The Witch Within

by M. Z. Andrews

  “And since Harlow is Stella’s mother, there’s a very good chance that Stella knew Daphne’s secret too,” I said. I couldn’t believe it. There it was. Once again, all roads led to Stella Blackwood!

  I turned to look at Stella. I wanted to know what she had to say for herself—find out what her defense would be. But when I turned around, she wasn’t standing next to me anymore. “Stella?”

  As I further turned, I caught sight of her, sneaking into the steam sauna. “Stella’s going for the portal. Stop her!”

  Alba was the first to dash forward, firing off a green bolt of energy at the sauna. Unsure if she’d succeeded in stopping Stella, Alba poked her head into the steamy ring. A split second later, we heard a scream ring out, and Alba fell to the grass in a big lump, her backpack falling by her side.

  “Alba!” I screamed, falling to my knees to find Alba unconscious, but breathing. A red lump had already started to form on the front of her skull.

  Before we knew what was happening, we heard the familiar whirling noise of the wormhole moving. Stella had activated the portal!

  “Oh no! She’s trying to take off in the time machine!” bellowed Sweets.

  I leapt to my feet, leaving Alba in a lump on the ground, and tried to push my way into the steamy ring, but found the walls to be impenetrable now. “It’s, like, locked or something.”

  “Locked? It’s steam!” cried Cinder. She rushed to stand next to me and pressed against the steam walls too, but her hands couldn’t break the barrier either.

  “What’s going on?” asked Poppy. “Why won’t it let you in?”

  “I guess because Stella’s using it,” I said, unsure. Alba was the one who had done all the reading about creating the time machine and time traveling with it. I could only make a simple uneducated guess.

  “Using it?! Where’s she going?”

  Cinder and I shook our heads. Their guesses were as good as ours.

  “Back to present-day Aspen Falls, I assume. Does she really think we won’t hunt her down once we get back?” I asked.

  Poppy’s head rolled back on her shoulders. “I don’t know, but this is as good of a guilty plea as I’ve ever seen.”

  Elodie wrung out her hands in front of herself. “I can’t believe Stella would do such a thing! She seemed like such a nice lady.”

  “I don’t know about that. It takes a pretty disturbed individual to commit murder. I mean, who kills their own sister?” asked Daphne, shaking her head. “Something had to have gone wrong in their relationship that we’re unaware of.”

  “When we went back in time, we saw Stella’s father berating her. He basically made fun of his ten-year-old daughter because she wasn’t as good at magic as her sister SaraLynn,” I explained to the Council.

  “And he was also pretty mean to her about her weight,” said Sweets. “I’m sure that hurt her too.”

  “He kept comparing her to SaraLynn and his other children,” added Holly.

  I shook my head. “If that’s the kind of emotional abuse she dealt with her entire life, she must have finally snapped.”

  “So what do we do now?” asked Poppy, staring at the walls of the impenetrable steam sauna.

  “I guess we wait until Stella’s done using the time machine and then we get in there and get ourselves back to present day,” I said, wishing Alba would wake up. “How’s she doing, Sweets?”

  Sweets, who was kneeling next to Alba, grimaced. “She’s breathing, but she hasn’t woken up yet.”

  I’d turned my head for only a moment to look down at Alba, when I heard Holly suddenly gasp. “Oh no!”

  My head whipped around to face her. “What happened?!”

  She pointed towards the time machine behind me.

  I turned around again to look at it and, shockingly, found it nowhere to be seen! My eyes widened and my heart dropped. “What just happened?”

  “Everything just disappeared!” shouted Holly.

  “Disappeared?” asked Elodie. “How did it disappear?”

  Cinder threw her head back and groaned. “She put out the fire.”

  “What?!” breathed several of us in unison.

  “Stella Blackwood. She must have gone back to present day and put out the fire, closing the portal.”

  “She can do that?!” gasped Elodie.

  Cinder tossed her arms out on either side of herself. “I think she just did.”

  “But she’s going to get away now!” said Gemma.

  “We’ve got a bigger problem than that,” said Daphne. “We’ve got no way to get home now!”

