The Witches of the Dark Power

by Gabriella Lepore

  Mia perched on the edge of her bed and knotted her fingers together.

  ‘Sometimes it’s hard to believe things that we don’t want to believe,’ Amos went on, adjusting his glasses. ‘I’ve known Colt for many years, and I care about him—’

  ‘Then you know he wouldn’t do this,’ Mia argued for what felt like the hundredth time. It was an argument that only ever seemed to fall on deaf ears.

  ‘My heart says he isn’t responsible . . .’

  Mia suddenly took notice.

  ‘But my head says he is,’ Amos finished. ‘The proof was right there in front of us. We can’t very well ignore that, just because we’re fond of the lad.’

  ‘The proof?’ Mia repeated, seeing a window of opportunity to clear Colt’s name. ‘What proof? The book?’ she cried. ‘That’s not proof, Mr Amos. He was just keeping it safe from the actual bad guy!’

  She groaned inwardly as soon as the words left her lips. Okay, so that sounded a little flimsy even to my ears, she accepted. If only Colt was there to do the talking. After all, he had certainly convinced her last night.

  But Amos wasn’t swayed. Not yet, anyway. ‘How can we take that risk? How can we be sure?’

  Mia hesitated. Was it her imagination, or did Amos want to be convinced of Colt’s innocence? Finally! she thought. Now this is something I can work with . . .

  ‘He didn’t do it,’ she said assertively. Not the most airtight argument, she conceded, but the passion was there. Surely that should count for something?

  ‘I can’t take that risk,’ Amos reiterated. ‘For your sake and for your family’s sake, I just can’t.’

  ‘Then talk to Colt,’ Mia appealed. ‘At least hear him out. Is Wendolyn awake yet? She’ll agree. I know she will.’

  Amos clasped his hands together and bowed his head. ‘Wendolyn is sleeping.’

  Mia furrowed her brow. ‘Still? What time is it?’

  ‘A little after eleven.’

  Mia’s eyebrows shot up. ‘That’s late for Wendolyn.’

  ‘She’s unwell,’ he replied quietly.

  ‘Oh.’ Mia felt a twist in her stomach. ‘Is she going to be okay?’

  ‘Yes, yes. Of course. She may not be better, but she is certainly no worse.’

  ‘Oh.’ Was that meant to be a positive? Amos seemed to think so.

  ‘Nevertheless,’ he continued, ‘you do make a valid point. Wendolyn would insist on hearing Colt out, and in her absence, so must I.’

  Mia almost fainted in sheer relief.

  ‘Thank you,’ she breathed. ‘You won’t regret it.’

  He considered her wording. ‘I hope not,’ he muttered. Then, louder, he said, ‘I will send for him this afternoon. However, if I am not satisfied with Colt’s intentions, I will be forced to reinstate the banishment. And I need you to accept my decision, whatever it may be. Can you promise me that?’

  She nodded emphatically, barely hearing him. She was sure that Amos’s decision would be in Colt’s favour. That was the only outcome she could fathom at the moment.

  ‘Know that everything I do, I do with your best interests at heart,’ he added, nodding his snowy head in reassurance. ‘Trust in my judgement. I’m smarter than this old mug would suggest,’ he chided with a knowing smile.

  Mia smiled back.

  That’s what I’m banking on, she replied silently, crossing her fingers for luck.

  Later that day, some of the castle’s residents gathered in the library to continue their search for the spell to break the Arx. Isaac and Roland were seated together in the far corner of the room. Amos, Madeline, and Cassandra were around the apothecary table, while Mia, Dino, and Blue were sitting in a row, shoulder to shoulder on the floor against the wall.

  ‘Blah, blah, blah, history,’ Mia muttered idly as she flipped a page in a musty old book. This is a waste of time, she thought. None of the books she’d read had even hinted at the whereabouts of the spell to break the force-field. Meanwhile, the real culprit who planned to kill her to steal the Arx was still out there.

  She turned the page. ‘Blah, blah, blah, traditions . . .’

  Isaac tutted at her from across the room.

  She blushed. ‘Sorry,’ she mumbled, flipping the page.

  Dino rolled his eyes. ‘You know, I think they’re actually getting a kick out of all this research,’ he said under his breath, nodding towards Isaac and Roland, who pretended not to hear.

