The Witches of the Dark Power Page 3

  Dino jostled the zipper on his rucksack until it eased open. He glanced into the bag before emptying its contents onto his bed. Crumpled white T-shirts tumbled out like snowballs onto the plush gold bedspread. He glanced over his shoulder.

  ‘Feel like doing some ironing?’ he asked Mia.

  Sitting cross-legged on the floor in her red and grey chequered pyjamas, she glanced up at him. ‘I don’t,’ she said. ‘Ever.’

  ‘Thanks for nothing,’ he grumbled as he did his best to flatten the T-shirts out with his palm.

  ‘Why do you think Wendolyn is making us share this room again, anyway?’ Mia asked. She nursed a china teacup in her lap. ‘It’s not like the castle is full or anything.’

  Dino shrugged. ‘No clue, but she seemed to have her reasons. Maybe she knows that I’m the only one who can put up with your snoring,’ he joked as he tossed a gold throw pillow at her.

  ‘Hey!’ she shouted, protecting her teacup with her hand. ‘I don’t snore.’

  ‘Why are you drinking that stuff, anyway?’ He frowned at the tea stewing inside the cup. Witches’ brew. It was beyond him why anyone would want to enhance their powers with enchanted tea. It was all he could do just to keep his Sententia powers in check.

  Mia leaned back against her four-poster bed, idly toying with a loose thread on the gold curtains that canopied the elaborately carved structure.

  ‘I like it,’ she said. She took another sip, then sloshed the liquid around in the cup, studying the disturbed leaves as they floated to the top. ‘If you ever tried it, you might start to like it, too.’

  ‘I have tried it,’ he reminded her. ‘And I don’t like it.’

  Mia pursed her lips. ‘Don’t like the tea? Or don’t like the side of power that comes with it?’ Witches’ brew was an ancient blend of herbs used at the castle to enhance psychic abilities and bring about visions of the not-too-distant future.

  ‘Both,’ Dino answered. ‘One power is more than enough for me.’ He immediately sensed her concern, as he did every time he let slip his true feelings about his power, so he quickly changed tact. ‘Besides,’ he said, ‘I don’t want to know too much about the future. I like to be surprised.’ Picking up on the subtle sound of her concern subsiding, he relaxed. It was no secret that Dino hadn’t wanted his powers, but he was past that now. Or, at least, he wanted his sister to think he was past it.

  The truth was, he didn’t want to be at the Glass Castle. He’d managed to convince Mia that he was glad to be back, and admittedly he was pleased to see Blue. But simply being there made his stomach turn. It brought up memories of a time when he’d been someone else. He’d hurt people. Worse, he’d tried to kill people.

  ‘I thought she was going to send us home.’ Mia’s voice jolted him back to the present.

  Dino took a deep breath before turning to face her. ‘Wendolyn?’ he said. ‘Nah. I knew she’d let us stay.’

  Mia rose to her feet and wandered to the window. ‘She’s worried though, isn’t she?’

  He shrugged, even though he’d clearly sensed Wendolyn’s anxiety. ‘It’ll be fine. All we need to do is find the Extraction spell, then do the ritual to break your . . .’ he trailed off and waved his hand in her general direction.

  ‘I bet Mum and Aunt Maddie are flipping out right now,’ Mia added with a grimace.

  ‘So? They’re the bad guys here, remember?’

  ‘Dino,’ Mia sighed. ‘Don’t be mad at them. They were only do what they thought was best.’

  This time Dino kept quiet. His relationship with his mother and aunt was like a frayed rope, just waiting to snap—being mad at them was familiar territory.

  Across the room, Mia gazed into the dark night, looking out over the hills and distant moon. For a while they were silent. When Mia spoke again, her voice was so quiet that Dino almost didn’t hear it.

  ‘Do you think he knows I’m here?’

  Dino stiffened. Did he have to answer? I could act like I didn’t hear her, he thought, not wanting to get into the Colt debate. And there was no doubt in his mind that it was Colt she’d been referring to.

  Mia turned her gaze upon Dino now, her eyes charcoal grey in the low-lit room.

  ‘He must know I’m here,’ she said, trailing her thumb over the rim of the teacup as she spoke.

  Dino’s mouth went dry. He had to answer. He had to say something, at least. ‘Maybe,’ he replied before returning his attention to the mound of clothes on his bed.

  ‘I thought I would have seen him by now,’ she mused. ‘It’s nearly midnight.’

