The Witches of the Dark Power

  THE WITCHES OF THE

  DARK POWER

  Gabriella Lepore

  The Witches of the Glass Castle

  Book Two

  For siblings everywhere—especially my own!

  Chapter One

  Blackout

  Mia felt her way around the basement, her hands moving over the stone walls as she searched blindly for the torch. In the darkness, her fingers skimmed the smooth surface of the plywood shelves before brushing against a small matchbox. She lifted the box and shook it, listening to the matchsticks rattle inside their cardboard confines.

  ‘I’m going to light a candle,’ she called into the darkness. Returning to her task, she groped for the wax candle and retrieved it from the shelf.

  There was a clang of metal across the room—the sound of her brother locating the fuse box.

  ‘A candle?’ Dino groaned. ‘Can’t you find the torch?’

  ‘There is no torch,’ Mia reported back.

  ‘Yes there is,’ he insisted, his voice growing aggravated. ‘It’s on the top shelf. I already told you.’

  Mia rose to her tiptoes and patted at the plywood shelving again. Stretched to full height, she could barely reach the top. Her fingertips nudged something and it rolled out of reach.

  She cringed. There goes the torch.

  ‘It’s not there,’ she said to Dino—a small lie, but no big deal. ‘The candle will be just as good.’

  Dino snorted. ‘Yeah, right,’ he muttered.

  Mia placed the candle on a low shelf and drew a matchstick from the box. She struck it along the rough side of the matchbox until a tiny flame fizzed and shot to life, setting a small patch of yellow light around her thumb and forefinger. She dipped the flame to the candle wick and watched as it ignited. The circle of light quickly expanded like an inflated balloon.

  Mia carried the candle to Dino. He was standing at the fuse box with his back to her. In the trickery of the shadows he seemed taller, and his dark brown hair blended into his silhouette.

  ‘Voilà,’ Mia announced, holding the tiny flame up to the labyrinth of switches and buttons.

  Dino sighed. ‘I could have used some wattage, but if this is the best you can do . . .’ He flipped a switch, then glanced over his shoulder, confused as to why they remained in complete darkness. He flipped the switch again. Still nothing.

  ‘Maybe you’re trying the wrong one,’ Mia offered.

  ‘I’m not,’ he replied.

  ‘Well, it’s obviously not the right one,’ she pointed out, mirroring his petulant tone. The candle was cold against her skin, and a sweet vanilla aroma wafted from the burning scented wax.

  While Dino continued to tap at the switch, Mia strayed from his side, plotting a course around the basement. With only her small patch of light, she was forced to discover things through new eyes. Now the old foldout table, stained with paint and unsteady on its legs, seemed enigmatic and antique, like a forgotten treasure.

  ‘Mia,’ Dino snapped, ‘I need light over here.’

  ‘Just a second,’ she murmured. Something on the wall had caught her attention. She raised the candle, studying with interest the rise and fall of the uneven stone of the basement’s foundations. And there, engraved into the wall, were three words.

  Mia frowned. She’d lived in this house her entire life, and in all those sixteen years, she’d never noticed writing on the basement wall before. Yet, there were the words, scored into the stone like hieroglyphics transcending the house itself.

  ‘Did you do this?’ she asked Dino.

  The switch clicked on and off as he lifted and dropped it in rapid motions. ‘I don’t understand,’ he uttered to himself. ‘This is the trip switch. There must be a fault with the main power line. I bet the whole street is out.’

  ‘Maybe it’s the wrong switch,’ Mia repeated absently. She returned her attention to the wall, captivated by its mystery. ‘Weird,’ she murmured, reading the words to herself. ‘It’s another language.’

  ‘It’s not the wrong switch,’ Dino shot back, disregarding her latter comment.

  ‘Addo vis vires,’ Mia spoke the words aloud.

  Her heart gave a thud.

  No sooner had the words left her mouth than she wanted them back. Speaking them out loud had changed something. Something big. She knew it in the pit of her stomach. The feeling was uncanny, as though the darkness had become darker. She instinctively knew that she’d unleashed something wild—that she and Dino were no longer alone in the basement.

