That’s not my head.
I return to the hall and hear the sound again, this time in the kitchen.
It’s coming from the cellar door.
“Aunt Em!”
I rush back into the main room and fall to my knees, wrestling with Uncle Henry’s chair so I can shift it aside. Once the door is free, I grab the inset handle and hoist it up.
“I’m here, Aunt Em. I think the storm is done and—”
There is a blur of white, a rush of air, then a shimmering blue light.
A woman bears down on me, feral like an animal. “Did she send you?”
“What the—”
I scurry back on my butt, but she’s on me in an instant, hands wrapped around my throat.
“Didshesend you?” she screeches again.
Her eyes are wide, her red hair a tangled mess. Her breath smells of the sharp tang of corn liquor and stale tobacco.
“I… didn’t…” I try to get words out but her fingers press harder at my windpipe.
My vision tunnels. I kick my legs trying to buck her off.
“The East End is my territory,” she says, nostrils flaring. The air around her snaps blue like lightning. “The West can’t have it. It’smine!”
Toto barks. The woman looks over and a cry of terror escapes her throat.
She clambers back and pulls a stick from her dress pocket. “Be gone, beast!” She waves it at him. Toto flies backward, slamming into Aunt Em’s open cedar chest. The lid snaps shut, the lock clicks closed.
Toto continues to bark from the inside, nails scraping at the wood.
“I don’t know who the hell you are or how you got into our cellar, but that’s my dog and he—”
She turns the stick on me, giving it two quick swipes.
Within seconds, I’m forced down onto my knees.
“Tell me who sent you,” she says.
“What are you talking about? This is my house!”
“And it landed on me!” She circles the room, eyeing some of Em’s paintings and one of the framed family portraits that somehow still clings to the wall.
With her back to me, I struggle to get up but it’s no use. It’s like I’m glued to the floor.
“Who are you?” she asks when she comes back around.
“Who areyou?”
She sniffs at me and tilts her head, regarding me like I’m a drowned worm that’s slunk in looking for better dirt. “Who amI? I am Delphine, Witch of the East, commander of these lands where you and”—she glances around at the broken house, grimacing—“your decrepit house have landed. So tell me your name, girl, before I wrench it from your throat.”
The stick is pointed at me again, her wrist bowed, ready to flick.
I have to be suffering from a concussion. There’s no other explanation.
