Chapter 13
What does a witch do when she’s created a portal in her living room and sees the face of her enemy but has barely any experience on how it all works and doesn’t know if the portal will kill her?
She jumps in, that’s what.
What can I say? I’m an impulsive witch, unhinged at times, with just the right amount of crazy to do it.
The world bent violently around me. My body stretched in ways bodies absolutely should not stretch, like invisible hands had grabbed every limb and decided to play tug-of-war with my skeleton. Heat whipped around me while darkness swallowed everything whole.
It didn’t matter whether my eyes were open or shut. There was nothing to see except endless blackness rushing past while the portal dragged me forward through whatever nightmare dimension existed between Point A and Point B.
Somewhere beneath me… or around me or possibly inside me… something twisted strangely. The sensation kept shifting every few seconds like gravity itself couldn’t fully commit to a direction. I was floating, falling, flying, and existing aggressively in a tunnel of magical chaos.
I clenched my jaw and focused hard on Addison. I didn’t want to end up in Madagascar because my concentration slipped for half a second.
Addison.
Her face. Her cold eyes and perfect hair. Murderous Gorilla Barbie energy.
I held on to the image of her like a lifeline while the darkness churned violently around me. And then slowly, far ahead in the tunnel, I saw something.
A shape. Small at first and blurry. But growing sharper.
Addison.
Sitting there on a chair at the end of the portal path like the magic itself had locked on to her.
My pulse jumped hard. Okay, good. Terrifying but good.
The pulling suddenly intensified, yanking me forward so fast my breath caught in my throat. Heat exploded around me. My entire body jerked violently once… and then it stopped.
My feet slammed against solid ground, and I fell to my knees. Shooting pain rattled through my kneecaps. Not exactly the landing I was hoping for. I’d need to work on that.
But bonus points when I lifted my head and saw Addison’s face, surprise mixed with horror.
I pushed to my feet, smiling proudly, like that landing was intended. “Surprise, bitch.” I felt my portal vibrate behind me. Yeah, still not clear on how to close it yet. I’d work on that too. Now? Now it was time to kick some Gorilla Barbie 2.0 ass.
I pointed a finger at Addison. “You’ve got some explaining to do.”
Addison stood very slowly. She looked the same with her blonde hair pulled into a ponytail, her perfect face pressed into a grimace. But something was off about her. She had dark circles under her eyes, like she hadn’t slept in days.
And she was wearing a white lab coat.
That’s when I took a minute to look around.
I stood in what looked like some laboratory.
Metal tables lined the room, their silver surfaces reflecting the dim overhead lights in dull streaks.
Glass tubes bubbled along one wall beside shelves crammed with labeled jars filled with powders, dried herbs, bones, black liquid, and things floating in murky fluid that I absolutely did not want identified.
The entire place smelled sharply of chemicals, burned herbs, blood, and something bitter underneath it all that reminded me unpleasantly of hospitals and dark magic mixed together.
Large restraints hung from one of the metal tables.
Damn. That was creepy.
Copper pipes snaked across the ceiling while strange machines hummed softly in the corners of the room, glowing runes carved directly into the metal casings.
It was some kind of magical equipment, ancient mixed with modern, like a science fair project created by deeply unstable paranormal people energy.
Wonderful.
Several cages sat stacked near the far wall, covered with heavy black sheets. Something moved faintly beneath one of them.
I decided I wasn’t emotionally prepared to investigate that.
The floor beneath my boots was stained in places. Dark marks scrubbed badly proved that someone had clearly tried to clean them but failed.
Also not comforting.
At the center of the laboratory sat a massive iron table covered with parchment papers, surgical tools, empty potion vials, and diagrams I couldn’t fully make out from where I stood.
Symbols had been carved directly into the tabletop itself, deep enough that dark residue still sat trapped inside the grooves.
Magic. Ugly magic. The kind that made my skin crawl.
I glowered at her. “This feels illegal. Like multiple-agencies-getting-involved illegal.” The kind of illegal that ended with magical hazmat teams showing up in protective gear.
My eyes swept quickly over the laboratory again—the restraints, the bubbling liquids, the sharp chemical smell hanging in the air.
None of this said emotionally stable behavior.
