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Inside it was too still, too quiet. A trail of blood began a few steps away and curved around the row of metal cabinets. Joy’s pulse beat like a panicked thing in her throat as she followed it, her wand raised and surprisingly steady. She’d moved past shaking, moved past fear into a constant state of numb terror.
Gus and Eilidh followed her without a word, disobeying her only order, though Maisie must have stayed to watch over Victoriya. “Oh shit,” Gus breathed, pointing to the end of the row as they passed the metal monoliths. The floorboards had been torn up, revealing the dull black floor underneath, and at the end of the row, like a ship wrecked on a rocky bluff, were splinters and boards and limbs made of wood. Separated, ripped apart as if by a giant’s hand or by … by a severing spell. Joy’s eyes fell on a head, the wood smooth over its eye hollows and the cavern of its mouth. Her stomach turned over and she moved quickly on, searching the rows for a black ponytail, a wool coat, a baton in a pale fist.
No Gabi. But three rows of filing cabinets later, Joy sucked in air and ground to a halt. The male elf was collapsed against a half-open cabinet at the end of the bloody trail, his leg cut and a slash on his chest. Not deep enough to cutintohim, to hollow him and stuff him with rubbish, but enough to show Perchta’s intentions. Was he one of the people she’d called naughty, or was she attacking anyone at this point? And whatwasthis—some twisted version of the Christmas list? Naughty, nice… Joy burned with anger even as her blood chilled.
Eilidh knelt at Peregrine’s side, brushing long dark hair from his neck so she could place a dot of green paste there, healing or reviving or some other combination of herbs that must have been Salma’s doing. She was the one who made tonics and poultices. Joy’s heart twisted at the thought of Salma hurt like Peregrine.
Joy moved on. She felt bad for leaving Peregrine behind, but she kept moving anyway. Her friend and her … Gabi were in here somewhere, possibly as hurt.
She heard the elf inhale a sharp breath, heard Eilidh whisper to him and Gus shush her, but then Joy was too far away. The numbness had spread within her. Now fear didn’t touch her, not even as she neared the end of the room, where they’d first found Victoriya.
Gus cursed and jogged after her. When he touched her elbow, Joy had to fight to stop the scream in her lungs from erupting. She swung a glare on him, but he just lifted his wand to point at the back wall where a door stood half open, a slice of silver light falling onto the bare floor. That door had been shut earlier, Joy was sure of it.
She broke into a run, not caring that her footfalls were loud, that Perchta would know she was coming. She took a sachet in one hand, wand in the other, and shoved the door the rest of the way open with her hip. One glance around the room—a second, smaller records room full of cardboard boxes and ancient desktop computers, this one smelling of ink and toner instead of blood—and she saw Salma, tied to a chair and unconscious, and Gabi, fighting Katrina with a small, ineffectual knife.
Joy took a breath ragged with both relief—she wasalive—and white fear—Salma was slumped and unconscious. Without waiting for Katrina—Perchta—to notice her, Joy reared her arm back and hurled the contents of the sachet into the air, diving into her armoury of crystals for a shard of nuummite, for fighting negative witchcraft and strengthening positive. The wand in Joy’s hand warmed in response to the spell, the purple ashes of the sachet now at Katrina’s feet, staining the bottom of her tan trousers, her shiny court shoes.
The fight froze, Perchta falling still.
Joy’s shoulders sagged. She had a single minute before that spell wore off, and even though she had a potion that would achieve the same effect when this one wore off, she couldn’t waste any time. Urgency pounded at her, telling her to run to Gabi, to untie Salma, but the anger hammering her heart led her to Perchta instead. Wand held at the ready, Joy ignored Gus behind her, catching Gabi around the shoulders, letting furious steps carry her to the witch who had killed a teenage girl. Who would have killed Neil and Victoriya.
Aware of the clock counting down, Joy grabbed Perchta’s hands—too soft for hands that had taken lives—and wrestled them behind her back. She had to holster her wand while she fumbled for a sachet and a crystal, tipping the ashes burned in a fire so hot it would melt skin from bones onto the witch’s hands. As soon as the ash made contact, the flakes turned to liquid metal, glossy and silver-white. She held the crystal securely over Perchta’s hands, one hand touching her holstered wand, guiding the witchcraft with smoky quartz, Stone of Power, to wrap around those pale hands like shackles. But she’d barely made one knot of the liquid metal when someone knocked into the doorframe—Eilidh—and Perchta came alive, wrestling and angry.
“No,” Joy breathed, urging the metal to move quicker, but Perchta wrenched and thrashed, and the smoky quartz slipped from her grasp, the sachet knocked to the floor where the rest of the spell pooled and hardened into a puddle of harmless white gold.
Joy fumbled to keep Perchta trapped by sheer willpower and physical strength but in one capable movement, she demolished the meagre bindings Joy had made and whipped around. Joy made to unholster her wand, but before she could close her hand around it Perchta’s pale hand struck Joy’s nose. A horrific crunching filled Joy’s ears. Pain hit her belatedly and with enough force to blur her vision. Perchta knocked her wand to the floor and Joy’s stomach dropped as it rolled out of reach. Perchta’s eyes widened as they fell on Joy, her mouth popping open as she registered her attacker. “But you’re a good one,” she said, and released Joy. Her pretty face was filled with shock and alarm. She looked at her hands, where flecks of metal still lingered.
