I shake my head. “I don’t know. I’m fine, I think.”
His eyes narrow, and he looks me over.
“Just a cramp,” I say, but Beep worries me when she corrects in a panic-stricken tone,Not a cramp.
He presses his palm to my forehead. “No fever.”
“It doesn’t feel like heat… or, it feels like the bad parts of it.”
He stares at me silently, eyes raking over me, frowning. After a minute, he curses and rocks back on his heels.
“She’s doing something to you. Mona, I think she’s—”
Pain lances through me like a white-hot poker. I collapse, a scream tearing from my throat as something writhes inside my womb. My fingernails gouge into my stomach as I curl into a fetal position.
“She’s doing something to your...”
“To my what?”
“Your… fertility.” He says it calmly, in contrast to how he gets up, stalks over to the silver bars caging us in, throws his arms up and begins chanting, curling his fingers around the silver and flexing with all his strength to pull it off. His flesh sizzles on contact, yet he only grips harder.
Paired with his magic, the cement frame begins to crumble. Ghost’s eyes have gone black, veins protruding across his temples and along his forearms, his back muscles flexing, as his voice deepens to something inhuman while he chants.
“Ghost!” I yell, trying to understand what’s happening, but I can already feel something vital draining from me, like sand through an hourglass.
Through the bond, he is crazed.
The door’s entire frame slowly pulls from the wall. I can hear Andrea shouting from across the silo. The stench of burned flesh and Ghost’s magic fills the air, and I open my mouth to call to him, but the words die as I see his face—eyes wide with fear, breath panting, cold sweat across his brow. He’s panicking.
Ghost never panics.
The pain inside me ebbs and flows. Three witches gather outside our cell, their fingers crackling with lime-green light as they hurl bolts at us between the bars. Ghost’s hands drop from the frame, his face slick with sweat as he throws both palms outward. The air shimmers where their magic hits his invisible barrier. A bolt slips through, missing his head by inches and leaving a smoking crater in the cement wall behind us. I lunge toward the half-loosened door, my fingernails scraping against silver.
“Mona, I don’t want you to hurt yourself!” Ghost’s warning cuts off as he ducks, a spell whizzing past his head. Chunks of wall explode inward, which actually helps loosen the frame even more. I feel Beep’s familiar strength flowing up my arms as my fingers curl around the silver bars, the metal searing my skin as we pull.
My palms singe with blisters, but they will heal. I peel back the bars just enough to let Ghost focus on magic. His face hardens, hands weaving patterns crackling with dark energy. The witches crumple one by one, their lime-green light sputtering out like blown candles. When the last falls, Ghost’s attention returns to the bars, muscles straining, veins popping along his forearms as he wrenches the bars apart with a groan. The bars screech and bend just enough, and he slides through, then reaches back for me.
Across the corridor, Sam and Andrea work together, making slow progress in pulling down the silver bars caging them in.Their faces are tight with determination, hands bloodied but still pulling, as if they can feel the approaching danger.
Ghost grabs my hand, nearly yanking my arm out of the socket, dragging me along the curved wall, past the fallen witches. The air around us shimmers with his hastily drawn protection ward, but it flickers whenever he throws out his free hand to deflect an incoming spell. I wrench my arm free. He whips around, pupils dilated, jaw clenched.
“I’m right behind you,” I assure him. “You need both your hands.”
He nods, and we run across the catwalk to the other side of the underground silo, and when we reach the opposite side, we follow the curved wall until we hit one of the rectangular openings cut into the cement, the one that opens into a larger room toward the back.
I can smell her from here. Deidre, her sister Tracy, and a handful of other witches. The scent of sulfur is strong, the magic sizzling out of their pores.
There’s a small hearth behind them, smoke dissipating into the dank air. The fire burns low, and beside it, the stone vat filled with my blood.
“You can’t do this,” Ghost pleads when we reach them.
Deidre smiles. Dips her already bloodied finger into the bowl and repeats the spell.
na´chno´ mde´~a~ hers mde´~a~ t'ach mine
na´chno´ mde´~a~ hers mde´~a~ t'ach mine
The cramp rips through me again, twisting like a knife. I cry out, collapsing to my knees. Ghost’s roar shakes the walls. “You can’t do this! You can’t take this from her!”