  Mia smiled. ‘Give them a break. They’re doing me a favour, remember?’

  ‘Don’t flatter yourself,’ Dino muttered. ‘They’re doing Wendolyn a favour. Trying to score points, anyway.’

  ‘If that’s true, then they must really want to impress,’ said Mia, stared down at the tedious scripture in her lap.

  ‘Tell me about it,’ Dino groaned. ‘I think I’ve pulled a muscle in my brain.’ He paused and glanced at Blue. ‘Is that possible?’

  Blue grinned. ‘I don’t think so. But you know,’ he reproached them in good humour, ‘when you actually read the text—instead of just skimming the subheadings—it’s very interesting. You could l-learn something.’

  Dino pulled a face. ‘Snooze.’

  ‘Ugh,’ Mia seconded. ‘Knowing that I can get by on just reading the subheadings is the only thing keeping me going.’

  Dino used both hands to lift his heavy tome. ‘Have you seen the size of this print? It’s miniature. My eyes can’t read words that small.’ He hovered the text in front of Blue’s face.

  ‘Here.’ Blue thrust his own book into Dino’s lap. ‘Swap. This scripture is easier to understand. It’s more your level.’

  ‘Hey!’ Dino griped as he offloaded his own book into Blue’s awaiting hands. ‘My level? What does that mean?’

  ‘It means that your level is lower than his,’ Mia teased. ‘Much lower.’

  Blue leaned across Dino and peered down at the text in Mia’s tome. ‘Huh.’

  ‘Huh?’ She frowned at Blue.

  He rose from the carpet and strolled to the wall of books. After careful consideration, he selected a medium-sized leather bound volume and brought it to Mia. ‘Try that one,’ he suggested kindly as he sat back down beside Dino. ‘The script is a little easier to manage for a beginner.’

  Dino smirked at his sister. ‘Look who’s in the low level group now!’

  ‘You’re not low level,’ Blue corrected diplomatically. ‘You’re beginners. I’ve been here all year, remember?’

  Mia pushed her former book to one side and began on the new one. She scanned the subheadings, then turned the page.

  Still boring, she decided.

  The heavy library door lurched open and Demetrius marched in.

  Mia looked up from her book. Amos had sent Demetrius and the younger Hunters to collect Colt hours ago. Did this mean that Colt was back in the castle? She resisted the urge to leap to her feet.

  ‘Sir,’ boomed Demetrius, ‘I return with bad news.’

  Bad news? Mia’s pulse went into overdrive. ‘Is it Colt?’ she cried, standing now.

  Demetrius glared at her through his thick black eyelashes.

  ‘Demetrius, what’s happened?’ Amos pressed, rising from his seat, too.

  ‘I went in search of the exiled coven leader, as you requested,’ he said.

  ‘And?’ Amos prompted.

  Mia started to feel short of breath.

  Demetrius bowed his head. ‘My search for the exiled Hunter was unsuccessful.’

  ‘Oh, well,’ Madeline sang breezily from her spot at the apothecary table. ‘You gave it your best shot.’

  Mia frowned at her.

  Amos cleared his throat. ‘I see,’ he began. ‘Yes, that is very bad news indeed—’

  ‘That’s not the bad news I speak of,’ Demetrius continued in a deep voice. ‘Our Arcana, Jonathan, is missing. As is Siren and the Tome of Black Magic.’

  Chapter Thirteen

  See No Evil

  The hours that followed Demetrius’s announcement were ten
se, to say the least. With Jonathan missing, Wendolyn unconscious, and Colt still on the loose with Siren as his presumed accomplice, the orders were for everyone to stay within the protected grounds of the castle where the rogue Hunters could not set foot.

  With the Arcana on lockdown, the castle was sombre.

  Curled up in an armchair in the drawing room, Mia chewed her thumbnail. Outside it was dark, and rain had started to fall. It pattered against the castle’s tall lead-framed windows, spilling down the glass in quick streams.

  Mia rose slowly from her seat and gazed around the imposing room. Huddled on the sofa, her aunt and mother sipped tea and murmured back and forth in hushed voices. They looked up when they heard movement.

  ‘Where are you going?’ Cassandra asked at once.

