My heart leapt into my throat and my stomach threatened to bring up my dinner as he reached out a charred hand toward me. I jerked away from him and bolted frantically through the bush, barely able to see where I was going. I had to escape from the horror of what I’d just seen. Red and black skin that was peeling in places and no hair.
“Over there!”
Great. My scream let them know exactly where I was.
As I darted through the trees and around rocks and logs thinking this guy had somehow been burned by one of the fires we’d started, it clicked that I’d had a tingling feeling when I’d seen him. He was a spirit. That meant that one of us had killed someone.
Oh, my God! What if it was me? What if it was a fire that I started?
The guilt was eating holes in me as I tried to imagine the agony of being burned alive.
The trees suddenly lit up and raw magic slammed into my back, sending me sprawling to the ground. I screamed, picturing my hair on fire and my skin charred like the burnt ghost’s. I was dazed for a few seconds, but the sound of their approaching footsteps had me scrambling to my feet and pushing myself to keep running. When I ran my hands over my hair and arms, they felt normal, which was puzzling, but a huge relief. I tried to create a shield behind me, but it was too hard to concentrate. The pain in my back faded as I went and I kept randomly blasting raw magic behind me without looking back.
I heard a scream, but kept going. One of the girls asked the other one if she was alright, then swore. She must have been badly hurt, but I was past caring at that point. They’d just tried to fry my ass, so they could go to hell.
I was pretty sure they’d stopped chasing me, but I kept running for a while, weaving my way in the darkness. Using so much magic was draining my energy, but I pushed on. There was a clearing ahead through the trees, so I slowed to a walk to get a better look. I could make out an odd shape just past the treeline. My blood ran cold and I froze. It was a gravestone. I’d found the graveyard next to the church.
I stopped and my eyes darted around the graveyard frantically. There was movement on the far side closer to a large building which was most likely the church, barely visible in the darkness. I turned to my right and started walking slowly, quietly, hoping they wouldn’t see me.
“You’re a pretty one.”
My breath caught and I spun around to see a man dressed in raggedy clothes and bare feet. His hair and beard were an unwashed, tangled mess. He looked like he’d stepped out of the set of a movie about the early convict days; I half-expected him to have shackles on his legs.
His bushy eyebrows rose. “You can see me?”
I turned and ran. I did not want a whole graveyard full of spirits to know I could see them.
“Wait!”
I didn’t look back, just concentrated on navigating my way through the underbrush and fallen trees.
As I rounded a large fallen tree, my heart rose into my throat when I saw Felicity. She’d lost the glamour and her pale, wrinkled face and greying hair knocked the breath from my lungs.
She and Jason and the other girl had Alina cornered. Alina was covered in cuts and bruises from their brutal attacks and looked like she was unsteady on her feet. Hot anger rose in my chest. Three against one. Why was Felicity doing this? She really had lost control of her anger.
As soon as Felicity saw me, she immediately let loose with some dirt and rocks and I put up my shield in time to avoid being hit. There was a dark mist swirling around her hands and a chill ran down my spine. Whatever it was, it couldn’t be good.
Jason grabbed Felicity by the arm. “Stop it! You said you just wanted to get a confession. You can’t keep attacking them — they’ve done nothing wrong. Do you know how many fires I’ve had to put out?”
She shrugged out of his grip. “Shut up, Jason!”
As she yelled, she blasted him with some sticks and rocks and one of the larger sticks speared him through the chest like a javelin. He grunted as he fell backwards into the leaf litter, then started groaning in pain.
The other girl ran over to him. “Jason! Oh God, Felicity. What have you done?”
Now Felicity was turning on her friends. This was more than just her wanting a confession. She was unhinged and hellbent on inflicting as much hurt as she could. What was wrong with her? Heat flared in my chest and my hands as my magic fought to escape.
I lifted both hands in my rage to blast her with raw magic and what flew from my fingertips was pure fire! I gasped and pulled my hands back. I didn’t know I could do that. It missed Felicity and smashed into a bush behind her, sending sparks and smoke into the air as it caught fire.
