Demons Forever (Peachville High Demons #6) (28 page)

Zara's light blue eyes met mine. "Oh yes," she said. "The Order has gates all over the world."

I gasped. All over the world? I never realized how far the Order's power had spread. No wonder demons were so afraid of fighting back. The Order's influence stretched all across the human world and even into the shadow world. Who knew where else they might have already invaded? What if there were other dimensions with gates and portals here in this world?

Thinking of it took my breath away. Destroying the Order would take decades, if it were even possible at all.

I grabbed my drink from the table and placed the cool glass against my flushed skin. Every time I felt like I was getting a handle on things, I realized the Order was much bigger than I'd imagined.

"Can you explain to me about the gates?" I asked. I needed to understand the structure of the Order so I could bring them down, one by one if I had to. "How many are there? And how do you know which Priestess is in charge of which gate?"

"There are five priestesses who make up the High Council. Each one of the priestesses is a direct descendant of one of the five sisters," Zara said. "To begin with, each sister opened one gate of her own. These were the original gates which used five separate colored stones. Like I mentioned, Eloisa's gate was the first, a blue portal in D.C. at Winterhaven."

I listened carefully.

"These five original gates are by far the most powerful," she said. "Once the sisters learned to open additional portals of each color, they began opening gates all over the world."

"Using their rings as anchors," I said, putting it all together in my head.

"Yes. At first, they were each in charge of a color of gate. For example, the Winters were in charge of all the blue gates around the world," she explained. "However, that became difficult since they are spread out. In order to make it easier on themselves, they eventually decided to assign themselves regions instead. Since Priestess Winter's home is in the eastern part of the United States, she's in charge of all portals in the East. Since Priestess Love's home is in Europe, she's in charge of the European gates, and so on."

I nodded, feeling overwhelmed. My head was spinning with information.

"The five priestesses meet at least once a year to discuss policies and the state of their regions," Zara said. "Then, there's the High Priestess."

"Who is she? Another descendant of the sisters?" Mary Anne asked.

Zara shook her head. "To be honest, I'm not sure. There's a lot of mystery surrounding the High Priestess. My mother doesn't like to talk about her."

"Let's get back to the diary," Jackson said. "That's what is really important right now. You said it was Alexandra's diary?"

"Yes. Apparently Alexandra's descendant, Priestess Love, kept the journal a secret until a few years ago when it went missing. I know this because my mother was extremely angry about it when she found out," she said. "I've never seen her so mad."

The news brought a smile to Jackson's face. He looked up, our eyes meeting. "The diary is real," he said. "It's really going to work."

"What is?" Angela asked.

Jackson stood, his eyes gleaming with hope. "The spell that will free my brother."

A Magical Battery

"The diary says that in order to reverse the magic that binds a prima to her demon, you must perform the original initiation spell backwards, using all of the original ritual items," I explained. I listed them using my fingers. "The cup. The ring. The necklace. The ritual dagger. And the master stone. If this works and we really are able to free Aerden, then Peachville is only the beginning."

"The first step will be finding the original items from the rituals," Jackson said. "Since these items are still used in the initiation ceremonies, I imagine they're guarded by the primas in each demon gate town."

Angela nodded. "Peachville's ritual items were always kept with Lydia Ashworth," she said. "When she was taken prisoner, the Order transferred them all to the Harris family."

Brooke
. If Priestess Winter had succeeded in killing me several months ago, Brooke would be the prima futura right now.

"What about my necklace?" I asked, reaching to my throat. I'd had that necklace since I was a little girl, and I wanted it back. "They took it from me in that last ceremony."

Angela pressed her lips together and grimaced. "The Harris family got that too," she said. "I've seen Brooke wear it to school a couple times."

Anger rolled through me like a wave. The image of her prancing around wearing my necklace as if she were already Prima, made me sick to my stomach.

"What does the ritual involve?" Zara asked. "I've never seen a demon gate being opened for the first time. It's rarely done anymore."

"Why not?" I asked.

"I'm not certain," she said. "I think it might have something to do with the way the gates work. They have to be placed in areas where the magical barrier between the shadow world and the human world is weak. The two worlds must be close enough for the barrier to be brought down and the demons to pass through. I would guess the rituals have slowed because all the magical locations have already been used."

I nodded, bringing a hand to my mouth in thought. It made sense. "The ritual itself is pretty simple," I said. "Once we have the items we need, it's mostly just a matter of reciting the right words in the right order. We'll need five woman from the town to stand on the five points of the star. We'll also need someone to act as priestess."

I looked to Zara and she brought her hands to her lap.

"I can do it," she said. "Who are the five women, though? Mary Anne, Angela and you. That's only three."

"I was thinking Lark and Courtney," I said. "We'll have to bring them up here and explain the ritual first, but I'm sure they'll help us. We might even be able to get a few others like Lark's mom to help just in case."

"What else do we need?" Mary Anne asked.

"We'll need people to stand guard in case Priestess Winter or other members of the Order show up to try and stop us," Jackson said. "I'll be in charge of leading that group."

Essex stood. "I will join you in this fight."

Jackson nodded. "Thank you. I'm hoping I can find my other shadow demon friends who are still here in the human world. Joost, Mordecai and the others," he said. "If anyone else has some ideas of who else we can ask for help, we'll need all the bodies we can get."

"What about the ritual items?" Angela asked. "The cup, the necklace and the dagger are with the Harris family, but what about the ring and the master stone?"

I patted my pocket. "I have the ring."

Angela gasped. "You do? I've never even seen a ring used in the rituals here. Where did you get it?"

"It was in the shadow world," I said. "The ring is part of the magic that allowed the Order to open multiple gates of the same color gemstone. The ring was placed in a special area of great power for the corresponding colored stone. They call it an anchor. When I found the blue ring and took it out of that area, all the blue gates became inactive."