  ‘To bed,’ Mia replied. ‘I’m tired.’ She forced a smile.

  ‘Okay, sweetie,’ her mother returned. ‘I’ll check on you later.’

  Madeline blew her a kiss. ‘Night, hun.’

  ‘Night,’ Mia replied quietly. She left the drawing room and crossed the lower corridor. As she lumbered up the staircase, each step she took felt heavy, laden with the weight of her tormented mind.

  She’d heard the whispers; it wasn’t as though anyone was trying particularly hard to conceal their suspicions. Everyone thought that Colt had killed Jonathan.

  Mia squeezed her eyes shut, trying in vain to block out the thought. Could he really do such a thing? Sure, he didn’t like Jonathan—that was certainly no secret—but murder?

  No. She refused to consider it. Colt’s not a murderer. I know he’s not. She paused on the steps. But what if I really am blinded by him, just like everyone says?

  If that was the case, could she have been wrong all along? Wrong to trust him? Wrong to stand back while he stole the book with the spell to steal the Arx? Wrong to not warn Johnathan of Colt’s vendetta against him? And now Colt held an Enticement over her, with the power to draw her to him whenever he chose. And still she defended him?

  Naturally, Mia hadn’t told anyone about Colt’s Enticement. She’d have to deal with it on her own; seeking out anyone else’s help would only get Colt in more trouble, and she wasn’t sure she wanted that, either.

  The only way she knew to break the Enticement he held over her was to take the blood of his coven. Siren, Talon, Finn—any of them would do the trick. Perhaps, under the circumstances, the younger Hunters wouldn’t mind sparing a couple of drops of blood. Of course, she’d have to ingest it for the remedy to work . . .

  Yuck. Her stomach heaved at the idea. Still, drinking a few drops of Hunter blood would beat the other alternative: death by Hunter.

  Death by Colt.

  On the other hand, there was still cause to argue Colt’s innocence. What if Jonathan really had been the one plotting to steal the Arx? What if Jonathan was the one who’d taken the Tome of Black Magic and was now laying low, waiting for his chance to strike? What if Jonathan had framed Colt?

  Mia shivered at the thought.

  She reached her bedchamber and twisted the handle. Slipping inside, she let the door fall shut behind her with a soft click. Dino’s side of the room was empty. He was probably in the library with Blue, Mia presumed.

  She wandered to the wardrobe and opened the double doors. Her meagre selection of clothes and jackets hung before her in a neat row.

  The weather outside was grim, matching Mia’s mood. Even safely inside the cosy bedchamber, the window pane trembled beneath the force of the rainstorm. But there were so many questions she needed answers to—and she needed them now.

  Mia glanced over her shoulder to the closed door. In this treasured moment of solitude, she was finally free from the watchful eyes of the others. She had choices to make, and the opportunity to make them.

  ‘Okay,’ she muttered to herself, letting out a breath. ‘I can do this.’

  She reached into the wardrobe and slid her blue raincoat from its hanger. Before she had the chance to second guess herself, Mia slipped the coat on over her clothes and zipped it to the top. Then, she hurried to her bed and bunched up the quilt, stuffing pillows under the sheets in case her mother came to check on her.

  Trembling, Mia quickly extinguished all of the candles and crept out of the chamber. She snuck along the corridor and down the steps to the main entrance.

  Out in the courtyard, rain lashed down, forming puddles on the paving stones. Mia flipped up her hood and paced towards the gardens. She crossed onto the boggy grass and forged on across the lawn.

  Thanks to her early morning trek to the castle, she was confident that she would be able to retrace her steps back to Colt. She had no doubt that he would be there. Even if he had managed to hide from Demetrius and the others, he wouldn’t hide from Mia. That much she knew.

  The storm raged on, and soon Mia’s clothes and shoes were heavy with water. She blinked against the raindrops as they struck at her from all angles. But she kept going, clinging to her hood, holding it firmly in place as wisps of silken brown hair escaped and whipped in front of her eyes.

  She reached the sloping embankment and began her unsteady descent down the muddy incline. The misted rows of pines just beyond the clearing were swaying wildly under the might of the storm.

  Nearly at the foot of the slope, Mia skidded on a slick patch of grass and landed with a thud on the flat ground below. She groaned. ‘Give me a break!’