  I rested my head in my hands. This was quite possibly the worst thing that could have happened. We were already almost out of time. Now Stella was going to get away scot-free. Graduation was in a few short hours. It was Jax’s birthday, and now there would be no way we could spend the day with her. And on top of everything, it was Mother’s Day, and if I wasn’t home to wish my mother a happy Mother’s Day by the end of the day, she’d never let me live it down.

  Cinder glanced over at her sister. “No. There’s a way to get home. We must recreate the time machine.”

  My mouth gaped. “But Alba’s out cold and Reign’s not here! We can’t do the spell without them. How will we lift the river?!”

  Cinder looked me squarely in the eye. “You’ll have to do it.”

  “Lift the river?! I can’t lift the river by myself! Alba and Reign could barely do it together. Even if I was as strong as either one of them, it took two of them to do it.”

  Gemma stepped forward. “I can help. My magic isn’t as strong as it was when I was in my twenties, but I can still certainly do my best.”

  Daphne frowned. “My magic is a fraction of what it used to be too, but maybe between Gemma and myself, we can at least equal a whole person.”

  “But I don’t know if I can even do my part,” I protested. The thought scared me. It felt like all of our futures were resting on me being able to be as strong as Alba. “Sweets, try and wake Alba up again. Please! I can’t do this.”

  Sweets shook Alba’s shoulders. “I’ve been trying, Mercy. She won’t wake up. We need to get her to a hospital. You need to hurry.”

  Cinder put a hand on my shoulder. “You can do this, Mercy. You just need to focus and gather your energy. Libby and I are ready whenever you are.”

  “But we need the magnetic powder and the knife!” I said.

  Sweets reached across Alba’s limp body and grabbed her backpack. She handed it up to Holly. “All of those things are still in Alba’s bag. Holly and I’ll get it all set up. You just worry about lifting the river.”

  I kneeled down in front of Alba. “But what about Alba? Someone’s got to keep an eye on her.”

  Elodie waved me away. “You worry about getting us home. I’ll take care of your friend.”

  I swallowed hard. The pressure was on. If I wanted to get back to Aspen Falls to see Stella Blackwood behind bars and figure out how to bring Sorceress Stone back to life, I had to do this. There were no other options. The clock was ticking.

  Inhaling a deep breath, I closed my eyes and focused all of my nervous energy and everything inside of me on gathering enough pure energy from the things around me. My arms and legs began to tingle, and slowly, I could feel the energy building in my body. But instead of rushing it this time and risking burning out early, I kept collecting. When I heard Sweets and Holly holler, “Ready!” at me, I knew it was time. I felt a sudden burst of strength and adrenaline powering my body. I opened my eyes. Daphne and Gemma both stood down river, directly across from me, both of them at the ready.

  “Now!” I yelled and launched everything I had at the river. At first it seemed as if the river barely moved. But I didn’t waver and instead continued to fire everything I had.

  “It’s moving!” hollered a voice. I wasn’t sure who it was.

  “You’re doing it, Mercy,” shouted another.

  But I refused to let the voices distract me. I kept lifting, until fin
ally, I could hear the water rushing down and hitting the earth like a pounding waterfall.

  As soon as I had it up high enough, Cinder launched fire bolt after fire bolt at the river basin until finally a fire began to burn beneath the waterfall.

  “It’s working,” shouted a voice. “See the steam?”

  But I couldn’t look. I could only hold. The river was so heavy and my arms felt so weak that my powers seemed depleted, as if I could drop it at any second.

  “Just a little bit longer, Mercy.”

  Every muscle in my body burned hot. My face felt like an inferno as I gritted my teeth.

  “It’s boiling, Libby,” shouted Cinder.

  But her sister was already on top of it. Libby blew a gust of frosty air to cool the boiling river. Steam rolled off it like a dense fog.

  “Quick! Someone needs to part the steam!” I hollered. There was no way I could do it. I could barely hang on to the river as it was. I had no powers to spare.

