Among the Unseen by Jodi McIsaac

said, backing toward the door. “You’re not supposed to leave.”
    “Maybe I can help you,” the woman said, slowly advancing on her. “I didn’t know what I was doing; I was under a spell. I’m innocent! I swear it.”
    “Don’t come any closer!” Eden yelled, her back pressed against the door. She wanted to open a sidh, but what if she couldn’t close it in time and the woman followed her through? If she let one of the druids escape, she would be in big trouble. She pulled on the large iron door handle, but it wouldn’t budge.
    “You must be Eden,” the druid said in what was obviously meant to be a soothing voice. “I’m not going to hurt you. I just need to go home to my family. You know what it’s like to miss your family, right?”
    It was the wrong thing to say. “You hurt my family,” Eden said, her eyes burning. She pressed her hands to the door, and then stepped through to the other side. She saw the druid run toward it, but then heard the thump as the sidh was replaced with solid wood. She leaned against the door, breathing heavily. This might be harder than she’d thought. She crept down the short hallway that led away from the cell, peeking around the corner into a cavernous chamber. She had only seen it twice—when being led into the cell, and when being led out of it, to her death. At least, it would have been her death if her mother hadn’t saved her.
    It’s like the inside of a castle , Eden thought, before realizing that technically she was inside a castle—or at least under it. Four guards were standing at either end of the chamber, and she whipped her head back around the corner. How was she going to find Helen?
    Eden? she thought. Um…older me? She waited, but there was no answer. But then…she couldn’t explain it, but she had this feeling that she was supposed to go down the hall. Not to the next door, but the one after that. The problem was that she wouldn’t be able to get there without the guards seeing her, and they’d haul her butt back to her parents before she had time to say “trouble.” Then an image flashed into her mind so vividly that she almost gasped out loud. It was the inside of a cell. It looked the same as the one she had just visited, except there was no window, and a woman with short gray hair was sitting at a desk in the center of the room. Eden had never seen her before, but she didn’t waste any time; the guards could walk by her hiding place at any minute. She squeezed her eyes shut and focused on the image in her mind, and then put a hand to the wall until she felt the solid rock give way to shimmering air. She was about to step through the sidh when she heard a guard’s voice call out, “Stop! Who goes there?”
    Eden swallowed a gasp and leapt through the sidh, closing it at once. She wasn’t sure how much the guard had seen, but there were only two people in this kingdom who could create the sidhe, and her mother had no reason to sneak around. Her heart was beating so wildly that it took her a moment to realize where she was.
    The woman inside the cell—the same woman who had been sitting at the small wooden desk from Eden’s vision—jumped up and gaped at her. “Who are you, child? How did you do that?”
    “I’m Eden,” she gasped, her breath still ragged from fright. “Are you…Helen?”
    The woman sank back down into the chair at the desk. She was old, like a grandma, with short gray hair. Dressed in human clothes, she looked like she was ready to go to work. Eden watched her warily, waiting, ready to make another sidh back home if this was not the right druid after all. She could hear shouts out in the hallway; the guards must be looking for the intruder.
    “Yes,” the woman said at last. “I’m Helen. Why are you looking for me?”
    Eden unclenched her fists, and her face broke into a smile. “Someone told me you could help me become more powerful.”
    “Who told you that, child?”
    The smile slid off Eden’s face.