A little scientific investigation is in order," I said aloud to break the silence. I seated myself again in the faery ring, plucking another blade of grass to chew while I consulted the photocopies Sarah had thrust upon me. The text explaining the purpose of the spells was couched in dramatically obscure language, no doubt fooling the more gullible reader into believing its authenticity. "It's going to take a lot more than some lame attempts at mysticism to fool me," I muttered as I ran my finger down the spells. "Magicus circulus contra malus, evoco aureolus pulvis, commutatus idem dominatio aqua…oh, for heaven's sake, how hokey can you get? I bet this isn't even real Latin—"

A glimmer of something caught the corner of my eye. I turned my head to look at it, thinking someone had dropped a penny or bit of glass on the ground that had caught the sunlight, but there was nothing.

The hairs on the back of my neck stood on end, as if something that posed a threat was approaching.

"Honestly, Portia, how pathetic is it that you're letting Sarah's chat about magic get to you?" I rubbed my arms against a sudden prickling of goose bumps, and gave myself a mental lecture about allowing someone's enthusiasm to sway my common sense.

A little flash of light in midair had me whipping around to look at it.

There was nothing.

"Oh, this is ridiculous. I'm spooking myself, and over what? Figments of an overactive imagination…"

Directly in front of me, something twinkled in the air again, just as if tiny motes of metal had reflected the sunlight.

To my astonishment, the twinkling continued, growing thicker until the air around me seemed to collect, flashing like a thousand tiny, nearly imperceptible, lights.

"I'm hallucinating," I said, closing my eyes. "It's the sun. I'm sun blind, or having heatstroke, or the fungus in the faery ring is a hallucinogenic."

I opened my eyes, sure I would see only the top of a sunny hill, but instead gawked as the twinkling lights gathered themselves into an opaque form.