And I don’t want to. I don’t want to be the one who spoils this. This is serious.
There is a screech, louder than any of the others, and the shapes in the sky swoop down. They are demons.
Human-ish. Ghost-ish. Horrible.
The air changes again, getting hotter, and I don’t know how to describe it. Hostile? The wind was foul, pushing and shoving at us, but the air is crackling around us, attacking us. I can hear a humming, feel a beat of evil in the air, like a drumbeat, or the beat of my heart.
I want to run away, cry, throw myself on the floor but I don’t, instead I lock eyes with Fletcher, and I stay still. Then I close my eyes for a minute. I cannot allow panic to overwhelm or consume me. This is working, and it’s not so bad – not as bad as getting kicked in the ribs by Efa or having my wrist broken. Elodie is doing this; it’s working. I just have to hold my nerve.
Then I open them because something is trying to pull my hands away from Elodie and Ember. The air? The wind? Invisible demons? I don’t bloody know.
I hold on even tighter, gripping their hands until my own hands tingle. I cannot feel anything, but I refuse to let go.
I can see from the look on their faces they are feeling it too.
The air is whirling; the wind is thick; the leaves are swirling around us, and the shadowy figures are heading towards us.
I feel hot from head to toe and then ice cold. The sound of the demon’s screams fills the air and I lock eyes with Fletcher again. I can just about hear Elodie’s voice over the top of it all. “Hold on!”
She is chanting again, and I hear Fletcher join her, then Ember, and then I am shouting the words with her. Words I don’t understand in languages I don’t speak.
The sky is suddenly bright white, hurting my eyes, tears stinging as they fall down my face. A demon swoops into the portal and shrieks. Then another follows and the cries sound like nothing I have ever heard on this earth.
Demon after demon swoops past us, each one filling my head with the screams of death, and each one making me feel faint. They are so otherworldly, so grotesque, but I cannot stop looking at them, even as they fly way, way, way too close to me for comfort.
The rush of air is back, the wind howling, the screams, shrieks and cries mingling to a nightmarish peak and I can feel tears pouring down my face. I want to let go but I can’t, but the wind is ripping between the four of us, pushing and pulling us, trying to tear us apart from each other.
I don’t want to let go, but I can barely hold on.
I can see the strain on the other’s faces, and I know their expressions match mine. My legs are shaking, and the demons keep coming.
I can hear them whisper my name, the ominous shadows of their wispy bodies pressing against me, their putrid breath in my face. “Ellis... Ellis... Ellis.” Then a maniacal cackle, or barely suppressed sobs. Then I hear my mother’s voice and my eyes fly open. Fletcher heard it too, and he shakes his head at me. I can’t hear what he’s saying and I’m rubbish at lip reading so I just imagine that he’s telling me it’s not really her. Or my father, when I hear his voice, or my brother when I hear him screaming for help.
It’s sickening the way they mimic people. They cry like a baby that’s in the worst pain; they sob like an abandoned child, then they laugh like a murderer who’s got away with it.
I hate this.
I want to cover my ears and drown it all out, but I can’t.
Elodie is still chanting, shivering, sweating – she looks like she might pass out any minute.
I want to scream for it all to stop.
Then it does.
There’s a final blood-curdling scream that makes me retch, but I don’t vomit, because I’m still holding hands with Fletcher’s mum and aunt and I don’t want to puke on my shoes.
Elodie lets go of me and I stumble over to a bush and throw up all over it.
“Done.”
The smile on her face is just beautiful, the weight of the world gone from her shoulders.
“Well done.” She kisses Fletcher on his forehead and then me on mine, magicking away all traces of vomit while she’s beside me, and I can’t help but laugh and cry all in one go.
We did it!
We banished the demons!
Elodie busies herself obliterating the portal forever, meaning that the demons won’t ever be able to come back, and nobody will ever be able to use them as a weapon again. Relief floods through my body.
Fletcher lifts me and spins me round, and we’re all laughing, and then the other witches all rush into the grove of trees, and we are all laughing, joking, whooping, and crying. We did it.
We’ve undone the nasty work that Zeta and Gregory did, and we’ve banished the demons once again.
Fletcher kisses me, and I kiss him back, even though we are with his friends and family. I let him kiss me, and I’m crying again that we’re both alive and safe and somehow, we got through this.
The rebels are dead.
The demons are banished.
We are winning!
5
The feeling of celebration stays with the witches all the way back through the woods to the open area they can fly away from. There’s a feel of giddy delight in the air, and it’s catching.
Fletcher squeezes Ellis’s hand. “Can you believe this?”
She shakes her head. “It wasn’t as bad as I thought.” She laughs at his surprised face. “No, it was bad, just not as bad as
