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“What the hell are you playing at?” I battled the tremor in my voice. “This isn’t what we agreed. You said you’d come alone. You said you wouldn’t get any of your people involved. That was the deal!”

Reid neared, tilting his head in confusion. “What de ye mean?”

“Them.” I pointed at the shadows amassing in the fishery doorway.

A startled gasp escaped his throat as he took them in. “No… no, this ain’t meant te happen.” He whirled back around to face me. “I swear te ye, Persephone, this ain’t me. I didn’t do this. I stuck by yer rules.” He rushed closer, putting himself between me and the encroaching shadows. “I’m sorry, Persephone—they must’ve followed me. I thought I were bein’ careful, but they must’ve… Ah, dammit te hell! I’m so sorry.”

Leviathan tried to warn me… He wanted to protect me. He’d given me a chance to run, and I’d ignored him. Now, I was trapped inside this fishery with no way out, and I had no idea whether to believe Reid or not. He looked as alarmed as I felt, but if I’d learned anything from Genie today, it was that people could be unexpectedly proficient actors when they wanted to be—and especially when they needed something.

“Just stay behind me,” Reid whispered, squaring his shoulders to make them even broader. “I ain’t goin’ te let aught happen te ye, not after what ye’ve done for me. I mean it. They’ll have te go through me first.”

“Why should I believe you? Who’s to say you didn’t set this up?” I hissed back, as the shadows started to take shape. I counted ten—eight men, two women—all wearing the same grim expressions, their eyes glinting menacingly in the faint, dusky light that managed to eke in from outside. Even if Reid was telling the truth, these people clearly intended to do me harm. After all, I was the enemy. I didn’t need it spelled out—these were the witch hunters.

Reid reached behind him and grasped my hand. His palms felt rough with callouses, but were surprisingly warm to the touch. “I didn’t, I swear on me life. Why would I? Ye were lookin’ into gettin’ the antidote for me—I’ve got no reason te want te hurt ye or set ye up like this. I did me best te be cautious, but I must’ve slipped up somewhere.” He gripped my hand tighter. “But I’m goin’ te get ye out of this, I promise, even if it costs me dear.”

“Finally, little Reid came out o’ the woodwork.” A deep, gravelly voice rumbled through the tension of the fishery, vibrating along the taut strings of my terror. It seemed to come from a thick-set bruiser of a man who stood at the front of the witch hunter group. “Ye thought ye were bloody good at yer little game o’ hide and seek, didn’t ye? Well, we’ve got the numbers, so it weren”t hard te smoke ye out in the end, even if ye did send us on a wild goose chase for a while there.”

Reid was telling the truth. I didn’t quite understand the dynamics between Reid and this squad of ten, but they evidently had some beef with him. I clung to Reid’s hand as I realized he might be the only person in this building who was on my side, and the only person who could help me get out alive. My friends and monsters were waiting for my call, but I didn’t want to sound the alarm until I absolutely had to, in case… well, in case blood got spilt.

“I wasn’t hidin’ from ye,” Reid spat back. “I was helpin’ ye.”

A thinner man with a hawkish face sneered. “Aye, and ye must think we was all born yesterday. Ye infect us with yer witch poison, then disappear without a trace. Ain’t exactly hard te put the pieces together, is it? Ye ran off ‘cause ye didn’t want te deal with yer mess, and we’re here to make sure ye clean it up.”

“Or maybe there’s another reason ye took off.” A woman of around forty jabbed a skeletal finger at me. “Got yerself a witchy lass, do ye? Wouldn’t surprise me if that’s why ye infected us, so ye could leave us all te suffer and run off into the sunset with one o’ them!”

The ringleader nodded. “Aye, lad. Any trust we had in ye has long gone. Ye been snakin’ about with the enemy. This all started when ye were tasked with tailin’ that lass there. Don’t tell me that’s coincidence, else I’ll smack ye into next week,” he growled. “She’s tricked ye, like all witches do. She put that curse on ye, probably while whisperin’ sweet nothins in yer ear, then ye infected us when ye came back covered in her filth. And now, yer both goin’ te pay. Te end a curse, ye kill the cursed one and the one what cast it. I don’t need te be a witch te know that!”

