The Orphan Witch

by Paige Crutcher

  It was the first time in one hundred years the barrier had dropped enough to permit someone like her to cross.

  Now Deandra walked up the long hill to Ever House. It was time for the final piece to return home to the board.

  It was time for the games to begin.

  * * *

  PERSEPHONE ROLLED HERSELF into a seated position, a lump lodged in the back of her throat. She had given all of her power over in calling for Dorian, and nothing happened.

  Nothing.

  She tried not to hyperventilate as she scrubbed her hands across her face. She may have just killed another witch, and yet she couldn’t reach the librarian even when she put all her magic behind it. And this was where her thoughts went. What the hell was wrong with her?

  Trying to dampen the panic exploding in her chest, Persephone closed her eyes and whispered all the beautiful things Moira had taught her to make. Buttermilk scones and coconut cakes. Crustless cherry pies and chocolate cupcakes with cream frosting so bright it glittered. Cinnamon and sugar, nutmeg and extracts—the kind that taste bitter and sweet and hold whole worlds in their flavors.

  The start of a sob escaped through her lips and she bit it off. What would Moira say when she found out Persephone had killed her cousin? Moira and Hyacinth may not like the Ways, but like had little to do with love when it came to family. Of that, Persephone was now almost certain.

  Tears ran down her cheeks and she dashed them aside. That Persephone had been a part of something so joyful these past weeks was no small wonder.

  It was a wonder, but it was not real. Persephone flashed on Ellison crumpled on the ground, the life seeping out of her, and the sob burst free. That was real. That was the destruction Persephone’s magic craved.

  Because Persephone was broken. She had been born broken and if she stayed on the island, she would break everything and everyone around her. The ground shook, her head spun, and she saw an image of Moira and Hyacinth dead at her feet. She saw them in stark contrast: the paleness of their faces, the deadness in their eyes.

  It was a foretelling of what was to come. A vision of a sort, one she could not ignore. Persephone knew this would be their fate if she stayed.

  She pulled herself upright as the vision faded. With waning strength, she managed to limp the rest of the walk to the dock. She smelled jasmine as she crossed through a side path and entered the cobblestones by the water. She knew the smell, had an instant recognition of the colorful notes, but couldn’t recall how or where.

  She crossed to the dinghy moored to the narrow dock. The wind came hard across Persephone, trying to push her forward, tug her back. As she held on, she wondered if it would send her spiraling into the ocean’s depths.

  Persephone persisted in pushing forward, and climbed into the small craft. She reached out one shaking hand to the meager motor attached to the back of the faded white vessel, and reverently hoped starting a boat would be similar to igniting a lawnmower.

  She cranked the motor over and over until her arm was heavy with effort. Finally, on her last attempt, the engine gave a craggy roar to life.

  Persephone let out a shaky sigh of relief as she lifted her face to the horizon. Her pajamas were half soaked through, her hair plastered to her face, and she had a variety of shallow cuts and lacerations along her arms and legs from where she had fought back the darkness.

  Persephone had come to the island with a dream in her pocket, and she was leaving with all her hopes crumbled by her feet. But if she did not go, Persephone saw what she would bring. She would not let the same fate befall her cousins as what she had done to Ellison.

  The sound of a heartbeat thrummed to life, and Persephone looked down at her chest. The hourglass flared, a bright white light trying to get out. Sorrow rose in her chest, but Persephone pushed it aside.

  She couldn’t think of Dorian now. She would fail Hyacinth and Moira if she stayed. For that, Persephone decided, was what she must have been born to do.

  Daughter of a faceless woman. Granddaughter to a ghost. Descendent of the cursed.

  Persephone set her shoulders, grit her teeth together, and untethered the final rope of the boat from the shore. The dinghy gave a violent jerk, sprang forward, and shot into a wave. It gave another start, tried to propel itself again, and the engine sputtered.

  “No, no, no,” Persephone said, crawling forward to try to will the boat on. “Don’t stop, we have to go.”

