Page 154 of How to Flirt with a Witch

My heart skips a beat. I’m doing this, then. I’m going to undo a century of work in order to prevent deadly power from falling into the Madsens’ hands.

“And you’ll give me some before freeing it,” Millie says—a statement, not a question. “Just to heal myself. I swear.”

I look at Natalie, knowing what I want but unsure what this would mean.

“I’m not going to stop you,” she says, her words stilted.

Millie nods, satisfied.

“And we set the rest free?” I ask.

Natalie says nothing, breathing hard, holding my gaze.

“Think of what the power in this room can do in the wrong hands,” I say, stepping closer, begging her to see reason.

Her dark eyes narrow, and she clenches her fists at her sides. “Set it free.”

Chapter 37

ChimeraTown666

As we enter theroom, darkness swallows us whole. My heart slams into my ribs, reacting to unseen forces.

Natalie’s hand slides around my waist, firm and reassuring. She side-steps behind me, and a torch on the wall roars to life, bathing the room in a flickering glow. It triggers a chain of torches, each one illuminating a moment after the last.

The light reveals a walkway stretching down a long, narrow room, bounded on either side by iron bars.Cages.Left and right, their doors are padlocked shut, the iron gleaming. The walkway stretches into the distance, fading to blackness, giving no hint of how many there are. The cages reach the top of my head and are big enough to house livestock—but inside…

My brain churns like rusty cogs. Even after staring for several seconds, I can’t put a name to what’s inside. I can’t put ashapeto them. In the nearest cage, something lies on the floor—an animal? It expands and contracts, breathing, its form in continuous flux. My mind tries to label it a lion, a goat, a snake. It has every feature of every animal, and at the same time, it has none of them.

A pang shoots through my head like I’ve stared at the sun for too long, and I blink, looking away.

“I don’t understand,” I whisper, a tremor in my voice.

“Pure bio magic doesn’t have a form,” Natalie murmurs, her presence sturdy at my side.

“It’s beautiful,” Millie whispers, taking Sebastian’s hand and stepping closer to the nearest cage.

I squint at the creature inside. “Is it an animal?”

“It’s…” Natalie tilts her head, deliberating her words. “You know how our brains fill in gaps in an ambiguous image? It’s one explanation for paranormal sightings. Like, someone sees a vaguely human shape in a graveyard at night and interprets it as a ghost, or—”

“Some burn marks in a piece of toast look like a face?” I supply.

“Exactly. With bio magic, our brains try to fill in what we’re seeing, but it doesn’t quite work… leaving us with a mishmash that we call a chimera.”

“Chimera,” I repeat. Of course—the hybrid creature.

Past the first cage, every other one within sight is occupied. Millie lets go of Sebastian’s hand and walks down the aisle, looking left and right, her footsteps filling the silence.

“Are they asleep?” I ask. They’re all breathing, and the room is very much alive. I run my hands over my bare arms to soothe the prickling sweeping across my skin.

“In a way. The cages are enchanted to subdue the magic,” Natalie says.

Hesitantly, I touch one of the large iron bars. Magic crackles up my arm and into my core, and I take my hand away quickly, shaking out the discomfort. “And if I break the locks?”

“They’ll be free.”

A sharp voice behind us makes us all whirl around. “No—they—won’t.”