The skeletons charged at me, this time lit up with bright green power that buzzed and sizzled like pure magic. I blasted energy at them, meeting more resistance from these magically charged skeletons than Zoe had earlier, but still managed to push them back. In the free moment, I spun, looking at Patrick, who was grouped up with Trudy and Mee-maw a fair distance away.
“Can you carry Mee-maw? We’re outmatched here and need to move quickly if we want to make it through.”
He nodded, scooping an indignant Mee-maw into his arms like a bride on her wedding day. “We’ll be right behind you.”
“Let’s try to get closer and use my invisibility spell,” Zoe suggested, waving them forward.
I nodded, turning to make my way back toward them, but stopped short as the sky lit up again, a bolt of lightning slamming into the ground just in front of Mee-maw, Trudy, and Patrick. The ground itself seemed to buzz with energy for an instant, a wall of green fire a dozen feet wide rising from the scorched earth.
“You think I’d allow that?” the sky called, cackling with laughter, though the rest still showed no signs of hearing it.
Zoe put her palms together, forming a raging whirlwind of purple-tinted wind and sending it toward the raging inferno that separated us from the group. It smacked into the fire, battling with it for a few seconds before putting out the central portion of it. “We won’t be able to group back together just yet,” Zoe shouted.
“Just try to follow the same path I use and do your best to keep the skeletons off of you,” I shouted, clenching my fists. “Trudy, try to stay as close as possible or she’ll be able to attack you directly.”
I’d need to devote some of my attention toward avoiding the traps she’d set for us, so I’d just have to rely on Zoe to keep the skeletons behind us at bay and assist the others, if needed. Identifying a safe path, I pointed, charging forward.
Thunder boomed and lightning struck all around us as we ran, digging up so much dirt that the air became clouded with the stuff, getting into my eyes and lungs as I moved. Zoe and I blasted skeleton after skeleton but there were too many to even make a dent in their number, with bigger and bigger hordes coming after us each time lightning struck ground. Maybe Verbena was right. Maybe we really didn’t stand a chance.
And then, an ember of hope blossomed in my belly as the gate to the parking lot came into view.
“We can do this! Just a bit further,” I called back, sparing a quick glance at the group behind Zoe and I. They’d lost a fair bit of ground but, no doubt thanks primarily to Zoe’s protective potions, they seemed relatively unscathed and had a good ten yards on the hoard of undead.
I turned back as the sky howled with laughter, striking the ground in front of us a half dozen times at once. Hundreds of skeletons stood up from their graves, facing us down like a wall of bone between us and our chance at escape.
“That typewriter of yours will be mine.”
Crash after crash of lightning struck behind us and I charged forward, determined to clear the wall of corpses ahead of us. “Zoe, I’ll handle these. You try to help the others catch up. Things will get easier once we’re out of the graveyard.”
Without waiting for a response, I bounded ahead, focusing my power into a magical tornado and sending it crashing into the line of skeletons. The size and power of the storm dwarfed anything I’d managed in the past, leaving patches of torn up grass and the bones of shattered skeletons in its wake.
The ones to my left, where the tornado had yet to touch, rushed at me, moving with new and alarming speed. They were upon me in an instant, swinging bony arms at me and doing their best to overwhelm me with raw numbers. I resisted the urge to panic as they pummeled me with knobby fists and yanked at my hair. It took everything I had to close my eyes and gather the remainder of my power, readying to blast them with everything I had left.
“Mom?” a familiar voice shouted from the heavens, strange and ethereal but undoubtedly my daughter’s. “Please help--” Her words cut off with a sickening thud, turning to a high-pitched scream of anguish.
The power I’d been digging deep to gather was gone, buried under the agony and anguish of hearing my daughter’s cries. Bones dug into my skin as the skeletons shifted and writhed, dragging me to the ground, and smothering me. Terror gripped me in its ruthless fist as I struggled for breath.