  ‘Exactly,’ said Dino. ‘It’s nearly midnight. He’s probably asleep.’

  ‘We’ve been at the castle since before sundown,’ she pointed out.

  Dino heaped his clothes together and carried the bundle to a wardrobe at the far end of the room. He began cramming his T-shirts into the bottom of the rickety cupboard. ‘I don’t need the hangers,’ he said, crouching and patting down his clothes. ‘All my stuff can fit on the lower shelf.’

  ‘They’re just going to end up on the floor anyways,’ Mia grumbled.

  There was a short pause.

  ‘But do you think I should look for him?’ she asked, steering the conversation back to her preferred topic. ‘Because maybe he doesn’t know I’m here . . .’

  ‘No,’ Dino said, wrestling with the wardrobe doors until they clicked shut. ‘Don’t go looking for him. You’ll see him tomorrow.’ Unfortunately, he added silently.

  It wasn’t that Dino didn’t like Colt. It was just that Colt was a Hunter. And Mia . . . well, Mia was his sister. Surely there was some sort of moral brotherly code to uphold here? Thou must maintain a simmering contempt for thy sister’s boyfriend . . . especially if thy sister’s boyfriend is a Hunter. Anyway, regardless of whether Dino liked him or not, he really didn’t want to talk about him.

  Mia had returned her gaze to the window. ‘I think I’ll just take a walk down to the forest and—’

  ‘Are you crazy?’ Dino exclaimed. ‘You can’t go wandering around the forest looking for Hunters at midnight!’

  Mia’s eyes narrowed as she stared back at him. ‘But . . . it’s Colt,’ she said, as though somehow that made it entirely acceptable.

  ‘Whatever. Look, you’ll see Colt tomorrow.’

  He shoved his empty rucksack under the bed. Damn it, Mia, he thought helplessly. She’s going to go.

  In an attempt to divert her, Dino began extinguishing the wall-mounted candles. He blew out the flames, watching them disappear into trails of silver smoke, until only the candle closest to Mia’s bed remained.

  ‘It’s late,’ he said, trying to disguise the tension in his voice. ‘Just go to sleep.’

  ‘I guess you’re right,’ she said with a sigh.

  Dino let out a breath. ‘I am right.’

  Mia stepped away from the window and then gasped. Her teacup slipped from her grasp and hit the carpet with a clunk.

  ‘Blood on my hands!’ she cried.

  Dino tensed again. ‘What?’

  ‘Blood!’

  Gooseflesh spread over Dino’s arms.

  ‘Blood on my hands!’ Mia repeated, brandishing her hands for him to see.

  There was nothing there.

  He began to relax. ‘I hate to tell you this, Lady Macbeth, but there is no blood.’

  Mia hurried to the candle and held her fingers to the light.

  ‘Blood on my hands,’ she murmured. ‘It was there, I swear it was.’ Her gaze wandered to the spill of witches’ brew that was now seeping into the fibres of the carpet. ‘Oh no,’ she choked. ‘It was a vision.’

  They stared at each other for a bated moment.

  ‘Don’t worry, it’ll be all right,’ Dino said at last. He’d been saying that a lot lately. It was his go-to phrase, suitable for any occasion.

  ‘Don’t worry?’ Mia spluttered, staggered by his unhelpful response. ‘Blood on my hands, Dino. Blood on my hands.’

  ‘Yeah, I remember. Blood
on your hands. That’s a bad one.’ He stretched out on his bed and folded his arms behind his head. ‘Can you blow out that candle while you’re up?’

  Mia threw up her arms. ‘Dino!’

  ‘Well, what do you expect me to say?’ he replied. ‘I’m sure it’s nothing,’ he added, before closing the bed curtains around him.

  In the privacy of his canopied bed, he held his breath for the count of ten. The light dimmed, and across the room sheets rustled as Mia crawled into her own bed. In the muted moonlight filtering in through the window, Dino lifted his hands. They were trembling. He balled them into fists, betrayed by them.

  At least she didn’t see, he thought, congratulating himself on his show of nonchalance. There’s no point in worrying her any more than she already is.

  He’d fix this. Somehow.

  I can do this, Dino reminded himself. I can stop this . . . whatever this is. Nothing bad is going to happen this time. He repeated the mantra until the words lost their meaning.

  ‘Night, Dino,’ Mia whispered from across the room.

