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As if she sensed Gia’s attention, Amy pushed upright, using the wall at her back as a brace.
“Hedge witchery is a patchwork sort of practice,” Gia said to Amy. “Some learn from their parents or siblings or others in the community, others by trial and error. You try and again until you find what works for you. It’s obvious this Ronna never made it clear to you that what she was doing with you was actual magic.”
Amy shook her head, the movement jerky, like a disjointed doll’s. But her eyes burned with an ever-growing anger. “She told me she was giving me charms and spells that I could activate with the right ingredients.”
“Like the blood of someone Fae.” Gia didn’t look at Wyn but everybody knew who she meant.
Amy’s face was a hot, humiliated red. “Yes.”
Deciding not to dwell on that, Gia angled her head. “And did she ever get your blood?”
“Mine?” Amy stared blankly, her gaze uncomprehending.
“Yes, Amy. Yours. Some piece of you.” Gia skimmed a look over the young woman, mouth twisted in a frown. “Hair, spit, those will do in a pinch, but for stronger spells, it has to be something with more punch and that usually means blood. Freely given is better, but it can stolen.” Gia hesitated, not wanting to add to the torment that likely already lived in Wyn’s mind. “Some who don’t mind darker paths can derive a great deal of strength from the things they steal from those of us with power, but that usually involves the taking of life and you’re still clearly alive.”
Fear darkened Amy’s eyes. But that wasn’t the only change.
Awareness.
“I cut myself.” In a movement Gia doubted the other woman was aware of, Amy lifted one hand, rubbing at the palm with her free hand, her thumb repeatedly passing up and down the center, as if tracing an old injury.
Gia held her hand.
Amy looked down, then jolted when she realized what she was doing. Slowly, she extended her hand to Gia.
Gia covered Amy’s palm with hers and sank down into her own energy, slowly letting it merge with Amy’s.
She hissed when she felt it, a dull, lingering pulse.
Instinctively, she went to break contact.
But she didn’t let herself.
Calling for her shade, she waited.
The shadow was reluctant and Gia didn’t blame her, nor would she force her. But she would ask.
“You want me to help her,” the shadow accused.
“I want you to help me, to help the boy,” Gia countered. “There’s a witch, and she uses the craft to hurt the Fae.”
The shadow’s angry energy took on an odd stillness.
So many witches, both the solitary hedge witch and those who practiced with others, had been left to fight their way through a world that was too often hostile to them. They didn’t fit anywhere—not with humans, not with the Pretern races and certainly not with the Fae, even though that was where those with true magic inherited their skill. It was little wonder those like Gia and her shade felt a strange kinship toward so many of the witches they encountered in the human world.
Shadow witches like Gia, even though their Fae blood marked them as Underhill’s children, often had to deal with bigoted, exclusionist tactics from the Sidhé themselves.
But unlike witches of Fae blood, witches who were mostly human were trapped in the human world. Underhill’s doors were closed to them.
As the old ways were forgotten, more and more grew up with absolutely no idea who and what they were, no understanding why they felt so...out of place.
Like Amy.
With a snarl Gia sensed and heard inside her head, the shadow turned toward Amy and shot out a hand. Amy yelped as the shade clasped their palms together, then she yanked back—or tried. The shadow wouldn’t let go.
“Tell the silly chit to be still. I’m not hurting her.”
Gia left the insult out, but passed the rest of the message along.