Reid took a step back, urging me to move with him. “That’s blatant lies!”

“O’ course, that’s what ye’d say.” The woman snickered icily. “I bet she’s got into yer mind, made ye think ye’d do anythin’ te protect her. I’ll tell ye this for nothin’—she ain’t goin’ te protect ye when we end this curse our way. She’ll slip out o’ one o’ them magic doorways and leave ye bleedin’ on the ground.”

A shorter guy, as tall as he was broad, shuffled forward. “Well, she can try.” He brandished a strange-looking device that reminded me of a face massager. It had a silver handle with two silver balls on the end that were glowing an electric blue. “Lucky fer us, we’ve got ways te stop slippery witches from gettin’ away.” The sight of that glowing thing cemented my thinking that these guys definitely had magicals working for them, voluntarily or involuntarily. They’d need magical input to use devices like that, pre-charged with Chaos so they could wield them. I shuddered as memories of those returned magicals, the ones that my mom and dad took care of at the SDC, came back to me. Was that where they were getting this magical juice?

No… The plan had been for Nathan and Genie to charge through a chalk-door if things turned for the worse, but if he had a device to prevent that, then I was even more screwed than I thought. I didn’t know which of the nearby boathouses my friends were hiding in, but it would take them a good few minutes to get here if I called for help. Those few minutes could be the difference between life and death.

“Ye can believe all the bollocks ye want, but that ain’t the case.” Reid gave my hand another squeeze, as if to say, “We’re going to be okay.” I had no clue how I was supposed to believe that. “This lass ain’t got naught te do with what’s happenin’ te us.”

The older woman snorted. “I bet ye’d say anythin’ te save her, eh? Well, there’s naught ye can say. It don’t matter that yer da is the boss, we’re goin’ te stop this infection, and that means takin’ ye and yer little witch out. He’ll understand once we explain everythin’. I expect he’ll be glad ye’ve been dealt with, so he don’t have to deal with the disappointment of havin’ a witch lover for a son.”

Hang on… what?! If I understood correctly, Reid’s father was the leader of these witch hunters. Did that mean Reid was also a leader of Veritas, or maybe just the leader of this Irish branch? When it came down to it, we still didn’t know how far the influence of Veritas reached, and it wasn’t as though I could just ask these people who evidently wanted me dead.

“This ain’t what ye think, so don’t ye dare try and tarnish me good name or that of me da!” Reid shouted back, as I peered warily around his muscular arms. “I ain’t gone against me values or the laws laid down by the Veritas. I only reached out for help ‘cause of this curse that’s hurtin’ all of us, and ‘cause I didn’t want it infectin’ more people. Folks’re on the brink of dyin’, so I did what I had te. It’s no different te nickin’ a magical device and usin’ it fer our own ends. Only it’s a person, not a device. Though that ain’t new for us, neither.”

“Ye did what?” The ringleader frowned. Thanks to Reid’s last sentence, any lingering shreds of doubt I might’ve had about their part in the missing magicals evaporated. They’d stolen devices and magicals, the latter helping them to use the former.

“It ain’t no secret that we hate witches, aye?” Reid said. “We want te out them and show we ain’t scared of what they can do, but that don’t mean they don’t have their uses when somethin’ like this happens.” He pointed at himself, and I wondered if he could hear the hypocrisy in what he was saying. They hated us, but they needed us, and magic was okay as long as it served them? I wanted to give him a jab in the spine, but I resisted. If he could talk us out of here, then I supposed he could say whatever he wanted—I’d get him back for it later. “This lass agreed te help us lift the curse, so long as we didn’t bother this island again. I’d say that’s a price we can pay, te stop the infection and save ourselves, eh? What’s one isolated group of witches off our radar if it means we live another day? If we can continue our work elsewhere?”

I peeked out from behind Reid once more. “He’s telling the truth. We’re not involved in any way. I wouldn’t touch him with a barge pole.” I shot him a glare, so everyone was on the same page. “He kidnapped me and tortured me, for Pete’s sake! That’s when I told him he should’ve just asked for help instead of trying to electrocute me.” I decided to exaggerate what had happened, in case it helped our case with the witch hunters. “After he explained what was going on, I decided to help, because even if you hate what we are, I don’t hate non-magicals. And I don’t want any of you dying because of something a magical did. That doesn’t exactly paint us in a good light, now, does it? Meddling with non-magicals also goes against our laws, whether you want to believe it or not.”

