Garette paced back and forth across the stone floor of the castle. Should he attack now while Jareth was weak and risk Sarah's powers? Or should he wait until Jareth left her house, healthy and more alert. He looked in the crystal ball and saw Jareth lying weakly on Sarah's bed. Oh, how he loved seeing his brother weak and helpless. That decided him. This would be the battle to end all battles. He would not back down. Not again, not ever. And Sarah would be his.
* ~ *
Sarah shuddered on the couch. Something was happening. Something evil had been decided. Her heightened sense of powers had detected it. But she could not figure out what it was.
She looked at the clock. It read 12:00. Her parents had gone to bed hours ago. Decidedly unsettled Sarah began meditating. It was something she had begun to do to calm herself. A habit. To her surprise she saw no tangled threads of magic. They were all pulled into her magic core, unknotted and whole. Sarah wondered what she could do now. Now that her powers were under control, how powerful was she?
Sarah experimented and tried to see if she could see what was happening upstairs without actually going up there physically. Within a breath her astral body left her physical body.
I read about astral projection, she thought. Somewhere. This is so cool!
She was so excited that she almost forgot the point of the exercise. She checked each room one by one. Everyone was sleeping peacefully. Feeling the need for some adventure she burst through the roof and looked around at the dark neighborhood.
The stars are beautiful tonight, she thought. She turned to leave when something magical slammed down on her almost like a cage. Sarah screamed, but no one could hear. Then her vision slowly faded away and she lost consciousness. There were no clues to where she had been taken. And her physical body lay in a coma-like trance.