Page 51 of Witch and Tell

That was it. My grandmother had been right. She wanted me to break my grandmother’s containment spell.

I was the only person who could sever those bonds for her. At the same time, she was the only person who could set me free, who could bring my old life back to me.

We stared at each other in the dark. Beata was serene, a faint smile on her face and a question in her eyes.

I stepped forward, through the protective dome, into her arms.

Chapter Twenty-seven

Aunt Beata’s embrace was comforting, but there was something else. A feeling of sharp zaps, as if I were shorting out. I pulled back and searched her face. She smiled, sure and calm.

“Trust me, Josie.”

Although the dome’s protection was now shattered, Rodney continued to sit in its center, staring at us.

“What do you need?” I asked, knowing her response.

“One thing. Something simple. Then I can help you.”

Anything. I’d do anything for relief. “Tell me.”

“I need you to release my magic.”

Of course it came to that. That’s why Beata was here, why she’d sent crows to watch me. She was using the glamour she had at her disposal as an ordinary witch to lure me to do her bidding. I knew that. I wasn’t that stupid.

But I also didn’t care. I wanted my old life back, and she could do that for me.

I let my gaze sweep her, foot to head. She might have been a guardian angel from a nineteenth-century painting. Her eyes shone pale blue, and her resemblance to my grandmother gathered so that it was almost as if I were seeing her again. My heart squeezed in my chest. She could make my pain go away.

“Okay,” I said.

At that simple word, the candle’s flame grew brighter, taller, and burned purple. I openedGrimm’s Fairy Talesat random to “Old Sultan,” a tale that had always puzzled me, about the shifting alliances between a wolf and an elderly mutt. In it, the powerful wolf was deceived, thinking a three-legged cat’s tail was a saber and its body a rock. The cat, in turn, believed a boar’s ears to be a mouse and attacked them. I read aloud the words that glowed from the page:

“Listen to me, old fellow,” said the wolf; “Be of good courage, I will help you in your need. I have thought of a way.”

As the words left my lips, a deafening crack rent the night. The air around us thickened and swirled with magic so forceful that I struggled to not to drown in it. After a moment, my senses returned.

I watched Beata morph once again. The resemblance to my grandmother faded. Beata’s face aged. She remained more beautiful than ever, but also more frightening. A sharp canniness replaced comfort and warmth. What had I done?

Then she laughed. Its force blew me back against a tree.

I heard a gasp. Was that me? “Beata?” The word sounded weak against the rage of power around us.

As a person, Beata remained on the small side—I was taller. As a witch, however, her magic made her a giant. She stretched her arms and swiveled her neck, as if relishing the energy that now flowed through them. This energy was not the strengthening flow I experienced, but something much darker, smelling of sulfur. It stung my eyes.

I’d made a monumental mistake.

“Goodbye, Josie.”

Cold like a knife ripped through my gut. I’d just unleashed a terrible force. In the space of a moment, images of sobbing men, heartbroken women, dark rooms, and hollow hearts raced through my head. Rodney howled behind me.

Then Beata vanished.

I stood alone in the night. After the riot subsided, the woods became unnaturally quiet. And dark.

Blinded by pain, I had done something stupendously stupid. My grandmother had warned me Aunt Beata was not to be trusted, yet I’d trusted her. I’d wanted to believe her, and that was glamour’s fuel. Turning anxiety to fear and fear to desperate acts, she’d made me believe what I wanted to believe. She’d amped up my pain, then used it against me. Beata was a master of mirroring people’s desires. She could make herself into whatever someone wanted or needed, and I’d so desperately needed relief—relief from disasters she’d created.

Now I’d pay the price. I was in an even worse situation than when I’d started. I had no delusions that she’d clear me of Tyrone’s murder or salvage my relationship with Sam. She’d used me and was done with me. All that talk about family and caring was just that: talk. I doubted I had the magic to rein her in again.