Addison’s eyes flicked behind me. “How are you doing that?”
I smiled. “Oh, my portal pal? Well, that’s because I’m awesome.
” My voice came out way more confident than I felt.
Internally I was still about eighty percent panic, fifteen percent rage, and five percent aggressively pretending I understood what I was doing.
The portal behind me hummed softly, red-black light twisting through the opening while warm wind curled around my legs.
It looked incredibly dramatic, terrifying but dramatic.
Addison’s cold smile flickered on her face.
She grabbed some sort of syringe with purple liquid inside.
“You shouldn’t have come here. It was a mistake.
” The liquid shifted strangely inside the glass, thicker than normal potion fluid, almost alive.
I didn’t like syringes. I liked creepy mystery lab syringes even less.
Especially in the hands of unstable gorilla twins with murder hobbies.
I stepped forward, pulling on my magic, feeling it, and keeping it there.
“No. The mistake was you coming to Hollow Cove. Coming to my house. Is this…” I waved my hands around.
“Where you developed whatever you did to my kid?” Anger surged hot enough that I could feel it crawling beneath my skin now.
“What the hell did you do to him? You better start talking.”
Every fiber of my being was telling me just to end her.
I knew my Nexari magic wanted me to do it, the darker part of me especially, the ancient part.
That same thing reacted every time Darian’s tiny trembling body flashed through my head.
Protective instinct mixed with Nexari power was apparently not a relaxed and reasonable combination. Shocking.
But I couldn’t. What if what she’d done to Darian got worse. I needed her to tell me what she did so she could reverse it in case Iris and Ruth couldn’t figure it out.
“I didn’t do anything in the way you think,” she said, holding on to that syringe like a weapon, ready to stab me with it if I got too close.
Her voice stayed even, like this whole conversation wasn’t insane.
Like we weren’t standing inside evil paranormal scientist headquarters surrounded by creepy murder equipment and bottled nightmares.
I stepped closer anyway. “So you don’t deny it.” My magic rolled hotter around me now, enough that papers on one of the nearby metal tables fluttered slightly. The portal behind me pulsed once in response like it could feel my anger climbing. Good.
“No,” she answered, cold and wrong, like this was just another test for her. Not guilt. Not fear. Nothing human in her expression at all. Just calculation. Somehow that scared me more than if she’d started screaming.
“What was it?” I pressed, heat rolling off of me from my magic, my temper, and now my portal.
“Because if you poisoned my son with whatever creepy purple nightmare sludge is floating around in this murder lab, I swear to the goddess I will personally throw you through my portal into the middle of the ocean and let the sharks sort it out.” My breathing had quickened without me noticing.
My hands shook slightly with restrained magic while Addison just stood there watching me carefully, like she was trying to decide whether I was dangerous or useful.
She didn’t move, but I noticed sweat slowly dripping down her forehead.
“You wouldn’t understand if I told you.” Her grip tightened slightly on the syringe while her eyes flicked once toward the portal behind me before snapping back to my face again.
Good. Let her be nervous. Let her sweat.
I was currently one emotionally unstable magical mom moment away from throwing this entire laboratory through a wall.
I grimaced. “Oh, I think I would. I might not have gone to some fancy supernatural university, but I didn’t suddenly crawl out of a cave either.
Tell me before I do something stupid.” Which felt less like a threat and more like a rapidly approaching probability at this point.
My magic rolled hotter beneath my skin the longer I stood here listening to her speak in cryptic psychopath riddles.
Addison’s gaze dropped for a second, her brows scrunching like she was thinking about something.
“My sister knew. She found out first. She tried to stop it. But she couldn’t.
Now it’s up to me.” Her voice softened strangely near the end.
Not emotional exactly. Worse. Convicted.
Like she genuinely believed whatever insanity she was saying.
I shook my head, disgusted. “Yeah, I know all about your trip to the prison. Your sister didn’t die in a prison raid like you said.
You killed her. You went to see her and injected her with some crap you made in your lab.
Now she’s dead.” I took another step closer.
“Is that what you did to Darian? You murderous lunatic? Killing your own sister? For what? What is all of this? What the hell did my kid ever do to you?” My voice echoed slightly off the metal walls while nearby glass tubes rattled faintly from the pressure of my magic.