  The boat shot out again, and as it did the wind wrapped around Persephone, clamping itself to her wrists and ankles, wrapping around her waist like chains. The tug was back, and this time it was in control. The little dinghy jolted and broke free. The invisible force yanked Persephone from the boat as it careened into the waves heading out to sea and piloted itself nowhere.

  Persephone was tossed back onto the beach, where she fell hard onto the soft sand. She turned her head to the sky, another sob wrenching free. Persephone watched the escaped boat until it was a mere speck in the distance. Until it, too, was a memory.

  For Persephone may have decided she was of no use in breaking the curse or saving the island, but the island would decide if and when it allowed her to go free.

  Eight

  PERSEPHONE KNELT ON THE beach, her knees sinking deeper into the sand, the water lapping closer but never brushing against her skin. The wind stirred around her, the skies blue and serene. She did not move, letting the minutes rush past, leaving her behind.

  The winds changed again. Persephone blinked and the skies were the color of mud, the sand beneath her swirls of beige and amber. She studied the grains, dotted with rain, and pulled her gaze up. Her clothing, like her hair, like the sky itself, was soaked through.

  Persephone felt muted, hollow.

  She blinked again and puddles of water had pooled around her. The sun had moved behind the clouds, refreshing the sky from an aggressive navy to a somber blue. The air, which only moments before smelled full of rain, was clean and crisp.

  None of it mattered.

  Persephone thought of Ellison Way, and looked up the beach. She could not fully see the yellow house, but should go to it. Turn herself over to Ariel. Maybe the other woman would kill her. Maybe Ariel would only arrest her or have her thrown in their dungeon. Perhaps that would be enough to keep everyone safe.

  What other unimagined horrors, Persephone wondered, could await her on this side of the dark? She looked down into the puddle closest to her and the water shimmered. Persephone leaned in, and it glazed like ice freezing over.

  She tilted her head, studying it, then crawled onto her hands to stare directly above it. The reflective surface showed her own face, the brows severe and forehead furrowed. Persephone’s mouth was drawn tighter than a fresh hemline, and there was a vacancy to her eyes that made her think of a blank-faced store mannequin.

  She tried to pinch color in her cheeks but left two pink slashes that looked more like mistakes. “Mistakes are all I make,” Persephone told her reflection. “You’re a fool, Persephone May. You knew better than to think you were special.”

  She wished for the hundredth time she could be someone else, someone better.

  Persephone blinked again and saw a different face. This one sure and strong, dark brows and a wide forehead. Eyes that saw too much, a mouth that held a crooked tooth behind full lips with a smile that could rival the sun.

  Dorian.

  Persephone didn’t question the drive to reach for the puddle. The island wanted her to stay, but she wanted to go.

  Persephone no longer felt the cold or loneliness that was worse and more familiar than the frigid rain. She put one hand into the water, and watched the waves ripple and part. The scene solidified, the colors inside the Library for the Lost blended and merged. Persephone took a hopeful breath, and dove in.

  * * *

  ELLISON WAY WAS suspended in time. She knew this because she could see the magical layers of the island. If the earth was made of a crust, outer core, and inner core, Wile Isle wa
s made of shell, time, and aether. Ellison was somewhere between the three. Not the hinterland, but some other place—where you go when you have no other place to go.

  From the moment Persephone had hit her with white light and Ellison had fallen into time, she’d felt a tug sending her to the middle layer. A door had flashed through her mind. Wooden, thick, and malleable. It looked a little like an entrance to a library.

  For no time and all time, Ellison had been studying it, trying to make up her mind if she should open it.

  Something about the door bothered her. It reminded Ellison of a vision she’d once had … before. An important vision, which was part of why she had ended up in this predicament. The problem was that the longer she floated, debating, the less she knew. The edges of knowledge were fraying apart, and Ellison was forgetting.

  There was someone she needed to get to. Someone she did not want to leave. But where were they? Maybe they were through that door. Ellison put out one hand, and tasted static building in the air as it bubbled like carbonation on the tip of her tongue.