  He swallowed a lump in his throat. ‘Night, Mia,’ he said hoarsely.

  Chapter Three

  Power Play

  Mia tossed and turned in her bed, drifting in and out of an uneasy sleep. On several occasions she woke to find herself tangled in the bed sheets and clammy with sweat. As the night went on, she teetered on the cusp of deep sleep, dreaming only of Colt. Her mind played out a scene where he appeared in her bedchamber, weightless and almost illusionary. He parted Mia’s bed curtains and stood in the path of moonlight, his dark hair striped with silvery shadows and his forest-green eyes turning pale and bottomless under the glint of white light.

  Trapped inside her dream, Mia fought to open her eyes, but again she was rendered useless, unable to move or respond to his presence. He stood for a while, watching her breathe until his own breathing fell into sync. And then, very slowly, he began to move closer. So close that it was now his breath she inhaled. His life to hers and back again.

  Colt’s hand slid onto her throat as he whispered words into her ear—words she could not understand. And then her throat began to close. She gasped for air, breathing in only him as his grip tightened . . .

  With a start, Mia’s eyes shot open to daylight. She fumbled to detangle herself from the sheets. In the tussle of her disturbed sleep, they had wrapped themselves around her throat like a noose. She broke free of them, then lay panting and exhausted within the confines of the curtained four-poster bed.

  What just happened? she wondered, touching her throat. It was tender from where the sheets had tugged at the skin. From where her mind had placed Colt’s hand. It had felt so real, and yet here she lay in the cold light of day, alone and unharmed.

  ‘Dino?’ she called.

  There was no response.

  She eased open her bed curtains and peered out into the quiet chamber. Everything was as they’d left it the night before. Dino’s empty rucksack had been jammed under his bed, and Mia’s overflowing one was propped against the wall.

  Shaking off the nightmare, Mia crawled out of bed and dug through her rucksack for her wash bag and a change of clothes. She threw on a pair of jeans and a cream-coloured top before heading for the bathroom.

  The bathroom was several doors down from her bedroom and shared by the other Arcana. For what must have been a relatively recent addition, it was just as impressive as the rest of the rooms in the old castle—perhaps even more so. Its floor and walls were made up of white marble, and in the centre stood a claw-foot bath and mother-of-pearl sink.

  Mia set her wash bag on the sink and turned on the taps. Leaning over the basin, she splashed her face with cold water, hoping to swill away the lingering memories of her nightmare. Droplets of water rolled from her skin and landed in the basin with a splash, the sound reverberating off the high marble ceiling.

  Mia stared thoughtfully at the torrent of water spilling from the tap.

  Move, she willed silently. That was her power, after all. She controlled the elements. Hadn’t she been told so a hundred times? And yet, here she stood before flowing water, no more in control of it than she was in control of her nightmares. Just as a good dream happened by accident, so, it seemed, did her power.

  Go left, she ordered the cascading stream of water, waving her hands to the left in the hope of inspiring its cooperation. But the water continued on its steady downward stream.

  With a submissive sigh, she abandoned her efforts and began rummaging through her wash bag for her toothbrush instead. Now was not the time to worry about her power. There were far more important things to worry about.

  Namely, her life.

  Before she left the bathroom, she swept her hair into a ponytail. She caught a glimpse of herself in the bevelled mirror as she did so. The pool of water in the basin seemed to be reflected in her eyes—eyes that were already a deep silver-grey, a hue that could be found on a sullen, stormy day or glistening on the surface of a placid lake. And with the earthy brown and coppery tones in her hair, it was as though her colourings were the perfect blend of each of the elements. Earth, Air, Fire, and Water.

  I look like my power, she thought ironically. I should be a natural. Wasn’t that the whole point of a power, anyway? Shouldn’t it be instinctive?

  Last summer her power had felt strong. She’d worked on it every day, and she’d gotten pretty good too. But, as the season changed, everything seemed to slow down. And then it all just . . . stopped.

  With a weary sigh, Mia pushed the thought aside and set off to find Dino and the others. For the second time in as many minutes, she reminded herself that her Tempestus ability would have to take a back seat. For now, at least.

  Her first port of call was the drawing room. It was one of the more used rooms in the castle, so it stood to reason that the residents would congregate there. Today was no exception.

  Mia walked into the room to find a small gathering of Arcana around one of the coffee tables. Wendolyn beckoned her to join them.

