Heart hammering now, I turned to Persi. Though a glance told me she was unreachable, like Rhi and my mom, I shook her shoulder anyway, my fear spilling over into something like frustration. I had to stop myself from slapping her. I whirled on the spot instead, searching the crowd before grabbing the arm of the woman in front of me. She was clearly a tourist, sporting a sweatshirt that said, “Get Spooked by the Sea in Sedgwick Cove.” She turned to glare at me, and I recoiled from her, dropping her sleeve at once.
“What’s your problem?” she snapped at me.
“I’m so sorry,” I replied breathlessly. “I… I thought you were someone I knew.”
The woman narrowed her eyes at me before turning around again. I began to scan the crowd more carefully now. Nearby was a family with three small children. At first glance, they seemed to be caught up in the performance, too; but after a moment, the toddler in the stroller began to fuss, having dropped his sippy cup on the ground, and the man behind the stroller bent to retrieve it. The other man, who had one of the children on his shoulders, turned to see that all was well. The little girl on his shoulders caught my eye and smiled shyly at me when she saw me watching. Beside this family was Phoebe, who I remembered meeting on my first day in Sedgwick Cove. She was the woman who ran the Historical Society. I hurried toward her and tapped her on the shoulder, holding my breath. She didn’t turn.
“Phoebe?” I said once, and then again, louder. She didn’t respond. Nothing existed for her but the pageant. I may as well have been a ghost.
I turned my head, my thoughts whirling faster than my body, as I found one familiar face after another: Davina, Ostara, Maricela. Every person I knew from Sedgwick Cove seemed to be entranced in the same way, utterly unable to pull their eyes from the performance, even as the tourists around them chatted and laughed and munched on concessions.
It’s a spell, I realized.It’s some kind of spell, and the only people affected by it are the witches.
Except for me.
The realization caused the cold dread in my stomach to spread like ice water through my veins, until the tips of my fingers and toes tingled with it. I didn’t know what to do or what to think. Would the enchantment—or whatever the hell it was that held them all in thrall—break with the end of the pageant?
The idea shot through me, sharp and clear. End the pageant.
Throwing one last anxious look at my mother and my aunts, I began to weave through the packed crowd as quickly as I could, mumbling apology after apology to anyone I jostled. At last, I reached the edge of the platform. It was about waist high, and I used my arms to boost myself over the lip of the stage. I ignored the angry shouts of the audience members nearest me, and shook off the grasping fingers of a man who attempted to pull me off the stage. I darted around to the side of the stage, masking myself behind the swaying mass of wood nymphs. I was looking for one nymph in particular, and after a moment, I spotted her in the middle back row.
“Eva! Hey! Eva!” I called in an exaggerated whisper. Eva didn’t turn. She continued to sway and wave her foliage-covered arms in perfect synchronicity with the other nymphs. I tried again, louder this time. Finally, throwing my last remaining bit of caution to the wind, I ran across the stage, ducking down so that I would be hidden by the other performers until I reached her.
“Eva!” I cried, taking the sleeve of her costume between my fingers and tugging on it. “Eva, can you hear me? Eva, answer me!” I took her by the arm and pulled, forcing her to face me, but though she twisted her body in my direction, she continued to chant the words, to wave her arms as though she was a sleepwalker in the depths of a dream.
“We are the keepers of forest, of flame! We are the beacons of sun! Of spring!” she repeated over and over again, her voice going hoarse, her eyes glazed as though she had a fever that had rendered her incoherent. Her gaze was vacant, devoid of reason or understanding. Again, I felt like a ghost, invisible and silent, no matter how loudly I screamed. I released her, and she whirled right back into sync with the others. Tears were pooling in my eyes, and I couldn’t force them back. They spilled downmy cheeks as I allowed myself one moment of panic. Then, I brushed them away impatiently. Falling apart now would solve exactly nothing. Instead, I made use of my new vantage point, peering through the frolicking nymphs to examine the crowd of upturned faces in front of me. Surely, there must be one witch, just one, who was unaffected by this madness like I was.
My eye was drawn to a little figure standing apart from the crowd. I don’t think I would have noticed her at all in the gathering darkness if it wasn’t for the sudden, violent flares of light emanating from the nearby tiki torches. Something about the figure was familiar, tickling my recognition like a breeze, until a particularly bright flash of firelight glinted off the colorful beads on the ends of her braids.
It was Bea. And she wasn’t staring at the pageant like everyone else.
Hope swelled in me, sudden and strong. I waved my arms frantically over my head, but it wasn’t enough to attract her attention. I let my hands fall to my side, a strange new sort of anxiety rising in me as I watched her. She wasn’t paying the slightest attention to the spectacle on display only a dozen yards from where she stood. I scanned the shadows that hemmed her in for a sign of Xiomara or Maricela, but they were where I had last seen them, in the midst of the crowd, faces blank and hypnotized by the pageant. Why wasn’t she with them? Why wasn’t she, like the other witches, in a trance?
At that moment, the Holly King and the Oak King came at each other, their staffs meeting mid-swing with a loud crack, sending a shower of sparks and snowflakes drifting up into the air. The crowd cheered in reply, and Bea threw her hands up over her ears at the burst of sound. Her eyes were bright, and I realized in the flash of light that it was because they were full of unshed tears. Then she shifted her gaze away from the giant puppets, and her eyes found mine at last.
She looked at me. I looked at her. Then, something shifted in the shadows behind her.
No, not somethinginthe shadows: the shadows themselves. They peeled away from the ground, from the trees, from the walls of the building she stood in front of. They pooled and swirled and then spun upward into a sort of dervish, before settling into a recognizable shape: long and thin, human, and yet so terribly not.
The Gray Man.
“Bea, behind you!” I tried to cry out, but the fear was smothering my voice, choking me, and the words came out in a strangled, breathless whisper.
As though she had sensed the danger, Bea turned and saw the figure standing there.She’s going to run,I thought.She’s going to scream. Bedlam is about to break out, and this whole festival is about to disintegrate into panic. Maybe that will be enough to break the spell.
The Gray Man reached out and extended a hand toward her. Bea stood motionless. I couldn’t see her face, couldn’t understand why she wasn’t backing, stumbling away. Was she, like me, immobilized with fear? Was she as helpless in her shock, as incapable of self-preservation?
And then, before I could do more than open my mouth to call out to her again, my breath stopped. My heart stopped. Everything around us seemed to stop. All except for Bea, who reached out her hand and placed it in the Gray Man’s. I watched his long, smoky fingers curl around hers, saw his ghost of a face twist into the suggestion of a grin. And then they turned together at a run and were almost instantly swallowed by the dark.
“Bea!” I shouted after her, but it was useless. The tumult in the street overpowered my voice completely—I could barely decipher it in my own ears.
It had to be magic, the way Bea and the Gray Man had melted through the throngs of people. No one had even glanced at them, too caught up in the music and the lights and the spectacle of it all. Without thinking, without caring that I was running toward the very thing that wanted to claim me, I bolted after her. Because what choice did I have? There was no one else who could help her.
“Bea! Wait!”
I leaped from the edge of the stage and hit what felt like a solid wall of people. With no other choice, I started shoving my way through. I ignored the startled and angry shouts, spewing a steady stream of preemptive apologies that I wasn’t even convinced anyone could hear. I didn’t want to apologize. I wanted to scream so loudly and so fiercely that every person around me would stop in their tracks, and turn to listen. So that everyone would have a taste of the terror licking its way up my bones, burning away my self-control, my logic, my self-preservation.
I couldn’t let Bea go where the Darkness would lead her, wherever that may be. I couldn’t let it happen.
