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Do something, Bella.
Instinctively, I lifted my hands to shield my face.
The creature was only a step away when it stumbled and looked down. Snakelike vines from the nearby willow tree crawled over its feet, wrapping around and holding it fast, rooting it to the spot as sure as my terror held me to mine.
But it only stopped for a moment, then lurched forward again, leaving its worn boots behind to reveal the gleaming white of bones beneath.
“Stop,” I moaned as it raised an arm to strike.
As if on command, the willow branches lifted again, swirling around my inhuman assailant, tangling in its long coat.
Did I… make that happen?
The idea was almost more frightening than the thing that was after me.
Almost.
My vision blurred at the edges, but my body surged back to life. I sprinted for the path to the gate that would take me out the other side of the cemetery, my footsteps thudding on the damp grass, then crunching along the gravel path.
I flew as fast as my feet would carry me, not daring to look back, darkness creeping around the edge of my vision until there was nothing left but the flat gray of the path. I was almost at the gate when another figure stepped out of the trees to block my path.
A woman, unmistakably human, but with an icy gaze that made her nearly as intimidating as the thing I was running from. She was tall and slender, with stylish dark hair. She sported a snowy pantsuit that definitely didn’t look like something a local would wear - more like she’d just stepped off the page of the kind of catalog that didn’t even get delivered to a town like Pottsboro.
I don’t know if it was just a trick of the light, but the color seemed to have drained away from the woman, leaving her like some kind of charcoal drawing, or retro movie star.
She looked at me, then lifted her hand like the world’s most overdressed crossing guard and spoke a single word that I didn’t understand, but that reminded me of one of the sea of Latin terms I’d been learning in my Anatomy and Physiology class.
I was close enough to realize she wasn’t speaking to me, but to the thing that followed.
I turned just in time to see the pile of clothing crumple to the ground, whatever had been in the coat scuttling away into the overgrowth along the edge of the path.
“I would have saved you sooner, but I had to be sure that you really were,” the woman said in a bell-clear voice.
“Be sure I really was what?” I asked, turning back to her in shock.
“Why, a witch, of course.”
