Escape to Witch City

by E. Latimer

  It moves,” Emma breathed, still staring out over the city. “Good God, this entire place moves. How are we supposed to find them?”

  Cold horror was curling in her stomach, though she wasn’t sure if it was due to the blatant display of magic by the empty city or the realization that this would make it nearly impossible to find their friends.

  A second later though, mingled with the sound of her own frenzied pulse in her ears, she heard a faint thump-thump, thump-thump.

  Emma jerked upright, pulling away from the door. She couldn’t waste a minute, not this time. “I can hear one of them. Quick, this way.”

  She plunged down the steps and made it halfway across the road when Edgar finally caught up. “You shouldn’t use your magic!” he said breathlessly from just behind her. “It’s dangerous. It will turn your eyes black and rot your tongue in your mouth. Emma, wait. Slow down!”

  She frowned, still hurrying forward, trying to concentrate as hard as she could on where the Noise was coming from. Up ahead was a long, winding street, hedged in on both sides by shops and hotels.

  Maddie and Eliza had to be up there somewhere, but if the streets shifted again before they could get there…

  Edgar was still protesting. “You can’t use witchcraft, it’s evil—”

  She finally spun on him. “Who is evil exactly? It’s your mother who was going to hang us.”

  Edgar fell silent, his face miserable, and she hesitated. “I-I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that. I mean…my mother, I don’t know if she…” She let her words trail off, unable to say it out loud.

  Isolde couldn’t have known.

  Before Edgar could reply, there came another loud rumble, and the cobblestones beneath them shook violently. Edgar gave a cry of dismay, and Emma darted forward without thinking, grabbing him by the arms.

  They couldn’t be separated. She wouldn’t let them.

  The buildings overhead were shaking so violently, the trees around them quivering and blurring so much that Emma had to squeeze her eyes shut for fear of being sick.

  The shaking was shorter this time, thankfully. When it finally tapered off, she opened her eyes, blinking around.

  They were now standing in the middle of an open square, much larger than the last one.

  It was vaguely familiar, and as she turned, looking around at the buildings, she began to think she’d been here before. There was a huge, L-shaped mansion in the distance, with siding that had once been white, though it had turned gray over the years. She could picture it in her mind now, with white walls and a pristine tiled roof.

  Yes, she’d been here before, though it had not been empty like this. And the fountain in the middle wasn’t quite right—here, it had a statue of a woman with a raven perched on her shoulder, which Emma was certain she’d never seen before.

  But she knew where they were now.

  This was Parliament Square—at least, she was fairly certain it was. It looked very different with trees looming over it, and the sides of the buildings covered in moss and ivy.

  The square was also completely empty. There was no sign of Eliza or Maddie.

  Her stomach sank, but she forced herself to walk farther into the square, to scan the surrounding buildings carefully. There was a startling moment when something gave a loud shriek from just in front of them, and then came the beating and flutter of wings as the raven on the statue launched itself into the air. Emma screamed and jumped back, and then gave a strangled laugh as she realized what had happened. She’d thought the bird was a part of the statue.

  Beside her, Edgar tilted his head back, shuddering. The offended raven was circling above them now, soon joined by another.

  Emma’s adrenaline was still high after the latest earthquake, the blood still rushing in her ears, so it took her a moment to hear the faint thumping of another heartbeat. She snapped to attention as the sound became clearer.

  There.

  Behind her, Edgar gave a squawk of protest as she shot off toward one of the nearest buildings.

  “Come on, before it moves!”

  This seemed to light a fire under him, because he barreled after her, following her across the square and up the stairs of a building, the washed-out boards creaking under their feet. It was an old barber shop, complete with a faded red-and-blue pole outside, though it was lying flat, as if someone had come along and yanked it down. Emma couldn’t see inside, since there were tattered yellow shades pulled over both windows. When she made her way to the weed-covered stoop and pushed the door open, she was startled to hear a bell above her jangle.

