Romie relaxed, knowing very well that deadly belladonna producedsingleberries. Still, as Bryony convulsed before their eyes, it was hard not to intervene. The young witch’s eyes flew open, as cloudy white as the dandelion fluff that suddenly froze around her, remaining suspended in the air.
Bryony was scrying.
A small smile touched Aspen’s lips. “She’s done it.”
“Why the berries?” Romie asked.
“They’re her tether. When scrying, a witch’s essence needs to be firmly tethered to the physical world through at least one of the five senses. Taste, it appears, in Bryony’s case. We do this to remind our bodies that we arehere, while our essence, our sixth sense, wanders the astral plane.”
“What happens if you pull a witch from scrying?” Emory asked.
“You would sever their essence from its tether, leaving room for—”
Aspen stopped midsentence as a girly giggle suddenly bubbled from her throat, sounding so unlike Aspen that Romie recoiled. The look on Aspen’s face was equally as confusing: gone was that stoicism, replaced with a doe-eyed wonder as she glanced dazedly around the garden. She sighted Bryony’s scrying form amid the cloud of dandelion puffs and tilted her head to the side, uttering a single sound.
“Oh.”
Aspen blinked, seemingly coming back to herself—just as the dandelion puffs around Bryony fell in one great motion to the earth at her feet. Bryony’s eyes found her sister’s, void of theirprevious milky appearance that showed she was scrying.
A smile split Bryony’s face, the red berry juices still staining her lips. “Aspen, I found it! My scrying power—it’s just like yours!”
Aspen stormed over to her sister, looking very much like their mother as she gripped Bryony’s arms. “You have to keep this secret. This is notnatural, Bryony. And after what happened at your ascension…”
Bryony seemed caught off guard by the sternness in her sister’s voice, the fear in her words. “But it’s just like what you can do.”
“No, it’s not. I can’ttake possession of others.”
Romie met Emory’s gaze as it all clicked into place. What they’d just witnessed…
Bryony hadtaken overAspen’s body.
A rustling sound had the four of them spinning around to see the two boy witches who’d called Bryony a hellwraith at last night’s festivities. They were staring at her now like she’d grown horns and fangs. One of them pointed a trembling finger at her. “You really are a hellwraith!”
“We’re telling our mother,” the other spat.
“Please,” Aspen said, pulling Bryony close. “This is all a misunderstanding—”
“Being Amberyls doesn’t make you exempt from rules. A hellwraith must be purged.”
Emory suddenly stepped toward them. “You’re going to keep quiet about this. Whatever you think you saw here, you didn’t. Got it?”
Before Romie knew what was happening, the boys nodded, their eyes oddly glazed as they turned on their heels and left.
And then it hit her.
Emory had Glamoured them.
12EMORY
THE REACTIONS TO HER USEof Glamour magic were almost as bad as the ghosts it conjured.
Emory had no time to explain herself before Aspen dragged her sister back to the house with a lingering look of suspicion at Emory—who she believed to be nothing more than a Healer, not someone capable of magically compelling others. Even Bryony, who’d warmed up to Emory last night, seemed fearful of her now, or perhaps she was just afraid for herself.
Romie watched her with that ever-present wariness that was beginning to fray on Emory’s nerves. “You shouldn’t have done that in front of them,” Romie admonished. “Now what are they going to think of us?”
With her ghosts pressing in, Emory didn’t have it in her to fight. She knew it was a risk to use her Tidecaller magic in such an obvious way, but she wouldn’t take back what she’d done to those boys. Not as she thought of whatpurging a hellwraithmight entail.
She couldn’t fathom that Bryony might be evil. If the kind of magicshehad used made her akin to a demon, what did that make Emory?