  Dino and Blue were sitting in armchairs beside one another, while Wendolyn, Amos, and the blonde boy from the previous night were seated opposite. Amos’s snowy hair sprouted in wispy tufts and he greeted Mia with round, buoyant eyes.

  ‘I’m sure you remember Isaac,’ Wendolyn said, extending her hand towards the Arcana boy as Mia took the empty seat next to Blue.

  Isaac was in his late teens, with slick vanilla-coloured hair and an upturned nose. He mustered a vague smile for Mia, then tapped at an open page in a leather-bound book set atop the table. The text looked impossibly tiny, as though it was destined to only be read by someone wearing a tweed suit and monocle.

  ‘I suggest we deconstruct this entire volume,’ Isaac advised, his voice tinged with superiority.

  Mia’s eyes widened. Deconstruct the entire volume? she thought dubiously. She glanced down at the page again. At second glance, she noticed that the text wasn’t even written in English, but in a strange sequence of symbols and numbers.

  ‘That’ll take d-days,’ Blue spoke up timidly. ‘Even with all of us working on it. It might prove to be a waste of valuable t-time.’

  ‘Understanding our history is never a waste of time, Buttons,’ Isaac said derisively. Wendolyn frowned at him and he hastily reworded. ‘Benny,’ he corrected himself.

  Blue’s cheeks reddened. He’d been taunted with the nickname Buttons since becoming known as the Conjurer who could only conjure buttons.

  ‘I’m with Blue on this,’ Dino stepped in, shooting a glare at Isaac. ‘How do we even know there’s anything useful in that book? What are the chances that, out of all the books kept at the castle, this is the one with the ritual to break the Arx?’

  Mia blushed as it dawned on her that everyone was gathered around to study these books for her benefit—and she had slept in.

  ‘And who’s to say the spell’s not in here?’ Isaac argued. His pasty cheeks reddened at the challenge and his pale blue eyes blazed. />
  Dino groaned. ‘Do you seriously want to spend the next week decoding that?’ he asked, thumbing towards the enormous volume.

  This is my problem, not theirs, Mia realised with a wave of guilt. Maybe I should offer to do the book decoding thing. She cleared her throat. ‘I’ll do it,’ she said gallantly.

  Isaac sniggered under his breath. ‘You do not have the capability to decode such advanced text.’

  Lucky me, she thought. ‘I could give it a go,’ she said aloud.

  Wendolyn offered her a kind smile. ‘I think it would be best for the less advanced witches to work through the Arcana Tomes, in the hope that the ritual is documented somewhere.’ There was a weight to her words that couldn’t be masked.

  ‘What about the book with the s-spell to steal the Arx?’ Blue checked. ‘Is that kept at the castle?’

  Mia’s eyes widened as she stared down at the enormous stack of volumes laid out on the coffee table. Was the spell that may kill her there in that very pile?

  ‘Ah, you mean the Tome of Black Magic,’ Amos answered Blue’s question. ‘Yes. Yes, that’s here,’ he said, adjusting his glasses as he rifled through the books. ‘Somewhere here . . . I’m positive I brought it down from safekeeping . . .’ He grew flustered as he searched the tower of dusty spines without success. ‘Oh, bother,’ he muttered. ‘I’ll be dashed if I can find the blasted thing.’

  Mia’s stomach knotted.

  ‘Don’t fret, Amos,’ Wendolyn advised, placing a soothing hand on his arm as he rooted through the books. ‘I’m sure it’s just been misplaced with all these volumes floating around.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Amos, sounding sheepish. ‘Perhaps that’s it.’

  Isaac’s chin tilted upwards. ‘I saw Benny Blue carrying a stack of books earlier,’ he mentioned coolly. ‘Perhaps he misplaced it out of negligence.’

  Blue sucked in his breath. ‘I didn’t! I would n-never!’

  ‘Hmm,’ said Isaac.

  ‘I’ll find it,’ Amos assured the group. ‘It can’t have gone far. I’m sure I had it this morning . . .’ he trailed off and pursed his lips, deep in thought. ‘Never mind. We’ve got plenty to keep us busy today.’ His canary-yellow shirt was buttoned right to the top and his bowtie had slipped a little askew. ‘Isaac, why don’t you make a start at deconstructing the text. See if you can gauge whether or not the volume will be relevant. In the meantime, the rest of us will get started on the Arcana Tomes. Let’s not forget, my boys will be here shortly. That’s two more heads to put together.’