“Hac nocte resurgemus! Hac nocte resurgemus!”
With the tip of her index finger, Hetti pushed my temple so my lolling head was facing the night sky once more. I couldn’t see her, but I heard the rustle of her cloak as she moved backward to rejoin the other Heretics.
“Tonight, we gather beneath the light of the full moon,” she called, her voice high and clear, carrying across the graveyard. “Tonight, we reclaim what was taken from us! Tonight, we—”
“NOT ON OUR WATCH, YOU WITCH!”
My head snapped over at the sound of two familiar voices coming from the far side of the graveyard. In disbelief, I watched as Sally and Agatha ran from the shadows, their slight, hunched forms weaving around tombstones. In their hands, they each held a carved wood staff, the kind I imagined a wizard might carry. On their heels, I saw six other dark forms streaking toward us in the darkness, each holding a staff, each cloaked in a similar matching cloak.
The Bay Colony Coven was here.
And they were here to fight.
All hell promptly broke loose. The Heretics charged out to meet them on the field of battle, chanting in Latin as they ran. Paralyzed as I was, I couldn’t turn my head to see what was happening as they moved out of sight. All I could do was listen to the sound of pained grunts, the thuds of staffs colliding with flesh, the screams of pain.
“Ag! On your left!”
“I see him, Sal!”
My heart swelled. They’d shown up for me. They were fighting for me. I’d never felt so useless, lying there, unable to do more than twitch the tips of my fingers and wiggle my toes inside my go-go boots. The haze was beginning to lift from my thoughts, my mind clearing a bit more with each passing moment, but my body was still effectively useless.
How long until I could move again?
“This doesn’t concern you!” Hetti screeched, her voice lifting above the din. “Begone!”
“You have no power here!” Agatha yelled back in defiance. “You—Ahh!”
Her abrupt scream of pain made me jerk upright. I only managed to lift a few inches off the crypt, but it was progress.
“Ag!” Sally screamed. “No!”
I tried desperately to move, but all I could do was lie there, listening as the Bay Colony ladies were slowly overwhelmed by the Heretics. I couldn’t see what was happening. Were they alive? Were they unconscious? I thought of Hetti’s knife, shining in the moonlight, and heard Agatha’s pained scream over and over, a constant replay inside my mind. Tears streamed out my eyes, pooling on the stone beneath my head.
I had never felt so hopeless and weak. Not when I was five, forgotten at school by my mother while she went on a weekend-long bender, which resulted in a short stint at a girls’ home on orders of CPS. Not when I was ten, locked out of our trailer all afternoon, forced to take shelter with coked-out neighbors. Not when I was fifteen, awoken by one of the creepy guys Mom brought back to party, his disgusting fingers gliding down my tank top strap. Not when I lost Aunt Colette’s light and felt the only solid ground I’d ever walked on crumble into dust.
Not ever.
Silence eventually descended on the graveyard. All I could hear was the thudding of my pulse, a constant roar between my ears, as the Heretics moved back into their circular formation around the crypt. Hetti returned to stare down into my face. Her dark hair was mussed, her cloak torn. There was a dark shiner blooming on her right eye socket.
Good,I thought, glaring up at her.I hope they gave you hell, you crazy bitch.
“Now that that minor hiccup has been dealt with,” Hetti said conversationally. “We can continue.”
Something came over me in that moment. Maybe it was rage. Maybe it was something else — some inner strength I didn’t know I possessed, some tiny fragment of the magic that Aunt Colette always told me flowed through my veins.
My golden girl, my little flame, you burn so bright someday you’ll set the world on fire.
Fighting the paralysis, I summoned every bit of my strength, infused my arm with all the power I could summon, and reached up. Not for Hetti’s smug, victorious face, which was within swinging distance, but for the pendant around my neck. The one Sally gave me.
For protection, she’d said.
At the time, I thought she was being philosophical. But in that instant, I used a far more literal interpretation of her words. My hand closed around the chain and I yanked it free from the confines of my dress. Hetti, too stunned to move, stood there gaping at me as my fist gripped the bone shard. I had no acute control over my movements yet, no real mastery of my fine motor skills, but I aimed in the general direction of her face and jammed upward. The shard made contact with her cheek, the sharp point piercing her soft flesh. I felt no small amount of satisfaction as she screamed and stumbled backward, clawing at her bleeding cheek.
“You bitch!” she shrieked. “You fucking bitch!”
I could hear the Heretics murmuring, closing in from all sides. I used the brief moment of chaos to my advantage, heaving my half-numb body sideways, rolling off the crypt. My body plummeted four feet and hit the earth with a breath-stealing thud. All the air evacuated my lungs in a great whoosh. I sucked in a desperate gulp, knowing I had approximately zero seconds to get away. Never one to squander an opportunity, I started crawling from the crypt, my fingers clawing at the grass as I dragged my dead weight along.
“Don’t worry about me, you fools!” Hetti was screeching somewhere behind me. “She’s getting away! The eclipse has already begun! We have only a few minutes left for the ritual!”