  Mia drew in a sharp breath. The air had altered; it was thinner, shrinking. It felt like ice as it trickled into her lungs and prickled her skin in tiny needle-like jabs.

  And then she felt Dino at her side, so close that his presence was suffocating. But when she reached out to push him away, he wasn’t there. He was at the fuse box on the other side of the basement, where he’d been all along. Now, though, it was as if an invisible cord was winding itself around them, soldering them together like a spider entrapping them in an invisible web.

  From across the basement, Dino let out a cry. ‘Turn that off!’ he shouted, covering his ears.

  Mia jumped in fright. ‘Turn what off?’ she stammered.

  ‘That noise!’ he yelled, dropping to his knees and clutching his head with both hands. ‘Turn it off!’

  The basement was silent.

  ‘I don’t know what you mean!’ Mia cried helplessly. ‘There is no noise.’

  A biting wind began to stir inside the windowless stone walls. It whipped through their hair and passed through their bodies like a ghost, extinguishing the candle’s flame as it went.

  Swallowed in darkness once more, Mia held her breath.

  What was happening?

  For several bated seconds, an eerie harmony returned to the room. Dino fell silent and everything was still.

  Then, it began.

  Exploding from the dormant candle wick, the flame shot back to life. It leaped skyward and spilled across the ceiling in a sea of fire. Purple smoke poured from its inferno, devouring the basement.

  Mia’s breath caught in a petrified scream.

  ‘Wake up.’

  Mia opened her eyes to a blinding light. She blinked, focusing on the outline of Dino’s face eclipsed by the glare of a high-watt bulb.

  ‘You found the torch,’ she mumbled. Was she still in the basement? She blinked, gathering her thoughts. No . . . she was in her bedroom. It had been a dream—a memory, really—and it was over. But it lingered fresh in her mind as though no time had passed at all.

  In truth, months had passed since that day—the day that had changed everything. Sometimes, in reflective moments, Mia would think back to that incident. Not only in her subconscious dreams, but during her waking hours as well. What if she hadn’t lit the candle? What if she hadn’t read the words aloud? Would she and Dino have gained their powers, or would the calling simply have passed them by?

  She supposed she’d never know. Not for certain, anyway. Their mother had called it destiny, but what was destiny if not the final result of a series of random events? If they had been predestined to be witches—if it had been sealed the moment she’d lit the candle—then she’d been the one who had set the wheels in motion. It was her actions that had unlocked their dormant abilities: Dino, a Sententia able to hear the emotions of others, and she a Tempestus with the gift of controlling the elements. Not that she felt particularly gifted. It was more a case of the powers controlling her than the other way around.

  When it had first happened, they’d spent the following weeks at a castle, an old isolated fortress where witches could go unnoticed by the rest of the world. A castle charmed to be as translucent as glass�
��there, but unnoticed, just like its occupants. Under the guidance of an elder witch, Wendolyn, they’d worked on their powers and gotten quite good, too. But months had passed since that summer, and whatever Mia had learned about her powers had soon slipped to the back of her mind. Now, she felt like any other sixteen-year-old girl . . . albeit one whose bad moods occasionally made it rain.

  Although there was one aspect of the Glass Castle that Mia hadn’t forgotten quite so easily. There was one person who, even months on, still held a firm spot at the forefront of her mind.

  Colt.

  In fact, her time away from the castle had only served to heighten her feelings for him. She’d heard people say that absence makes the heart grow fonder, but she’d never really believed it until Colt. Sometimes, when she was feeling particularly lonely, she’d try to summon his presence to her, hoping that their shared Tempestus power would somehow reconnect them. But always she’d been left feeling cold and more alone than ever. She wondered if he thought about her, too. Did he miss her at all? Colt was a Hunter, bred as a warrior and taught to be exempt from obeying human emotion. Did that make him exempt from missing her?

  ‘Wake up,’ Dino waved his hand in front of her face, snapping her focus back to the present.

