Grabbing pieces of fabric from around the room. I placed a bunched-up cloth ball in Petra’s mouth for her to bite, and hopefully keep her much quieter.
“I’ll see if anyone heard,” I said.
“I should,” Cass began, but I was already at the door.
I pulled on the handle and peered out, taking a step to look down the hall. It didn’t appear familiar. It was shorter, with no windows at the end of the hall. The door slammed shut with an almighty whoosh.
“No, no, no,” I grumbled, pressing myself forward and leaning into the door on the handle. The door opened into a bathroom.
Empty and dark.
I pulled away back out into the hallway, looking in either direction. I hadn’t seen this corridor before. The floor was the same throughout; wooden with a long length of fabric rug going the length of it.
For now, I had to get to the foyer. The gift I’d brought as a present would’ve been useful enough to help get us out.
Slow-stepping down the corridor, with the pain in my hand throbbing in hard pulses, I had to make sure I wasn’t screaming out in pain. I’d tried to dull it with the magic from my rings, but nothing worked, nothing could bypass a hex.
Finding a window, I felt saved. In the light through the glass pane, I held my hand up to get a better view. The dark spot was spreading. I watched as it was now at my wrist, almost to the point of turning my entire hand black.
Footsteps approached from behind, and I was rushed off again, in search of the stairs to the foyer.
With a hissing on my heels, I stopped for a moment to take off my shoes, although I was a little worried I’d find myself slipping on the carpet or wooden floor. It was the only way I could continue without making too much sound.
Like a game of hide and seek, I continued exploring seemingly endless corridors in the dark with only my eyes adjusting to the ever-darkening spaces to know where I was going.
I glanced out of another window and realised I appeared higher than on the second floor where I’d presumed I was all this time. However, if I was anything higher than a second floor, then I would’ve found the stairs to the second floor.
My fingers were swelling, pressing against my rings painfully.
I pulled them away and placed them on my other hand. In the light from the window, the darkness on my hand was made from many shades of blue and purple.
A thudding sound on the ground forced me to move on away from the light, although I was lost now. This was now no longer a game of hide and seek, and more of a maze, attempting to figure out where the centre was.
The only way out was to go back inside another room and hope it changes. It was a risky choice and an even riskier decision. I had no idea how things moved, or if they operated on a strange timer.
I entered the first room I could. Into complete darkness.
“Light,” I mumbled, snapping my fingers.
Three lamps in the room came alive with light. They revealed a plain room, similar to the one I’d been inside with Cassandra, and the Kingsway twins, and where Petra was on the verge of giving birth.
My face scrunched in thought. If Petra had been wailing and screaming like she had, then I should’ve heard her, unless the cloth I’d made her bite into really worked and she wasn’t making any sound at all. But there was complete silence, they had to have been on the second floor unless there was a secret fourth floor.
Pacing the room, trying to figure out the next move. I knew I had to do something that wouldn’t give them any power, something that would render me useless. I appeared to have a price on my head as a witch, and they would do—ouch.
An electric shock of pain travelled through my hand.
—anything to get me to do this spell.
I opened the door again, this time to find a more familiar setting; this was in the same place as the room I’d found Camilla in earlier, and straight down this hall were the stairs to the foyer. It was one long stretch.
I kicked my feet into my shoes again.
Straight down the hall, chasing the throbbing pain in my hand as if it would leave me once I reached the crystal.
The foyer was empty, I noted, stepping with caution down the stairs. I looked around, reaching the bottom step. Still nothing. The breath of relief was choked at the back of my throat. The relief of having found my way back here.
Where I’d left it, the purple box and white chiffon ribbon sat on the table. I noticed another box, the one I realised hadn’t been there earlier. It was open slightly. I pushed the lid with a finger to see the silver medal Elliott had been wearing, now pressed into a foam mould.
I pushed the lid back in place as a shudder came over my back.
Shhhh.
A crushed velvet bag was placed around my head, muffling sound in my ears. A tightness came around my neck, like a drawstring.
Thump.
Pulled back. I was down on my bottom.
TWENTY-FIVE
The sensation of being pulled backwards sent my head spinning. I was dragged for a moment before being thrown into a chair, sat upright. I recognised the chair as being hard and uncomfortable. The hood was pulled from my head, skewing the glasses on my face and sending my hair outward with the static.
“Where did you get to in such a hurry?” Vivian asked with a chuckle. “We’ve been looking for you, for—” she pulled her sleeve up to glance at a watch. “Twenty minutes or so now.” She shrugged. “We knew you wouldn’t get far.”
I’d tried. At least I’d tried.
Setting my glasses on my face properly, I saw the study we were inside. It appeared larger now. I looked around to see the matriarch of the Kingsway family standing ahead of me, her pointed chin in my direction as she looked up, almost trying to seem valiant and triumphant.
“I can’t do it,” I said.
Behind Vivian, almost everyone else had gathered; her son and his wife, Felix, the professor, the doctor, Bella, the detective, and Rory. Each of them, glaring me down, staring with their wide bug eyes.
“Oh, you’ll do it,” she replied with a huge grin.
