Strange Ways by Gray Williams

Author:Gray Williams [Williams, Gray]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781788638463
Publisher: Canelo Digital Publishing Ltd
Published: 2020-06-15T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Thirteen

Everything hurt.

There had been dreams. Steph’s face snarling at her over and over. Zoe panicked, looking to Amanda for help. Simon, her husband, weeping, the sound following her as she rose back to the surface.

She felt wrung out and wet all at the same time. Beginning the slow crawl back to wakefulness, she shifted, only to feel a weight press down on her, pinning her limbs to the ground, like the floor beneath her was sucking her down into it.

She opened her eyes to see the sun peering back at her through the trees. What time was it?

Was she paralysed? No, she could feel her limbs trying to move, but the weight on top of her was too immense.

Then she remembered. As the memories stepped forward, the pressure holding her down was released and she bolted upright. Her body protested at the sudden movement.

She was soaking wet, her clothes reeking of sea salt, clinging to her skin, chilling her through.

She was in a small hollow, some natural formation of the land that hid the rest of the forest from view. Symbols were carved into the trunks of the trees on the edges.

The girl stood on the lip of the hollow, glaring down at her. The girl from her nightmares.

It was really her. The last time she had seen Steph had been over two years ago. The girl had been half-conscious and fever-ridden, her mutilated hands wrapped in bloody bandages. Once Amanda had handed her into the care of a Russian hospital, she had left, eager to get back to London and her daughter.

Steph had grown another foot since then, making her taller than Amanda by a few inches. She was leaner than she used to be. But her face made her look older than she was. Life had given a sharp edge to her cheekbones, and a hard look to her eye. Her lips and brow were set in a scowl.

She had every reason.

Amanda’s eyes inevitably travelled down to the girl’s— no, the woman’s, hands. The last ritual she had seen those hands perform had been their undoing, or so she’d thought. The spell had proved too powerful and too complicated for a girl of her experience. If Amanda had acted sooner, she could have saved them. Only she’d chosen not to, chose to hesitate. The shredded fingers cut the girl’s career in magic short. One less Abra in the world, she’d reasoned.

She’d lived with the guilt over two years now. Every time it surfaced in her mind, she had only to think of Michaela to allow herself to believe that she had done it for the right reasons. Now, facing Steph again, her motives for standing back seemed woefully inadequate. It felt like having a cold nail pulled out of her heart, the pain renewed, the wound reopened and bleeding, a sick, hollow feeling in her chest. Under the girl’s gaze, she felt exposed, every flaw, every mistake laid bare for anyone to see; her sins made flesh.

But

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