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He’d meant it as a warning, a self-loathing commentary about the extent of his damage, inside and out, but I didn’t hear it that way. All I heard were the words heart, body, and you.
“Promise?” I asked.
Damien’s stormy gaze collided with mine, and before my smirk could widen into a full-blown grin, he dived for my mouth and kissed it right off.
“Took ya long enough.”
Before I finished gasping at the sudden, unknown voice, Damien had already broken our kiss, spun around to face the stranger, and tucked me behind his back.
I peeked around his shoulder and discovered that we weren’t where I’d thought we were. I could have sworn that Damien and I had only been halfway down the hill when I’d kissed him, but now, we were all the way at the bottom, standing on the bank of a murky, stagnant lake. In front of us stood an old stone cottage with a thatched roof—the kind people lived in during medieval times—and a woman who appeared to be even older than that. Her body curled like a question mark over a twisted cane and was dripping with the pelts of a hundred woodland creatures, stitched together, claws and all.
I recognized her immediately from Darby Donovan’s book, The Witch in the Woods—scraggly gray hair, milky-white eyes, that grotesque fur cloak, and a voice that was both high and rough, like a child who’d been screaming for days.
Glancing up at the swirling sky, the gnarled old thing smirked. “She’s none too happy with you, young fella. Made a fine mess of things, didn’t ya?” She clicked her tongue in disapproval.
“To which fine mess would ya be referrin’?” Damien asked, keeping his voice neutral. “I’ve made quite a few of ’em here lately.”
He stood even straighter, causing the sack of food on his shoulder to shift.
The woman’s cloudy, pupil-less eyes narrowed at the sound. “I hope ya got somethin’ reeeal shiny in there. Ya know how she gets when she’s mad.”
Damien and I shared a glance, and the old woman let out a cackle that sent a flock of birds tearing into the sky.
“You don’t know, do ya?”
Her laugh devolved into a hacking cough.
“I … I’m sorry, but …” I took a small step out from behind Damien’s body. “I’m afraid you have us mistaken for someone else.”
If there was any truth to the book, the old woman was an illusionist and a trickster—a meddling gossip with a flair for the dramatic—but she wasn’t malicious. At least, Darby hadn’t thought so.
“Mistaken?” she mocked before erupting into another fit of cackles. “I might be half-blind, but I don’t need eyes to know that you two bear her mark.” Lifting a gnarled finger to the sky, a clap of thunder boomed in response. “She knows it too. She’s been pitchin’ a fit since ya got here.”
“Well then, she must be mistaken,” I stated as politely as possible, assuming that she must be this woman’s imaginary friend. I knew all too well how real one of those could seem. “We’ve honestly never been here before in our lives.” I glanced around the woods as a deep, heavy dread settled into my stomach. “In fact, I don’t even know if we can find our way out.”
“Never in our lives, she says!” The old woman snorted, doubling over her cane in hysterics and tapping it on the ground, like the slapping of a knee.
“Can you … perhaps tell us how to get back to town?” Damien asked, guiding me back behind him with a strong hand. “Please.”
“I’ll do ya one better.” The old woman closed her eyes as her spine began to uncurl, vertebra by vertebra.
Damien clutched my hip as we watched her body straighten and stretch to a height nearly as tall as the thatch-roofed cottage behind her. And when she reopened her eyes, they were a bright, burning blue.
“Run!” Damien grabbed my hand and bolted up the hill, but we didn’t get more than a few meters away before some invisible force—like a wrecking ball made of air—sent us flying backward.
And into the lake.
I braced myself for the lung-seizing cold—I’d only ever swum in the sea, which was freezing, even in June—but the water was cool and still.
Relieved, I began pumping my arms and kicking my legs, eager to get to the surface, find Damien, and get the hell out of Glenshire, but the harder I swam, the faster I sank.
And sank.
And sank.
My muscles screamed as I thrashed against the pull.
My heart pounded.