“As if a witch would voluntarily help a human,” a different woman hissed. They were all Irish, I noticed. And hearing and seeing the hatred spewing out of them, I realized that Reid had actually been relatively tame by comparison. This lot would definitely have tortured me within an inch of my life, and they wouldn’t have flinched.

“We do it more often than you’d think, actually.” I wasn’t going to back down without a bit of sass. “Especially in cases that are this disturbing. And there’s more than one way to undo a curse. Although, if you want the facts, killing Reid and myself would do absolutely nothing to remove the curse from the rest of you. I didn’t cast it, so you’d just have one dead witch hunter and one dead witch.”

The ringleader furrowed his brow. “If that’s true, ye’d have undone the curse on him already, and we’d all be free o’ it.”

I shook my head, adding a “tuh” to make it as patronizing as possible. “That’s what I was getting ready to do before you all barged in and started making death threats. Now, I’m not even sure I want to give him this.” I took out the bronze ball and balanced it on my palm. “This is your antidote.”

“More of yer poison, more like,” said the squat man with the anti-chalk-door technology.

I shrugged, determined not to show weakness. “I’m not going to waste my energy trying to convince you that it’s the cure to your problem. Here’s how I see it: you can go ahead and think whatever you want, but if you don’t let me give this to Reid, you’ll keep infecting more of your own kind. More people will die, whether the infection itself kills them or the curse’s effects kills other innocents. I know the extremes of this curse because I saw it kill someone. So, you either trust me and let me break the curse, or you don’t and lots of people will suffer. Seems like a simple choice to me.”

A whisper of suspicion susurrated through the group of witch hunters as they conferred. Some glowered at me, making no attempt to hide their disdain. Just looking at these sour-faced brutes made me want to crush the antidote underfoot, but pettiness wouldn’t win the battle, and my disliking these people didn’t mean that others deserved to suffer.

“I’m sorry, Persephone,” Reid whispered. “I should’ve made sure there weren’t anyone followin’. But I sure ain’t usin’ ye like yer some inanimate bloody object. I know yer a person, and I know yer riskin’ a lot te help. They won’t say it, but I will. I owe ye.”

I looked up at him, meeting his warm eyes. He had Veritas eyes, in the true sense of the Latin word for ‘truth,’ rather than this group of ingrates—they didn’t lie.

The air throbbing with nervous tension, the Veritas clan spread back out into their “V” formation, as though they were flying south for the winter. The ringleader cleared his throat and puffed out his chest—classic defensive behavior, as I’d learned from Hosseini during Monster Training. It wasn’t necessarily what I would’ve expected from someone who claimed he wasn’t afraid of magicals. Rather, it showed that he subconsciously thought that he was the weaker party and needed to make himself appear bigger to compensate.

“Sure, Reid can take that antidote o’ yers. Let’s see what happens.” He smirked. “The way I look at it, if he dies, ye’ve cut our workload in half. If he don’t, then maybe we’ll trust it is what ye say it is.”

It took you that long to come up with that? I turned to Reid. He was the one who’d asked for my help. He was the one who seemed sincere and had those honest eyes. I didn’t owe the other witch hunters anything, except to prevent them from infecting more people. But what if it doesn’t work? The thought came to me, unwelcome. Reid was the first guinea pig, and the stakes of the anti-curse’s success suddenly felt exorbitantly high.

I shook off my doubts, trusting the expertise of the Institute’s staff. “All you have to do is hold this and grip it tight in your hand,” I instructed, passing the hex ball to him. “A needle should pop out and inject liquid into you. It might sting a bit, but it’s nothing to worry about. That’s how the ball works.”

He took the item without a hint of fear. I even checked his eyes, but there was nothing there but trust. Perhaps he had gone over my list of provisos, after all. “Like this?” His hand clenched around the ball and he flinched. “Yeah… I think I feel that needle.”

“You should start to feel the antidote doing its work within a couple of minutes,” I assured him, though I had no clue if that was true.