  Strangely, for just a second or two, the rain and wind bowed away from her, as though her cry had quite literally scared it away. It was as though, for that brief moment in time, Mia had been encased in her own little bubble, protected and sheltered from the storm.

  Mia glanced to the dark, imposing forest. What just happened? she wondered. Did I do that?

  Her mind was racing. Had she finally managed to call upon the passion that Colt had so desperately wanted her to find? It stood to reason, really. At that moment, her very being was charged with emotions: anger, confusion, fear, grief, love . . .

  She rose to her feet and gripped the rim of her hood as the material whipped against her cheeks. This was it—her chance to prove that she could master her Tempestus ability on her own. With every ounce of emotion she could muster, she commanded the rain to deviate from her path.

  ‘Move,’ she said firmly.

  And, just like that, it did. The downpour bent away from her like curtains being parted to grant her access. She had created a clear and dry path that ran through the storm like an invisible tunnel.

  A triumphant smile spread over Mia’s face. With a swell of pride, she relinquished her grip on her hood and allowed it to slip down onto her back. Her long hair barely even stirred as the gale shied away from her. She had done it!

  In fact, the rain carved a path for her the whole way to the outskirts of the Glass Castle borders, and not until she had ventured into the forest did she release her control over the downpour. Once in the forest, the tangled mass of branches and leaves became her shelter.

  Mia stopped and took stock, adjusting to her new surroundings. The trees were gnarled and their moss-covered branches were hooked and deformed. A short distance away, a dense patch of silvery mist hung in the air. Colt’s mist.

  Instead of floating through the pines in clouds of vapour, however, it now formed what appeared to be a series of impenetrable walls. Its consistency was so opaque that it took on the appearance of ice rather than the insubstantial vapours that it was.

  There was a clear path leading into the mist, and Mia began down it. Ahead, it broke off into other pathways—a complex rabbit warren of tunnels. It’s a maze, she realized with a sudden knot of trepidation.

  ‘Colt?’ Mia called uneasily.

  She edged deeper into the maze. The walls of silver mist rose high above her head. Tentatively, she began down the first path, brushing away puffs of fogged air that drifted free from the walls. The other sounds of the forest were stifled, leaving it eerily quiet. As Mia paused at a fork in the path, she could only hear the pa
nt of her breath and the distant patter of raindrops landing on leaves.

  Left or right? she contemplated, peering into the depths of the unknown passageways.

  She thought back to the instruction Colt had given when he’d guided her through the underground passages in the castle. ‘Two lefts then a right,’ she murmured to herself. ‘And repeat if necessary.’

  Left, she decided, and forged on. However, before she’d had chance to complete the sequence, she was grabbed from behind and pulled deeper into the chasms of the maze, rupturing the thick walls of fog.

  Dragged backwards, Mia coughed and gasped for air as she breathed in the mist. She grappled for her footing and finally stumbled to a stop, collapsing into Colt.

  ‘You were going the wrong way,’ he told her casually as they stood in a mist enclosed corridor in the forest. ‘You bypassed a turn.’

  Mia quickly gathered herself. ‘Jonathan is missing,’ she blurted out.

  Colt’s body went rigid and he stepped back from her. ‘Since when?’

  ‘I don’t know. This morning, maybe.’ Mia met his eyes in the darkness. ‘Tell me you don’t have anything to do with it. You don’t, do you?’ They stood face to face, with silver walls of mist surrounding them on all sides.

  ‘I wish I’d had something to do with it,’ Colt snapped. His eyes blazed deep green as they bore into Mia’s accusing gaze.

  ‘How can I believe you?’ she cried.

  ‘Someone has to.’

  ‘But why does it have to be me?’ she despaired, looking to the ground.

  Colt didn’t answer.

  Mia exhaled and raked her hands through her hair. ‘If you’ve got nothing to do with it, then where is he?’

  ‘Good question,’ he said darkly.

  Mia’s mouth went dry. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I mean that his disappearance is all too convenient. He’s got a plan. And he’s getting ready to execute it.’

  Mia winced. She had considered the notion herself, but to hear it said aloud made her blood run cold. ‘You seriously think that Jonathan might be on the loose and’—she swallowed—‘dangerous?’