A Witch in a Well

by K. J. Emrick

  Unlike the more interesting passageways behind them, the rock here was almost smooth, with few striations of minerals or sediments. No stalactites hung from the ceiling. Every so often a bulge in the wall or the floor would cast even more shadows around them, as if the skin of the passageway was blistering, but that was the only thing to see. These passageways were lava tubes, created long before the other parts of the caverns were carved out by water. They dated back to the creation of the Earth, and a time of primordial chaos.

  Thankfully they had their flashlights to push back the shadows. Chase and Purity were quick to aim theirs into the dark. Godfrey whispered something to Maria about how he would watch out for her as he held up his, too. Addie rummaged for hers in her pack, a slim but powerful LED. Willow put Domovyk down again and let him walk for himself while she pointed hers around as well. All things considered, they had plenty of light to see by.

  Just not enough to see everything. Shadows collected thickly around their feet and danced with the uncoordinated rhythm of the flashlight beams, moving and reforming and never quite going fully away.

  Another loud creaking of tortured rock reverberated around them, and they heard pebbles cascading down the Steps behind them, loosened by the vibrations.

  “Right,” Kiera said, as if the cave had just reminded her that time was of the essence. “Now, as you see, the tunnel splits in two directions through here. Going to the right will only bring us back to the Cathedral. We must go to our left. Stay together, please.”

  Once they were moving, Addie closed and relocked the door with thin streams of magic. She put a few of the spells back in place too, but she really was feeling the strain on her body. Her Essence was low. She needed a two-day nap and a gallon of mint chocolate chip ice cream to recharge herself. And one of Lucian’s foot massages.

  Lucian. She hadn’t thought of him for a while now, but the whispered mention of his name through her mind made her wish he was here. Not that there was anything he could do that they weren’t already doing, but just having him here would make her feel so much better. Like Godfrey was doing for Maria. Only with Lucian and herself, there was a deep and intimate bond. One that was part love, and part magic, and all wonderful. It wasn’t some random meeting like it had been for Maria and Godfrey.

  Although, love had started from stranger places than this.

  She couldn’t think of any at the moment, but she was sure that was true.

  Floodlights snapped on all around her as Kiera found the red push button switch just inside the entryway.

  This passageway went left and right from where they were standing, even though the furthest end of both choices was lost in shadows. The lighting here wasn’t very bright. They hardly ever used this section of the tunnels, and when they did… well, witches had ways of seeing in the dark that didn’t involve adding to the draw on the town’s power grid. Under the thin glow the rock was less colorful, and the edges of the tunnel were sharper. Up above them the stalactites seemed poised to drop with dagger-like points. It was not an inviting space.

  Some of that was spellwork created by Addie and her sisters. A simple spell to make people scared to even be here.

  Some of it was simply the fact that this was a spooky stretch of Shadow Lake Caverns.

  “Which way?” Godfrey asked, shining his flashlight all around them. The LED beam was brighter than the wall-mounted lights.

  “This way,” Kiera said, making a sharp turn to the left. Against the harsh yellow lighting, her brooch seemed to shine with an inner light. Addie knew that effect. Kiera had connected the protective amulet to the resonant energies of the stone all around them, hoping to be alerted to any big tremors that could signal another cave in before they happened.

  There was actually a third tunnel off to the side here, but it was a dead end that wasn’t even wired for lighting at all. There were hundreds of little spurs like that all through these caverns. Nature wasn’t perfect, after all. It was just interesting.

  Water dripped from the ceiling, along the tips of the stalactites, and onto their shoulders as they made their way. Maria looked up nervously as she wiped a droplet off her cheek. “We’re underneath the lake now? Shadow Lake is… up there? All of that water?”

  “Yeah,” Willow said. “Just try not to think about it.”

  Addie gave her a look. Yes, they had to go in this direction to get out, but there were ways of saying things that wouldn’t start a general panic in the group.

  Willow shrugged. She had been down here lots of times before. More so than Addie, actually, because she liked the quiet and the feel of raw power that emanated from everywhere in the caverns. She was comfortable down here. Here, in this world of light and shadows, she felt safe.

  Then again, she hadn’t seen that shadowy person standing in the tunnel before the explosion, or the little creature that had ran at its feet.

  “Boom.”

  A chill ran up Addie’s spine as she remembered it. That person had known exactly what they were doing, and exactly what would happen when they set off that explosion. If Addie hadn’t used her quick wits and her magic, she and Kiera might be dead now, too, just like Evelyn was. What was two more dead bodies in the scheme of things? That was how the mind of a coldblooded killer worked.

  Alan’s face flashed across her mind’s eye again. Was that how his mind worked?

  Please, she thought to herself. Let her be wrong about this one.

  Usually her instincts were pretty good, but she’d made mistakes before. She could be happy if this was one of those times.

  Except, if it hadn’t been Alan back there, then who had it been?

  On the one hand, no one should be able to get in to these caverns who wasn’t a Kilorian. On the other hand, Alan was sort of a Kilorian, which made it better than even money the figure she saw really had been him, but to accept that meant accepting he’d tried to kill not just Addie… but his own mother.

