Page 32 of They Were Broom-Mates

“Delia!” Amelie shouted, feeling faint with terror. “What do we do?”

For a moment, Delia shifted, and Amelie’s gaze flitted to the door of the cathedral, leading to the kitchen. However, as though she could read their thoughts, Regina called out.

“Don’t break the circle!” Regina shouted from her spot on the circle. “If this is going to work, the circle has to stay intact. Keep going, Delia!”

Suddenly looking very small, Delia’s gaze flitted over to Amelie for a second before she took a breath and began shouting the incantation once again.

“Ab intra”

Amelie stared in horror as the horde began closing in on Hestia.

“Abyssus abyssum invocat”

The ground began to shake, and for a moment Amelie was terrified that it was more zombies were rising from their graves, but then she felt it; the frigid cold of Delia’s power pulsing through the circle.

“Ex silentio”

The plants and foliage inside the circle began to decay at an alarming rate, and when Amelie looked back at Delia, her eyes were cold black.

“Ad pulverem”

Amelie did everything in her power to remain still as the literal ground around her began to crumble. Delia’s power was literally reducing rocks to sand and sending a wave of decay through everything in the circle.

“Te expello”

The flesh that had manifested on the zombies began to tear away, revealing their skeletal structure underneath, but they were still moving.

“Consummatum est!”

The graveyard was literally shaking with the force of Delia’s power being boosted by the other three’s, and for a moment Amelie thought that it had to have worked, but then she heard Hestia’s cry.

At the blood-curdling scream, Amelie’s gaze snapped away from Delia and over to Hestia, where, to her horror, she found that the zombies had reached her and the first one had just taken a huge bite from her arm.

“Delia! Do something!” Amelie screamed.

Delia yelled in frustration and yanked a knife from her back pocket just as the second zombie sank its teeth into Hestia’s shoulder.

Holding her hand out in front of her, Delia took the blade and sliced her palm deeply.

“Just fucking die already!” She screamed as she dropped to the ground, slamming her bloody palm into the earth. A wave of energy shot through the circle, nearly pushing Amelie off balance. It was as though the wind itself got sucked into the circle, creating a vacuum at the center and robbing the area of all sound and movement.

The air fell still as Amelie felt all the magic flowing through her body leave in an instant, dropping her like a rock.

Fighting unconsciousness, Amelie blinked away the dark blotches in her vision, brought the herbal charm to her nose, and took deep breaths, focusing on the scent. Then, once the world stopped spinning, Amelie dropped the charm and steadied herself, palms flat in the cemetery dirt.

From the ground, she looked up, gasping for air. At first, all she saw was stillness; the creatures were still standing, but all movement of any kind had ceased. One zombie in particular had made it to within 5 feet of her, and as Amelie watched it, staring into the soulless pits of its eyes, she held her breath. Her lungs started to burn, but still, she did not breathe, terrified to break whatever trance it was in.

But seconds later, a puff of dust floated off its skull, followed by more, and Amelie finally breathed as the zombies began dissipating into dust as they blew off into the wind. Feeling as though she’d had the breath knocked out of her, Amelie sucked in air until she could feel her legs again before scrambling to her feet. Delia was on her knees off to the side, and Regina was getting up off the ground, but Hestia was lying in a heap at the foot of the cathedral.

Breaking off in a run, Amelie dodged disintegrating corpses as she sprinted as hard as she could through the graveyard.

Regina got there first, dropping to her knees and cradling the Illusion Witch in her arms, and Amelie expected the worst. But when she finally arrived, Amelie let out a massive breath of relief as she saw Hestia trembling and heard the sound of her sobbing into Regina’s chest.

“Fuck.” Amelie sat on the ground, hard, adrenaline beginning to leech from her body. Trembling and crying weren’t a good sign, typically, but in this case, it meant that the Illusion Witch was alive, and frankly that was better news than Amelie had expected.

Screwing her eyes shut and digging her palms into her eyes, Amelie sat there motionless until she heard a dripping sound next to her ear.

When she turned to the side where the noise was coming from, she was met with a bloody hand, still dripping blood onto the dirt. Jumping into action, Amelie looked up, seeing a very pale Delia, swaying on the spot.