The group behind her smiled as well. I turned to get a greater view. I saw a table, covered with a bloodstained sheet. My only thought was about Elliott, wondering if they’d done this to blackmail me.
I hated to think it was working.
Argh.
The pain struck the centre of my palm once again. I flinched, looking back at Vivian as she stood in front of me with the handkerchief she’d collected my blood with, it was wrapped around something solid. Perhaps a rock, whatever it was, it was hexed, and I was paying for it.
I glanced at the travelling black mark, making lines up my forearm now, appearing as if my veins were now on the outside of my arm.
“A beauty, right?” she asked. “You have two choices.”
“Two?” I asked, wondering if either of those viewed me favourably.
I recalled memories of times where I’d been in difficult situations; life or death. I’d had it worse. I was being dangled over shark-infested waters, not that I’d ever been there either, but I’d been in similar situations; caught in traps made by forest fairies.
“You either die, or you do a simple spell.”
The longer I refused, the more pain I’d be in. “Fine, fine,” I said behind my pain-clenched teeth. “But I can’t do it while my hand is like this.” I held it in the light, it appeared much worse than it had been when I saw it in the light from the windows.
“Oh,” she smiled, clapping her hands. “Wonderful. We’re happy to hear.”
Everyone clapped along. The mentality of these people was beyond anything human, it was very much the type of behaviour I’d expect from a cult, and I’d just disbanded one of those. But these people weren’t vampires. They weren’t that clumsy.
“It’ll take time though,” I said. “To prepare.”
She waved a hand at me. “Nonsense,” she said. “We’re already prepared.” She removed the cloth from around the dark o
bject; just a crystal.
“Okay, but I need to prepare myself,” I said, feeling the instant relief from the pain. It was like dipping my entire forearm and hand into a bucket of ice water. The searing pain was gone, and for a moment, my hand was numb.
“Bring them in,” Vivian said.
Them? I turned in the chair, following everyone’s gaze to the door.
Camilla and Petra walked into the study. Petra’s stomach now larger than before, waddling as she clenched her teeth in pain, painted red with tension. The butler followed them, carrying a third in his arms; Conrad.
It still wasn’t adding up. Nothing connected.
The spell the old woman had opened on the desk was about fusion, osmosis, pushing two things together to create one. Did she want three people pushed together? I wracked my brain, butting my lips together in thought.
“You don’t have to do this,” Camilla cried.
“Shut up!” Vivian barked. “Kneel.”
She lowered herself to her knees as an uncontrollable sob broke from her lips.
I glanced at her parents, their faces unphased as they held each other close.
Petra let out a moan. “Get these out of me!” she screamed, the veins in her forehead were red and pulsing. She was about to burst in more ways than one, and Felix didn’t bat an eye to her. It was almost like they’d been replaced.
“What do you want me to do?” I asked.
“Well,” she began. “I told you. I want you to cast a spell.”
I knew that much.
The butler placed Conrad on the ground in front of Camilla and Petra. Camilla immediately grabbed her brother’s hand.
“To who? To what?” I asked, looking back at her as she stared at me, her sight unwavering. “I need to know exactly what you want, and who you are.”
She snapped her fingers before pointing at me.
The butler approached the back of the chair and pushed it up to the table with an almighty screech across the wooden flooring. My body up against the side of the table, the book was open on the page.
“Take it!” she shouted. “Take the book.”
I grabbed it and the butler dragged me back across the floor to where I’d been. I glanced at the lines on the ground, scratched into the wood. He turned me on the spot to face Camilla, Conrad, and Petra.
“Now what?” I asked, hoping she wouldn’t ask me to turn the three of them into one being. Other than it being some messed up experiment, there’s no saying what it would create.
Vivian clicked her tongue twice before pressing fingers to her lips and whistling.
Two figures appeared by the door.
Camilla and Conrad. They stood together, holding hands, their smiling faces staring into the room full of people.
TWENTY-SIX
There were two of them. Looking back and forth. Four of them. Camilla continued to cry on the ground as she hugged her brother while the other two walked to Vivian with large smiles on their faces.
“Shifters?” I asked.
Vivian cackled, throwing her head back. “Oh, sweet,” she said. “No, not at all.”
I tried, quickly thinking about all the different types of things these people could be. There were many cases of people taking over another’s life; shifters, parasites cloning themselves. Clones? I gasped at the words. “Doppelgängers?”
“Bingo,” she said. “Now, what we want is for you to merge these with their doubles.”
“No,” I said. “It’s not right.”
Ezra and Margot joined Vivian’s side.
“We were all a doppel once,” she said.
I’d come across doppelgängers before. Depending on how they were formed, they weren’t completely living things at all. Paranormal, often inhumane strength, cockroaches of the paranormal world, apparitions and ghosts.
“Someone’s done this before?” I asked. “To you?”
Rory raised his hand from behind them. “I gave them the gift of second life,” he said.
It wasn’t a second life, it was an unknown host, taking over someone’s body without consent, with magic force. I couldn’t put anyone else through this darkness, like being locked up inside a body you once knew.
“Merge them,” Vivian said.
