect little Shifters-with-classical-elements-only world. After Storm, after the Acids...they don't want to risk you." 

Lilly slammed the book closed in response. 

Now she and Max started up the porch steps, and everything was fine up until they made it to the fifth stair. Save for the eerie tinkling tune the wind chimes and dream catchers sang, the world around this little house was quiet, quiet. The sun shifted and fell through an opening in the overcast sky, casting a hazy gold glow over the porch.

Then the front door burst open and everything was not fine.

An old brown-skinned woman hobbled onto the porch. Her hair was peppered with gray, falling in shaggy twisted ends to her waist. She wore an ankle-length skirt composed of every possible fabric imaginable, from silk to wool to nylon, and wrapped around her huge waist was a belt of multi-colored feathers. She was heavyset and had to squeeze through the doorframe, and she might have had a kind face if she didn't currently look so furious.

She barked, "Lillian Cart Ci, stop walking right now."

Lilly and Max halted. A smile scratched at the corners of the psychic's lips. It was not an I-have-company-for-the-first-time-in-a-long-time sort of smile.

"I stopped," Lilly half-whispered, throwing up her hands in surrender. "Like you asked."

"I'm not blind. You cannot have my biscuits, you understand? The biscuits are for me and me only. Got it?"

"I'm not even hungry," Max replied. Lilly, who was still hungry even after the tea and the bread at the café would have gladly stolen Desidonna's biscuits and would not have lied about doing so. Max's reply gave her an extra second to think about how badly a response hinting any such intent might turn out.

"We just want to talk to you," Lilly said instead. But man, she really wanted a biscuit now. She was still so hungry. "That's all."

"I don't care what you want, or how you get it, or what you do," the psychic spat. "Even if you're telling the truth, I know you're still going to try and steal my biscuits. And you can't have them. They're mine. Maybe I'll make you two into biscuits."

"You don't have good listening skills, do you?" Lilly said.

"Maybe we should go," Max whispered.

"No," Lilly snapped, pointing a stern finger at the woman. "You're not going to scare me out of asking what I need to ask you. Please just hear us out. We won't steal anything, we promise."

"That's right you won't. I find joy in cutting up children. I'll make your flesh into biscuits, give them to my imps."

"Eat her. I taste disgusting," Max protested, jerking his head towards Lilly.

Lilly stomped on his foot.

"Ouch!"

The psychic ground her teeth. "I don't think you understand. I'm annoyed. You know what happens when I'm annoyed? I make biscuits."

"Um..." Lilly cleared her throat. "We, um...I'm sorry, I have no idea how to respond to that. We really need your help, lady."

The psychic paused, tilting her head to the side. After a moment of consideration, she said, "On the condition I can make biscuits out of your hearts, I'll answer a question for you." She leaned her head against the doorframe, her eyes fluttering shut. "Mm...Shifter hearts are especially delicious. Seasoned with a little bit of paprika—"

"We'll do anything for you if you help us," Lilly said gently, extending a hand. "What's your name?" 

"Anything?" Max smacked Lilly's arm.

"Desidonna," Desidonna answered, and her eyes popped open. She gestured for them to come closer. Lilly grabbed Max's arm to keep her balance; she had gone weak in the knees and stomach with anxiety. When they were on the porch, wind chimes singing all around them, Desidonna lifted a chubby hand. Lilly and Max paused.

"Okay," Desidonna continued, tilting her head in Lilly's direction. "Let me cut out a piece of your heart, and I'll tell you anything you want."

"To...make biscuits?" Lilly couldn't quite process. Surely Desidonna didn't mean—

She turned to Max. "And your shirt."

"I am not walking back through Faevil shirtless," Max said. "No way."

Desidonna clucked her tongue. "Then I can't let you leave." She wiggled so she could turn into her house and screamed, making Lilly and Max both jump, "IMPS! GET MY BUTCHERING SET READY AND START A BOILING POT OF WATER! WRITE A LETTER TO THE BOARD MEMBERS OF ELLIOTT WAY SAYING THAT THESE KIDS GOT KIDNAPPED BY ACIDS!"

"Okay, okay." Lilly held out her hands in a placating gesture. If this was what it took to get Desidonna to talk to her and Max, then Lilly supposed it was much better than whatever was asked of the Board Members. "You can have some of my heart and his shirt."

