“What do you mean, you don’t know where we are?!”

There was a hint of desperation in Evelyn’s words.

“Shut up, I’m thinking!” Brianna told her.

Evelyn snorted. “Doesn’t seem like you do that often.”

Brianna ignored her. “I think we’re in some sort of castle,” she said, mostly to herself. Her fingers trailed the stone walls. It made sense. After all, where else would you find walls built of stone slabs sixty-centimeters wide? “But still,” she continued, “there are no windows, so this must be some sort of underground room, like a dungeon or a catacomb. The torch is lit, so it’s not abandoned. And I can hear water, so maybe we’re close to the sewers. Now if only...”

Evelyn left Brianna to her musings, and decided to check the contents of her pockets. If she could find her phone, it would be easy to figure out where they were using the GPS tracker. But the girl didn’t have it, of course, because she didn’t usually carry the phone to bed. She fairly remembered leaving it charging on top of Brianna’s hideous dressing table, earlier that night.

“What were you trying to do, anyway?” Evelyn asked. Brianna stopped walking to look at her. “That was a spell, wasn’t it?” Evelyn continued, now that she had managed to get Brianna’s attention. “Does Mr. Phil know that you’re a witch? Does mom know?”

Brianna smiled, shook her head dismissively at Eve, then began pacing around the room again, absorbed in thought.

“Answer me, dammit!” Evelyn snapped.

And Brianna, in turn, snapped back.

“My goodness, Evelyn!” she yelled. “You spent two whole months ignoring me, and now suddenly you wanna talk?! Fine! So I am a witch, big deal! But you’ve never been interested in me anyway, so why start now?! Because honestly, I’m so—”

Brianna was interrupted by a rumbling sound coming from somewhere beside them. Evelyn turned to look, and saw that a section of the stone wall had swung open inward, like a door, revealing what seemed to be a corridor on the other side. But what surprised them the most was the woman standing in the doorway, gaping at them.

Evelyn’s first impression of the stranger was that she was beautiful. She had olive skin, a round face and hazel eyes that shone vividly even under the faint light of the torch. Her dark hair had been tied into a braid, with a few loose locks framing her face. She did not seem to be older than Eve or her sister.

The next thing Eve noticed were her clothes: the girl wore a long-sleeved linen robe, intrincately decorated, and tied at the waist. It was not a piece of clothing most people wore on the daily, not where Evelyn lived. Had they traveled this far from home?

“Why are you here?” the new girl asked. In English. That was a good sign. It reduced the range of places they could have wound up at as a result of Brianna’s spell. But Eve had never heard an accent as thick as that one, as was having trouble locating it.

Brianna cleared her throat. “Where is here, exactly?” she asked.

The stranger opened her mouth to answer, but stopped when the three girls heard what seemed to be voices coming from the corridor behind the open door. It startled them all. The stranger hurried to the other side of the stone door and, with considerable effort, managed to push it closed again, sealing herself inside the room with Brianna and Evelyn.

“There’s no time,” said the stranger. “You two must come with me. We’ll talk later.”

She walked to the center of the room and raised her arms, fumbling with something on the ceiling. One of the large wooden boards came loose in her hands, and she slid it open to reveal some sort of passage. She climbed on some rock slabs that rested by her side, and pulled herself up to the floor above. Brianna and Evelyn exchanged worried glances, unsure.

“Quick!” the stranger urged them.

Eve shrugged, and decided that it was probably a better idea than staying inside the stone room, so she went and followed the stranger’s example, hoisting herself up.

Once she was above the stone room, Evelyn realized that Brianna had guessed it right. They were inside a castle of some sort. The hatch had opened onto a large, sumptuous corridor, with red tapestry covering the wooden floorboards, as well as braziers and paintings on the walls. Windows showed what seemed to be an inner garden, though little of it could be made out at night. The vaulted ceiling and baroque architecture, combined with the dim light of the braziers, conferred the place a rather ghastly appearance.