  And then, miraculously, the steam separated into two distinct directions. Half of it hovered over one side of the river and half of it hovered over the other side. Holly and Sweets stood in the centers of their rings with their knives held at the ready. Then the magnetic powder did its job, sucking the steam down to the ground around them, creating the steam sauna once again.

  With Sweets and Holly now hidden from our view, they counted in unison. “One, two, three!” On three, both of their knives sliced through the steam, creating a pair of doorways. Both girls pulled the slit they’d just cut apart and stepped back out onto the grass.

  “We did it!” said Sweets excitedly.

  Holly leapt across the narrow river and high-fived Sweets.

  “Can I let go now?!” I shouted.

  “Yeah, Red, let go! It worked!”

  I released my hold on the river and spun around immediately to see Alba on her knees in the grass. “Alba! You’re awake!”

  “Something told me you might need my help!”

  “You’re the one that split the steam?”

  Alba gave me a crooked smile. “Yeah, but you had things under control. Red, you lifted the river!”

  “Daphne and Gemma helped.”

  “But still! You got it up there and held it there! I’m impressed! If you can lift a river, I definitely don’t think you’re gonna have any issues passing your Advanced Kinetics final.”

  Gemma and Daphne walked back over to rejoin the group.

  Gemma shook her head in disbelief. “I can’t believe what we just did. That was…”

  “Impressive,” said Daphne. “Beyond impressive.”

  “And to think a group of junior witches did this,” added Poppy. She smiled wildly. “You girls are nothing short of amazing.”

  Elodie helped Alba climb to her feet and steadied her when she stumbled backwards slightly.

  “Alba, you alright?” asked Sweets.

  Alba nodded. “Yeah, I’m fine. Just have a bit of headache. That’s all. What happened?”

  “Stella knocked you out before stealing the time machine. When she got back to the present, she must have extinguished the fire,” explained Cinder. “If we want to catch up to her, we’ve got to get going. Can you walk?”

  Alba took a couple of uneasy steps forward with Elodie and Sweets flanking either side of her. “Yeah, yeah. I’m good. Come on. We have a murderer to catch! And a sorceress to bring back to life!”

  42

  Bursting through the time portal back into present-day Aspen Falls, the Council paused before we headed back towards campus.

  “Wait. What about this time portal? It shouldn’t be left open like this. Someone else could come along and use it for nefarious purposes,” said Poppy.

  Alba and I looked at each other. We still had two big issues to resolve: helping Jax get her powers, and bringing Sorceress Stone back to life. Closing the portal meant neither of those things could be accomplished by going back in time.

  “But there were things we wanted to fix before we closed it,” said Alba with a hint of a whine sounding in her usually authoritative voice.

  Poppy looked over at Alba disapprovingly and wagged her finger. “Learn it now. Nothing good comes from rewriting history, dear.”

  “Poppy’s right,” agreed Gemma. “Granted, we’re witches and have the power to do so, but I live by the mantra: Fixing past problems only creates future problems. Just because we’re witches and have the power to change things in our lives doesn’t mean it’s wise to do so.”

  “So true,” said Daphne with a nod. “Now, we can discuss the things you wish to fix once we get things with Stella sorted out. But unfortunately, she’s got a head start on us. We need to find her and deal with her before we can discuss any other issues. So let’s get this beast shut down before she can use it against us in some way.”

  Alba hung her head. “Fine,” she grumbled. She rolled a finger in the air at the twins. “Do your thing.”

  Libby and Cinder both stood back. Holding their arms out on either side of themselves, they fired at the river. Libby aimed at the fire, fighting to put it out with her icy blasts. Cinder fired heat at the uppermost point of the waterfall, where Libby had cooled it earlier. The combination of the two sent the water crashing back down into its carved course, completely dousing the fire, extinguishing it into a huge smoky burst of air.

  “Wow,” said Holly. “Just. Wow.”

  Sweets stared, wide-eyed. “That was amazing!”

  Daphne patted Cinder and Libby each on the back. “Very impressive indeed! If you two ever need a job, I’m pretty sure I can get you hooked up helping with disaster relief efforts anywhere around the globe.”

  Libby and Cinder both smiled. “We will go home to Sweden first to see our family. Then maybe we will take you up on your very kind offer,” said Cinder.