"NEVERMIND!" Desidonna squeezed back into her house and stepped out of the doorway, motioning for them to walk inside. The entryway leading into the kitchen was cluttered with odds and ends; there was a coat rack to the left of the doorway that held colorful bags...and, with a start, Lilly realized the bags were moving—shivering, bulging, convulsing—and she wondered if there were small animals hidden in the bags's contents. At least thirty clocks covered one grubby wall. Dream catchers and more wind chimes hung from the mantel. Desidonna led them through a tiny living room that was so filled with moth-eaten furniture, it was hard to walk through. Max staggered and nearly face-planted over a yellowed tome or a tray of glass teacups at least twice; finally, after an adventurous ten (tiny) steps through the living room, they ended up in an even tinier kitchen that smelled like old cats and mothballs. Lilly's shower at home was bigger than this kitchen.

"Both of you," Desidonna barked, snapping her fingers. "Sit." 

Lilly and Max took a seat at the table, which was cluttered with slips of paper written in a language of symbols and bronze chain links that spilled over a deck of playing cards. Desidonna wiggled between the table and the counter and sat across from Lilly. She looked far too big for the small wooden chair, with her already vast body and many skirts of many different textures bulging off the sides of the chair. "I'll answer your question first, and then we get to the heart business. Understand?"

Lilly and Max nodded.

"The beasts," Lilly started. "Storm made them. One of the beasts that attacked Elliott Way said he was looking for a way to get into the magical dimension. My friend said you know how to get into the dimension. Can you...can you explain it to us?"

"I'm going to be quite frank with you. The only reason I'm telling you this is because I can feel deaths coming tonight, and those deaths are tainted with the scent of the magical dimension. And you're giving me stuff I want." 

Lilly and Max exchanged a glance. 

"The Board Members came to you," said Max. 

"They weren't willing to give me what I want," Desidonna harrumphed, then was quiet for a long time. She looked from Lilly to Max and back to Lilly again, and right when Lilly felt the silence becoming awkward, Desidonna shoved some papers on the table aside, grabbed one, and cleared her throat. "I'm only going to explain this once. If you don't understand the first time, too bad, you're still going to give me stuff." 

She laid the paper down. It was cream-colored and blank save for a yellow stain in the top right corner. "You're from Earth," Desidonna said to Lilly. And then she repeated softly, "Earth."

Light materialized from the sheet of paper.

"How did you do that?" Lilly gasped. "You're a psychic, not a witch!"

Desidonna narrowed her eyes. "I'm also an herbalist. You can make anything magical with the right herbs and it has nothing to do with clairvoyance."

Lilly swallowed hard as she watched the light form into a blue sphere the size of her fist, hovering above the paper. Next, Desidonna said, "the Shifter World," and another sphere of light sprang from the sheet of paper. This one was yellow and looked more like a sun than a world. 

"Whoa," Max breathed.

Desidonna shot him a grumpy look. When she turned her gaze back to the twin spheres of light, Max stuck out his tongue at her.

"I saw that," she snapped before continuing. "Think of these worlds as watermelons. And between them is a very thin, frail boundary...a curtain of mathematical equations." A thin line of green light separated the two worlds. Lilly squinted; she could just make out tiny symbols and equations that made up this line. 

"Like the rind of a watermelon, we can only see the surface of these worlds. Earth, the Shifter World...any world. The visible part. The part we live in. But if we cut the watermelons open—" Desidonna gestured as the light began transfiguring. Both spheres split in half to reveal pink insides, "—we can get to these magical dimensions."

"So the world is layered," Lilly verified. "It has two layers. The surface, or the world we can see, and the magical dimension."

"That's what I just said, isn't it?" Desidonna snarled. "There are hundreds of layers of the world. The magical dimension is just the one I got into."

"What's inside it?" Lilly asked.

"Strings. Every string is a physical embodiment of some sort of magic. There's one for clairvoyance, and one for earth powers, and one for space thieving magic." She tapped the spheres of light and they dropped, plopping right back down to be absorbed by the fibers of the paper. It was like the light hadn't even existed if Desidonna had never said anything.

