The Witch’s Assistant (Bitchcraft #1)
Prologue The Tower
Prologue
The Tower
D arlings,” said the woman with copper hair. She spoke in a lisping Queen’s English, soft yet menacing, and with venom on her tongue: “There is a spoiled, rotten apple in our bunch...”
The women amongst her candlelit circle, dressed in black like her, held on to her every word with bated breath. The room was still save for their peroxide strands swaying in the whisper of the opening in the roof. The jewels on their necks pulsed with their stiff heartbeats.
“We have a traitor in our midst.”
For a moment, even the night sky around them splashed across the glass floor seemed to be leaning in, watching, listening. Slowly, the hollow-eyed women followed her forbidding gaze, until all came to rest upon a single member. The young witch’s face fell from smug, smirking satisfaction into a bewildered look of pure terror.
“No...!” she gasped. “It wasn’t me! I swear! I— I didn’t do it!”
Lip curled, voice even, the copper-haired woman hissed a single, merciless word: “Liar.”
“No! I would never! I love you! I’ve always loved you!” the witch said. “You’ve got it all wrong!” Her desperation hung in the air, echoing in that round glass tower.
“When one bad apple spoils and rots,” the copper-haired one continued, speaking to the members of her circle, “the others will surely follow. That apple must be disposed of.”
“No, please! I’ll do anything! Anything you want! Anything, I promise! Please! ” the witch begged. Mascaraed tears began to line her cheeks in sooty, black runs. Uncontrollably, she began to tremble.
But the copper-haired woman simply stared down at her from atop her long, straight nose. Unmoved, she said, “One does not suffer a traitor witch to live.”
“No!” cried the other woman. “I didn’t mean to! I’m sorry! Please don’t! Please! ”
The other women of the circle dared not look away. They watched, statuesque and still, thrown into severe relief by the pentagram’s quivering candles. All knew what was to come, what they could not stop. Far below them, New York City carried on sleepless and none the wiser, late-night business as usual.
The copper-haired woman hissed, “And what is a witch to do about her traitor sister, my darlings?” Sparks like lightning pulsated from her aura, a glowing black halo that seethed all around her with electric rage.
The frantic woman broke the circle and carefully backed away, step by step. She shook her hands and tear-streaked face in helpless protest. “Leave me alone! Leave me alone! ”
At this, the copper-haired woman’s face broke into the most peculiar and dangerous of smiles. It stopped just short of the apples of her cheeks, and failed to reach her seething green eyes.
Her answer was simple: “She fires her.”
“No! Stop! Don’t! Leave me alone! LEAVE ME ALONE! NO! NO! NOOO! ”
First came the quivering smoke billowing from her nose, ears, and mouth. Then, in a flashing instant, the woman erupted into screaming flames, a human bonfire from head to toe. Her shrill cries filled the air and reverberated against the round tower windows, while her flames licked the tall glass ceiling. It could not be determined whether the betrayer was engulfed by the fires of her own anxiety or by the power of the copper-haired one’s mind, but it happened all the same.
The other women hardly flinched. They stared, the light of that magnificent golden fire dancing in their alabaster eyes.
“Do not break the circle,” the copper-haired woman commanded.
Wailing, the woman on fire hobbled away on high heels, and after only a few steps, came down hard onto her knees. She fell onto the glass floor and crawled towards the iron banister staircase. She did not get far. Eventually, after what felt like a lifetime, the fire came to die as abruptly as it had started. Smoking and smoldering, the whimpering witch opened her encrusted eyes and gasped with a shaking, rasping, heaving breath. She tried to utter a word that would not sound—and with her blackened arm outstretched, reached for the young man watching behind that iron banister that descended into the black-as-night glass floor. Then, her head slumped over, her whimpers subsided, and a single bloodstained tear escaped her eyes, menacingly affixed to his. Her smoke escaped the opening in the ceiling, and she lay silent and still.
“We have one more rotten apple to tend to,” the copper-haired woman said, even calmer and more forbidding than before. “Ladies, please, open the circle for our little guest.” As she turned her gaze, her circle followed, and suddenly, to the young man’s complete and utter horror, all the hollow eyes in that glass room tower had been aimed at none other than him. He had been discovered.
“Come here, my darling,” she said with a murderous smile. Her leering green eyes locked onto his, glassy-eyed, brown, and full of fear.
His stomach dropped, his blood ran cold, and with a jolt as if he had suddenly missed a step at the bottom of a staircase, the young man startled himself awake. He was tangled in his sweat-soaked bedsheets in his home.
It had all felt so real. He could swear there was a lingering malodor of dread in the air: the smokey vestiges of scorched skin and hair mingled with the metallic taste of blood in his mouth. There was a prickling itch in the middle of his forehead too, and a shrill, high-pitched ringing in his ears, like an echo of the screaming woman. Worst of all, he had the uncanny feeling that someone was staring at him, that someone had taken notice of him who shouldn’t. Burned into his mind’s eye was the acidic gaze of the copper-haired woman, as if it had been wrenched into reality with him, unblinkingly affixed, gapingly open, and looking straight at him.
Huh . . . the young man thought to himself. Weird!
A glance at his clock showed it was just after three in the morning. Unable to make sense of it all, he chalked the dream up to indigestion and an exuberant imagination, and after some moments, fell back to sleep.
When he awoke again, the uneasy feeling of being watched remained.
Still, he put the entire ordeal out of his mind, and by the afternoon, forgot about the feeling of being watched altogether.