Page 22 of How to Flirt with a Witch

“Leave her!” Natalie extends a hand. “I need your help.”

A crackling noise fills the air, and it dawns on me what the kitten was hissing at. The doll contorts, bending backward, her angelic face melting like hot wax.

Terror seizes me, weakening my legs. I scream.

“Okay, new plan.” Natalie takes a glass vial from her inner coat pocket. It’s thumb-sized, tubular, with a cork stopper to keep the shimmering amber substance inside. “We’re doing this here. I have to get this onto the doll, but she’s going to resist.”

“What’s in the vial?” The second part of that sentence registers, and a chill ripples through me. “What do you meanresist?”

Her dark, molten eyes meet mine. “I’m not going to let you get hurt. But I need you to do exactly as I say.”

She uncorks the vial. Thepopis drowned by something louder—thewhooshof my window opening.

A cold draft blows in, lifting the strands of hair framing her face and raising goosebumps on my arms. The candlelight shudders, casting moving shadows over everything.

Uncertainty crosses Natalie’s expression. “You really shouldn’t have brought that doll home.”

She lunges for Rebecca, and I hurtle toward the window to shut it.

I’m too slow. A massive bird swoops in, knocking me back a step. It heads straight for Natalie.

“No!” I lurch after it, trying to shoo it away as its talons close over Natalie’s wrist. For an absurd moment, the wordpterodactylcomes to mind. Then logic kicks in. It’s a hawk.

Good God, there’s a hawk in my bedroom.

At least my landlords aren’t home.

Natalie roars in pain, blood oozing between the claws on her wrist.

“Get off her!” Icy fear shoots through me. She came here because of me, and I can’t let this happen.

In an explosion of sound, music blares from my desk.

Natalie looks around, a hand on the bird’s neck as she tries to pry it off. “What—is—that?”

Heat invades my face. “My phone.”

“Total Eclipse of the Heart” has resumed, blaring at full volume, filling the room until my head throbs.

“Why?!” Natalie shouts.

“I don’t know! Ask the doll!”

Fine, it was the last song I listened to. I have a playlist of power ballads that Hazel and I love to bellow at the top of our lungs, and I may or may not have been reminiscing earlier.

I would dive for my phone and turn it off, but the hawk is still on Natalie’s arm, and whatever is in that vial is in danger of spilling.

I charge and seize the bird around the middle. Its bony wings flap against me, its soft feathers smushing between my fingers. Its shrieks shred my eardrums.

Something catches my eye on the bed.

From the melted porcelain and crumpled purple lace that used to be Rebecca, a black shape emerges. It breaks apart, trickling over the duvet. In the darkness, it takes me a moment to process what’s going on.

“Spiders!” I shriek.

A nest hatches from the lump that was a doll, scattering across the room.

Shit, shit…What have I unleashed? Are these poisonous? Will they spread through the city and—