The Spell by Heather Killough-Walden

more than the magic. Imani was also acting strange. And there was something else…. He couldn’t put his finger on it.
    “Uh, it, uh, was nice meeting you,” Sasha said behind him. Lucas turned to watch the man bow a bit, his own expression very wary and distracted. And then the Russian was jogging off again, glancing once in the girls’ direction before he disappeared into the crowd.
    Without thinking, Lucas tuned himself into what Danny and her friend were saying, using his sharpened senses to make out their hushed words.
    “… knows you’re here! He knew the second you were within range. You two shouldn’t be here!” Imani hissed.
    Danny yanked her hand out of Imani’s and narrowed her own gaze. “I don’t know what the big deal is about Jason knowing I’m here, Ima, but I’m aware that we shouldn’t be here!” she hissed back. “We were just about to leave when you showed up.”
    “Why the hell are you here to begin with?”
    “Lucas wanted to come – he drove us here and I didn’t know this is where we were coming. Now calm the hell down! We’re leaving.” Danny turned away from her friend to walk back toward Lucas, but stopped when the crowd suddenly gasped as one and then fell silent just as quickly.
    The hair on the back of Lucas’s neck stood on end. His skin felt prickly. Every light in the Festival grounds went out, one after another, until the entire area was dark. Lucas could feel the people around him freeze in place, afraid to move amidst the absence of light. Warning bells were going off in his head. His vision automatically adjusted for the darkness, switching to a stark contrast of grays, whites and reds.
    From somewhere unseen, a drum began to pound. One beat. Two. Low and slow and methodical. It was a hypnotic sound, capable of stirring the blood. A few onlookers began to whisper amongst themselves.
    Lucas felt something soft brush his fingertips and he looked down to see that Danny had found her way back to his side. He wasted no time in taking her hand once more, and she didn’t object. But he could see her clearly in the darkness and her gaze was on something in the distance.
    He turned to look. On the opposite end of the Festival grounds, a light began to grow. It was a firelight, perhaps from the tip of a torch, but it expanded in time with the beating drum, a brightening glow in the September night.
    There was a sudden flash, and two of the torches along the Festival’s walkway burst into fiery life, momentarily blinding everyone. The drums picked up their tempo, joined by several other drums beating out a fast pulse. A second later, two more torches burst into flame amidst gasps of delight and surprise. Then two more, and so forth, until the expanse of sand beneath the Festival stands and stage was decorated in long, flickering shadows.
    Tiki torches around the stage also exploded into flame, revealing the source of the single fire that had lit the darkness only moments before. A tall man with light blonde hair stood at the center of the stage, dressed from head to toe in black swaths of clothing, a black, lit torch in his left hand.
    He was relatively far from where Lucas and Danny stood, but even at this distance, Lucas could tell that he was a young man, possibly in his late twenties to early thirties. He was about Lucas’s height, well built, and there was a charismatic air around him that Caige could feel radiating outward like ripples on a pond. It mesmerized the Festival participants, drawing them closer to the stage as the drums beat themselves into a fury.
    The hypnotic rhythm crescendoed, powerful and potent, and then it stopped altogether – and the crowd waited breathlessly. The man smiled, flashing perfect white teeth. “Welcome,” he said. He simply spoke the word, but it echoed throughout the Festival grounds as if amplified by invisible, floating speakers.
    Magic.
    “Tonight marks the first night of the Harvest Moon,” he continued. “In honor of this