I shudder again, thinking of how I held and snuggled Macaroon when it was actually Layland. I let him lick my face. I’m so glad he’s dead. Urgh!
“I don’t need to convince you. You’ll be dead within the hour.”
My stomach turns over. Dead within the hour. I’m expendable. I’m nothing to her, never was. I was always just a means to an end.
“So if Zeta had succeeded and killed me, made Efa head witch, would you have killed her, to put Talia in her place?”
Ember nods. “Yes. It’s always been my plan to make Talia head witch. Ever since they killed Adam, and I realised that Fletcher would be head witch at such a ridiculously young age. Elodie doesn’t have what it takes to lead him. I can lead Talia, help and support her until she’s a little older, wiser.”
Talia doesn’t look too chuffed about that. I wish I knew what her and her sister thought about all of this. They don’t have their typically smug look on their faces. They look shocked. Subdued. Uncomfortable.
Probably exactly how I look – but you can add terrified to my list.
There is nobody here on my side, nobody that will take pity on me, and I will die.
I know Fletcher will come looking for me when he realises that I didn’t fly after them, and his mum, but what can the two of them do? Faced with this deception, this betrayal?
I want to close my eyes and cry. This whole situation is awful.
There’s a tiny bit of me that’s maybe glad that I’ll be dead, and I won’t have to see Fletcher’s reaction to all of this. He thinks so much of his dad, thinks he was the best person he knew, and yet, if what Ember is saying is true, then he wasn’t that good.
And then I think of him, his beautiful face, his ridiculously lovely hair, the way he holds me and kisses me and I know that if I’m going to die, if somebody needs to be the head witch in my place, then it needs to be him. Not Talia, not Ember’s puppet. But Fletcher.
That could be the last thing I do, the one good thing. Ember reckons she’ll be an outstanding leader, and show Talia the way, but if that’s the truth why is Vann still alive, why was he able to switch sides, without her being angry with him? Because she knew all along. She’s a terrible person. And she was in on this entire thing with Zeta – she had to be. No way Zeta would have kept Vann alive for anybody she didn’t have an affiliation with.
I hate this. “Did Zeta know that Vann was on your side?”
Ember shakes her head. “No, she forced him to help her get away from the safe house, but I had given him something to protect him, just in case. Just a little potion. As soon as she was safe, she turned on him. But he had used the magic to switch places with a shifter. The shifter became Vann and Zeta killed him and left him on our doorstep, and Vann turned into the shifter, only for a few hours. Once the magic wore off, Vann had already left her and gone to safety.”
“What about Gregory? Gregory was on Zeta’s side. He freed the rebels at the portal.”
“True, but we kept him alive.”
“Why?”
Vann comes into the room. “He’s dead now.”
My head is reeling. “Why? Why kill him now?”
“We needed him. Now we don’t.”
“What did you need him for?”
“We needed him to get Lincoln back over here. He has close allies that are best friends with Lincoln – we needed that relationship. Lincoln was unwilling to get involved with another investment for us.”
I snort. No wonder after what happened last time, when I was made head witch by accident. Or not so accident, after all.
There’s no time to save me now, if only I had told Fletcher what I had done, if only I had had more time, maybe he could have changed Sadie’s magic. But the fact is, if anybody undoes the original magic that put the witches in charge, I will die – not everybody else as she initially planned, lovely lady that she was – but me, just me. And I have no way of escaping this room and making sure that the witch invested after me is Fletcher, not Talia.
I’m stuck.
And sad.
Ember unbinds me so I can walk to my death and Vann ushers me along the corridor to the back of the house where they’ve set a room up ready for the magical ceremony that will set the other creatures free from the witches’ rule and kill me.
I swallow down some sick and try to breathe.
I have to get out of this. I have to get out of here. I have to get away. But I cannot think of a single thing to do and it fills my head with white noise, the echoes of the demon’s screams, the sound of Ember’s cackles, the sound of Sally’s hand hitting my face. How can I escape when I cannot think straight?
I don’t want to die so that Talia and Ember can rule.
Think, Ellis, think!
It’s like any brain cells I had have shrunk or run away or been scared out of my brain. It’s too much pressure.
Vann pushes me into a chair, in the middle of the room, that looks like it’s set up for some sort of sacrificial ceremony.
Which I suppose it is.
I focus on the candle flames, letting the warm, orange flickering lights soothe me, while I wait for death.
14
“What does she want? Does she know if Ember is okay?” Elodie tries to peer past Fletcher to see his phone. “Has she heard anything?”
“Mum, she’s here.”
Confusion colours both of their faces. “Here? Is she safe? Is she with Ember? With Talia?”
“Hang on, mum. She’s texting. She says be quiet and still and she’ll be out in a