  Mia pushed the torch aside and its glare shot across her bedroom. The spotlight landed on a bulging rucksack, propped against her dresser. All at once, she was reminded of why the bag was there—and why Dino stood before her, gripping the torch and speaking in hushed tones.

  They were leaving.

  Mia took a shaky breath. The idea of running away didn’t fill her with the confidence it had earlier in the week when it had been merely a fledgling idea. Now, the excitement that had once rushed into her stomach had turned into a heavy lurch, nagging at her, warning her that she was making a mistake.

  ‘Are you sure we should do this?’ she asked Dino.

  ‘If we don’t leave now, we might not get another chance,’ he answered.

  Mia glanced at her bedside clock. The digits read 2:35. Of course her mother and aunt would be asleep. Part of her wanted to wake them to seek their approval, but she supposed that would defeat the point of running away.

  They’ll be furious when they realise, she thought.

  She looked back at Dino. ‘You don’t have to come with me,’ she said, presenting him with a way out whilst secretly hoping he wouldn’t take it. ‘This isn’t your problem.’

  He shook his head. ‘We’re staying together. That’s the plan, remember?’

  ‘We’ll get caught,’ she warned him. ‘The Glass Castle will be the first place they’ll look—assuming Wendolyn doesn’t grass us out the second we walk through the door, that is. And once they’ve found me, they’ll send me away anyway.’

  ‘Not if we can get Wendolyn on side,’ Dino assured her. ‘Look, let’s just get out of here. We’ll deal with everything else when the time comes.’

  Mia kicked off her bedcovers, already dressed in jeans and a button-down top in preparation for a quick getaway.

  ‘Thanks, Dino,’ she said, her voice escaping in nervous rasps, betraying her. ‘I don’t think I could do this without you.’

  He mustered a smile. ‘You can owe me one,’ he teased. ‘Anyway, this is what we do,’ he reminded her. ‘We look out for each other. No one is going to send you anywhere.’

  ‘Even if it’s for my own safety?’ she remarked in a wry tone as she zipped up her raincoat and slung her rucksack over her shoulder.

  ‘You’re safest with me,’ Dino told her firmly. ‘I won’t let anything happen to you. We just need Wendolyn to back us up, that’s all.’

  It was a weak hope and they both knew it. What were the chances that the older woman would somehow take pity on them, let them stay with her at the Glass Castle, and offer them a different scenario than what their mother was offering?

  ‘It’s the only way to keep you safe,’ Cassandra had said to her daughter earlier that week, sitting beside her on the couch with a remarkably stoic expression. ‘It won’t be forever,’ she had assured Mia. ‘Just until we know more. Once we’ve eliminated the threat, you can come home. You won’t even have a chance to miss us.’

  ‘It’ll be like a holiday,’ her aunt, Madeline, had added, flopping onto the couch beside Mia and slinging her arm around her niece’s shoulders.

  Mia had stared at her aunt and mother in disbelief. The two women had smiled amiably back at her, fiery red hair tumbling around their porcelain faces. They had seemed so poised, so calm. How could they have been so composed when handing her such a bleak forecast? They had basically been telling her to go into isolation in the mountains and hide away until the person who presumably wanted to see her dead had been eliminated.

  Unnerved by the calmness of her mother and aunt, Mia had found Dino’s eyes across the living room. He’d been standing at the window, his expression grim as he processed the information.

  Don’t let them send me away, Mia had begged him silently, pleading through her winter-grey eyes.

  He’d met her gaze, his own eyes dark and fearful, yet resolute at the same time. She knew he’d heard her pleas. Somehow, somewhere inside, he’d heard her, and he was on her side.

  So, in secret, the two of them had made arrangements of their own.

  Now, standing in her torch-lit bedroom, Mia slipped on her shoes and crept into the hallway behind her brother. They made their way down the staircase and headed for the front door.

  Dino snatched Cassandra’s car keys from the hook on the way out.

