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My mother leans forward in the tub, glaring at them. “I need you to promise me that you won’t harm Katrina. I understand if you want to kill Brom, but you are not to harm my daughter in any way. She belongs to me, not to you.”
Leona scoffs. “You belong to us, Sarah, and by default, your child does too. If Katrina plays her cards right, then perhaps we can make an exception. But if she doesn’t, she’s as good as dead, and feasting on a witch of her power? Nothing will taste so sweet.”
“So sweet,” Ana chimes in, and I have to suppress a shiver at her ravenous tone.
“We just need that child, Sarah,” Leona goes on. “That’s all we need. And we need it soon. I don’t mind if the world outside the gates falls apart a little, because give us three months, and as soon as that child is born, then that world is over as they know it. Maybe Goruun will help speed up the process even more. Perhaps one month instead of three, and all of our troubles will go away.”
“You seem overconfident,” my mother says grimly. “All this talk of her giving birth in three months and she’s not even pregnant yet.”
“Oh but you see, the plan is already in motion,” Leona says with a wicked smile. “The ceremony can commence as soon as tonight.”
“I thought you were waiting for Samhain?” my mother says uneasily.
“The harvest moon works just as well,” Leona says. “We already have Brom in the cathedral. The horseman was very adept in handing him over.”
No.
No.
My eyes go wide, my stomach twisting, and it takes all my energy to keep the shadow magic going, to keep myself hidden in the dark.
“You already have Brom?” my mother asks warily.
“Yes. His body, anyway. His seed. That’s what counts. I’m afraid the horseman has fully possessed him at this point, and there will be no going back. Once we find Katrina, our ritual will commence, with Goruun’s presence to bless the whole thing.” She pauses. “You haven’t seen Katrina, have you?”
My mother shakes her head. “No.”
“Why do I feel like you’re lying?” Leona says, stepping forward.
“I’m not lying.”
“You wouldn’t be lying to try and save your own daughter, would you?”
“No. I’m not…I…have you checked Professor Crane’s room? I’m sure she’s with him.”
“We just came from there,” Ana says and my heart drops. “There was no sign of either of them.”
Oh thank goodness.
“I see,” my mother says, averting her eyes.
“You told them,” Leona says, seething, leaning in across the tub. “You told them to run and hide, didn’t you?”
“I didn’t,” my mother says, shaking her head. “I didn’t.” Then she meets Leona’s awful gaze. “But I wish I did.”
Leona straightens up, a smirk on her fleshless mouth. “Hmmmph. Thank you for being honest, Sarah. At least we know now that we can’t trust you.”
And at that, Leona puts her hand out and lights the bloody bathwater on fire.
“You should have burned like your ancestors did, my dear daughter,” Leona says to her as my mother screams and tries to crawl out of the bathtub. The flames catch, burning higher and the heat fills the room, and it’s only by sheer luck that where I’m standing is still in shadow.
“No!” my mother cries out, the agony going straight to my heart, and the fire engulfs her head, the blood burning like she’s been doused in oil. She screams again, and I am certain any teachers left in this building will hear it.
But where will they go?
Where can they go when the coven will find them anyway?
Leona and Ana turn around, their cloaks swishing around them as they leave the room, and I am left alone with my dying mother as she burns and drowns in the bathtub.
And I can’t even save her. I want to. Despite all she’s done to me, I want to save her. I want to try and redeem her, as if that will spare me some awful fate. Blood runs deep, and it holds tight, and I want to spare her from this horror, solely based on the fact that I think she would have spared me.
But I can’t. I just stand there in the shadows, and I watch as she’s burned into a crisp, until the flames go out, plunging us back into moonlight, and her charred body sinks beneath the surface.
Until it looks like it did when I first came in the room.
As if nothing had happened at all.
Chapter 33
Brom
The day the horseman caught up with me I was in Manhattan, standing outside a laborer’s union, looking to see if I could find some work. I had this awful feeling that I was being watched, which normally wouldn’t have felt unusual. After all, for those four damn years I had run away from Sleepy Hollow, I thought I was being watched everywhere I went.
