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THIRTY-FIVE
JOY
Agasp tore from Joy’s throat. She hurt everywhere but especially her stomach, five points of stabbing pain jolting her awake. Her head throbbed as she groaned, the end tapering into a whimper, and she tried sitting up, but hands pushed her back down. Something solid and hard was under her, a table or the ground. The scent of fir trees and dust surrounded her, but Joy couldn’t tell where she was, couldn’t convince her eyes to open. The only sound she could pick out, other than her own strained whimpers, was someone’s steady breathing very close by.
She shivered. Her coat. Where was her coat? Her crystals, her wand, the last potion bottle! She shuddered, cold skimming her arms, and tried to get up again, begging her eyes to pry open.
“Not yet,” a male voice said, gentle and smooth. Deep, like secrets and shadows. The hands on her shoulders pushed her back down. “You’re not fully healed yet.”
“What?” Her tongue felt swollen, clumsy. Her nose pulsed, and she distantly remembered the crunch of bones breaking.
“It’s Peregrine,” he said, and Joy finally unglued her eyes, waiting for them to focus on his face. Long chin, good looking with his concerned chocolate eyes, crooked nose, and messy black hair hanging into his face. The elf who’d come with them, she remembered, piecing together events leading up to Perchta’s claws stabbing into her soft belly. But then he added, “Gabriella’s brother,” and confusion fuzzed her mind.
“Gabi doesn’t have a brother,” she said, her tongue still feeling like a beached whale in her mouth. Too late, she realised that could have been rude, hurtful.
He glanced away but his hand didn’t leave her shoulders, pressing down, keeping her from undoing the healing he must have worked on her. Pain wove through her, but it was nowhere near as painful as when Perchta had stabbed her. Gratitude instead unwound in her chest but more pressing was the lack of her coven, and Gabi and Bo’s absence. “Where are we?” Joy asked, eyes rolling to take in the empty office around them. Dust covered most of the furniture, some of the pieces covered with sheets, and the back wall was stacked with unused chairs and tables. A storage room, then. That explained the dust she kept inhaling. And the forest scent was Peregrine himself. “Where’s Perchta?”
“Downstairs still. We’re on the third floor.” His worried eyes met hers, hesitation in them. “The whole place cleared out when they heard me rip into those cabinets.”
Joy didn’t have a reply to that. She supposed it explained the wrenching metal sound that had drowned out everything else in the smoky room. That seemed like a long, long time ago. Joy gritted her teeth at a spike of pain that came from nowhere. She needed to go to the clinic, to get full healing and treatment, but she couldn’t. Not yet. “Where’s Gabi?”
Peregrine looked away. Joy understood the hesitation, the way he was handling her—as if she’d break. She stared at his sharp profile and felt her heart crumple, her face heat with oncoming tears. Downstairs? Gabi was still with that witch, that killer—
Joy scrambled into a sitting position, ignoring the flares of hurt along her legs, her wrist, her belly. None of that mattered. She was alive—she could get up, she could move, she could find Gabi. She paid little attention to the table beneath her, sheet-covered furniture around her, the gauzy light filtering through the windows. None of that mattered either. Nothing did except Gabi.
“I’m not done!” Peregrine tried to settle her down again, alarmed eyes on her, but Joy wrestled his grip off her. “I’m not the best healer on a good day. You shouldn’t be straining yourself, Joy.”
Joy looked him in the eye with her hardest glare and said, “The woman I love more than anyone else in the world is downstairs with a witch who’s already killed one person and tried to kill three others.” Herself included. Joy couldn’t think of that, of the danger she’d be walking back into. She could only think of Gabi, her warm brown eyes, her slow-unfurling smile. “Let me up.”
Peregrine let her up.
Her whole body screamed as she swung off the table she’d been laid out on, but she was steady enough. The adrenaline that had fled her earlier filled her veins again and gave her the strength to stumble out of the room. She reached for a crystal from her pocket and came up empty, remembering with a pang the absence of her coat. She spun, as if she could find it in this lonely corridor. For a too-long moment she stood there, a witch useless without her spells.
Peregrine touched her arm, tall and stone-faced at her side.
“Where’s my coat?”
He shook his head. “I don’t know. It was covered in blood the last time I saw it.” He dug into a slim pocket cut into the chest piece of his elven leathers and Joy’s heart leapt in her chest as he produced a long, tapering piece of amethyst with a rounded end and a jagged tip. A sob rushed out of her mouth, and she snatched her wand from him, holding it close to her chest.
“Thank you,” she forced through her thick throat. “Thank you.”
He nodded, watching her. Joy couldn’t read his expression, but she was sure there was pity there, and the same worry from earlier. Gods—Gabi’sbrother? Joy shook her head, gripping her wand as her tears cleared. She didn’t have time to think about it. “A witch should never be separated from their wand.” Peregrine replied, a smile twitching his mouth. “My mum told me that once. My—my adoptive mum, I guess. Her best friend was a witch.”
Well, Joy appreciated the woman—without her words she’d be wandless right now. And with it… Gabi’s face flashed behind her eyelids as Joy blinked, looking the way she had when they’d stepped out of the lift. Determined to do the right thing, hellbent on protecting the town and Joy’s coven, and scared deep down but not letting that stop her. Noble to the end.
Gabi had told Joy to run while she dove into the smoke to fight Perchta.Not this time. Joy wasn’t running away and leaving Gabi to fight alone. Once was enough.
She locked eyes with Peregrine and said, “I can’t leave her alone down there.”
“I know.” Peregrine smiled and Joy blinked, surprised. He began moving towards what Joy assumed was the staircase they’d ascended while she’d been unconscious. Her healed-over wounds pulled, and she winced but after she made the first step, the next steps came without much effort. “I was waiting for you to wake up and finish healing.” He speared her with a look that reminded her she’d failed to do so. “And then I was going back down there to get my sister.”
Joy nodded. His voice had changed into something determined and rough, and Joy could identify with it. They reached a door set in the wall that led to a staircase, a narrow window above letting a shaft of grey light into the area. Joy took a breath, leaning on the elbow Peregrine offered when she wobbled, and began to descend. They took each step in silence, the light fading until they were enclosed in flickering fluorescent light, until that heavy iron tang grew stronger, until it was all Joy could smell.
Because the silence and the fear were killing her, and because she couldn’t get the imagined scene out of her head—Gabi torn apart, her stomach slit, her eyes empty—she whispered, “I don’t have any spells prepared. I don’t have crystals or sachets or potions oranything.” Her voice broke but she ignored it. She had to keep it together for Gabi, alone down here with a killer. “I only have my wand and raw witchcraft is … unpredictable. It would take too much from me.”Talkingwas taking too much from her—she was winded after half a flight of stairs and a conversation.
What the raw witchcraft would do … that was the trouble. She didn’tknowwhat it would do. It could be nothing, or it could turn her heart to glass, her hair to serpents, her soul to ash and glitter. It could erase something Joy desperately needed—her will, her sanity, her ability to consent. It could kill her.
“You shouldn’t be here,” Peregrine shot at her, sounding a lot like he was contemplating dragging her back up the stairs. Joy daren’t look at him; she just bit her lip and kept descending the stairs, ignoring the pull in her tender belly, the burning in her thighs. “You’re going to get hurt.”