  The shop was small. There were three chairs set up in front of a trio of dusty mirrors. There were even capes laid out, and jars full of rusted combs and scissors at each station. Bottles of shaving tonic stood beside them, covered in dust and cobwebs. At the back was a couch, and a coffee table that held several moldering books and magazines. Just beyond that was another door, a back room maybe.

  Emma’s footsteps echoed on the floorboards, which creaked loudly as she moved inside. The shop smelled musty, and she wrinkled her nose before cupping one hand to her mouth.

  “Eliza? Maddie?” Her voice sounded small in the stillness. At first there was no answer, and then she heard a muffled thud from the back. She froze, eyes on the door. Whoever was behind there, it couldn’t be Eliza or Maddie; they would have answered.

  She almost jumped out of her boots when she heard shuffling footsteps behind her. She whirled around to glare at Edgar, who stood waiting in the doorway. He blinked at her when she shoved a finger to her lips, eyes wide, and then turned to point at the door to the back room.

  Slowly he nodded, and held the front door open wider.

  Thanking her lucky stars that he had at least some common sense, she crept forward, toward the prince and the exit. Whatever was thumping behind the other door, it probably wasn’t anything they wanted to meet. Wild animals, maybe? A cougar or a bear wouldn’t seem so out of place in this nightmare city, and she didn’t fancy meeting either.

  She was almost out, edging slowly past Edgar, when another thud came from the back room, followed by a sharp yelp. Emma stopped, the hairs on the back of her neck prickling.

  That had sounded like Maddie.

  She exchanged a quick look with Edgar, who was shaking his head frantically, and then turned back into the shop, inwardly groaning. What if it was Maddie and Eliza, and they were in some kind of trouble that didn’t allow them to answer?

  She moved quickly for the door at the back. If she had to open it, it might be better to take whatever was in there by surprise.

  Emma yanked open the door, and then reeled back in shock.

  Eliza stood in the center of a small, dimly lit room, her expression twisted with fear and rage. There were shelves of dusty boxes on either side of her, illuminated by the flames encasing both of her arms, all the way up to her shoulders. Standing at a safe distance behind her was Maddie, who spotted Emma a second later and flapped her hands, eyes wide.

  “Eliza! It’s her, she’s back again!”

  Eliza whirled to face Emma, throwing her hands up. Emma opened her mouth, about to tell them not to worry, when a huge, orange fireball blossomed from Eliza’s hands, hurtling straight toward her.

  Emma shrieked, darting behind one of the barber chairs as the flames shot past, inches away. The fire flickered wildly in the side of her vision and reflected back at her a thousand times in the mirrors, as searing heat flashed across her cheeks. “Eliza, it’s me!”

  “It’s us!” Edgar shrieked from the doorway.

  “It was you before.” Sparks showered off the tips of Eliza’s fingers, sizzling on the floor at her feet. “And then it wasn’t.”

  “What are you talking about?” Emma peered out from behind the chair, gripping the moldering leather, fear making her throat tight.

  She ros
e from her crouch, still holding on to the back of the chair in case she needed a shield again. “I’m me,” she said urgently. “I have no idea what you’re on about, but you need to calm down so you can put that fire out.” It was only a matter of time before the sparks from Eliza’s hands struck a dry spot in the ruined shop and started an inferno.

  “We don’t know it’s her,” Maddie said. She was looking hard at Emma, and then at Edgar. “But she has got the prince with her.”

  “She could be tricking us.”

  “What are you talking about?” Emma looked helplessly from Eliza to Maddie. They were acting as if she were the enemy. After everything they’d been through together…

  “Ask her something only she would know,” Maddie said, but Eliza only raised a hand higher, eyes wide and wild. The flames were licking at her throat now. Her fire seemed to be completely out of control.

  “Alright, alright.” Maddie turned to Emma. Her hands were trembling, and she curled them into fists at her sides. “Emma, do you remember when we first met, and I let you go in front of me?”