  Outside, the December air was bitter. Their narrow suburban street was lit only by pools of cool light cast from the street lamps. Parked neatly at the curb was Cassandra’s blue station wagon. One of its hubcaps was missing, and spoils of rust discoloured the framework.

  ‘Are you sure you can drive?’ Mia whispered as they piled their bags into the boot of the station wagon.

  ‘Of course I can drive!’ Dino paused. ‘I mean, not legally, obviously.’

  Mia laughed nervously. ‘Stealing a car and driving without a licence? Oh, well. At least Mum and Aunt Maddie won’t think to look for us in jail.’

  ‘It’s our mother’s car,’ Dino pointed out. ‘And we’re not stealing, we’re borrowing. Besides, I left a note.’

  ‘Remember to remind them of that when they’re reading you your rights,’ Mia said as she slid into the front passenger seat. She pulled the door gently shut behind her, enclosing herself in the cold car. Her breath fogged the windscreen.

  Dino settled into the driver’s seat and fastened his seatbelt. With one hand fixed on the steering wheel, he turned the key in the ignition. The car rumbled to life, then jolted forward, jerking them in their seats. The engine stalled and died, leaving them in eerie silence.

  Dino glanced at Mia. ‘My foot slipped,’ he justified vaguely.

  She glanced down at his muddy skate trainers where they rested on the pedals. ‘Is your foot planning on slipping a lot?’ she asked.

  ‘I don’t know,’ he mused. ‘We’ll soon find out.’

  He turned the ignition over again and slowly, erratically, the car lumbered out onto the tarmac.

  Clinging to her seat in trepidation, Mia shot one last look at their house, nestled in the heart of a terraced street. Neat stone steps led up to the cherry-red front door, which in the darkness was more a blood-red hue. The ill omen made her shiver and she quickly looked away.

  Mia watched through the car window as the slumbering houses of Conway Street were left behind. There was no turning back now; they were on their way.

  Mia gave one last glance over her shoulder. A chill ran down her spine. The feeling was neither good nor bad, simply an awareness that this was just the beginning.

  Chapter Two

  Homecoming

  Hours later, the old station wagon crossed into the town of Silver Brook. Even though it was daytime, the streets seemed bleak and deserted. Evergreen pines lined the main road, and fog clung to th
e distant snow-capped mountain peaks.

  Inside the car, the stereo crackled in and out of tune, disjointing a maudlin ballad as though it were waiting for the listeners to fill in the blanks, daring them to narrate their own story. The fragmented melody only added to the haunting atmosphere of the desolate town.

  Dino pulled over on the roadside and slowed to a stop. The car engine gave a little splutter.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ Mia asked. She gazed out the window to a smaller dirt road leading through an archway of trees. ‘This is the turnoff, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yeah,’ Dino answered. ‘This is it.’

  ‘Then why have you stopped?’ Mia turned to him, studying his profile. His eyes remained trained on the road.

  ‘I need a second,’ he said in a hoarse voice.

  Mia’s stomach knotted. ‘What’s wrong?’ she tried again.

  ‘Nothing.’ He exhaled quietly before pressing his foot down on the accelerator and swerving off the main road and onto the dirt path. His grip on the steering wheel tightened as the car juddered along the uneven ground.

  Overhead, the trees bowed towards each other, creating a tunnel. The barren winter branches knotted together, blocking out the daylight. Only occasional bursts of fading sunlight lanced through the gaps, shooting spears of misted light across the dusty road.

  When the trees finally parted many miles later, the tunnel opened out onto a rolling meadow. The turrets of the castle came into view in the distance, and as they drove along the gently sloping pasture they were greeted with the sight of the castle in its entirety. It stood tall, grand and imposing. The russet stone walls curved neatly around one another, and the tall lead-framed windows reflected the light like mirrors, echoing golden hues back at them.

  Dino let the car roll to a stop in the courtyard and cut the engine.

  For a long while, neither of them spoke. The only sound was the hum of the car engine as it cooled from the journey.

  ‘We’re back,’ Mia murmured breathlessly.