Page 11 of A Time of Witches

“You are stuck in the past. You cannot be free until she is. You must help her.”

Air fled Lilith’s lungs. “What did you say?”

“The woman from your dream. You must help her.” Those strange green eyes found Lilith’s. “Or you will unravel, one thread at a time, until you are gone.”

The world around Lilith shrank away, leaving her too large, too exposed. “Excuse me?”

The fortune teller did not blink. The flat monotone of her voice resonated in Lilith’s soul. “You will cease to exist.”

“Cease to exist?” Nerves pitched Lilith’s voice. “I don’t understand what that means.”

“Look into your past. The answers of the present are always in the past.”

Panicked frustration surged in Lilith. “That isn’t an answer. It’s a riddle.”

The woman stood. “That is all I have for you.”

Lilith didn’t move from where she sat, gaping at the woman who spoke in riddles and threats. “That’s it?” Lilith asked, a worm of fear eating its way into her heart.

The woman did not appear perturbed at all by Lilith’s lack of composure. “You must find the answers soon.”

“How soon?”

The fortune teller lifted her shoulder with casual uncertainty. “You have as long as she does.”

Another riddle.

Her birthmark burned hot enough to make Lilith flinch. “Who?” she demanded. “Who is she?”

The woman closed her eyes, her lids shiny and threaded with blue veins. “Sybil,” she breathed.

“How do I—?”

But the woman rose and walked toward the door.

Lilith did not move from her seat, not even as the woman opened the door and offered a sweet smile. As if she had not delivered a cryptic fortune to Lilith and told her she would soon be dead, assuming that’s what “cease to exist” meant.

“I don’t…” Lilith stood and slowly approached the door, as hesitant to leave as she’d been to enter. “I just don’t understand.”

“You will.” The woman’s eyes squinted into half-moons with her deceptively kind smile. She cupped Lilith’s cheek in a maternal way. “May the earth guide you.”

Lilith had never liked people touching her, the intimacy of a stranger’s hands infiltrating the barrier of her personal space. And yet what should have been awkward was instead curiously comforting, a moment of connection between her and the peculiar fortune teller.

Reeling, Lilith stepped outside and the door closed behind her.

The rain had stopped and night had descended, but clouds still gathered overhead, swollen and shifting over the moon.

How long had she been in there?

A sudden realization gripped Lilith. She hadn’t paid.

She spun back to the door, but when she pulled at the handle, it did not budge. Locked.

Frowning, she peered into the window, but the shop was completely dark behind the thick plastic. Not a single candle lit.

Closed.

The dream was more intense that night, keeping Lilith from sleep, leaving her to run over the fortune teller’s words until they blurred in her mind.