Page 17 of The Human’s Heart

“Look at this.” She held her phone up so all of us could see and played a video.

It was shaky and a little blurry at first. I had no idea what the hell she was showing us, but then the camera focused and the shape of a person surrounded in black smoke—or was it shadow magic, like a witch?—became clear. There was so much shadow around them I couldn’t even make out a single feature. The person stepped forward and pushed their arm out in front of them.

Vines tore from the ground, shooting up in the air. The camera person screamed and backed away far enough that we could see the vines wrapping themselves around three people.

I squinted. Holy shit, it was three police officers, if their uniforms were anything to go by. Although, they definitely weren’t Brinnswick uniforms. Huh. Perhaps somewhere in Gauhala?

The officers screamed as they were wrapped in vines from head to toe. The shadow person slowly walked toward them, shadows flicking out, making it look like they had a hundred arms.

My heart raced from the sight. I couldn’t imagine how terrified the police officers were with that person coming straight for them. They looked like something plucked straight out of a nightmare.

The shadow person stopped directly in front of one of the men, and the shadows wrapped around them both. The police officer let out a terrified yelp, but cut it off after only a second. From the shaky video view, I couldn’t tell if the shadows were hurting him or not.

Before I could ask the question out loud, a deep voice began speaking. For some reason, I’d expected the shadow person to sound inhuman, like a demon with a million voices at once or something. But they didn’t. They just seemed… normal. A deep voice, sure, but nothing too wild.

But then the words became clearer, and I thought maybe I was wrong. Maybe they really were a demon. I almost laughed out loud and rolled my eyes at myself when I realized they were speaking in a different language—a normal one, not something from the depths of hell or whatever nightmare my brain had conjured up. Too bad there wasn’t a translation on the video.

The shadow person let out what sounded like an angry growl, stepped back, then reached their hand to the side and swiped down in midair. They stepped in the same direction as their hand, and their body slowly disappeared like they were stepping behind a curtain. And then they… disappeared into thin air. The shadows disappeared with them, but the vines remained wrapped around the officers.

Yells and gasps were heard through the video before the whole thing went black.

What. The. Hell.

Were there supernaturals who could just disappear like that?

Did that mean they could appear out of thin air too?

That was… holy shit, that was a terrifying thought.

“Wasn’t that wild?” Phia asked.

“Yes! What the hell was that? What kind of magic was that?” I asked. “Do you know what he said?”

“I’m not sure, but someone in a comment said the guy said something like Stay out of my business, and I’ll stay out of yours. This is your final warning. But I don’t know if that’s true or not.”

“Wow. That’s… yeah, I don’t even have words, honestly.”

Phia let out a small laugh. “Right?”

I looked at the others since they hadn’t said anything.

Kian’s eyebrows were raised, looking as surprised as I felt. I expected the same expression from Zay, but when I looked at him, he seemed more thoughtful than anything else.

After a moment, Zay said, “That had to be fake.”

“What? Why?” Phia looked annoyed, as if personally offended by the accusation.

I could feel how uncomfortable Zay was, so I reached under the table to rest my hand on his leg, giving it a squeeze. He instantly blew out a deep breath before speaking.

“Witches don’t have that many powers.”

“That was witch magic?” I couldn’t help but ask.

Zay nodded. “Looked like it to me.”

Phia asked him, “What do you mean about the powers?”

“Every witch only has one affinity—either nature, death, light, or shadow. That video had the same person using shadow and nature affinities—possibly death too, but I’m not sure—so… it’s not real. It can’t be.”