The featureless white walls of grandma’s guest room loom overhead, and the last vestiges of sunlight stream in from a narrow window that overlooks the gardens.
All traces of agony have gone, replaced by a pulling sensation on my skin. My gaze drops down to my exposed arms. They’re covered in red wounds that haven’t quite knitted together to form a scar.
It’s as though Aunt Klara ran out of magic and had to delay the cosmetic repairs.
That, or she left the cuts to heal naturally to teach me a lesson.
Memories flood to the forefront of my mind from what happened after I awoke in bed with the Boogie Man and decided to perform the banishment spell.
Grief swirls around me like a draft. It’s a culmination of the loss of my hound, the Boogie Man’s deception, and the realization that the magic I welded was never mine.
I clutch at my chest, my heart sinking at the lack of power from my locket. Without magic, there’s nothing to maintain its power. I’m completely unprotected. But most importantly, without magic, I am no longer a witch.
“Maybe Aunt Klara was right,” I mutter under my breath. “Maybe I should consider myself lucky to be alive.”
I swing my legs out of bed and walk to the window. Every movement is like a paper cut across my nerves. Even my scars sting and make me hiss through my teeth.
It’s dark outside, and the cottage is a blackened ruin, illuminated by the full moon. A small crowd of women gathers on the scorched earth around the building with their wands raised.
Shit.
Now the rest of the coven knows I’m a magic-less failure.
I’m not even sure how the cottage even caught fire. Tiny tendrils of smoke rise from the rubble, only to get caught in the invisible barrier above the garden.
I bite down on my bottom lip.
That’s not smoke. It’s the remnants of my black magic.
The spell I performed to banish the Boogie Man must have burned through the fabric of reality. I probably would have known this if I had bothered to read all the fine print, but I was in no fit state to consider any consequences after discovering him in my bed.
Grandma must have kept the tendrils within the confines of her wards to keep what I did from the Magical Council.
Now that it’s the full moon, the rest of the coven must be trying to clear up the mess.
“Bloody hell,” I mutter.
If the Council discovers I performed a spell of this magnitude in our coven’s headquarters, it won’t just be me who gets into trouble. They’d punish Grandma, Aunt Klara, Aggie, and all the other members.
“What had I been thinking?”
Common sense gives me a kick up the backside. It had to be done. The Boogie Man was getting closer and closer to breaking through my defenses. He already told me his plan to fuck me before murdering me the way he tried to kill Aggie.
The way he succeeded with poor, dead Norbert.
I exhale a weary sigh.
There are several reasons I acted alone: the Boogie Man was more powerful than a necromancer. Nobody believed me when I told them he existed. The only person who could see the Boogie Man ended up dead.
I did the right thing.
Heavy footsteps creak up the stairs. They’re far too loud to be female. I pick up an iron candlestick holder and step out into the hallway.
All the lights are off, with moonlight streaming in through the skylight and illuminating the dust motes.
Something shifts in the shadows.
“Who’s there?” I whisper.