The creature’s knees bent. Its maw stretched open, wider than it should have been able to, and I could have sworn the yellow, cone-shaped teeth elongated as a menacing hiss slid through them.
Its voice was ancient and hauntingly feminine. “She’s no normal witch,” it murmured. “She’s muddled your thoughts, demon. Just like she did to old Ashra. Come closer,” the creature coaxed softly. “Let Ashra set you right.”
The creature crooked a scabbed finger, beckoning me closer, and something at the back of my mind whispered that I should trust it. Then Isadora’s warning cut through the thought like a blade:Do not let it touch you. Do not let it fill your head with its lies.
The creature tilted its head, its brows knitting together, as if it could feel how close it had come to convincing me. Its lips peeled back from its teeth in frustration, but the snarl faded just as quickly. The creature’s face softened, settling into something almost... pitying. Without the scowl or the grimace, stripped of menace, it looked strangely gentle.
I pressed my luck. “Will you come back with me? To Isadora?”
The change was instant. The creature let out another low hiss, the sound vibrating through the clearing as whatever softness it had worn peeled away. Its eyes sharpened, glowingfaintly in the gloom. “Thatthingwill never be my witch,” it snarled. “My witch is gone. I feel it in my bones.” It leaned forward, teeth flashing. “And if I learn Morana was felled by thatthing’shand, I will tear her apart and hang her bones as a warning to the next creature foolish enough to think it canownold Ashra.”
Cold settled in my gut. I said nothing. I wasn’t sure whatcouldbe said.
The creature’s witch had abandoned her. Or died. And given the fury in its voice, the distinction mattered very little. And perhaps that alone explained why the hob had turned hostile... why nothing about this situation felt right.
“If you had an ounce of wit about you, demon,” the hob said softly, “you’d let old Ashra help you.”
Its spindly fingers flexed, and without meaning to, I drew my shadows closer, coiling them around myself, ready to strike. The creature noticed. A slow, knowing smirk tugged at its cracked lips. Then, slowly, it reached beneath the collar of its sweater.
When its hand emerged again, it let the object dangle like a lure between its fingers, swinging gently despite the still air.
At the end of the patinaed silver chain hung a small polished black shell, its dark surface gleaming faintly, pitted with tiny perforations as though it had been carved from porous stone.
“One touch is all it would take, demon,” the creature crooned. “And you’d be as free as old Ashra.”
Lies!Isadora’s voice cracked through the haze, sharp as salt and steel.Don’t let it touch you!
The creature lunged. It hurtled through the air, brandishing the necklace like a mace. My shadows reacted on instinct, snapping outward and plunging the clearing into darkness, whip-cracking through the void as the creature fought its way toward me.
A pained scream tore through the night as my shadows collided with the hob—coiling tight, squeezing around its body, lifting the creature from the forest floor like a black serpent readying to crush the air from its lungs.
You don’t want to hurt it,I reminded myself.This isn’t you.
Panting, I dragged in a steadying breath and forced my shadows to loosen. They peeled back from the hob’s face inch by inch. Its phosphorescent eyes were wide and glassy with panic. The hob choked and spluttered, its body bowing forward, the necklace still clenched in its hand.
“I—” My voice caught. I swallowed hard. “I’m sorry.”
The shadows vanished entirely. The hob hit the forest floor with a dull, breathlessthump.
“You need to leave,” I said, the words trembling despite my effort to sound firm. “Find another house. Because if you come back...” I hesitated, then forced out the truth of what I knew Isadora would ask me to do. “Next time, I might have to kill you.”
I didn’t wait to see if the hob had understood. With one last, horrified glance at the pitiful creature curled in the dirt, I spun on my heel and bolted through the undergrowth, running back toward Isadora.
***
I could hear Isadora long before I could see her. By the time I reached the garden gate, the crash of shattering glass and ceramics rang through the air, setting my pulse racing. The only thing that stopped me from charging toward her in fear that she was being attacked was her frustrated scream following each smashed belonging.
I lingered at the gate, fingers tightening around the wood. A small, insistent voice at the back of my mind whisperedThis isn’tright. How could I be so completely in love with a woman like Isadora? Blaise might have been chaos, but at least he was kind.
Don’t leave me, Ambrose.
Her voice slid into my thoughts, soft and coaxing, threading itself through my doubt. Her voice was what carried me through the gate, back into the fold of her wards.
And just like that, the unease dulled. The tightness in my chest loosened.
Perhaps it was a mercy that Isadora was already apoplectic over something else. It meant that telling her I’d failed might land as little more than the cherry on top of an already disappointing day as opposed to an issue of its own.
Tentatively, I crept up onto the porch and risked a glance through the window. In the thirty minutes I’d been gone, Isadora had turned the house upside down. Cushions lay ripped open, feathers drifting lazily through the air before settling among splintered wood, torn books, and shattered crockery.
