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“Her what?” Natalia asks, coming over to us.
“Yeah, what?” I repeat, staring at the moth as it stares back at me. “My familiar?”
“You’re still a witch, moonshine,” Solon says to me, reluctantly letting go of Dracula, who nurses his hurt wrist. “All witches have a familiar.”
“Yeah, but a familiar is like a cat or a fox or something…not…a bug,” I protest.
“Ugly fucking bug at that,” Kaleid says. There’s a hint of menace in his voice that puts me on edge. From the way Solon tenses briefly, I think he feels the same.
“So what does it do?” Natalia asks. “And how do you know what it is?”
“I’ve seen it around Lenore before,” Solon says, to my surprise.
“You have?” I ask. “Because I’ve only seen it twice.”
“You weren’t looking for it before,” he says. “Or you weren’t ready to see it. The familiar will make itself known when the witch is ready. I’ve spent enough time with your kind to know how it all works. I’m sure your parents would have told you had you asked.”
“Jeremias never said anything.”
“He wouldn’t have a familiar,” Solon says darkly. “They aren’t powerful enough for him. He would have apprentices.”
The image of the matching black-haired girls in their white dresses comes back to me. The way they slithered out of the ground, how identical and strange they were. I’m starting to wonder if they were even human at all.
As I ponder that, the moth takes flight again, disappearing into the forest.
“Where is it going?” I ask, suddenly feeling bereft at its absence, like it was anchoring me to my old life, something safe and comforting. “Don’t I need it for something? Isn’t it supposed to help me?”
“Maybe it can’t help you yet,” Solon says, placing his hand around my waist for a moment. “Maybe it’s just letting you know it’s there.”
Kaleid clears his throat and glowers at us. “Well, enough talk about a fucking moth. We need to get going.” He turns and starts walking again.
“Bossy fucker,” Dracula mumbles from behind us.
After the incident with the moth though, it feels like something has changed. The further we go into the forest, the longer we walk, the less sunny and magical it feels. Oh, there’s definitely an energy here, but it’s not one from the light. It’s one from the dark.
And there are mosquitos, too. Tons of them, huge ones, and they all keep buzzing around me. I spend every five seconds swatting at them while Dracula laughs at my antics. Asshole. Bloodsuckers are apparently not a problem for the other bloodsuckers, but they’re still a problem to me, probably because my witch side—my human side—feels stronger than ever.
Do you feel that? Solon pops into my head as we walk.
Being eaten alive by mosquitos? Yeah, I feel it. And no, I don’t like it.
No, he says. Not the mosquitos.
The darkness?
Yes. The darkness. The change. We’re getting close, he says. Things are going to get strange.
I almost laugh. What could possibly be considered strange with these vamps?
But, after a while, I get what Solon meant.
Because the forest gets darker, like the sun has set again, like it can never reach this place, and I’m getting the creeping feeling that we aren’t alone. I keep looking at the forest, peering through the dark trees, but I don’t see anything. The feeling is strangely familiar though, like I’m being looked at by something that’s looked at me before, if that makes any sense.
Are there things in the trees? I ask Solon. I feel like we’re being watched.
We are being watched, he says, so simply that I nearly stop walking.
By who?
By what, you mean, he says. I don’t want to think about them. They get stronger when you do.
Oh my god.
Kaleid shoots us an annoyed look over his shoulder, like he can tell I’m about to stop out of fear.
Keep going, Solon says. Don’t think about anything.
Right. Like that’s ever been easy for me.
Somehow I keep going, though now the trees are opening up a little and the ground is turning marshy, sucking at the bottoms of my boots, and we make our way through tall reeds.
“Careful,” Kaleid shouts at us. “We’re in the land of the old ones now. Just keep to the middle of the path and keep walking.”
“What are the old ones?” I ask, feeling frantic now.
But no one answers me.
Solon! I yell in my head. What are the old ones? Are they the ones who were watching us earlier?
No, he says after a moment, and that’s all he says.
Well fuck.
And that’s when I see it. I’m watching Natalia as she walks forward, sticking to the middle of the marshy path, when suddenly hands reach out from the marsh, trying to grab her legs.
I scream. I can’t help it.
“What the fuck!” I yelp, just as the hands start reaching for me now, grey hands that are twisted like branches, leaves sprouting from their skin in patches, hands that are swiping at the air, so many of them just coming from the reeds, no sign of who or what they belong to. Hands that want to drag me away.