This was it. This was the end.
“You have lost,” Verbena called down, laughing triumphantly, drowning out Lizzie’s screams. “This is what happens when you allow love and fealty to rule your mind. Pure foolishness, you silly li--”
Her voice cut off mid-sentence, along with everything else around me. No bone clacking against bone, no Lizzie screaming, no heartbeat thumping. No lungs burning from lack of air.
Just silence.
Suddenly, I was standing upright again, facing down the horde of skeletons a few yards in front of me.
Deja vu struck as I realized this was exactly what I’d been looking at a few moments earlier.
“Don’t screw it up this time, kiddo,” a familiar voice shouted from behind me.
Mee-maw.
By God, she’d scored me a Mulligan! And this time? I wouldn’t fail.
I gathered my energy as they charged, using every ounce of concentration I had to ignore whatever Verbena was doing to Lizzie, and blasted the skeletons with it, a great wall of blue energy slamming into them, bowling them over like a tidal wave.
Between that attack and the previous tornado, the path to the parking lot was now clear. By all appearances, we’d won, but, with Lizzie still under Verbena’s control, it certainly didn’t feel like a victory.
“Good job,” Zoe called, several sets of footsteps coming up from behind me. “That was impressive.”
I glanced to the sky, barely even registering her words. Tears poured down my face at the hopelessness of the situation.
“Why?” I demanded, howling at the sky futilely. “Why are you doing this to us? Don’t you know what it’s like to go through this kind of pain after what they did to you and your coven sisters? What kind of monster would go and become one of them, after all that?”
Patrick grabbed my arm. “Cricket, we need to go before she--”
Patrick’s voice was a million miles away as my vision was filled with a swirling mixture of orange and red.
Fire?
I tried to move, but couldn’t. With a sickening lurch, I realized that I was tied up and strapped to some kind of wooden object. No matter how I struggled and writhed, trying to slip free, it was no use.
“You would compare your suffering to mine?” Verbena’s voice called, ringing inside of my head. “You know nothing of pain, clairvoyant, but allow me to enlighten you. Should your sanity survive this, and you want one last chance to save your daughter before I kill her and come for the typewriter myself, the Everlasting Conservator will know how to find me.”
For a moment, there was blessed silence.
And then the burning started.
Chapter 17
“You’ve got to eat something,” Patrick murmured, setting a plate with a peanut butter sandwich on top of the covers beside me.
I shrugged, barely registering his words as I sat up against the pillow. Knowing he wouldn’t leave until I did, I picked up a triangle of the sandwich and forced down a bite.
Everything seemed so futile in light of the horrible memory Verbena had swept me into, which I’d re-lived over and over in my sleep. Patrick had done his best to comfort me, but I hardly saw him. I felt like a shell of the person I was just the day before. The physical pain had been white-hot and enough to make me empty my guts, and continue to dry heave long after. But the emotional damage?
I wasn’t sure I would ever fully recover from it.
Who was to say that Verbena couldn’t simply put Lizzie through the same thing she’d done to me? I shuddered at the thought, forcing myself to continue eating.
Maybe I should try again. Offer myself, alone, to Ver
bena. An even trade; me for Lizzie. But again, something inside me knew that was a trap. What possible reason would she have to let her go?
Then again, what other option did I have? Verbena likely hadn’t even been in town last night, and she’d put me through an agony I couldn’t even begin to process. Part of me wished my brain had truly broken. Then, maybe, I wouldn’t have such a stunningly clear recollection of what it had felt like to burn.
And burn.
And burn.
I couldn’t conjure a path to victory after a defeat like that. Were things really so hopeless? They hadn’t seemed so after powering up our items at the mausoleum. Suddenly, the memory of the burning came back, consuming my thoughts, and I ate ravenously while trying to pry my mind away from them for a blessed moment.
“Cricket!”
Patrick’s voice hit me like a slap and I jerked back, banging my shoulder against the headboard, nearly upending my plate in the process.
