“There is this thing we do in Everden when witches disobey the Echelons,” he said, slow and impassive as he blinked at me.“Mutilation of the tongue? Have you heard of it?”
I reared my head back to avoid the shadowy tendril straying toward me, which was as much as I could move to get away from it, as I was still under the command to follow him.
The shadow arced upward.
I turned my head to the side to stop it from grazing my mouth, but the movement must have angered it, because it formed into a Shadowcurrent and dove between my lips.
Inside my mouth, the Shadowcurrent thickened, rushing down my throat and inundating my lungs with a vortex of air. Gasping, I beat the heel of my hand against my chest, trying to bang the shadows out before I suffocated.
The shadows he’d been driving down my throat reversed into my mouth and swarmed around my tongue. I’d just started to breathe again when his shadows forcefully tugged on my tongue, as if to remove it. Then his shadows receded from my mouth and withdrew.
“Interesting,” he remarked, his long strides striking the hard pavement and leading us closer and closer to my house. “I really thought you’d have more questions for me.”
I clenched my jaw, afraid to say anything after he’d told me not to speak, threatened to mutilate my tongue, thenchokedme. I scrambled to piece my thoughts together while reminding myself to breathe. He was a Dark Witch, a powerful one. He knew who my mother was, and he said he was showing me the way to the portal.
If itwasin my yard, then I was running out of time to get away.
I couldn’t run. Despite my best attempts at it, my body was only capable of obeying the command to follow him. I couldn’t scream, or he might choke me again. There was only one thing left to try. The one power I had. I could lie to him.
“Wait!” I said. “You have the wrong person. I’m not her. I’m not Ember Blackburn.”
He halted, then turned to face me. I scanned his dark eyes and let out a breath when I saw they were vacant. Glazed-over eyes meant he believed it.
“I’m human,” I said, raising my hands in the air to show I was innocent. “I don’t know Ember Blackburn. I just want to go home.Please. I just want to go home to my dad.”
At that, his eyes turned calculating, probably because he’d cast those Shadowcurrents. The treaty forbade witches from casting spells on humans, and now that he believed I was one, he had to make sure his tracks were covered. I felt a wave of relief, thinking I’d saved myself. ThenDadflashed on my phone screen, and before I could hide the phone that was lighting up in my hand, a Shadowcurrent lunged and tore it away from me.
My phone flew through the air and crashed down in a patch of grass. In the next second, the Dark Witch lifted his arm in a callous wave, winding up a powerful gust of wind that blasted me in the opposite direction across the street. I hit the ground with a thud, then rolled onto my side and rocked back and forth, clutching my stomach as I gasped for breath under a trembling oak tree.
“Stay,” he loudly commanded from across the wet road. “Someone will be by to deal with you.” Shadows thicker than smoke rose from behind him, and the Dark Witch and the night were at once indistinguishable.
I attempted to stand from the wet grass, but it was useless. I could lift my head a bit, and my arms somewhat, butStayseemed to cut off the rest of my movements. I was bound by his magic to this one cold spot on the ground, sinking into the earth’s dampness.
The more time passed, the more my adrenaline faded. My body reverted to the way it was before the Dark Witch appeared on my road: cold. It was my karma for lying, I supposed. For the denial that kept me running back to Gray. For imagining a world wherehe looked at me and saw something worth keeping.
A car rattling like a tin can pulled me from my thoughts.
I knew it was Dad’s before I saw it. His car had been making that noise for two years. He said not to bother with fixing it because he didn’t drive enough for it to make a difference. I took it in for maintenance anyway. Hours of inspections later, the mechanics just shrugged. They hadn’t found anything wrong.
I lifted my head from the grass and watched Dad rattle past. I could’ve screamed — I probably should have — but with the Dark Witch gone, the last thing I would do was give him a reason to return.
If I shouted for anything, it would be for Dad to turn around, because when he drove in that panicked state, he was worse than any drunk on the road. It might have driven me crazy if it weren’t for the other sound.
The cold, clear voice piercing through my mind.
Scream, Ember!Draw human witnesses. You need to scream for help!
A sharp pain stabbed me behind the eyes, and I shut them, even the darkness too bright in the midst of the headache the voice in my head had brought.
Ember, scream!
My head pounded, and my stomach convulsed as I was hit by a strong wave of nausea. The only thing keeping me conscious was that I needed to know whose voice it was. I knew what kind ofmagicit was. A Mentalist casting a Contact spell. But the only Mentalist I knew who might help me was my sister, and it wasn’t her.
Their voice died out, and the pain in my temples eased enough that I could open my eyes again, just in time to see taillights turning off into the distance, the rattle gone.
The last ounce of heat in my body rushed to my ears as the sound of footsteps returned. I recognized the Dark Witch’s,heavy and deliberate, but there was also a second, softer set of footsteps striding in time with his.
My gaze roamed up from the oily puddles staining the road to the shadows around the Dark Witch, then traveled to the even more ominous-appearing witch at his side. They wore a heavy, black coat and a thick, black face mask. All I could see of them — through a small, glass pane they looked through — was a pair of sharp, dark-brown eyes.
