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Gabi came so close to collapsing to her knees, to giving up and just staying there until Perchta broke free and came for her, but footsteps pounded at the end of the hallway and Gabi lifted her heavy head to see the glass doors at the end of the corridor stood open and a blur of black clothes and blue-blonde hair come flying out of them. Eilidh, her face red and eyes blown so wide Gabi knew adrenaline had to be the only thing fueling her.
“They got the doors open,” she huffed, breathing hard, her shoulders sagging at the sight of them. “Your brother managed to open it.” Oh good. Peregrine had made introductions. “Salma?” Eilidh asked.
“I’m fine,” Salma said in a rough voice. She was still dizzy, Gabi knew, but would never tell one of her witches that.
Gabi opened her mouth—to ask, to demand to know about Joy—but she snapped it shut. A coward, she didn’twantto know. Couldn’t face it. Not yet. “Where’s my dad? Peregrine?”
“Upstairs.” Eilidh’s eyes lingered on Gabi. “Peregrine’s … he got hurt. I managed to heal his skin with a paste but the inside…”
Gabi shut off her hearing. Just blocked out the words. She reached for Salma’s waist to support the woman and began what felt like a vast trek to the open doors at the end of the corridor. She didn’t even ask why Eilidh had said they got the doors open, as if they’d been locked, or why they weren’t using the lift.
She tightened her grip on Salma reflexively as they neared the doors, aware enough to scan the shadows and corners for anyone lurking, not that they’d had any indication Perchta had an accomplice. Gabi’s heart was in her throat. First Joy and now… What if the last way she saw Peregrine was hurt by the way she was treating him? What if he thought she hated him? She wanted to punch him in the gut most days for what he’d done, but she didn’t want him dead. She just couldn’t deal with the betrayal. That he’d known they were siblings for so long and never told her. That he’d let her find out from a letter her mum gave her on her deathbed.
The door to the stairwell had been melted to the floor by elven magic, reforming in a messy puddle Gabi had to step carefully around. Did Eilidh say Peregrine had done this? He couldn’t be dead if he’d done this. Could he?
“Almost there,” Eilidh gasped, ducking under Salma’s other arm as the older witch swayed. “They already took Victoriya up and—”
And the horrifying sound of a door slamming open behind them killed all other words, any other reassurances she might have given.
Eilidh and Salma scrambled up the staircase but when Gabi lowered her arm from Salma, Eilidh turned wide eyes on her. Gabi just shook her head. She’d brought them into this building, risked their lives, hurt them all. Maybe worse.
“Go,” she said, something inside her collapsing. She’d never see Joy again even if she survived the stab wounds to her stomach. But to make up for this mess, for endangering everyone … that was okay. To get Eilidh and Salma to safety that was definitely okay. It was her job. “Up the stairs. Don’t stop until you’re out.”
“We can’t leave you here.” Eilidh’s face was tight, silver lining her eyes. “Peregrine’s up there healing Joy. She’s going to be fine, and she’ll expect you to be around when she wakes up.” That last part was a lie, but Gabi appreciated it, along with the other bit of information she’d given her. Peregrine was alright.
Without making excuses or goodbyes, Gabi turned, straightened her shoulders as if she could strengthen her bravery by a simple movement, and descended the few stairs to face the open door to the records room. And the sharp, grey figure framed inside it. Perchta ignored Eilidh and Salma, her beady yellow eyes fixed solely on Gabi. She’d been naughty now, she assumed. Good. Let Perchta allow the witches to leave. Let her fixate on Gabi. It was the least she deserved after letting the coven come into a situation like this.
Gabi sucked in a shallow breath, even that small movement straining the wrecked muscles of her stomach—her magic’s price: physical weakness, physical pain. At least for her. For other elves, mere tiredness.
Her mouth went dry, her hands twitching towards the baton she’d once again strapped to her waist, as Perchta lunged out of the room, bits of the floorboards and concrete stuck to her feet, a trail of blood behind her. Gabi raised her weapon and struck hard and precisely at Perchta’s throat. Pain had not kept her down before as much as surprise. “You,” she snarled, her voice a pained wisp. Her grey face contorted with fury, the skin pulling tight to show sharp bones beneath. Her breath smelled of rot and iron. “You need to be punished.”
Every bit of bravery had left Gabi. It was recklessness, it was Joy bleeding and Peregrine hurt and her dad in Gods knew what state, which raised her eyebrow and laughed. “Kinky, but no thanks.”
Gabi’s muscles stretched, screamed, as she dove out of the way, ready for the fury that propelled Perchta through the air towards her, claws pointed outward. On the stairs, far above, Gabi could hear shoes squeaking and she hoped it meant Eilidh and Salma were running as fast as their legs could carry them. Good. At least one thing had gone right.
