Page 180 of Bedeviled

I don’t remember releasing my own hands, but I must because suddenly I’m touching my hair, my face. I feel incandescent. I roll my neck, laugh at this euphoric exuberance.

I don’t intend to leave the Ritual Room. I simply follow the flow of the magic, the flow of my sisters. Our power fills our veins, intoxicating us. We are laughing and dancing. My problems still tug at me, but I’m swept onward by this addicting connection I share.

We spill out of Ravensmeade, out into the dark night, where the moon lies shadowed behind a cloud.

“Hiding your secrets again, Mother!” one of my sisters shouts at that hidden moon. “We’ll find them out anyway!”

We laugh as one, and I understand now why normal folk always assumed witches were a touch mad. Drunk on our power, we talk to the moon and laugh at the unseen.

Sybil grabs my hands and spins us around. Once more the power moves between us, from palm to arm, circulating through us before moving on, faster and faster, hot like flame, heady like wine.

A coven sister shrieks, the sound splitting the air, and the giddy, exhilarating moment is shattered. My hand drops from Sybil’s as I turn my attention to the shrieking witch.

She stares at the clouds with those moon-touched eyes, seeing but unseeing.

Finally, the scream cuts off. “THE SCROLLS WILL BE BURNED. THE BARRIER WILL BE NO MORE. THE DEMONS HAVE SET UPON YOU. YOU WILL BE BETRAYED.” Her wild, unfocused eyes fall to mine. “RUN! RUN!” she shrieks.

“What?” Her words don’t immediately percolate, not when magic overpowers my senses. I press a hand to my temple.

“RUN!”

I back up a few paces, forcing away the cloying hold my sisters’ magic has on me.

Once I’m able to reclaim my mind, it’s like being doused in cold water, and I hear my sister’s words all over again.

The scrolls will be burned. The barrier will be no more.

Eislyn’s move to take her throne must be happening tonight. Right now.

Around me, the ecstatic frenzy that had overtaken the group has morphed into shrieking and hair pulling. They act almost as one, and I have to fight the urge to twist my hands through my own hair and wail.

Where is Nero? I cast my eyes about the chaos when I see him sitting under the oak tree he used to climb up and down to get into my room. His eyes glint in the darkness.

Amidst the writhing, wailing bodies, Cordelia shouts, “Sisters, grab any brooms you can find and as many water bottles as you can hold. We’re going to save our sister.”

Save?

I don’t have long to linger on that thought before Sybil gasps, pointing to my abdomen.

I glance down and notice then the ribbon of indigo magic that leads directly to me. With my eyes, I trace the line of it to the Everwoods. Likely to Last Rites Cemetery.

Little witch, I sense you are close, Memnon says, suddenly, starkly in my mind. You didn’t listen to me. You really should have.

All the hairs on my arms stand on end. I haven’t heard this ominous, terrifying version of Memnon since before he framed me for murder.

Run, he told me. Run, my coven sister shrieked.

A rush of saliva coats the inside of my mouth, and I have to swallow it down.

Unfortunately, there’s no place left to run.

I turn back to the oak tree. “Nero?”

My panther watches me silently for a moment before prowling forward.

Heart hammering, I kneel and draw in a shuddering breath. “I think things are about to get bad,” I confess to him, “and I—I’m about to do something unwise.”

He growls, as though he objects to this decision.