  Names are powerful seals. When called with certainty and trust and truth, they are bindings.

  Ellison.

  Ellison knew that voice.

  Ellison Lenora Wayfair.

  She turned from the door.

  Damn it, Elsie.

  Ellison shook her head, trying to clear the cobwebs.

  Please, Elsie.

  Ellison lifted her chin and studied the door. The number eight flashed before her, and a crackle of unease climbed up her spine. She took a step back.

  Elsie! Now!

  Ariel.

  Ellison turned her mind away from the door, and the number. Ellison took one step, another, giving a last glance over her shoulder to the shimmering layer of aether bound in the island’s outer core.

  Then Ellison took a breath and opened her eyes.

  * * *

  PERSEPHONE FELL THROUGH the ceiling of the library and landed with a hard thump on the multiple rugs overlayered across the wooden floor. She wheezed out a cough, which rattled down into her lungs and rumbled against her rib cage. Everything in her ached and moaned.

  “Persephone?” The shock in Dorian’s voice had her looking up.

  “Help?” Persephone managed, before dropping her face into her arm.

  He crossed to her, his large hands gentle as they propped her up. He ran fingers over her skull, down her side and over arms. Checked her legs for broken bones and brushed his calloused thumbs across her cheeks. “How are you here?”

  “You like to ask me that, don’t you?” Persephone asked, as he assisted her, a giddiness bubbled up beneath the pain as she studied his face.

  She couldn’t believe she’d managed to reach him, and she tried to find the humor in the situation, considering she looked like a drowned rat and felt far worse. “Everyone likes to ask me questions I have no answers to, and give me answers that never quite satisfy my questions. It’s rather annoying.”

  “You don’t understand,” Dorian said, shifting back onto his heels. “No one can travel into the library unless it’s through the front door.”

  “Your library has too many rules,” Persephone asked. She pressed a palm to the side of her dizzy head. She wished she had a giant aspirin and human-sized bottle of Coca-Cola. “What will the punishment be? I have no change for an overdue fee.” She gestured to the pajamas and its lack of money.

  “You’re speaking gibberish,” he said, guiding her to her feet, and walking her to a small plush sofa in the center of the now circular library. “And no one should be able to travel here like you just did.” Dorian sniffed the air. “That’s serious magic.”

  “I’m remarkable like that,” Persephone said, trying and failing for a winsome smile. Her heart cracked as she thought of Ellison, of Moira and Hyacinth. “It was a fluke, Dorian. I don’t think my magic brings anything but devastation.”

  He stared at her, waiting, hovering, making her palms sweat.

  Persephone looked over her shoulder and registered the new space. “What room is this?”

  “It’s the main room, or the outer level of the library,” he said. “You’re not the only new magic or rule being broken. The library rewrote itself a few hours ago.”

  “Like a story?”

  Dorian winced as he sat next to her, and she realized his limp had grown more pronounced. Persephone wasn’t the only one in pain.

  “Did you hurt yourself?”

  Dorian barked out a small laugh, still looking as dazed as she felt. “Funny you should ask it that way. I don’t think it was me who did the hurting.”

  At her puzzled look, he waved a hand and a fire roared to life in the large stone fireplace opposite them. Then he pulled a blanket from a small ottoman next to the sofa and laid it around her shoulders. “I can’t charm your clothing, as they and you don’t come from the library. You’re out of your time here. The best we can do is give heat the opportunity to do the work for us.” He leaned back and ran a hand over his hair, pausing as he touched his ear with another wince. “The library isn’t a story, or not in a way anyone could write it. It’s a being. One you tried to steal from and then broke into. You’re a puzzle of a library thief, Persephone May.”

  “I’m not a thief,” Persephone said, and shivered at how he used her full name, the way the syllables rolled off his tongue. “What kind of a being?”

  Dorian opened his mouth, appeared to be trying to speak, but only shook his head. “I’ve said too much. I guard the secrets, but they aren’t mine to keep.”

  “Do those secrets have anything to do with me?”

  “Did you or did you not try to break the worlds apart today?”

