Page 32 of Bewitched by the Wicked Witch (The Bewitching Hour #4)
Tommy tried to wrench free, his face flushing with rage and humiliation. "Release me, you corrupted fool! You have no authority here! The council will hear about this assault!"
"The council?" I scoffed, allowing my disdain to drip from every syllable. "You mean the same council that's been sitting on their collective hands while girls disappeared and dark magic ran rampant? The same council who is more interested in scapegoating Sage than actually solving murders?"
Doubt flickered across some faces in the crowd, the first cracks in their manufactured certainty. But Tommy wasn't finished with his performance.
He yanked his wrist from my grasp, stumbling backward while rubbing the reddened skin. "You see?" he shouted, pointing at me with renewed fervor. "He's completely under her spell! The evil witch has ensnared his mind, turned him against his own kind!"
"Wicked witch!" the crowd chanted with increasing fervor. "Burn her! Make her pay!"
My heart stopped as I saw several burly men grabbing Sage by the arms, dragging her forward despite her fierce struggles. She fought like a cornered wildcat, but they overwhelmed her with sheer numbers, snapping iron cuffs around her wrists to suppress her magic.
"What proof do you actually have?" I demanded desperately, my voice raw with fury. "What evidence connects Sage to these crimes? You cannot condemn someone without due process!"
But reason had abandoned this crowd entirely. They were too far gone, whipped into hysteria by Tommy's poisonous rhetoric and their own festering resentments.
"Please!" Sage cried out, her voice breaking as the iron cuffs bit into her skin.
"I didn't do this!" But then, as the chanting continued, something shifted in her expression, a kind of dark acceptance as she met their hateful stares.
"You've spent years trying to turn me into your monster," she said, her voice gaining strength and taking on an edge sharp enough to cut glass.
"Congratulations. You've finally succeeded. "
"Sage, no," I called out, trying to reach her through the mob. "Look at me."
Her gaze locked onto mine, but her eyes had changed, dark and filled with swirling stars, reflecting the full power she'd kept carefully contained for years. The iron cuffs began to crack under the pressure of her unleashed magic.
"But this?" she continued, her voice carrying across the crowd with supernatural clarity.
"This particular crime isn't mine. Though if you insist on having an evil witch.
.." The cuffs disintegrated into dust around her wrists as she rose into the air, dark energy crackling around her like captured lightning.
"I'll give you one worthy of your nightmares. "
With an explosion of smoke and stars that left everyone temporarily blinded, she vanished.
The silence that followed felt heavier than tombstones.
Slowly turning to face the crowd that had just made the worst mistake of their collective lives, I raised my voice with the authority of someone who spoke for powers they couldn't imagine.
"You have all made a grave error today," I announced, my tone carrying the weight of inevitable consequences.
"The High Council will be informed of this attempted witch hunt, and I assure you, they take a very dim view of vigilante justice. "
"No, they won't be informed of anything," Councilman Bishop said as he materialized through the crowd like a bad omen. He raised a finger in my direction with dramatic authority. "Apprehend him. He can no longer be trusted, he's been corrupted by dark magic."
"She doesn't practice dark magic, you fool," I snarled, planting my feet firmly as I channeled every ounce of power within me. "She has a light inside that has managed to keep shining despite all of you trying to extinguish it for years."
"How would you know?" someone yelled from the crowd. "You just arrived! "
"Exactly what someone bewitched would say." Cate's voice cut through the noise as she stepped forward, arms crossed and glaring at me with vindictive satisfaction. "I witnessed her perform a spell on him with my own eyes at the coffee shop."
There was something deeply unsettling about how readily Cate appeared with her testimony, how perfectly her accusations aligned with Tommy's orchestrated performance. The timing felt choreographed.
"Then we have sufficient evidence to detain you, Agent Renshaw," Bishop announced with oily satisfaction. "I'll be contacting your superiors immediately." He gestured, and four sets of hands reached for me, clasping metal shackles around my wrists before I could react.
Just as the restraints made contact, my power surged in response to the immediate danger.
The gift that made me valuable to the High Council, the ability to see truth, flickered to life like a dying lightbulb.
For one crucial second, Beverly's lifeless body flashed in my mind, but this time I caught a glimpse of hands, a partial face, someone standing over her corpse.
The vision vanished before I could identify the killer, leaving me with frustrating fragments.
The man now holding my chains was someone I'd never encountered before. A tall, muscular man who was clearly a warlock with substantial magical reserves. His grip was firm but not unnecessarily brutal.
"Meet Hank, Agent Renshaw," Bishop announced with proprietary pride. "He's our locally appointed enforcer, sanctioned by the council for situations exactly like this. "
I met Hank's steady brown gaze, searching for any hint of recognition from my vision. His expression remained professionally neutral, not unkind but absolutely unyielding.
"Time to go, Agent Renshaw," he said quietly, his tone carrying the weight of someone accustomed to being obeyed.
The iron shackles kept my powers suppressed, preventing me from identifying the killer I'd glimpsed. My eyes swept frantically across the crowd, searching faces for any match to the fragments I'd seen.
"Who helped apprehend me?" I demanded, my voice carrying across the gathered mob. "The person who killed Beverly is standing among you right now."
"That's quite enough of that nonsense," Councilman Bishop growled dismissively. "We already know who's responsible, and she'll be dealt with appropriately."
"You will not touch her!" I snarled with such vehemence that several people stepped back instinctively.
I let my voice drop to a warning that promised apocalyptic consequences.
"I will bring the full weight of the High Council down on this town and burn it to the ground before I let you harm one hair on her head. "
"You see?" Bishop addressed the crowd with dramatic gesturing. "What more proof do you need of her evilness? She's corrupted a High Council agent to her will, turning him against his own kind to escape justice for kidnapping and murdering our children."
Shouts of agreement rose from the mob, and I tried desperately to make them understand Sage's innocence, but Hank was already forcing me away through the crowd. Within minutes, I found myself deposited in an iron jail cell, the door clanging shut with the finality of a coffin lid.
As Hank's footsteps faded away, leaving me alone with the terrible knowledge that Sage was out there somewhere, hurt, angry, and more dangerous than she'd ever allowed herself to be, I realized that our investigation had just become infinitely more complicated.
Because now we weren't just hunting a killer.
We were racing against time to prove Sage's innocence before her newfound embrace of darkness made that impossible.