The Witches of Glass Castle: Uprising (The Witches of the Glass Castle Series Book 2) (16 page)

See No Evil

The hours that followed Demetrius’s announcement were tense, to say the least. With Jonathan missing, Wendolyn unconscious, and Colt still on the loose with Siren as his presumed accomplice, the orders were for everyone to stay within the protected grounds of the castle where the rogue Hunters could not set foot.

With the Arcana on lockdown, the castle was sombre.

Curled up in an armchair in the drawing room, Mia chewed her thumbnail. Outside it was dark, and rain had started to fall. It pattered against the castle’s tall lead-framed windows, spilling down the glass in quick streams.

Mia rose slowly from her seat and gazed around the imposing room. Huddled on the sofa, her aunt and mother sipped tea and murmured back and forth in hushed voices. They looked up when they heard movement.

‘Where are you going?’ Cassandra asked at once.

‘To bed,’ Mia replied. ‘I’m tired.’ She forced a smile.

‘Okay, sweetie,’ her mother returned. ‘I’ll check on you later.’

Madeline blew her a kiss. ‘Night, hun.’

‘Night,’ Mia replied quietly. She left the drawing room and crossed the lower corridor. As she lumbered up the staircase, each step she took felt heavy, laden with the weight of her tormented mind.

She’d heard the whispers; it wasn’t as though anyone was trying particularly hard to conceal their suspicions. Everyone thought that Colt had killed Jonathan.

Mia squeezed her eyes shut, trying in vain to block out the thought. Could he really do such a thing? Sure, he didn’t
like
Jonathan—that was certainly no secret—but murder?

No
. She refused to consider it.
Colt’s not a murderer. I know he’s not.
She paused on the steps.
But what if I really
am
blinded by him, just like everyone says?

If that was the case, could she have been wrong all along? Wrong to trust him? Wrong to stand back while he stole the book with the spell to steal the Arx? Wrong to not warn Johnathan of Colt’s vendetta against him? And now Colt held an Enticement over her, with the power to draw her to him whenever he chose. And still she defended him?

Naturally, Mia hadn’t told anyone about Colt’s Enticement. She’d have to deal with it on her own; seeking out anyone else’s help would only get Colt in more trouble, and she wasn’t sure she wanted that, either.

The only way she knew to break the Enticement he held over her was to take the blood of his coven. Siren, Talon, Finn—any of them would do the trick. Perhaps, under the circumstances, the younger Hunters wouldn’t mind sparing a couple of drops of blood. Of course, she’d have to ingest it for the remedy to work...

Yuck
. Her stomach heaved at the idea. Still, drinking a few drops of Hunter blood would beat the other alternative: death by Hunter.

Death by Colt.

On the other hand, there was still cause to argue Colt’s innocence. What if Jonathan really had been the one plotting to steal the Arx? What if Jonathan was the one who’d taken the Tome of Black Magic and was now laying low, waiting for his chance to strike? What if Jonathan had framed Colt?

Mia shivered at the thought.  

She reached her bedchamber and twisted the handle. Slipping inside, she let the door fall shut behind her with a soft click. Dino’s side of the room was empty. He was probably in the library with Blue, Mia presumed.

She wandered to the wardrobe and opened the double doors. Her meagre selection of clothes and jackets hung before her in a neat row.

The weather outside was grim, matching Mia’s mood. Even safely inside the cosy bedchamber, the window pane trembled beneath the force of the rainstorm. But there were so many questions she needed answers to—and she needed them
now
.

Mia glanced over her shoulder to the closed door. In this treasured moment of solitude, she was finally free from the watchful eyes of the others. She had choices to make, and the opportunity to make them.

‘Okay,’ she muttered to herself, letting out a breath. ‘I can do this.’

She reached into the wardrobe and slid her blue raincoat from its hanger. Before she had the chance to second guess herself, Mia slipped the coat on over her clothes and zipped it to the top. Then, she hurried to her bed and bunched up the quilt, stuffing pillows under the sheets in case her mother came to check on her.

Trembling, Mia quickly extinguished all of the candles and crept out of the chamber. She snuck along the corridor and down the steps to the main entrance.

Out in the courtyard, rain lashed down, forming puddles on the paving stones. Mia flipped up her hood and paced towards the gardens. She crossed onto the boggy grass and forged on across the lawn.

Thanks to her early morning trek to the castle, she was confident that she would be able to retrace her steps back to Colt. She had no doubt that he would be there. Even if he had managed to hide from Demetrius and the others, he wouldn’t hide from Mia. That much she knew. 

The storm raged on, and soon Mia’s clothes and shoes were heavy with water. She blinked against the raindrops as they struck at her from all angles. But she kept going, clinging to her hood, holding it firmly in place as wisps of silken brown hair escaped and whipped in front of her eyes.

She reached the sloping embankment and began her unsteady descent down the muddy incline. The misted rows of pines just beyond the clearing were swaying wildly under the might of the storm.

Nearly at the foot of the slope, Mia skidded on a slick patch of grass and landed with a thud on the flat ground below. She groaned. ‘Give me a break!’

Strangely, for just a second or two, the rain and wind bowed away from her, as though her cry had quite literally scared it away. It was as though, for that brief moment in time, Mia had been encased in her own little bubble, protected and sheltered from the storm.

Mia glanced to the dark, imposing forest.
What just happened?
she wondered.
Did
I
do that?

Her mind was racing. Had she finally managed to call upon the passion that Colt had so desperately wanted her to find? It stood to reason, really. At that moment, her very being was charged with emotions: anger, confusion, fear, grief, love...

She rose to her feet and gripped the rim of her hood as the material whipped against her cheeks. This was it—her chance to prove that she could master her Tempestus ability on her own. With every ounce of emotion she could muster, she commanded the rain to deviate from her path.