My heart still battering my ribs like a caged bird, I nodded at Patrick, realizing that he’d likely been calling my name over and over while I was lost in thought.
“Yes...sorry,” I said, swallowing thickly. “What is it?”
He searched my face, a look of pity in his eyes as he opened his mouth to speak, and then closed it with a snap.
Leaning in, he lifted a hand slowly toward me and laid it on my shoulder.
“I thought I’d truly lost you there, for a minute,” he said after a second. “I didn’t mean to frighten you. I’m going to give you some space, but let me know if you want to talk. Mee-maw and Zoe have been trying all morning to come up with something to help you feel better.” He paused for a long moment. “Cricket...I can try to--”
“No.” I shook my head, ignoring the temptation.
Did I want to forget?
More than anything.
But knowledge was power, and something told me that knowing Verbena’s suffering firsthand might just be the key to defeating her.
A nauseating mix of pity and horror and fury rolled through me as I considered my nemesis.
What would’ve happened to me if I had to live through what Verbena had? If the lore were true, she’d suffered that agony for a week. I’d barely scratched the surface, but it’d felt like an eternity.
As much as I despised her, I understood her. Could I honestly say that I wouldn’t have ended up as screwed up as she was after such a thing?
I hoped not. But to my shame, I couldn’t be sure.
For now, though, I needed to put it all aside and get my strength and my sanity back. And that meant healing, restful sleep. At least a few hours, or I’d be good to no one.
I looked back in envy at the version of me that’d thought the pain of the jailer’s necklace was the worst pain imaginable.
So naive.
“Sheriff Webber came by. He’s obviously distraught about Lizzie. The Newtown police have been calling, as well. They don’t have any leads, and Zoe thought it best for all involved if we told them we suspected that Lizzie might have run away, in hopes of turning their attention that way. She was concerned that--”
“Yes, I agree,” I cut in, already anticipating what he would say. “There is nothing they, or anyone else with a badge, can do to help. No point in them risking their lives when they have no hope of finding her, and even less hope of surviving if they did.”
“And Greg rang, as well. Mee-maw spoke to him. I’m not sure what she said, but he’s agreed to stay in Newtown, for now, with Jack.”
I would need to call him eventually and try to calm him down, in spite of my own fear. He was her father, after all, and at the end of the day, this was my fault. If I had just walked away from that typewriter, Lizzie would be home safe right now.
But for now, I felt like I’d been tossed off the side of a dock with an anchor around my neck. Until I got some actual rest and replenished my magic, I would be useless to anyone.
With a sigh, I wordlessly handed Patrick the empty plate and slid down low against the mattress, eyes already heavy from exhaustion.
Don’t think of Lizzie.
Don’t think of fire.
Don’t think at all.
* * *
A soft knock at the door roused me from my fitful sleep and I blinked, trying to get my bearings. A quick glance out the window affirmed that it was evening, as the last rays of sun painted the sky a bloody red.
I must’ve slept, if it could even be called that, for hours, but my limbs still felt leaden and my brain fogged.
“Come in,” I called.
Mee-maw came barreling through the door like a woman on a mission, with Zoe bringing up the rear.
“Any better, kiddo?”
I nodded, but couldn’t work up the energy to speak the lie.
“I tried, you know,” she murmured. “I tried to rewind it right after it happened. But it didn’t work. She did the same thing again, and we had no way of stopping her. I’m sorry.”
Zoe stood beside the bed, peering down at me, a knowing look in her eye. “But Mee-maw and I came up with something that we think might help.”
“We’re almost sure it will. We had Trudy do the research for us,” Mee-maw said. She sounded confident, but there was fear and worry etched on her face.
Patrick looked on from the doorway in silence.
I nodded and watched as they unrolled what appeared to be a huge tarp with a big chalk circle drawn on the center of it. They smoothed it over the floor before placing incense burners around the perimeter.
