This woman claims she’s a witch and she’s carrying around a stick like a wand.
So maybe I just need to play along until my mind snaps out of it?
“My name,” I say, “is Dorothy Gale.”
Delphine goes eerily still. Her expression is unreadable, but her knuckles are white as she clings to her wand.
There is a simmering tension in the air not unlike that of an approaching storm.
“I think I know who sent you,” she says, and then she lunges at me.
When the witch collides with me, we both fall backward. I hit the wall and the air rushes out of me.
“I’ll kill you and then I’ll kill all of them!” Her wand comes up, jabbing me in the side. Pain lances across my ribs, pressure building in my chest. I feel like I could pop from the inside out.
What the hell is happening?
The pain spreads outward, filling every hollow, and my blind instinct is to run, to run far and fast.
But this is my house, isn’t it?
I deserve to be here.
This woman doesn’t.
As tears blur my vision, I plant my feet to the hardwood floor and shove outward with everything I have.
The witch stumbles back. Her teeth are gnashed together, her eyes bloodshot.
She may have been pretty once, long red hair, a dusting of freckles on a thin, noble nose. But right now she looks wild and unhinged and I don’t know how to get her to stop.
She screeches at me again and presses forward.
I dart to the side. She slams into the wall.
I reach for the nearest object I can find—one of Aunt Em’s old butter crocks, the one that’s cracked down the center and only good for storing yarn now. I grab it by the opening and swing around.
Whack.
The crock hits the witch across the face and the momentum spins her around. Blood shoots from her mouth.
She tests her jaw, flexing it, and spits out a molar.
It pings over the floorboards.
“How. Dare. You!” She shoots forward and clips me across the face with the back of her hand.
Stars flicker in my vision.
I blindly stagger forward and hit the kitchen counter, scrambling for a weapon. Something. Anything.
I wobble on my feet.
The woman gets hold of my nightgown and yanks, spinning me around.
My fingers find a solid object and I take it at the last second, not caring what it is.
I swing downward.