  “Okay, enough playing around,” said Gemma. “Let’s get back to campus and see if we can’t find miss Stella Blackwood and make her pay for her sins.”

  We saw the flashing lights and heard the sirens before we’d even reached campus. We followed the sounds of commotion, which led us directly to the quad. There we found Detective Whitman slapping handcuffs on Stella Blackwood’s wrists. Off to the side, Reign held a sobbing Jax in his arms while Detective Whitman finished reading Stella her rights.

  “There you are!” shouted Reign. “Oh, thank God!”

  “Mercy!” squealed Jax when she caught sight of me leading the pack. Through a messy face full of tears, her eyes brightened when she saw the rest of the pack behind me. “Oh! It’s all of you! You’re here!”

  “How in the world…?” breathed Stella.

  “But we saw the portal close with our own eyes!” said Reign in shock.

  Cinder lifted a brow. “We reopened it.”

  “You were there when she closed it?” asked Alba.

  Reign nodded. “Jax decided she wanted to be there when you got back. We were on our way to the time portal when all of a sudden, we saw Stella emerge. Of course I knew she was our prime suspect, so when I saw her extinguish the fire and close the portal, I had to stop her.”

  “Oh, Mercy, you should have seen him!” gushed Jax. “He was so brave! He got ahold of her and wouldn’t let her go! And then I called Detective Whitman and told him everything.”

  “You did all of that in the few minutes that we were gone?” asked Holly.

  “Few minutes?” said Reign. “It’s been over an hour.”

  “Over an hour?!” cried Gemma, looking at her watch. She looked up anxiously. “Witches, we must don our robes. The ceremony starts shortly.”

  Poppy looked down at Alba and me. “You’ll finish up here?”

  “Yeah, no problem,” said Alba.

  I shooed them all on their way. “Of course. Go get ready. We’ll see you all at the ceremony.”

  Holly turned to look at Libby and Cinder then. “Oh no! We’re so late that you two didn’t get to work on your graduation project.”

  Cinder wa
ved a hand. “It is okay. We will make a big bonfire and put it out with water and air.” She smiled at Alba.

  Alba pointed at her and grinned back. “You’re welcome.”

  Libby waved her sister on. “Come on, Cin. Let’s go get our caps and gowns on and freshen up before the ceremony.”

  “We’ll see you there,” I hollered as the two of them rushed away, leaving the Witch Squad and my brother alone with the growing police presence on campus.

  “Has she told you why she did it?” Alba asked Detective Whitman.

  “No. I haven’t heard a motive.” He looked at Stella. “Care to tell them why you did this before I have my officers take you away?”

  Stella lifted her chin up into the air and turned her head away obstinately.

  “Oh, please, Aunt Stella. I need to know why you would have done this. Why did you take my mother away from me?” begged Jax, her face wet, red, and swollen from crying all day.

  Stella turned to look at Jax then. Her face softened slightly. “Aunt Stella?”

  Jax nodded, her face filled with tears. “I don’t understand. Why did you do it?”

  Stella sighed, slumping forward as Detective Whitman held her cuffed hands behind her back. “I was so tired of hearing about her,” she admitted. “Year after year after year, my father told me how worthless I was and how magnificent his daughter SaraLynn was. My entire life, it was always SaraLynn this and SaraLynn that. It didn’t matter that I convinced one of the biggest pharmaceutical companies in the world to carry my medicines, SaraLynn was always better than me.” She sniffed as her own eyes filled with tears. “I guess I’d just had enough. When my mother mentioned that her term on the Council was expiring, she asked if I’d like to take her seat.” Stella shook her head. “This—this plan to eliminate the competition just began to take shape.”

  Jax sobbed on my shoulder through Stella’s entire story. When she was done, Jax wiped her eyes on her shirt and looked up at the woman. “Thank you for telling me,” she whispered.

  Jax’s words seemed to pierce Stella’s heart. She hung her head. “I’m sorry I took her from you. I was so consumed with my own grudge that I didn’t think of the children that she would leave behind. I only wanted to hurt my father.”