Night of the Witch by Sara Raasch

Author:Sara Raasch
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Sourcebooks

25

FRITZI

Dieter kept her in a closet.

I glance back into it, the stench emanating from it sour and vile.

Liesel shivers against me.

She cannot create fire from nothing, but even so, she usually runs hot, and I would beg her to sleep at my cottage during the winter so the bed would be cozy—but she’s shivering now, and that rocks me into biting clarity.

I scramble for the healing potion and nudge her away, doing a quick sweep of her body for wounds. A few scrapes, a few bruises, but nothing severe—and no brand. Would it even burn her, who controls fire?

Still, I encourage her to drink the healing potion, and she gulps it down and clamps her arms back around me.

He imprisoned her. In a closet worse than a cage. In darkness and foulness and fear.

I hold Liesel to me as I stand, fury draping in a red veil over me.

Stop him, says the voice. This is his office. You have to stop him.

Liesel clings to me like she used to when she was small, arms around my neck, legs knotted around my hips. Her weight makes me stumble, but I survey the room, eyes snapping from the desk, to the shelves, to—

“Fritzi,” Otto says, low at first, then again. “Fritzi. We don’t have time.”

“His office. His secrets are here. We could—”

“He doesn’t store anything of importance here.”

I whip a look at Otto and shift Liesel in my arms, wordlessly saying, Oh, he doesn’t?

Otto holds up his hands. “Nothing he doesn’t want anyone else to find. It’s too public. We won’t get anything else worthwhile here. Trust me—I’ve looked in the past.”

My jaw clamps, lips stiff.

“I want to burn it,” I whisper.

Liesel pushes back to look at me, and I recognize my own rage in her sunken, bloodshot eyes.

“Set me down,” she tells me.

I comply.

Otto’s brows pinch, his gaze flashing between us tentatively, as though he knows he should intervene, but holds himself in restraint.

Good.

Liesel takes a shaky step toward Dieter’s desk. She fumbles in a top drawer and pulls out a tinderbox—she must have seen him use it. Did he taunt her with it? My stomach turns.

My cousin flicks the flint against the steel and cups her hand over it.

Her palm begins to turn red. Scalding, wavering heat palpitates the air over her skin, and a spark flares. She twists her hand to place it palm flat on the desk, and flames start to eat across the top, hungry, tearing fingers of orange and yellow.

“Let’s go,” says Liesel. She snuffs the flame and pockets the tinderbox. When she takes my hand, her palm is still warm.

The two of us are halfway to the door when Otto finally manages to speak. “How far will it spread?”

Liesel blinks up at him. Then looks at me. “Who is he?”

“A…friend,” I say dumbly. “A rogue hexenjäger.”

“He doesn’t want his precious church destroyed, hm?”

Behind us, the desk is a slowly building inferno, the chair catching now too. A few sparks drift off, snag on scrolls stacked on wall shelves; soon, the whole of the room will be engulfed in flames.

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