"Do you know everything about us?" Max griped. 

"I just feel the vibrations. The vibrations tell me the facts I need. Sometimes I can smell the future." 

"You said you could smell deaths tonight," said Lilly. "If that were true, and it does have something to do with the magical dimension, why wouldn't you help the Board Members when they asked?" 

Desidonna threw up her hands and groaned, "You idiots! I wanted something from you. If I denied the Board Members by asking them for something they'd never give, I knew you two would come. Well—not you two specifically, but two kids with stuff I wanted. Clairvoyance is complicated. Why does it matter?" 

"It...I guess...I guess it doesn't," Lilly stammered.  

"I'm saving the world either way, aren't I?" 

"Saving the world?" Max sniffed. "You're just telling us information we need to give to the Board Members—information that you could have given them but you didn't because you wanted my shirt and Lilly's heart! That's not saving the world, that's playing for your own team." 

"Do you want to talk about it over tea and biscuits, sad little princeling?" 

Max leaned forward and clasped his hands together. He looked like a politician like this, with his eyebrows creased together and his lips pressed into an eager frown. He spoke slowly, softly, deliberately. "We know Storm wants to get into the magical dimension because he wants to destroy the Shifter World, but how does he get in?" 

Desidonna mocked Max by mimicking his position. "He must have found a way to tear open this dimension, but to do that, you'll need the most magic dense spot in the whole Shifter World. Must be Elliott Way if he sent one of his beasts there." 

"So how do you tear it open?" Lilly asked. 

"You two don't need clairvoyance to figure that out. Chemistry. Math. Energy. A skilled magician would be able to tear open any dimension with the right amount of energy. And if Storm wants space magic, I bet he's planning to use it to destroy the world. Honestly, you two couldn't have figured this out yourselves?" 

The wake of Desidonna's words left Lilly wanting to smack her forehead, because of course of course of course the only way to destroy the magical dimension would be with space thieving magic, and of course of course of course Storm knew how to open the dimension. The only thing he needed to know was where the most magic-dense place in the Shifter World was, and if the beasts had broken into Elliott Way, Storm must have predicted that place was Elliott Way.

So all he needed was space thieving magic to destroy the magical dimension once he opened it in Elliott Way. And he knew where to get it. 

The beasts had already found Lilly once. She couldn't run or hide. 

Lilly and Max exchanged a glance again, and she read it all over his face: What now? 

Desidonna clucked her tongue, then stood up so abruptly that the whole table rocked. "Time for your heart, girl."

"Wait—" Max started, but Desidonna was already out of the kitchen, shuffling to grab who-knew-what from the living room.

Lilly whispered, "There's gotta be a back door here somewhere," and Max nodded, but the moment they stood up, Desidonna was back in the kitchen doorway, grinning.

Max threw his hands out in front of him.

"That would be a very bad idea, dear. I'll send an imp inside your rubber ducky boxers before you even get a chance to twitch your fingers, and I imagine that would feel very uncomfortable."

Crimson rushed to Max's cheeks. Lilly snorted, and she and Max sat back down.

Lilly's pulse lurched up to the speed of NASCAR racers when Desidonna said, "My surgeon imps are coming. They were taking a nap in one of my clocks."

"Fantastic," Lilly murmured. How much of her heart was Desidonna going to take? Would she be okay? The heart was one of the most important organs in the body...maybe she should have thought this through a little more. She should have negotiated for Desidonna to cut off a finger or something.

The reality of it slapped her in the face: She was about to let a psycho psychic perform open-heart surgery on her in a too-cramped kitchen.

Fantastic.

Three gray creatures appeared on Desidonna's shoulders. They were four inches tall, their minuscule bones jutting out like nails in an old piece of wood from their leathery skin. They were all ugly wrinkles and slouchy, smudgy, skinny things, eyes round as baseballs and black as onyx. Their grins matched Desidonna's: wicked-sharp and eerie.

It was hard to see that these things were related to brightly colored fairies.

One twittered something in a language Lilly didn't know. Desidonna muttered something back before squeezing back into her original seat at the table. The imps hopped off the psychic's shoulders and dashed across the table with a sudden speed Lilly hadn't anticipated.