She gasped and looked at me with her mouth hanging open and Alina took the opportunity to blast her with a barrage of rocks and sticks and pushed her against a tree and held her there with her magic. Felicity struggled, but Alina’s power was too strong and she looked at Alina with wide eyes, blood trickling down her forehead.
Alina didn’t let up. “Are you going to stop now?”
Felicity nodded, defeated.
I fell to my knees in relief, my magic drained and my energy low. I looked down at my tattered dress and my anger flared again. Alina had paid good money for it and now it was ruined. Alina’s dress was ripped and charred.
My attention snapped to the girl as she called Jason’s name softly and cried and kept trying to heal him. Maybe she was his girlfriend.
I remembered the crystal I’d shoved into my bra. It had been feeding me small amounts of magic to help me heal, but I needed to draw more magic from it to boost my own. I concentrated and felt the magic flowing slowly into my body. I sighed. I needed this.
The fire I’d started was crackling and growing bigger, but I didn’t know how to produce water to put it out. All it would take would be for the wind to pick up and we could be caught in the middle of a bushfire. Jason was the one who had been putting out the fires. I looked over at him again. The branch had been removed from his chest and the girl had both hands over the wound. I hoped he would be alright.
A group of people from the party appeared out of the trees. A girl with white-blonde hair and white angel wings on her back stepped forward. “Felicity! Are you okay?”
Felicity seemed to come alive at that and she suddenly pushed at Alina. “Get them! They attacked me!”
Chaos erupted. Alina and I were outnumbered and ended up pinned against the ground by a dozen girls who were holding crystals against our skin that were somehow blocking our magic. We were both too drained to resist.
Several people scrambled to put the fires out.
Felicity stepped toward us and looked me in the eye. “Now, you’re gonna tell me what you did to Emily.” She looked to her right. “Bridgette?”
A girl with mousy-brown hair in long plaits and a Wednesday Addams costume moved closer and knelt on the ground between me and Alina. She turned to Felicity. “Make sure the questions are specific.”
Felicity looked me in the eye. “Right. Now tell me the truth. Did you kill Emily?”
Here we go again. “No.”
“Did you hurt Emily?”
“No. I’ve told you already.”
She lifted her chin. “Did you go to Emily’s house on Wednesday night after the fight?”
I resisted the urge to roll my eyes. “No. I don’t know where she lives.”
“Did you stop or confront Emily before she went home?”
“No.”
She started pacing in front of us. “Did you call Emily and tell her to meet you somewhere?”
“No. How would I even get her phone number?”
“Did you see Emily the next day?”
“No. I haven’t seen her since Wednesday night.”
She turned to Alina. “Did you kill Emily?”
“I’ve never even met her.”
“Did you hurt Emily?”
I rolled my eyes.
Alina struggled against the hands holding her. “What part of ‘I’ve never even met her’ did you not understand?”
Bridgette looked up at Felicity. “They are telling the truth.”
Felicity’s arms swirled with the dark mist. “Bullshit! I don’t believe you! They’ve done something to her, I just know it.” She pointed at Alina. “Maybe not her. Maybe just Maddie. She had a motive. She hates Emily. She took Emily’s boyfriend.”
The black mist spread further up her arms and Alina whispered to me, “That’s dark magic. Don’t let the blackness touch you.”
I cringed.
Felicity’s eyes snapped to Alina. “Shut up, bitch!”
Bridgette stood and faced Felicity. “My gift has never failed me. They are not lying to you. This has gone way too far. You need to let them go.”
I could feel a few hands loosen their grip.
Felicity shook her head. “Shut the fuck up, Bridgette!”
With that outburst, she blasted Bridgette with dark magic, which slammed her body so hard into a tree trunk that she became impaled on a broken branch and her whole body looked like it was covered in soot.
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Author's Note: Are you dying to know what happens next?
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