  Persephone looked at him sharply. “What? No. I can’t break a world.” Dorian arched a brow and Persephone thought of the blood draining from Ellison’s face as her body dropped like a puppet with its strings cut. “That … can’t be right.”

  “Tell me?” Dorian asked, peering at her like he was trying to read her mind through her eyes. Maybe he could, maybe he could read the very wishes printed on her soul.

  He leaned in, and Persephone smelled the pine and musk of him. The fear in her relaxed, and she felt the steady beat of his heart when she shifted closer in response. The warmth of his skin brushed against hers and sent her own heart fluttering. Persephone thought it was dangerous, in a way she didn’t fully understand yet, being so close to this man.

  Taking a calming breath, she turned her attention to the crackle of kindling and flame in the fireplace. She studied the way the hearth spilled shadows across the floor even with the lights on in the room.

  Persephone cleared her throat. “I haven’t been able to make my magic work proper. I’ve struggled to access and control my aether … until today. This morning I faced off against Ellison Way after I left you.” Her hands shook, and Dorian took them in his. “When I stepped back through the veil, she was there. I saw something in her eyes, and she started to speak, and I … reacted. I didn’t think, or not overly, I just didn’t want to be attacked again. I only meant to stop her, but I did something else.”

  Dorian squeezed her hands, his touch gentle but sure. It helped as much as it distracted. “What did you do?”

  Persephone grimaced. “I shot something at her … aether, or the essence of it? I’m still learning. Ellison fell, and then I tried to find a pulse…” Her voice trailed off, the words chased away by the ghosts of regret. “But I … I think she was gone.”

  * * *

  DORIAN WATCHED WHAT little color Persephone had won back from the fire leach from her face and lips. He made a decision. It was time for action, and if he was honest with himself, he’d already made the choice to act the moment he had opened the door and saw Persephone standing there. It had really only been a matter of time.

  “She’s not dead,” he said, bending, not quite breaking, a law of the library.

  Persephone lifted her chin from where she had tucked it into her chest. �
�What?” She turned her body so she was facing him square on. “How can you know that?”

  Dorian waved an arm around the room. “The books aren’t mourning her. I haven’t seen her. If she was dead, I would know.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean lost things come here, Persephone. All lost things connected to the islands.” As the implication of what he was saying settled on her shoulders, he continued. “That wasn’t what I was referring to, though. What you did, you tried to cross the borders without being lost. I thought perhaps you were trying a new angle against the curse, attempting to fracture the worlds, but you weren’t?”

  Persephone turned her face from his, averting her eyes as a blush climbed up her neck and cheeks. “I was trying to reach into this world,” she said, her voice whisper soft.

  “You—oh.” He blinked, trying to clear the shock. “You were trying to pull me to you?”

  He had heard her say his name, but he didn’t realize her call had been for him. Dorian’s soul did not belong to him, and therefore no one could call it through space.

  Now he understood the price he paid when someone tried.

  Persephone squirmed. “After I left Ellison—which wasn’t my choice, the postmistress ordered me to leave—I lost my way.”

  “You followed the wind?” he asked, still trying to understand how she could have risked everything to pull him from his station.

  “Not intentionally.” She brushed her drying bangs from her brow. “Something came for me.” She remembered the hold, the fight, and the voice in her mind. “It was like before, when I faced the Way witches on the beach. Oh. Ariel must have sent it.” Persephone tugged at her hair. “Of course she did. I tried to kill her sister.” She looked at Dorian, feeling utterly stupid for not comprehending it before. “Whatever the thing was, it almost won. I thought I was going to die, and then—”

  Persephone glanced at him, a small smile on her lips. The embarrassed quirk of her lips was so honest it sent his own heart thumping a painful staccato against his rib cage. “Then I thought of you. It gave me solace, to think of you.” She gnawed on her lip, turning her eyes down. “I managed to get away.” She reached for the timepiece beneath the collar of her nightclothes. “I called out for you after but I didn’t intend to steal anything.” She released the locket. “Or anyone.”