The pain dulls, and the room fades, and my heartbeat slows right down. I can hear it drumming in my ears, getting slower, and slower, and slower.
And then I reach for Thea who is Fletcher one more time, just to feel the touch of another human before I-
15
“Ellis!” Fletcher screams her name as she loses consciousness, and quickly spells his cousin Talia, and Vann, before turning to his aunt at the same time as hollering out to his mum and Thea.
“What the hell are you doing, Thea!” Ember is furious, anger making sparks shoot from her fingers. “Why are you screaming for your mum, when I’m right here, and why are you screeching your own name, and why have you spelled...” It dawns on her and she puts a hand up to immobilise him, but he’s too quick. He dodges to the side. “I’m Fletcher, Thea told me everything.” He pushes his hair off his forehead and fury over whatever has happened to Ellis strengthens his magic. He binds Ember, causing her to fall to the floor. She is helpless for now but screaming obscenities at him.
The door flies open and his mum and Thea still disguised as him, come in. His mother is bleeding and looks like she’s got a black eye. Thea looks okay.
“Mum, are you okay? I need help with Ellis.”
Quickly Elodie switches Fletcher and Thea back to their normal selves. Thea refuses to look at her mum or sister, both of whom are pleading with their eyes for her to help them.
“Mum, what’s wrong with Ellis?”
“I don’t know.” Elodie feels for a pulse and puts a hand above her mouth. “She’s breathing, she’s alive.” She turns to her sister. “What did you do to her?”
Ember shrugs and refuses to answer.
Elodie mutters a few spells, keeping her fingers on Ellis’s wrist. She tuts with annoyance. Simple spells aren’t working. Elodie turns to face Ember, the hurt, anger, betrayal and devastation that Adam might be the twins’ father making her far more furious than she would have been if Ember was just trying to grab power for herself for any other reason. Elodie slaps her sister across the face, enjoying the loud noise her hand makes as it strikes her skin. Ember touches her face and then laughs. “Is that the best you can do?”
“Oh, I can do better. I want to know what’s wrong with Ellis first.”
“Nothing that I’ve done, more’s the pity.”
Fletcher has scooped Ellis into his arms, trying the few bits of magic that he knows that might help. She doesn’t stir.
“Mum!” The pain and misery in his voice forces Elodie to turn away from her sister. She kneels beside Ellis again. “I don’t know Fletcher, her heart rate is slowing, she’s not responding.”
“Then we take her to hospital.”
“We can’t, you know that. Let me try...” She presses her hands to Ellis’s forehead, muttering the words to another spell.
Ember tuts. “Let me help.”
Fletcher spins to look at her, to glare at her. “Why? You would have killed her right after you finished this spell, anyway. Did you do something to her?”
“You know everything?” She looks at her daughter, Thea. “You told him everything? You betrayed me.”
Thea looks sad. “Mum, if what you told us about uncle Adam is true, then you betrayed us, and Fletcher and worst of all, your sister. I can’t believe we fought through this entire war when your plan the whole time was to kill Ellis and make Talia head witch. She won’t be any good at it and neither will you.” Thea turns away and kneels next to Elodie, laying her head on her aunt’s shoulder.
Ember swears at her, and Elodie turns to shoot a flame at her. “Watch your mouth. Your daughter is showing the loyalty you couldn’t. Now, what’s happened to Ellis?”
“I don’t know.” Ember folds her arms across her chest, able to move, but unable to perform any magic. “I really don’t. I did the spell, I got to the end and then she went all funny.”
“You’d finished the spell?”
Ember nods.
Elodie looks at Fletcher. “Maybe Sadie tricked Ellis, when she said that she changed the magic. Maybe she meant to hurt Ellis?”
Fletcher nods. It makes sense, sort of. There’s no other reasonable explanation to why Ellis has suddenly collapsed, when she was in perfect health two minutes before. He knows; he was watching her. Watching her roll her eyes at Ember, watching her expression when he tried to convey who he really was, and then watching her realise that he was Fletcher and not Thea. And then she went.
Elodie doesn’t look happy. “Fletcher, we can’t take her to a hospital, but I need you to phone Matthew – Dr Jones.”
Fletcher flicks through his phone and dials the number of their friend, a doctor but also a witch. There would be too many questions asked if they took Ellis to a regular hospital and she started shooting sparks from her fingertips, or worse.
“He’s on his way. Mum...” He doesn’t have to finish his sentence; she can read the fear on his face. If this is something Sadie put into motion when Ellis met with her, there might be nothing they can do, magically to help her, they can only hope that Matthew can do something, medically.
“All we can do is wait. I’m giving her as much of my life energy as I can. Put your hands on her skin, and you Thea.”
Fletcher places his hands on Ellis’s bare arm and closes his eyes, muttering a prayer of some sort that she might be okay, that Matthew might help, that somehow she might get through this.
“Let me help,” Ember says. “Let me give her my strength too.”
“You’re
