Ashley thrust out her arm to stop Jackson in his tracks and helped him lower me to my feet, wrapping my arms around her shoulders and bearing my weight herself.
‘I don’t know if I can go in there,’ she said. Then, taking a deep breath, she added, ‘Guess we’re gonna find out.’
The door slammed shut as soon as we crossed the threshold and Ashley gasped at the beauty of the room, the iridescent walls, the heavenly skylight. As my feet touched the floor, I flew back into my body, eyes snapping open, limbs filled with life.
‘Thank you,’ Ashley muttered, although I didn’t know to whom. ‘You’re alive.’
‘It was a Were,’ I told her, feeling my way over to the bed on the far side of the room. ‘It had to be Astrid.’
‘Inside the house?’
I nodded and she looked more afraid than ever.
‘She’s … gone, right? No way she came into Bell House, attacked you and survived.’
‘She didn’t touch me,’ I said lightly as I laid myself down. ‘She came for Wyn. I have no idea how she got inside.’
Ashley had more questions but I didn’t have time to answer, not when the blessing was calling to me so very loudly. She was still talking when I rolled over and reached for the silver ceremonial dagger. She stopped when I pressed the blade to my skin.
‘Emily, don’t.’
‘Ashley, it’s done.’
I drew the point lightly across my palm, a thin line of scarlet springing up against my pale flesh. Holding my palm against my shirt, stained with Wyn’s blood, I laid back down and exhaled slowly through pursed lips. The white shell-like walls shimmered, the rainbow shifting through the colour spectrum, from pastel pink to rose red to a deep and menacing maroon-like bruise, throbbing as the cut on my hand pulsed in time with the house’s protest. When I fell backwards into the velvet nothingness, it was almost a relief.
At least it was until I saw her.
Astrid Hansen, dark hair, vicious eyes, standing in a kitchen and peering through a round window. She wore black pants and a white shirt, like a dozen other people around her, some of them carrying silver trays. I followed when she pushed through the swinging door and into a huge ballroom, a party. The DeSoto. In a corner, I saw myself talking to Ileen Stovell and Astrid’s snarl turned into a smirk. The scene changed. Astrid approached Ms Stovell, offering her a glass of champagne. She took it withoutpaying much attention and didn’t notice the small green ball fizzing in the bottom of the glass. Chamomile, lemon balm, something to make her more suggestible. Ms Stovell smiled at Astrid and the darkness rushed back in, stealing me away.
I found myself in a grand house I didn’t recognize, the parlour teeming with photographs of people I did. The Stovell family. This was their Savannah home and Astrid Hansen was inside. In a daze, Ileen showed her around, her husband was away in Florida for at least a month, maybe more, no real friends to come calling, no one to intervene on her behalf. Astrid chose a room, Ileen’s room, and forced her host to sleep on the floor. From here she watched and waited. From here she made her plans. More moments flashed past, me and Ms Stovell in the square. Eating lunch with Lydia and Alex. Sitting on my balcony with Wyn. Lydia and me in the magic shop.
What came next took me far from Savannah and my body screamed as my spirit soared away across the seas. I was still with Astrid, her protests loud and defiant in her native language. I couldn’t understand most of what she said but she was clearly unhappy. Not nearly as unhappy as the woman standing before her. She was a witch and afraid of this version of Astrid, but it hadn’t always been that way. There had been a time when she attempted to guide the conflicted young Were along a happier path, a time of empathy, but now she knew she would live to regret it. She knew she would die to regret it. Astrid dropped a palm full of stones on the forest floor and lunged at her mentor, no knife, only the claws at the end of her own fingertips, and slashed at her throat, coating the stones in blood.
I turned away when the light vanished from the witch’s eyes and the forest was gone, the blessing leading me back to the void.
‘It’s not as simple as you thought, is it?’ Catherine said, sauntering out of the darkness. ‘Protecting those you love.’
‘What does she want?’ I asked, arms reaching out for something solid to hold on to, but there was nothing. We were nowhere.
‘What do you think?’
‘Where is she now?’
Catherine shrugged.
‘Not here.’
She placed her hands on my shoulders and met me, emerald eye to emerald eye. I clutched at her wrists but my hands passed right through.
‘I didn’t bring you this far only to come this far,’ she said. ‘If you die, the prophecy fails.’
‘You’re saying if I die, I can’t end the world?’
‘I’m saying if you die, you cannot save it.’
My grandmother faded into the distance, and another voice intoned a familiar echo.
‘When the dead fight back. When the earth consumes. A lie becomes the truth. She will return.’