Joy had forgotten about the rest of the room, the rest of the world, but she jolted back to reality with a faint sob as Gabi crept up behind the witch. She was steady, upright, and Joy couldn’t see any injuries. Somehow, Gabi slid her small knife around Perchta’s neck and pressed it against the witch’s throat. Perchta went perfectly still but she grinned … as if the knife wasn’t restraining her at all but she’d allow them to think so.
Joy swallowed, not daring to move even to get her wand.
“Joy,” Gabi barked. “There are handcuffs over there by the desk. Quickly.”
Joy tripped over her feet in her rush. The numbness had solidly worn off, leaving a shaking, terrified Joy in place of the version of her that marched determinedly into a room to save her ex-girlfriend and her witch sister.
Losing balance, she slammed into the desk, saw the glint of metal on the floor, and snatched them up. Her breath was tight, scraping up her throat now, but Joy stumbled back to Gabi. Perchta was clawing at Gabi despite the knife at her throat, though half-heartedly, like she wanted her situation to seem convincing. Joy didn’t allow her eyes to stray to Salma, a coward for not wanting to see, to know if she was alive and breathing or not. Gus had vanished between the freezing spell and Perchta resuming her motion, and Eilidh too, but Joy had no doubt they were nearby. Helping Peregrine, maybe. Or Bo. Gods, Bo. Where was he?
A lump formed in Joy’s throat as she made to hand the handcuffs to Gabi but realised, with a flood of cool fear, she’d have to do it herself. This was no different than binding Perchta’s hands with witchcraft, Joy told herself. Except she was awake now, not frozen. And she was still going along with this when she clearly had enough witchcraft to disarm Gabi. Joy looked into the witch’s eyes and faltered. Fear took her in its careless hold.
The witch changed. A blink, and the willowy blonde woman was gone. A grey skinned, colourless nightmare smiled at Joy with teeth too long and thin to be of any witch she’d seen before. Her eyes were cloudy yellow, and her hands were skeletal and made entirely of bone. The pant suit had gone, the glossy white hair replaced by a fall of white wisps, any humanity she might have had or pretended to have wiped away to reveal amused cruelty.
Joy stumbled back, a cry in her throat, and her instincts begged her to run, run as far and fast as she could. The cuffs slid from her grasp as she backed away and she shrieked as her legs slammed into a computer desk, knocking over a mug of coffee. The sound of the computer monitor rocking, liquid dripping to the floor, were as loud as gunshots and Joy shook, every breath rasping as she looked at the nightmare before her, and Gabi, still struggling to hold Perchta with that tiny knife.
Gabi. Joy met her eyes and wished the fear had magically melted. It remained, brutal as ever, but Joy straightened her spine, bent to retrieve the cuffs and her wand, and shoved herself back towards the hellish witch before fear could snare her again. Joy snapped one of the handcuffs rattling in her hands around the wrist of the witch. She didn’t take her eyes off Gabi.
She lifted the second cuff, but Perchta opened her mouth and screeched, something inherently pleased about the sound, like a hellhound’s laugh. The sound filled Joy’s head, screamed through her until warmth trickled from her ears. Blood. She lifted her hands instinctively to cover her ears, pressing her palms hard to push out the screaming echoing inside her skull. She realised her mistake a second too late and cried out.
One hand cuffed but the other free, Perchta lashed forward. Her hands were outstretched, those fingers of shining bone narrowed to claw like points on the ends, and all Joy could think was they were poised to sink into Gabi. Her Gabi. And she would never let Gabi be hurt,ever.
Joy justacted. She slammed into Gabi, knocking her out of the way as Perchta moved—so fast she blurred into a bone white smear on Joy’s retinas. Joy’s cry choked off as the claws of both Perchta’s hands sunk through her coat, her flamingo-patterned top, and into the soft flesh of her stomach. Joy felt the discomfort first, the spears in her stomach ripping free, and as if watching it happen to someone else, she saw the blood well from her belly, flooding her clothes. Saw the blood too dripping from the tapered ends of Perchta’s fingers, saw the witch raise them to her lips, her tongue darting out—and then the pain hit in full force and Joy slid to the floor, gasping, a howl building until she was screaming, on fire, her face wet with tears. The impact of hitting the floor erased everything else and blackness rose up to claim her.
THIRTY-FOUR
GABI
Gabi felt those vicious claws as if they’d gone into her own stomach. Even as Perchta moved, even as she grinned to find Gabi paralysed, staring at Joy bleeding and fainting, Gabi couldn’t move. Couldn’t breathe. Joy—
She was going to be sick. She stumbled a step towards Joy but swayed at the sight of the blood gushing from her stomach, pooling on the floor. Perchta took advantage of Gabi’s horror to slam her against the closest wall, a bookshelf digging into Gabi’s back. She barely felt any of it, not the discomfort, not the pain flaring in her shoulder. Her eyes were glued to Joy, gasping for every breath, unconscious as Gus and Gabi’s dad swarmed her, magic singing through the room as Bo called power to defend her. Gabi just stared. Useless. Her chest heaving with every breath, eyes burning.