  Emma blinked at her, feeling a trickle of panic run down her spine. First, they were treating her like the enemy, and now Maddie was talking nonsense. “I…what?”

  Behind her she heard Edgar groan, and Maddie flinched and stepped back.

  “Wait, hold on,” she said quickly. “That’s a lie. I let you go in front of me, because you wanted to get it over with. The Testing, I mean.”

  Maddie’s shoulders slumped and her face relaxed into an expression of relief. “It’s really her.”

  Eliza slowly lowered her hands, brows raised. A long moment passed while she continued to stare at Emma, and Emma held her breath, her entire body tense in case she had to duck. Then Eliza’s shoulders relaxed, and her flames extinguished all at once, flickering away as if they’d been reabsorbed into her skin. She straightened her shoulders and shook her hands out. “Alright, maybe it is her.”

  “What on earth was that about?”

  All three girls turned to look at the doorway, where Edgar was still standing, looking absolutely horrified.

  “There’s something out there, that’s what.” Eliza looked grim. “And it could come back at any moment.”

  “We should leave.” Maddie glanced over at the door. “I don’t like this place at all.”

  “What was it?” Emma said. “What did you see?”

  “There was someone—or something—here,” Eliza said. She was already heading for the door, and the others followed. “Something that looked like you, but it behaved…not like you. It tried to get us to follow it, and when we wouldn’t, it chased us into the shop. I burst into flames and it ran.”

  Emma’s skin was crawling. “It looked like me?”

  “At first,” Maddie said, her expression uneasy. “And then when it realized it wasn’t fooling us, it looked like me, and then Eliza.”

  Emma caught a glimpse of herself in a pock-marked, dusty mirror and shivered. It could only be magic. Which meant there was a real live witch somewhere in Forest-London.

  “That sounds horrible.” Edgar shuddered. “You’re right—let’s get out of here.”

  Emma glanced through the doorframe to the strange city beyond. “Wherever here is.”

  “The In-Between,” Edgar said. “That’s what she called it.”

  “It’s London,” Emma said. “Or…something like London.”

  But eerily silent and half-swallowed by forest, not to mention constantly moving.

  “We should go.” Eliza glanced at the door to the shop, and then back over her shoulder. “We should keep moving, in case that thing comes back. The ambassador said to get to the other side of…something.”

  “London, it’s got to be London.” Edgar stood up straighter and cleared his throat, as if he hadn’t just been ready to bolt out the door a moment ago. “We should get on with it.”

  “But it’s completely ridiculous,” Maddie said. “Getting across London could take days.”

  They crowded onto the doorstep, looking out at the crumbling buildings covered in moss, at the crooked stone street ahead of them, shadowed by trees stretching up into the sky. Even as they stood there a faint rumble could be heard, and Emma felt the ground tremble beneath her. They watched as the tops of buildings in the distance disappeared and reappeared.

  “Or maybe longer.” Maddie’s voice was shaky. “I suppose you two have already discovered it does that.”

  “Yes,” Edgar said darkly.

  “Whatever you do”—Emma kept her eyes fixed on the shifting buildings—“stay very close together.”

  They made their way back onto the street, moving over the uneven cobblestones in a tight cluster, with Emma and Eliza in front and Maddie and Edgar just behind, nearly walking on their heels. She felt more like the leader of a jungle expedition than someone walking through a city.

  Emma looked up at the brick buildings as they passed—shops with broken windowpanes, greenery bursting through blinds and rotten curtains, saplings growing up through porches and walkways. Hundreds of dark, empty windows peered down at them, creating the sensation of hundreds of dark eyes following their progress. It made Emma’s skin crawl.

  Maybe trusting the ambassador had been a terrible mistake. Maybe the witches were simply trying to finish off two more members of the Black family. If this had been a trap, they’d walked straight into it.

