Page 37 of Reluctant Witch (A Course in Magic #2)

37

Ellie

Ellie watched in horror as Dan started to shake. Light stretched from him in what looked like tangible ropes. The ropes twisted across the ground, vibrating like the tips of rattlesnake tails as they pursued the people in the room.

“Is that normal?” Scylla murmured.

“No.” Sondre moved forward so he was between Dan and everyone else—except Prospero. She stepped forward, too. They exchanged a glance that was easy enough to interpret.

Dr. Jemison gestured to Walt. “Help me move Scylla out of here.”

“I’m not leaving.” Scylla crossed her arms. “Plan, Prospero?”

For a moment, it struck Ellie that no one had asked the chief witch. Prospero was the one managing things, the one trusted to go after threats, the one the governing body leaned on and somehow also the one who had been punished by assigning her an amnesiac wife. Once the crises were all resolved, Ellie would be having words with the chief witch—and maybe the entire Congress of Magic.

But the magical cords were thrashing like living serpents now. Their serpentine motions were hypnotic to Ellie, and when one of the cords lashed out at a speed akin to a striking cobra, Ellie did nothing to resist it.

“Allan. Focus on Allan.” Prospero’s words were terse as she stepped between Ellie and the radiant light that was spilling off Dan’s body like something inside him had caught fire.

The twist of magic released Ellie and twined around Prospero’s ankle. It steadily started creeping upward.

Prospero stumbled.

Her voice taut with something Ellie couldn’t identify, Prospero ordered, “Move toward the door, love. If this doesn’t work, I need you to stop him.”

Ellie realized what she meant since they had discussed ways to use her magic to stop a witch. It wasn’t a thing Ellie wanted to do. Murder ought not be the first choice. This wasn’t the place to say that, though, not to this assembled group.

Dan was obviously beyond hearing their regular voices, but Prospero’s magic was more than words. Even as the shimmering magical cords kept seeking the witches throughout the room, Prospero stepped in front of him and grabbed his face in her hands. Staring into his eyes she repeated, “Allan. Focus on Allan.”

Prospero’s voice wavered, but when she stepped back, jerking her hands from Dan’s now–blindingly bright body, her gaze darted to Ellie. It felt like a plea for help.

But of all the things Ellie had done as a witch, only a few had made her feel like she was dangerous. She didn’t want to add to that short list. She didn’t want to take a life.

On the infirmary bed, Allan made a gasping noise and stopped thrashing. Had he stopped trying to cling to his magic or had something more fatal just happened? Could a person die in front of you without you noticing?

Allan’s body started to contract, like he was seizing or tensing against a strike.

Over the next several moments, his entire body shrank into itself. His hair lost its gleam. His skin began to droop with lines and wrinkles. Then the flesh shifted again, as if it were thinning and clinging tighter to the bones. In the space of several heartbeats, it became abundantly clear that Allan’s vitality had been drained along with his magic.

Allan was now a mummified corpse in loose-fitting clothes. His unbuttoned shirt exposed the sunken cavern that had been his stomach moments prior. Now, it was no more than a hollow basin of contracted skin. Each rib was highlighted under the thin webbing of desiccated flesh, and as Ellie watched, the weight of his skull fell sideways.

A crackling noise reverberated in the room as Allan’s head detached from his spinal column. Ellie stared at the now-empty eye sockets and then at the now-unhinged jaw. There was nothing left of Allan.

Vaguely she noticed that the foul smell in the air was gone. He created the rift. And with his death, his magical corruption in Crenshaw had ended, too. That at least was a comfort. Crenshaw was no longer poisoned, since Allan was dead.

Still, Dan’s magic continued to try to drain magic from the withering husk of the witch on the infirmary bed.

“Daniel?” Axell called his lover’s name.

“Monahan!” Sondre barked out.

“He’s dead,” the chief witch began. “Daniel Monahan! Stop siphoning now. Stop. ”

Nothing was getting through to Dan. Meanwhile, the glowing rope that was around Prospero’s ankle had crept up to her hips. As Ellie looked at her wife, she noticed that Prospero was breathing as if injured.

“Is he siphoning you?” Ellie asked. They’d talked about what would happen if a witch as old as Prospero were to be siphoned. Proof of that fact didn’t take but a glance to the infirmary bed where Allan’s crumbling remains continued to fade toward ash.

As Dan’s magic started to speed faster over Prospero’s body, her hair turned gray, and her limber body loosened as if decades had passed in a blink.

Death will follow. She was being siphoned, and unless Ellie did something, Prospero would die just as Allan had.

Ellie glanced again at the corpse that was cracking into pieces as every last echo of magic was pulled out of the already dead bones.

“Prospero?” Ellie whispered.

“Ell… ie,” Prospero said, voice thready with pain and age combined.

And at that moment, Ellie no longer remembered any objection to violence or death. She was not willing to lose Prospero. Her magic lashed out as if unaware of any conscious thought or effort.

In that sliver of a moment, Ellie reshaped Dan’s heart. Her magic created the selfsame vines she’d once woven together to protect Crenshaw when the barrier fell. In her mind’s eye, she saw them, the thin vines taking on droplets of blood in the place of eyes. Her creation looked back at her from within the nest of his no-longer-beating heart.

And under Ellie’s magic, Dan Monahan died. She stopped his life to save Prospero. There was no guilt, no hesitation. It was simple.