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Ryder scoffed.
“Another one?” he asked.
I stepped in front of Cadence.
“Watch how you talk to her,” I warned.
“Shush, brother,” Cady said. She walked past me and dropped the firewood in front of the cave. “I’ve never been much of a dog person anyway.”
Freya snorted.
“I’m glad to see you’re alive,” she said to Cadence. “You must be one quiet hiker to have evaded my ears and the dark witches’.”
My stomach squirmed at the thought of little Cadence anywhere near those awful things. She shrugged, as if she weren’t frightened at all.
“I’ve always been good at sneaking.”
Freya nodded, but her pensive expression did not agree with the motion.
I helped Cadence set up the fire but couldn’t stop noticing how Freya stared at her. She clearly thought the explanation was more complex than childish bravery and excellent sneaking skills.
I wondered what other explanation existed.
*
Freya
Walker wasn’t the only reckless sibling in his family, but I suspected he might be the only human.
I stared at Cadence. She lay on the cave floor with her back pressed against Walker’s side. She was so close in the tiny cave that I could reach out and touch her. Walker snored peacefully and drool trailed out of his mouth. Cadence’s eyes fluttered behind her eyelids.
I envied their peaceful sleep. I hadn’t known it in since my mother went missing, though the loss of her wasn’t the only thing that kept me up tonight.
Witches—well-trained ones, at least—didn’t amble through the woods without a care in the world. We were tuned to the movements of the forest, from wind-blown leaves, to crawling insects and pouncing predators. The dark witches had concealed themselves with carefully crafted, powerful magic.
How did Cadence do it?
She was more than the little girl her brother thought she was.
I couldn’t tell him that yet, though. Not when his world had already been flipped upside down. He needed something steady to hold onto, and there was nothing steadier than a family’s love.
A tear slipped down my cheek.
I missed my mom, but I missed my coven too. I wanted to hear Josephine chide me for not mixing a potion just right or see the Elders perform a Saturday ceremony that would manifest a bountiful week for the coven. I wanted to smell the old books in the apartment complex’s library and grow flowers in the garden.
I wanted, I wanted, I wanted.
So, I closed my eyes and pretended I was home. I heard my friend Thea’s laughter, I saw Josephine’s rare, but nonetheless dazzling smile, and I felt my mother’s hug after a long day. I envisioned it so clearly, the ache in my chest became hollowness filled by self-fed lies.
But my dreams did not.
Silently, I watched my mother scream for help. She stood in front of the Goddess’s statue, in between our coven’s homes. Her eyes were black, as if she belonged to Lucifer. No one heard her. Elders, acolytes, and other witches milled by without even a glance in her direction. I tried to run to her, but I was frozen in place. I looked down to see what trapped my feet, only to find that I had no feet at all. I was a wisp of wind, forced to watch and nothing else.
An elder, Mabel Lightheart, stopped.
Finally, I thought, someone is going to help her.
The Elder tossed her long, white hair over her shoulder and scoffed.