  She kept watching the dark windows, half expecting to see herself peering out from behind the smudged glass.

  They took a left down another narrow street, almost an alley, with rusted bins on either side and a fence that had nearly rotted away. The sight of it seemed to trigger something in her brain.

  The picture was off. She’d been down roads like this back home, but this one was different, aside from obviously being overgrown.

  No fog. That’s what was missing. There was no fog here, no curling mist rolling along the streets and up off the water. London was nearly always covered in smog or enveloped in fog, but here the air was completely clear, revealing every crumbling building in stark detail.

  It was also, as she had noticed earlier, warmer, and Emma unbuttoned her jacket fully as they went. As disturbing as this place was, it also made her feel like the East Wing always did. Lighter on her feet, more awake than usual. The telltale signs of a lack of thistle.

  Beside her, Eliza had slowed to nearly a stop. Emma was just turning to tell her they needed to stay together when she caught sight of what the other girl was staring at. She started, cold panic jolting through her.

  A moment later she relaxed, feeling sheepish.

  What she’d mistaken for a person standing at the base of the nearest building was a statue carved in dark, glimmering stone. A woman in long, flowing robes. Her head was tilted back to the sky, and a smile was on her lips. She wore a tall, pointed hat, and in one hand was a wicker broom.

  Eliza stepped closer to the base of the statue, and Emma and the others followed.

  It was quite remarkable. Emma had never seen one carved in such fine detail. And the surface was so smooth and glassy that when she edged forward, she could see her own blurred and stretched reflection.

  “A witch,” Maddie said in wonder. She was right behind Emma, peering over her shoulder. She looked both transfixed and wary, as if she wasn’t sure if she should get too close.

  The stone woman’s face was broad and handsome, and she had a full figure and wide shoulders. She looked fierce and rather stern, but all the same, the statue was nothing like Queen Alexandria’s. There was no malice or poisonous secrets in this woman’s stare.

  Eliza frowned, moving around the back of the statue. “Who’s she supposed to be? There’s no plaque.”

  Emma’s mind was working furiously now, trying to remember the first statue she’d seen. Parts of the face had been worn away, and
she hadn’t paid close attention to the other details.

  Were all the statues in this Forest-London of witches?

  Edgar was fidgeting behind her, and when Emma glanced back she found him clearly distraught.

  “What’s the matter?”

  He looked at her, eyes wide. “What if we’re already here? What if this is Witch City?”

  The was silence for a moment as this statement sunk in.

  It was almost as if Edgar had struck her. Emma felt dizzy at the idea, off balance, and she reached out a hand to brace herself on the base of the statue. The stone was cold and smooth under her fingers.

  The strange copy of London, the shifting streets…it made a horrible kind of sense.

  “That can’t be true.” Eliza was shaking her head furiously, fists curled at her sides.

  “But just look at this.” Edgar glared around at them. “It’s a witch statue. It makes sense.”

  “But there’s no one here.” Maddie glanced up at the building in front of them, where row upon row of empty windows peered down.

  “Why would the ambassador send us here?” Emma said.

  Edgar looked at her, expression dark. “She’s a witch. When have witches ever helped the Black family?”

  “You can hardly speak.” Eliza growled the words. A faint trickle of smoke rose from her closed fingers. “The Blacks kill witches.”

  “We were only returning the favor.” Edgar’s expression was sour. “You lot started it by killing the queen, my grandmother.”

  “You’ve been fed a bunch of lies.” Eliza’s voice was low and tense. “We never killed her, she was one of us.”

  Edgar instantly bristled. “What? Don’t be preposterous. Witches wiped out my entire family. They’re evil, murderous—”

  There was a sudden woof sound, and fire sprang up from Eliza’s hands, the flames licking up her arms.

  Edgar jumped back, jabbing a finger at her. “See? Murderous!”

  “And I suppose your mother was perfectly happy to hang her own son, because she’s all about justice.”