  What could make a man do that?

  That question was just too hard to think about. She set it aside and concentrated on following behind everyone else and stretching out with her senses to make sure there were no other problems coming their way. There weren’t any more colonies of bats to worry about, but there were other creatures who wandered these parts of the caverns, sometimes, and God help them all if Maria got a photo of one of those and posted it on the internet—

  Up ahead, Kiera paused, and held her hand up for everyone else to stop with her.

  A few seconds later Addie felt a tremble building in the cavern under her feet, and then up the walls, reaching to the ceiling above, shaking loose a few palm-sized chunks of stone and a spattering of water.

  That tremor had been close. It faded, and was gone again, but all of them were left with the feeling of being in mortal danger.

  The lights on the walls flickered, and then steadied.

  “Come on,” Addie said to Willow. “I need to ask Kiera something.”

  “You mean, like why do we do this every year? That sort of question?”

  “Very funny.”

  “You have to admit, sis. My suggestion of cancelling is looking pretty good right now, isn’t it?”

  “Just come on,” Addie told her. “Before we start walking again.”

  She motioned for Kiera to move down the hallway with them, just a little further away from their guests. They still used their magical trick to keep their voices from carrying to everyone else.

  Addie felt a pang when she pulled on her magic. She couldn’t remember the last time she had used this much, this quickly.

  “Kiera,” she said, “what about calling on your ex-boyfriend for help?”

  “No.” Kiera’s answer was out of her mouth before Addie was done asking the question. “He was more than my boyfriend, but that isn’t the point. No, we will not call on him.”

  Willow shifted on her feet as she rubbed a hand on her opposite arm. “I don’t know, Kiera. Right now might be a good time to call on Philly.
He can do things the rest of us can’t. He might be able to pull us out of here just by flicking his little finger. If he clapped his hands, he might fix the damage to the tunnels in the blink of an eye.”

  Kiera levelled a hard stare at both of them.

  Mephistopheles Smith—or Philly, as he preferred to be called—had been the love of Kiera’s life when she was just a teenager. Alan was the son that resulted from that love. Kiera had given Alan up for adoption to keep him away from Philly, for her own reasons. At the time she had thought it would be better if father and son never met.

  Which was understandable, when you knew Philly Smith was actually a Fallen Angel.

  And yet, it wasn’t long after Alan arrived in Shadow Lake that Philly had showed up, looking to connect with his son, and looking to put himself back in Kiera’s life too.

  Just one more coincidence that made Addie suspicious of Alan, and of his motives.

  More than once, Alan’s father had proven to be helpful to Kiera and her family. Addie knew that logic got a little twisty when it came to Angels in general, and Philly wasn’t exactly trustworthy, but so long as what he wanted coincided with what they needed, then Addie figured calling on him for help might be their best chance of getting out of here alive.

  Even the Fallen had been known to do a good deed every now and then.

  “Why not give him a call?” Addie pressed. “Working together, with his power and ours…?”

  “Well, first of all,” Kiera said, “there’s no cell signal in these tunnels, as you recall. Secondly, not even magic can extend through all of this rock. I suppose we could have attached a note to the leg of one of the Blood Bats and used them as a carrier pigeon, but bats are notoriously undependable. Not to mention, they’re all gone. I think it’s just as well. Our relationship is complicated at the best of times, and this is hardly the best of times. I shudder to think what Philly might want in return for help of this magnitude.”

  Her words said no, Addie thought to herself, but there was a gleam in her eye that said she might not actually mind it if they found Philly waiting for them around the next bend.

  Willow sighed and rolled her head back, her eyes on the ceiling. “So, no help from our angel friend. Fine. Let’s get back to hoofing it or it will be hours before we—”

  The lights went off completely this time. Darkness fell around them, punctuated by the beams of the three flashlights held by Chase and Purity and Godfrey. Maria had been using her cellphone’s light, Addie reminded herself, and it wasn’t on at the moment. There’s a primal instinct associated with darkness. A need to run from it, to burn it away with light or the sun or fire. Watching the lights go out around them, Addie felt a shudder go up her spine.

  Something bad was going to happen. She just knew it.

  A furry body pressed itself up against Addie’s legs. She recognized Doyle, even in the dark.

  Willow cleared her throat. “If the explosion damaged the power lines, then this is going to be a very long walk home.”

  Kiera’s brooch flashed for a brief second.

  Addie braced herself for another tremor.

  Instead, the lights came back on around them.

  Willow sighed in relief. “Well, that’s better. Let’s get going before it happens again.”

  “I agree,” Kiera said. “Let’s make sure we’re all here, first.”

  Behind them, they heard murmurs of relief from the others, too. Flashlights flicked off. They moved around, picking up their backpacks, and getting ready to move again—

  “Hey. Where’s Maria?”

  Godfrey was looking up and down the tunnel, back in the direction they’d come from, ahead past Addie and her sisters. There was a genuine look of concern in his eyes.

  Maria was gone.

  Chapter 6

  “She was right here beside me,” Godfrey insisted, panic edging into his voice. “She was right here when the lights went out. Now she’s gone. How can she be gone?”