Evelyn made a quick recap of what she had discovered so far. They were in a place that had lingering vestiges of monarchy, probably dating back to the dark ages, as made evident by the castle. And it was somewhere where people spoke English, but with a rather thick accent. Put together, she could narrow down the possibilities considerably. Not Australia, not Canada, not most European countries. So... Scotland, maybe? Had they traveled to Scotland?

As soon as Brianna joined them on the corridor, the stranger slid the floorboard back in place. It fit perfectly, as if it had never been moved. Then she motioned for the Brianna and Evelyn to follow her.

“Keep to the shadows,” she informed them, for reasons Evelyn could not fathom. Under those conditions of lighting, it was almost as if the whole place were shadows.

Left. Right. Up the stairs. Left again. Narrow corridor under the tapestry to the right. The three of them entered the room at the end of the corridor. The stranger closed the door behind them and let out a breath of relief.

It was so dark inside that room that, for a moment, none of them could see anything. Then a candle was lit. Curiously, at the very moment it did, the stranger had her face and hands positioned right next to the flame, as if she had meant to tell it a secret. But you can’t whisper a candle alight, can you?

The girl took the candle, and walked with it around the room, lighting three similar candles on other surfaces. No electricity? Evelyn had thought that the braziers in the corridors were mostly for the antique look and feel, but she was beginning to fear that this might not be quite the reason.

The room they were in was a round one. It had a small window, on the wall opposite to the door, but that had been boarded up. There was a mattress on the floor, a jug of water, some scattered books, a chest with what seemed to be mostly clothes, a wooden table, and a full body mirror. Clearly, someone had been living there.

The girl sat down on the mattress.

“Who are you?” she asked. “And what were you doing down there?”

“Well... I’m Evelyn,” said the shorter of the two women, “this is Brianna, and I have absolutely no idea why we were down there, because Brianna won’t tell me.”

Brianna grunted.

“Sorry about breaking in,” said Brianna, addressing the stranger. “It seems I... messed up a spell.”

At that moment, the two women saw the stranger’s eyes sparkle.

“You’re a witch?!” she asked, brimming with excitement. The blonde nodded. “Great!” exclaimed the stranger. “Then, please, can you take off the curse that’s on me?”

“A curse?” Evelyn asked, quite interested.

“Sorry,” said Brianna. “Curses are too advanced for me. I can only do the basic stuff.”

The girl’s face fell. “Oh, okay,” she said, saddened.

“What curse is it?” Eve insisted. Then, so as not to sound as if she was just curious and nosy (which she was), she added: “...since maybe Brianna knows something about it. Maybe she’s heard of it.”

Brianna scoffed at the blatant use of her as an excuse. The stranger girl gave Eve a half-smile. “It’s a simple curse, really,” she said. “It’s just that there’s this weird thing that happens when I—” she stopped talking.

“When you...?” Eve asked, eagerly.

“I– I– Aaaa—”

Aaaa? What did that mean?

“AaaaaaAAATCHOOO!”

The girl sneezed. And, suddenly, she was gone. Her clothes fell in a pile at the spot she had just been sitting on. Actually, no, wait... there was something moving there.

A black cat emerged from the clothes. It meowed.

“Cute...” said Brianna, absentmindedly.

The cat meowed again, seemingly annoyed. It jumped off the mattress to the floor, licked its front paw, then jumped onto the table next to the wall. A number of small glass bottles were on it. The cat pushed one of the smaller bottles. It tumbled over, spilling its contents — fine black powder, resembling pepper — on the table.

The cat sniffed the powder, and it really must have been pepper, because it instantly made the cat sneeze.

And just like that, the girl was back, sitting naked on the table, rubbing her nose.

“Sorry about that,” she said. “As you can see, whenever I sneeze, I turn into a black cat.”

Eve and Brianna were both too stunned to say anything, but for different reasons. Brianna was probably just impressed by the curse. Sure, Eve was too, but her attention was a bit skewed by the presence of this very beautiful and very naked lady sitting in front of her and acting like it was nothing.

“What did you say your name was?” Brianna asked.

“Catherine,” the girl replied. “Cat for short.”