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“I don’t know.” Destiny lowered her head, as if studying the tips of her shoes. “I told you, I wasn’t invited. I didn’t see anything.”
“She was here.” A rush of cold air swept over Peri as Valen suddenly appeared next to her. He was pointing toward the stables at the back of the barn. “She stood there.”
“How did he know that?” Destiny licked her lips, still refusing to glance in Valen’s direction. Smart witch. “Who is he?”
Peri ignored the questions. She had no words to explain Valen.
“What was the spell?”
“A simple spell to draw the energy from the earth and store it in the owl. We had been practicing it since Brenda first started to believe in demons.” The witch sucked in a harsh breath that sounded like a sob. “I never expected it to work.”
“But it did?”
“I sincerely don’t know what happened.”
“Tell me what you saw,” Peri commanded.
Destiny pressed her hand to her stomach, as if she suddenly felt sick. “They finished the spell and the owl started to glow.”
“With magic?”
“It wasn’t any magic that I’d seen before,” she muttered. “It was red, as if there was lava inside the statue. Your mother was ecstatic. She was laughing and telling everyone she’d captured the demon power. She looked…wild.”
Red like lava? Peri was as baffled as Destiny. Witches couldn’t see magic in a physical form. Not unless it was an illusion or a glamour. So why was the statue glowing?
“What happened to the statue?” she asked.
“It shattered when the lava exploded out of it.”
Peri glanced down at the floor. The explosion must have caused the charred stain on the wooden planks. She frowned as she caught sight of a white shard wedged between two boards. Bending down, she carefully pulled it out before she straightened and showed it to Destiny.
“Is this a part of it?”
Destiny shrugged. “I think so.”
Peri tucked it in the front pocket of her shorts. It just felt like a piece of marble. Was whatever magic that had once clung to it gone? Something she intended to find out.
“What happened to the lava?” she asked, feeling ridiculous asking the question.
What kind of spell created lava? And how had a bunch of witches managed to trigger it?
“It kept spreading and spreading.” Destiny’s voice shook as the memories threatened to overwhelm her. “The others wanted to run.”
“Why didn’t they?”
“Brenda ordered them to stay.” Her laugh came out as a sob. “She promised they would have the true magic of a mage. Just like you.” There was an edge in her voice that warned Peri that the witch considered it her fault that Brenda had been crazed by her lust for power. Or maybe she blamed Peri for being a mage. Whatever. “She even promised immortality.”
“So they stayed.”
Destiny nodded. “Even when the magic crawled over them, coating them in a glowing red. Your mother’s laughter turned into screams. It was awful.” Destiny shuddered. “I can still hear those screams.”
“What did you do?”
Destiny flicked a quick glance toward Valen. Was she considering a lie? Probably. Just as quickly, however, she returned her attention to Peri.
“I wanted to run, but I was afraid it would follow me,” she grudgingly confessed. “I just hid in the shadows until the screaming stopped. When I managed to get enough nerve to look again, they were all dead. Like they’d been sucked dry.”
“And the lava?”
