My brows were so high on my forehead, they’d probably disappeared beneath my hairline. “Then… if you aren’t the ones who left the donkey in my alley… what do you want from me?” I asked, trying to sound entirely unrattled, though I was anything but. Shake me to the beat and call me a maraca, baby, because…
I.
Was.
Rattled.
The central figure — the one they’d called Agatha — emitted a long sigh from beneath her hood. “We don’t want anything from you, child. Merely to talk.”
“Towarn,” her companion corrected.
My eyebrows shot up. “Warn about what?”
“You are in grave danger.”
“Yeah, see, the police already told me that yesterday. Plus, I mean, I sort of put that together on my own, what with the series of disembodied, decapitated farm animals and the creepy message left in blood. So, this whole kidnapping was really not necessary…”
“Do not be glib!” Agatha snapped. “This is not a joking matter.”
“I wasn’t joking—”
She cut me off. “Don’t you understand? As soon as they learned of your existence, you became a target. Before you moved back to town, they thought the bloodline was dead. Extinguished. They thought there was no chance to undo the binding curse we laid upon them so many years ago. But you have changed all of that.”
My eyes were bugging out of my head as I stared from one of the cloaked figures to the other, waiting for them to yell, “gotcha!” and start laughing. Waiting for the hidden cameras to appear, for Flo and Des to step out of the shadows and declare it all a practical joke at my expense. But the seconds ticked by and nothing happened.
“You have given them hope they once thought lost, to reclaim that which we took,” Agatha continued. “And they will not rest until they have eradicated the Goode lineage from the face of this earth. You will not be safe until they are cast from these lands once more.”
This was beginning to feel more and more like some sort of fever dream. Perhaps I’d slipped and hit my head in that alley. Perhaps I’d had a bad reaction to that silvery fairy dust I inhaled. Perhaps I was hallucinating. That would make more sense than anything she was saying.
“Look, I respect that you’re trying to warn me about some seriously witchy impending doom, but… I think you’ve got the wrong girl. All this talk of bloodlines and curses and casting out Heretics?” I shook my head back and forth rapidly. “Not my cup of tea. I’m a coffee girl. I don’t even drink tea! And if I did, it certainly wouldn’t be to divine my future in the leaves at the bottom of the mug. I’m not a true believer. I’m not anything, really. Just an ordinary girl leading an ordinary life.”
Silence descended, thick as fog, cold as ice. The trio seemed decidedly unhappy with this revelation. The vibes in the basement — which, admittedly, were already rather creepy but in a cool, gothic sort of way — becamegenuinelycreepy, sending a shiver of unease down my spine. The candles on the altar behind them began to flicker as if a draft of wind suddenly swept through the room. Which was pretty odd, since there were no windows anywhere I could see.
“I told you this was a waste of time,” one of the trio — the one who had spoken the least and stayed farthest away, half-hidden by her companions — muttered. She kept her voice hushed, but again I was struck by the thought that there was something distinctly familiar about it. “She’s never shown even the slightest flicker of inheritance.”
“And yet,” Agatha hissed. “She is the one.”
“How can you be certain?”
“There is no one else!” She sighed. “And even if we are wrong, the Heretics believe she is the one. The key. They will not stop until she is dead.”
I did not like the sound of that.
Like,at all.
“Um,” I interrupted softly. “Look, if you know who these Heretics are, why not just report them to the police?”
Agatha snorted. “Do you know nothing? No ordinary task force can handle this. No jail cell can properly contain a practitioner of dark magic. Gaia above, she really is a simpleton.”
“Intuitive as a turnip,” the second witch added.
“Hey!” I snapped defensively.
“I told you,” the quiet one murmured. “Waste of time. It seems the gift has skipped a generation.”
Inside my sluggish brain, something finally clicked. In shock, I jolted against my rope bonds as my eyes flew to the face concealed behind the third cloak. Because I’d finally recognized the voice that was whispering from beneath its rim.
“Mrs. Proctor?” I half-shouted, incredulity dripping from each syllable. Of all the people I’d suspected of kidnapping me, my elderly neighbor with a penchant for gardening was not at the top of the list. In fact, she wasn’t evenonthe list. “Oh my god, Mrs. Proctor, is it really you?”