“Hewouldn’t approve—he doesn’t care about who’s naughty or nice—but it’s important. This is for your own good, Gabriella.” Perchta lashed forward again but she was ready when Gabi dove, one clawed hand snapping out to curl around Gabi’s arm, nails leaving even more shallow cuts on her skin. Somehow, they stung worse than her muscles, her rapidly-forming bruises. Gabi tried to lift the baton, but Perchta’s hand squeezed her wrist so hard that her hand flexed involuntarily, and she gritted her teeth to not cry out. She couldn’t spare a thought to wonder who Perchta was talking about and didn't care. The clatter of the baton hitting the floor, rolling away, was so loud Gabi flinched. Weak—she should have felt so weak, but to be here so the coven could get to safety … there was strength in that.
“You’ve been a bad girl.” Gabi’s eyes watered as Perchta leaned close, her lungs filling with the witch’s noxious breath. She was glad for the film over her eyes, so she didn’t have to see the triumph on the witch’s face, the satisfaction at having finally got her hands on someone deserving of her violent brand of judgement. “Lying to so many people.”
Gabi thrashed in vain, trying to get her fists in Perchta’s face in the absence of her baton but there was power moving around them now, Gabi could sense it, as it converged on her arms, pinning them to her sides. Panting for breath, while the rest of her body was unrestrained, Gabi shot her knee up and into the witch’s gut. But Perchta’s grip, both witchcraft and physical—claws and inhuman strength—did not waver. Gabi tried stepping down hard on her instep, did everything she’d been taught and learned herself over the years, but she was pinned, well and truly. But witchcraft was moving around Gabi, not restraining this time but something else. Her head swam and Gabi felt the sudden, delirious urge to laugh.
Even as a rasp of a laugh slipped out of her, as her eyes cleared of tears but glazed over with something else, she called on her elven magic. Dragged it from the depths like she was dredging an ocean. Laughed and urged that magic deep inside her to wake up, to cooperate. But concentration abandoned her as Perchta murmured a sinuous word and slashed a deep line down Gabi’s forearm. The magic spun away from her if it had never begun responding, pain flaring,scalding, in her arm. Different to the other cuts. Cold, then burning. Gabi peeled her eyes apart—when had they shut? When had her sharp words dissolved to scratchy laughter?—and glimpsed silver. A knife.
A thought should have come then, some conclusion to draw from that knife, some connection, but Gabi just sighed and smiled and laughed. Wrong—she felt wrong—but also right, deep in her bones. She sighed again, letting her eyes fall shut.
“Lying to your father,” Perchta went on, “about your work. You don’t want his job. He thinks it’s passion that keeps you in your job but it’s duty—to him, to your mother.”
Gabi shook her head. Through the haze of feeling right, something stirred. Unease.
“Lying to your brother,” Perchta whispered. “You want a relationship with him but you’re a coward.”
Pain, pure and screaming and emotional, arrowed through Gabi, clearing the fog around her long enough for her to remember Peregrine’s hopeful, hurt face as he stood waiting outside Town Hall. He’d come because she’d asked, at a minute’s notice, and she’d treated him like she couldn’t stand him, like she could barely look at him. She loved him—he was her cousin, her best friend.
“Lying,” Perchta whispered, fanning rotting breath over Gabi. She gagged, bile rising, and that too pushed back the delirious fog. A spell? Or something Perchta naturally produced to disarm prey? “Lying still, to yourself.”
Gabi’s head slammed into the wall behind her as she recoiled at a cutting touch sliding down her cheek, a twisted caress. Not deep enough to bite into the flesh beneath, to carve her judgement but enough to remind Gabi of what was to come. And to pry Gabi’s mouth open. Panic drummed into her, a thrashing wave, but Gabi didn’t have the strength to stop Perchta’s narrow fingers prying apart her lips. She tried to bite down, to cause any tiny amount of damage, and it was not logic and training controlling her now but pure survival instinct, yet nothing worked.
A glass bottle met Gabi’s teeth and she choked as a sapphire blue liquid was forced down her throat. She gagged, coughing most of it back up, but Perchta ran the backs of her fingers over Gabi’s throat and forced her to swallow a mouthful. Gabi clenched her stomach muscles, urging her gut to roil, to revolt, to purge whatever was working through her system, but she slumped before she could get her stomach to cooperate and Perchta’s grip loosened. A hazy curtain fell over her surroundings, and then unconsciousness took her, leaving her to the witch killer’s mercy.