"They're going to use magic to take a small piece of your heart," Desidonna said. "I'll take Rubber Ducky's shirt now." 

Lilly was about to ask how small was small, but the words died on her lips as Max slipped off his shirt and reached to slide it over the table. 

"Max," she whispered instead.

Lilly sucked in a breath. Everyone in Elliott Way had bruises and welts; Lilly found bruises in places she didn't even know could bruise...but the bruises were never this saturated, and there were never this many. Reds, greens, blacks, and purples spread over Max's shoulder blades and stomach like the sky of a bad thunderstorm; they fanned out over the barely-there muscles of his abdomen, rose over his chest, colored his upper arms. The bruises were marred by puckered scabs that wound like roads over the already-mutilated skin. 

"I was hunting with my dad and got attacked by a wild animal," Max explained at her horrified expression. "It's rude to stare."

Lilly hugged her arms around herself, wrenched her gaze away, and whispered on a trembling breath, "No knives?"

Desidonna rolled her eyes. "Oh, you babies. We're doing this by magic. You'll still function normally, but you may get a little dizzy here and there after strenuous activity. I just hope it's painful. Maybe one day someone will cut your whole heart out and you'll die. I'll send them flowers."

Lilly shivered.

Desidonna gestured towards the imps. The three of them crawled up on Lilly's shoulders, and she closed her eyes. The imps felt like large bugs on her shoulders. She felt Max's hand on her back. Small piece, no knives.

Six hands plunged into her chest.

Several things happened at once.

Lilly's eyes sprang open and she bent double, yelping as a deafening groan reverberated from outside. The walls of Desidonna's house shuddered. Dust fluttered from the ceiling—the plates, clocks, and silverware stuffed in her kitchen cabinets rattled. Pain shuddered up Lilly's chest cavity in a wave of knife-sharp aches. She felt as if something in her chest was splitting—

Desidonna shot up from her seat at the table and went to one of the musty windows, resting a dark hand knotted with veins against the dingy glass."Gristin," she hissed."They're coming. You've gotta go."

"Who's coming?" Max asked. Lilly didn't care who was coming, she just wanted these imps as far away from her as possible. She screamed through her teeth as the imps pulled their hands out of her chest, and the shockwave of pain crescendoed. Lilly slapped a hand to her chest and shook her head. The imps scuttled off her and onto the table; one of them held a soft, dripping something no larger than a coin in their hands. 

That's a piece of my heart. 

Max helped Lilly stand, and Desidonna was shooing them out the door before Lilly even realized she was on her feet.  She and Max stumbled onto the messy front porch.

"Executioners in the city," Desidonna said, a little breathlessly. "Take the back roads to Elliott Way. If they see you, they'll create a horrible yet plausible excuse on why they should kill you."

"I thought you wanted to kill us," Max snapped.

"I do, but at least biscuit-making is a better reason to kill someone than no reason at all."

"And hiding out here with you would be more dangerous than walking out in the open?" Lilly grumbled, a hand pressed to her chest. 

Desidonna shrugged. "They come to my house for tea. Try to steal my biscuits. Always trying to steal my biscuits!"

She slammed the door in their faces.

"Are you okay?" Max asked Lilly.

"I think so" she replied. The pain was slowly fizzling out of existence, but she was dizzy and her vision had gone dark at the edges. "I just...she's just shoved us out of her house...what just happened?" 

"She may have just wanted an excuse to get us out of the house she can eat your heart." With a smirk, he added, "I bet it tastes nasty, as salty as you are." 

Lilly elbowed him.

During their time with Desidonna, the rain had stopped and brilliant mid-morning sun had burned the dark clouds away, drenching the trees in white light. The air was sultry, humid, and horribly smelly. Despite Bria Hungary's icy mornings, the days transformed into muggy monstrosities.

Lilly and Max had been walking for several quiet minutes and were on their way to the intersection between the main road and the back road that led up to Elliott Way when Max said, "So what's our next plan?" 

"Well I can't exactly show up in Elliott Way." Lilly crossed her arms and looked into the woods bordering the left side of the road. Fairies with skin made of emeralds danced between the leaves. "My magic could destroy the world if Storm finds a way into Elliott Way." 

"You can't hide forever." 