‘Move,’ she said firmly.

And, just like that, it did. The downpour bent away from her like curtains being parted to grant her access. She had created a clear and dry path that ran through the storm like an invisible tunnel.

A triumphant smile spread over Mia’s face. With a swell of pride, she relinquished her grip on her hood and allowed it to slip down onto her back. Her long hair barely even stirred as the gale shied away from her. She had done it! 

In fact, the rain carved a path for her the whole way to the outskirts of the Glass Castle borders, and not until she had ventured into the forest did she release her control over the downpour. Once in the forest, the tangled mass of branches and leaves became her shelter.

Mia stopped and took stock, adjusting to her new surroundings. The trees were gnarled and their moss-covered branches were hooked and deformed. A short distance away, a dense patch of silvery mist hung in the air. Colt’s mist.

Instead of floating through the pines in clouds of vapour, however, it now formed what appeared to be a series of impenetrable walls. Its consistency was so opaque that it took on the appearance of ice rather than the insubstantial vapours that it was.

There was a clear path leading into the mist, and Mia began down it. Ahead, it broke off into other pathways—a complex rabbit warren of tunnels.
It’s a maze
, she realized with a sudden knot of trepidation.

‘Colt?’ Mia called uneasily.

She edged deeper into the maze. The walls of silver mist rose high above her head. Tentatively, she began down the first path, brushing away puffs of fogged air that drifted free from the walls. The other sounds of the forest were stifled, leaving it eerily quiet. As Mia paused at a fork in the path, she could only hear the pant of her breath and the distant patter of raindrops landing on leaves.

Left or right?
she contemplated, peering into the depths of the unknown passageways.

She thought back to the instruction Colt had given when he’d guided her through the underground passages in the castle. ‘Two lefts then a right,’ she murmured to herself. ‘And repeat if necessary.’

Left
, she decided, and forged on. However, before she’d had chance to complete the sequence, she was grabbed from behind and pulled deeper into the chasms of the maze, rupturing the thick walls of fog.

Dragged backwards, Mia coughed and gasped for air as she breathed in the mist. She grappled for her footing and finally stumbled to a stop, collapsing into Colt.

‘You were going the wrong way,’ he told her casually as they stood in a mist enclosed corridor in the forest. ‘You bypassed a turn.’

Mia quickly gathered herself. ‘Jonathan is missing,’ she blurted out.

Colt’s body went rigid and he stepped back from her. ‘Since when?’

‘I don’t know. This morning, maybe.’ Mia met his eyes in the darkness. ‘Tell me you don’t have anything to do with it. You don’t, do you?’ They stood face to face, with silver walls of mist surrounding them on all sides.

‘I
wish
I’d had something to do with it,’ Colt snapped. His eyes blazed deep green as they bore into Mia’s accusing gaze.

‘How can I believe you?’ she cried.

‘Someone has to.’

‘But why does it have to be me?’ she despaired, looking to the ground.

Colt didn’t answer. 

Mia exhaled and raked her hands through her hair. ‘If you’ve got nothing to do with it, then where is he?’

‘Good question,’ he said darkly.

Mia’s mouth went dry. ‘What do you mean?’

‘I mean that his disappearance is all too convenient. He’s got a plan. And he’s getting ready to execute it.’

The colour drained from Mia’s face. She had considered the notion herself, but to hear it said aloud made her blood run cold. ‘You seriously think that Jonathan might be on the loose and’—she swallowed—‘dangerous?’

‘Yes,’ Colt insisted.

‘The book is missing, too. The one with the spell to steal the Arx. Do you think Jonathan has it?’

‘I have it.’

Mia’s eyebrows shot up. ‘Siren brought it to you?’ She felt a tiny swell of relief—despite knowing that her reaction may not have been entirely prudent. 

‘Yes. After you left.’

‘So Jonathan doesn’t have the Tome of Black Magic,’ she mused.

She hesitated for a moment as the information sank in.
Then maybe Jonathan’s
not
the one who wants to kill me
, she contemplated, stopping herself short of considering what that option meant for Colt.
Or else Jonathan
is
the one who wants to kill me—and he’ll have to go through Colt to do it
.

‘When I got back to the castle last night, Jonathan said some...
things
. About you. What if he’s planning to come after you?’

Colt took another step back, bringing even more distance between them. ‘You saw him last night?’

‘At the castle. He was waiting at the entrance.’

‘I told you to stay away from him!’

‘He was there when I walked in,’ Mia argued. ‘What do you expect me to do? Walk
through
him?’

‘Yes, if that’s what it takes. Although, since you refuse to stay away from him, there’s the very real possibility that you might be walking
through
him after all. Since you’ll be a ghost. A dead one.’

‘Gee, thanks for the clarification,’ said Mia irritably. ‘Look, it might not be Jonathan. Maybe something else has happened to him—something bad.’

Colt rolled his eyes. ‘So naïve.’

Mia groaned. ‘Just promise me that if you come across Jonathan, you’ll get proof before you do anything reckless. Promise me you’ll let Wendolyn and Amos deal with this. Okay?’

Colt’s expression was indifferent. ‘That’s a lot to ask.’

‘Just promise me. Please.’

Colt sighed. ‘Fine,’ he relented. ‘I won’t kill him. Is that what you want me to say?’

‘Yes,’ Mia breathed.

‘I won’t kill him, but I
will
prove he’s guilty. And then I’ll request that Wendolyn and Amos
permit
me to kill him. Happy?’

‘Of course I’m not happy,’ Mia grumbled. ‘I’m rarely happy when the word
kill
is being used in a conversation.’