Now that my hand was no longer in constant pain, I wasn’t being pushed into it as harshly as I was earlier. I could bide my time to get out of the spell and help them. I glanced to Petra, wondering where she fit into this entire situation.
Doctor Juliana and her husband, the professor, stood behind Petra.
“Petra?” I asked.
Vivian shrugged. “Petra is a vessel,” she said. “Carrying two of our own into the world.”
She screamed, lowering herself to the ground with Juliana’s assistance, as she coached her through some breathing exercises.
I’d heard many myths of where doppelgängers came from, often from the ether, but to be born from a human womb. It was unheard. It gave them footing in the human world. “What do you mean?” I asked.
“You know,” she replied. “The cogs working in your head.” She winked at me with a slight grin.
“Doppelgängers, born, not created,” I said.
Vivian rolled her hands, before turning slightly. “Oh, she’s getting there.”
“You’re giving them life, they’re not apparitions,” I said. If they were merged, it was two physical bodies coming together, one of them would die in the process. No matter which outcome, it wasn’t favourable.
Rory presented himself. “I introduced them to the idea,” he snorted, “and they pay me handsomely for it now.”
“Are you—”
“Yes,” he chuckled. “Seven years. It’s a shame the witch who did these ceremonies passed away.” He snorted. “Guess it’s true what they say, it really does take a little bit of your soul away every time you cast it.”
They didn’t seem to care about that caveat, grinning and smiling to themselves like the cat that got the cream. And I wanted to believe they hadn’t got it, but so far, their plan seemed foolproof. “No,” I said. “I won’t do—”
“Bring in the human,” she said with a shrug. “More blood on your hands.”
Moments passed before a familiar face came walking into the room with the butler. The woman stood with her hands by her side, her hands in fists, looking around at everyone else in the room.
Cassandra.
“Daniel,” Vivian called with the snap of her fingers. “If this woman dies today, who will be in the report?”
He coughed into a fist, glancing at Vivian before around me. “Evanora Lavender, of Eden Road, Witchwood,” he said. “I witnessed it with my own eyes.”
Vivian clapped her hands with a childish giddiness. “Perfect,” she said. “And, of course, in a few months you’ll be given immortal life.”
“Immortal?” I questioned.
She laughed. “Yes, dear,” she said. “These dear doppels are made from the finest lizard skins, perfect for shedding, perfect for rebirth.”
Doppelgänger lizards?
“There’s more to it than that,” Rory said. “It’s a blend of different species, all culminated into one, and engineered by Juliana and Dusan, without the brains behind it, and the ample students from Dusan’s classes to experiment on, I’d still be human.” He chuckled. “A very rich human, but human nonetheless.”
“Yan,” he said. “Only my mother calls me Dusan.”
Petra was carrying for them, and from what it looked like, she wasn’t doing it willingly. They had really thought of everything, really planned every aspect of this out, down to having a police officer and a reporter in the stands, waiting to threaten me with whatever curve ball came their way.
“We’ve stalled enough. Kill the girl,” Vivian said.
TWENTY-SEVEN
“No!” Cassandra threw herself on the ground at my feet, she reached up to my hand, thrusting something smooth and circular into my palm. I recognised it as the stone I’d wrapped fo
r the Kingsway family.
“If,” Vivian continued with a smirk. “Evanora doesn’t do her job.”
“I’ll do it,” I said. “I’ll do the spell.”
They cheered, finally. But I hadn’t lost my mind, at least not just yet. With the crystal in my hand, a source of untapped energy, I could attempt to reverse the spell in place, or at best, break the wards around the place and leave before any more damage.
The butler bent and wrapped his arms around Cassandra, picking her up by the waist and placing her down beside Camilla. She continued to hold her twin brother’s hand, her knuckles turning white from the pressure.
“Here,” Vivian said, rolling a small desk over to me.
The desk had small metal bowls prepared on it. She pushed it over my knees, concealing the crystal in my lap. I plonked the book down on the table with a small thud.
“Is everything here?” I asked, looking down the list, trying not to place my finger on the page. I had enough of it from keeping the binding in my lap. I didn’t need any more residual energy from the other witches who’d been in my seat before, creeping in on me. “How many witches have done this?”
Ezra turned, counting heads. “One, five times,” he said.
So, five was the lucky number, and that drove her crazy. I didn’t get into the gory details, but by the sounds of it, she was dead now. I counted the remaining heads, not including Cassandra, Petra, or the butler. They’d want me to do this six times; the twins, Juliana and her husband, Bella, and the detective.
“Don’t worry,” Vivian said, sensing my hesitation as I took deep breaths. “Just the twins for the today,” she said, nodding to the doppel twins. “One at a time.”
Camilla cried out louder as the girl who wore the same face as her stood behind, resting a hand on her shoulder. She tried to shrug it away, but the doppel kept it firm.
“Start with Camilla,” Margot said, “it’ll be less trouble when we come to Conrad.”
Felix chuckled. I recalled he’d left just after him, with a key. Whatever had happened to Conrad, I was sure it had happened because of Felix, and he was the one engaged to Petra, he’d implanted them in her.
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