"You were right about what you said yesterday." Lilly stopped walking, kicked a pebble out of her path, and pressed a hand over her heart. What a strange story she would have to tell to her children one day: I wanted to find out how to tear open this layer of the world so a biscuit-loving cannibalistic psychic took out a piece of my heart for her own selfish purposes.

"Lilly?" Max stopped walking, too, narrow-eyed and bruised and sad and anxious.  

The weight of the situation squeezed its iron fingers around Lilly's lungs harder than it ever had before. Two hours ago, she had used her magic to kill someone, and even though it was self-defense, she hardly knew anything about her magic. If Storm got a hold of her—Storm, the man who found a way to create eleven massacring beasts, the man who made the Acids run and hide in their underground cities, the man who could create hurricanes and tornadoes and kill little girls with lightning, the man who made the world bow in fear—he could destroy this world. 

Lilly groaned and sat down on the side of the intersection's carved path, propping her wounded leg out in front of her. 

What's our next plan? 

Lilly did not usually think of herself as a selfless person. She often thought about heists and pranks and stories and ways to make her tiny little world more interesting through tricks and creative idiosyncrasies. Until she had come to Elliott Way, there were only four people in her life that she truly loved (Walker Vatakai, Maya Sturnly, Mr. Larrykins the janitor, and Melissa). Her world before the Shifter World was hers to craft, to mold any way she liked. Sneaky little smiles and butterfly-pranks merely sent her spiraling out of her boredom. But now...now her world was much bigger than the four people she loved, sneaky little smiles, and butterfly-pranks. Her world was much larger than tiny Belle Village. Her world was the Shifter World, and she could be selfless enough to save it. 

The Shifter World was a part of her. Her parents and Melissa came from this world. She was born here. And even if she hadn't been a part of this world, Lilly knew this world deserved saving. The phantasmagorical whimsy, the color, the crooked backwards upside-down culture, the people, her friends. If her magic was illegal and the Bloom caught her and killed her or hid her or stripped her of her magic, then it was okay, because the magical dimension would be safe. The Shifter World would be safe. 

"I'm scared." Lilly drew her knees up to her chest and crossed her arms around them. 

Max sat down next to her. He opened his mouth like he wanted to say something, shut it, opened it again, closed it once more. A moment later, he blurted breathlessly, "I'm scared of something, too." He reached into his pocket and pulled out the small vial of bright purple liquid Lilly had seen in the café earlier that morning.  

"My dad..." He pressed his lips together, and once again, his mouth seemed to battle with his mind: He opened his mouth, closed it, opened it, stopped himself, tried again, looked away...Lilly wondered what was currently ripping through his mind.  

"My dad is a Bloom Official." Max sucked in a long breath and blew it out, then turned his gaze back to Lilly. "When he thought that you didn't have magic, he wanted you out of Elliott Way, said there was no need to admit non-Shifters into a war against Acids. He told me that if I poisoned you with this, you'd get so sick you'd have to leave Elliott Way and he'd promise me a spot in the Bloom." 

"Ah. Well. Thanks for not doing it." Lilly's voice came out in a tiny little whisper. 

"That's the thing," said Max. He blinked hard several times, and the shadows on his cheekbones cast by his pale lashes flickered, making him look tired and sore. "If I don't do it, you're safe. But I'm scared he'll—he might hurt you and then he might—" 

"Your bruises?" An acrid taste rose in her mouth. No. She hated this. 

Max whispered back, "I've never hunted anything in my life." 

Lilly did not know what to say. She had no idea; she didn't know if words could ever describe what she wanted to convey to Max, what she wanted to tell him. She wanted to thank him for not poisoning her when his own body was on the line; she wanted to tell him he was selfless and generous and kind, but she had so many questions, too. Why did Max's dad hurt him, and what did he hurt Max with to amass so many bruises and welts? 

Because Lilly knew that if she tried to say any of these things aloud she'd somehow make herself sound like a completely ignorant idiot, she simply breathed, "I'm so sorry." She then reached over, grabbed Max's hand, and gripped it tight. Holding on to it was like holding on to a friend's hand as you dangled off the edge of a cliff. 

They sat well past the time the thundering hoof-beats of strange Shifter World creatures and the executioners reading out sentences deeper in the city faded away.