He nodded, scrunching up his eyes. “Is it meant te feel cold?”

“Uh… yeah,” I fibbed encouragingly.

I waited for the antidote to kick in, observing him closely. Off to my right, I felt the burning stares of the witch hunters, equally invested in what was happening. If I could’ve sank to my knees and prayed for it to work, I would have, but I figured it was best to stay standing with the enemy so close.

At first, nothing seemed to happen. He just stood there with the ball gripped in his hand, his gaze flitting from me, to his fist, and back again. You could’ve heard a pin drop in the rancid fishery, everyone on tenterhooks.

Then, Reid dropped to his knees with an almighty howl. He lurched forward on all fours, his spine arching violently, the veins popping out of his neck, reminding me of my worst Purges. His face twisted in pain, and his fingernails raked at the gelatinous residue on the floor as a fiery trail of glinting red shot up his arms and spiderwebbed out across the visible parts of his skin. As he unleashed another ground-shaking roar, his head shot up, revealing two burning red lights in his eyes. They weren’t the same as his Fear Dearg flames, but they still scared the living daylights out of me, prompting me to stagger back a few paces.

I chanced a look at the other witch hunters. In response to Reid’s howls, their heads had snapped up toward the ceiling, and the red mist was pouring out of them in rapidly tumbling torrents. The mist pooled onto the floor, slithering along the ground like it had a mind of its own, heading toward Reid. As he bucked and writhed in agony, the mist wound up his braced arms and disappeared into his skin, returning to its source. A second later, a tear in the fabric of reality appeared in the crumbling rafters of the fishery, the edges fizzing with speckled black light. Out of the atmospheric wound, more red mist spilled out, swirling in the air above Reid like a cyclone before powering into him in a violent cascade—likely, the infection from all the other witch hunters who had succumbed, traveling all this way to be reabsorbed into its original host. Reid roared in pain, his whole body swamped in the mist as it fought to find room inside him. I thought it would never stop until, with a deafening snap, the tear closed and the last of the contagion was sucked into Reid, leaving him a trembling, gasping mess on the floor.

Is this good? Is this bad? I stared, utterly stumped, until the ringleader of the witch hunters spoke.

“Well, that feels better, don’t it!” He tilted his neck from side to side, presumably to relieve any cricks. “I can breathe proper, and me mind’s clear as day. How are the rest of ye?”

“Grand,” the older woman said, with a pleased grin.

A murmur of agreement ran through the group, but Reid looked anything but fine. The bright red fire in his eyes and his veins had gone out, and all the mist seemed to have been reabsorbed, but he continued to breathe heavily, sweat running down his face.

I crouched beside him. “What about you? How do you feel?”

“I don’t feel no different,” he rasped.

“Pity for ye then, aye?” The squat witch hunter mocked, patting a hand against his rotund belly.

I frowned. “Maybe the antidote just stopped the contagious part. Maybe it didn’t fully heal the curse in you, only the people you infected, and to prevent you from infecting anyone else.” This possibility filled me with a jarring disappointment. It didn’t seem fair that Reid should still have to suffer when he was the one who’d sought out the antidote in the first place.

“Hey, at least no one else is goin’ te get infected.” Reid peered up at me with watery eyes. “I’ll take that as a win, so… thanks for all ye’ve done. I had a moment where I thought ye might’ve foxed me, but ye didn’t. I’m grateful. I just wanted the infectin’ te stop. That’s all I can ask for.”

I heard the heavy thud of footsteps and my head whipped around. The ringleader had taken a few steps forward. “Looks like ye’re a useful device after all. Might be more we can tap out o’ ye. I’d say it’s time te grab this little witch and leg it out o’ here before someone comes lookin’ for her.” He glanced at his pals and they all leered in assent, edging closer. “And if ye’re still as loyal as ye say ye are, Reid, ye’ll not mind givin’ us a hand.”

Are you freaking serious?! I wanted to scream at them until their ears bled. How could they turn on me after what I’d just done for them? They’d clearly ignored the small print about leaving this part of the world alone after I’d cured them. Couldn’t they give me a damn second before flying their hate flags again?

Apparently not.

With the witch hunters closing in and Leviathan’s warning echoing in my head, I slipped my hand into my pocket and dialed.