“We need you to sit in the center,” Zoe said softly, gesturing for me to come over.
I swallowed the lump in my throat, pushing myself out of bed. Gingerly, I stepped into the circle. The moment my butt touched the floor, Mee-maw and Zoe began chanting. Their voices were low and even as they circled me, lighting the incense. Even the tiny, flickering flame on the head of each match sent a bolt of terror through me, and I pinched my eyes closed.
Breathe, Cricket. It’s not real. It wasn’t you.
But despite my self-assurances, what would usually have been a pleasant smell seemed to be infused with the stench of burned flesh and hair as my brain was dragged inexorably back to Verbena’s burning and, even worse, the burning of her fellow witches.
She’d failed them.
She’d allowed her cursed empathy to control her. In doing so, she’d made a critical error.
And her coven had paid for it with their lives.
I let the tears flow, reliving the vision for who knew how long. The sky had turned dusky before the chanting finally stopped.
Suddenly, magic surged around me, twisting and wriggling over me, burrowing under my skin, sending pulse waves coursing through me.
“Ut curari nequeas!” they shouted in unison, saying the words they’d been chanting one final time.
My mind exploded with activity, thoughts flowing more freely and some of the crippling fear and anxiety fading away. The fires still burned in the back of my mind, but the inferno no longer consumed me.
“I...I think it worked,” I murmured cautiously, grateful for even this partial reprieve. Whatever they’d done had definitely taken the edge off. I swallowed back a sob of relief and nodded. “Better.”
Not good. But better. And for now, it was enough. Maybe, someday, I’d be stronger, and be able to truly get past this. If not, I’d find a way to deal with it. My cousin and my grandmother had given me enough fortitude and strength to try to get Lizzie back, and for that, I could never repay them.
They both watched me with glassy eyes, and I knew no words needed to be spoken. Our time in the mausoleum the night before had solidified our bond. They felt my gratitude as surely as if it was their own.
“There’s my girl,” Mee-maw said with a clipped nod. “Now, let’s prepare. We’ve got a psycho to take down.”
I rose shakily to my feet, avoiding the incense burners as I picked my way out of the circle and headed back to the bed. “Yup. I just need to get
my legs under me and eat something. I’ll be good to go by tonight. I’ll be down in a few minutes, okay?”
“Actually, do you guys mind if Cricket and I talk for a bit, first?” Zoe asked with a quick glance at Patrick and Mee-maw
Patrick waved for Mee-maw to join him. “Let’s go heat up some soup for everyone.”
Mee-maw ambled after him, looking at me anxiously as they headed out of the room.
“So...better, but not good,” Zoe said, nudging me over to sit beside me. “Right?”
I paused for a moment. “It was horrible, Zoe,” I finally said, my emotions surging outward like a wave.
“Do you want to talk about it?” she asked, clasping my hand in hers. “It had something to do with fire?”
I realized with a start that, despite this vision having taken over my entire life...my entire being for the past fifteen hours, I still hadn’t told them what I’d seen.
“You were talking about it in your sleep,” Zoe admitted. “And I could feel just the barest hint of your pain. I can’t imagine… Tell me, Cricket.”
I opened my mouth to say no but realized, to my surprise, that I did want to tell someone. To lance the wound and let the poison run out.
“She took control of my mind and had me experience what she suffered so long ago. I didn’t see it, Zoe. I was Verbena. She let me feel what she was feeling and think what she was thinking right through her execution. What it was like to be burned alive for days on end, my magic healing the burns as quickly as the fire could make more. But that wasn’t even the worst part.” I paused for a moment, wiping the tears from my eyes, before continuing, “She was their leader, Zoe. Not just her coven, but a dozen or more others. They looked to her for guidance and protection, and she let them down somehow. She watched every one of them die before she finally died herself. As if seeing each was a penance for her mistakes. Like a captain, going down with the ship.”
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