"All except one," Zara said, her eyebrow raised. "The original blue gate at Winterhaven is still active."

"Yes," I said. "I thought that might be how it worked. The ring kept the additional gates open, but the original gate would be unaffected."

"What is the master stone?" Angela asked.

"We wondered that too," I said, looking at Jackson. "We decided it has to be the portal stone, right? It's the largest stone and all of the other ritual items have a chip of the portal stone inside them."

"Yes, it makes sense," Zara said.

It was reassuring to hear her agree with us on that. I had never specifically seen or heard the portal stone referred to as a master stone, so it made me nervous. I didn't like making assumptions about something like this since we'd likely only have one good shot at the ritual reversal. After that, the ritual room would be guarded and closed off at all times.

"I'd like to see if we can find more information on the master stone, just to be sure," I said. "Zara, maybe you could help with that?"

"Of course," she said.

"The first step is to get the three ritual items from the Harris house," I said. "Any ideas?"

"Why don't we just break in and take them?" Mary Anne asked. "There are six of us and we're pretty powerful. Brooke's older sisters have already graduated and left home, haven't they? So it would probably just be her and her mom there."

"The problem is we don't want anyone to suspect what we're planning," I said. "Right now, our main advantage is that Priestess Winter has no idea we have the diary or that we're planning to try to free Aerden. If she finds out we are gathering the ritual items, she'll guard the portal stone with an army. We'll have to wait until no one is home to take the items."

"That might be a problem," Angela said, cringing. "I know from our weekly meetings that after the items were moved to the Harris house, they had a security system installed in the house. Video surveillance cameras on the main doors. If you go inside, they'll see you. They'll know you were there and when they see the items are gone, they'll be able to guess what you're up to."

"So we have two problems," Mary Anne said. "We have to find a way to trick the video cameras, and we need to get the items in such a way no one knows they're gone until it's too late." Mary Anne asked.

"Exactly," I said.

Essex had been silent throughout most of the discussion, but he sat up now and cleared his throat. "I would like to make a suggestion, if I may," he said. "What if we were to make copies of the ritual items? Something that looks identical to the ones you will steal? Then we could switch them out and no one would know they were gone."

Jackson straightened. "That's a great idea," he said. "How do we do that, though? They'd have to be perfect copies for it to work."

"We can use glamours," I said, my heart racing. It felt good to be coming up with a real plan. The idea of finally being free of the Order's power was exhilarating. It was all beginning to feel so real.

"We can't glamour them indefinitely," Jackson said. "They'll lose the illusion the minute someone stops concentrating on them. I don't think we can afford to have someone hanging out there at Brooke's house all the time to keep up that one spell."

"I can create a glamour that will last many days even without concentration," Essex said.

Jackson furrowed his brow and stood up to pace the length of the table. "How?"

"By using the stones," he said. "Like the elders."

"You mean like a magical battery?" Jackson asked.

"Yes, this is what I mean." Essex looked around the table.

"Wait, I'm lost. Can you explain it?" I asked. "What kind of battery?"

Jackson came to stand behind his chair and placed his hands on the back of the seat. "You remember the soul stone Mary Anne's ancestor used to stay alive?"

How could I forget? I nodded, thinking of the crow witch and how she had been alive almost a hundred and twenty years through the use of a soul stone.

"The soul stone would draw a witch's essence and power from her body," he explained. "Then the crow witch used the stolen power as a type of battery to keep herself alive. Well, that was just a perverted version of the elder's magic Essex is talking about. In our culture, our elders choose when it's their time to move on to the Afterworld. Usually this happens when their child is ready to have a child of their own. During their passing, the elder pours a portion of their power and essence willingly into a stone similar to a soul stone. It's a type of voluntary sacrifice, representing love and a promise to future generations."

"And the stone?" Zara asked. "What happens to it?"

"It can be used for anything that takes power," Jackson said. "It's the elder's way of giving back to our world. Sometimes a stone can be used to power a certain spell for decades. The lights in a city, for example, or a protection spell around a home. Usually it's up to the family how to use the stone's power."

I listened carefully, trying to wrap my head around it. I turned to Essex. "So you're saying you can make a glamour last longer by using one of these stones to power it?"

"Yes," he said. "Except no one will have to pass away in order to make this magic work. If we all allow the stones to absorb even a very tiny portion of our power, it should be enough to run a simple glamour spell for at least a week."

Excitement rushed through me. "Where would we get the stones we need?"

Essex reached into his backpack. He pulled out a handful of different colored stones from the shadow world. I wanted to kiss him, I was so happy.

"This is awesome," I said.

"That solves the issue of the Order knowing we took the items," Jackson said. "We still have to figure out how we're going to get in there to switch them for the real items without being noticed by the cameras."

I had an idea, but I knew Jackson wasn't going to like it.

"I'm going to just walk in and get them," I said, my heart pounding.

Jackson groaned. "Of course you are."

"How do you plan on pulling that off?" Mary Anne asked.

I smiled. "I'm going to become Brooke Harris."

No One Will Even Know It's Me

"It's too risky," Jackson said. "You don't need to leave the crow village until it's time to perform the ritual."

I shook my head. "No one will even know it's me," I said. "Glamours are practically second nature to me now. All I have to do is copy Brooke's look."

Jackson stood and pushed his chair in toward the table. "I don't like it, Harper. I thought we decided you would stay here no matter what," he said. "If anything goes wrong and they find out it's you-"

"They won't," I said.

"What if Brooke comes home while you're there?" he said. "I think they'll notice if there are two Brookes walking around."

"I can help," Mary Anne said. "I'll use my crow form and watch out for Brooke. If I see her car drive up, I can warn Harper."