  Addie didn’t like this. She was already stretching out with her senses to try and find Maria. She could feel along the tunnel for a short distance, but all this rock was defeating her magic. It was kind of like trying to push her hand through a layer of styrofoam. If Maria was out there somewhere, she couldn’t reach out to her.

  “She didn’t go past us,” Willow pointed out. “I don’t care if the lights were off. There’s no way we would have missed it if she walked past us.”

  “Or was carried past us,” Doyle whispered loudly at Addie’s feet.

  She glared down at him.

  He looked back at her and flicked his whiskers. “What?”

  “Shush,” she whispered before anyone could hear them. “Cats should be seen and not heard.”

  She knew that her little feline friend was right, however. Maria most likely did not just wander off on her own. If she was missing, then she had probably been taken.

  If she was taken, then it was probably by the person in the red shirt.

  Who might be Kiera’s son…

  No. She had to be wrong about that. Please God, let her be wrong about that.

  But no one had come this way down the tunnel. So if someone took her, they took her the other way, back toward the entryway where they had just come from.

  Which meant they needed to go back that way. Right now.

  Only, they couldn’t bring Chase and Purity and Godfrey with them. They couldn’t put those three in danger to save one person. The red-shirted attacker was out there waiting.

  “Go on,” Kiera said to Addie, as if she could read her sister’s thoughts. “Take Sister Willow and the cats and find Maria. I’ll keep the others moving forward. We will meet up when you return.”

  Splitting up did not seem like a good idea to any of them. There just wasn’t any time to debate the plan. Time was not their friend in this.

  “All right, let’s go,” Addie said to Willow. “Doyle, you too. Domovyk…”

  Hold on. Now where was Domovyk?

  Then she saw him, further down the tunnel, back behind the guests, apparently keeping a guard on the rear of the group.

  “You three stay here,” she said to their remaining guests, starting back down the tunnel. “We’ll find Maria and bring her back to you.’

  “I’m going with you,” Godfrey told her.

  “Uh, no you’re not,” Willow answered for her and Addie both. “These sections of the caverns can be dangerous if you don’t know what you’re doing. That’s why the tour doesn’t come this way.”

  “Don’t care,” he replied, pursing his lips. “I can help. I know about caves. And… I don’t want to see anything bad happen to Maria.”

  Addie exchanged a look with Willow, and her sister’s mouth formed into a little O. So it was like that for him. What Addie had mistaken for harmless flirting had apparently turned into more than that. At least for Godfrey.

  “Look,” Willow told him, crossing her arms and leaning on one hip, “that’s sweet and all but we’re way more capable of finding her on our own than with you holding us back.”

  He hiked his backpack over his shoulder and gave Willow a lopsided frown. “Well, I’m walking in that direction. Unless, of course, you plan on holding me hostage somehow. No offense, ladies, but I don’t think you could take me.”

  “Try me,” Willow smirked.

  “Let him come,” Addie recommended. “This is something else we don’t have time to argue about.”

  Godfrey nodded his thanks, but Addie wasn’t doing it for him. She could feel the seconds slipping away. The other part of this passageway, the right turn that they hadn’t taken, was a winding path that went all the way back to the Cathedral section of the caverns. If Maria’s abductor had taken her that way, it would allow them to get away entirely if they didn’t stop him soon.

  Addie suddenly realized, with that thought, that she had already started thinking of the person in the red shirt as a “him.”

  A man. Yes. She was sure he was a man.
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br />   Alan…?

  They went quickly, but carefully, and Addie and Willow made sure to keep their senses stretched out ahead of them as they came up to the twists and turns that their eyes couldn’t see around. The entryway to this section, with its open door, was right up ahead. The passageway continued on from there. The little dead-end spur off to the side was there as well…

  At the same moment, they both felt it.

  Addie stopped and put her hand up against the wall of the tunnel. The stone was cold and impassive under her fingers.

  “What’s going on?” Godfrey asked, anxious to keep moving until they found Maria.

  “Shh,” Willow told him. “Let us work.”

  Willow put her hand next to Addie’s. Threading a measure of their Essence into the rock they felt ahead of them, tracing the striations in the wide passageway, looking for the source of what they were feeling.

  It went out along the wall.

  Down, at an angle, and across the floor.

  Up the other side.

  Zigzagging along the ceiling.

  Around the mouth of the dead-end branch in the tunnel.

  And inside.

  Their magic stopped abruptly where Maria Martin lay on the hard, uneven floor. She wasn’t moving.

  As far as Addie’s magical senses could tell, there was no one else there with her.

  “Come on,” Willow told Godfrey. “It’s this way.”

  “What?” Godfrey asked. “She’s in there? How do you know?”

  “Woman’s intuition,” Willow answered quickly. “Trust us, Godfrey. If you want to help Maria, don’t ask questions. Just follow us.”

  Doyle snickered as he and Domovyk kept pace at their feet. Addie was sure there was a cutting and sarcastic remark he was holding back.

  They went more quickly now that they knew the way was clear. The killer in the red shirt wasn’t waiting for them. Maria was.