Autumn Storm (The Witchling #2)(27)

Autumn shook her head, amused. “I’ll be okay.”

He gave a salute and walked into the living room, nudging Biji over on the couch so he could sit. Autumn smiled at the small girl’s objection. Unconcerned, Beck squeezed between her and the arm of the couch.

With a deep breath, Autumn tackled the stairs. Beck’s magick wore off too fast, and she was in pain halfway up the stairs. She forced herself not to pause, afraid of showing anyone else how weak she was. When she reached the top of the stairwell, she steadied herself against the wall in the shadows of the hallway before proceeding to her room.

She was relieved to see Dawn and her entourage had left. Autumn closed the door behind her and sat on her bed. Removing the brace, she stared at her leg.

Sometimes, when she was alone, she felt anger at the part of her that was so weak. The visible scars, the immobility. Why did this happen? What had she ever done to deserve pain for the rest of her life? Wasn’t taking her family from her when she was four enough?

Frustrated and fatigued, Autumn propped up her leg on a pillow and lay back in bed. It’d take awhile for the swelling to pass. She normally read a book. Today, she felt too tired and closed her eyes to nap.





Chapter Seven





Come with me.

The whisper pierced her sleep. Her eyes opened, and she blinked, surprised to find it dark in her room. She didn’t mean to sleep the rest of the day. She’d hoped to take a nap then venture outside to recover her iPad in the hope it survived the snow.

Autumn sat up. The swelling in her leg was gone. The room was chilly, and a glance out the window showed it still snowed. Dawn was sleeping deeply, and the time on her alarm clock read a few minutes past midnight.

Standing, Autumn waited for her body to balance then crossed to the bathroom. She refused to turn on the light, telling herself it was because she didn’t want to wake Dawn. In truth, seeing the dark-haired girl in the middle of the night scared her too much to fall back asleep.

When she returned to the bed, she caught a glimpse of movement from the Square. Autumn pushed aside the sheer curtain to gaze into the quiet gathering place, lit by a single light on the back of the main house.

She gasped. Standing below her window, gazing up, was the dark-haired girl from the mirror. Her body was ethereal and surrounded by black fog, her pale face the only real part of her with form.

Autumn closed her eyes and willed the girl away, terrified that the hallucination had moved from her mirror to the real world.

Come with me.

She knew before opening her eyes that the apparition wasn’t leaving without her. Autumn looked. The girl remained.

Shakily, Autumn pulled on jeans, boots and two sweaters. She grabbed her cane and checked out the window again. The girl waited for her. Telling herself the hallucination would disappear by the time she reached the Square, Autumn took her time with the stairs and retreated out the back door.

The snow was three feet deep and the air cold. The night was silent, aside from the murmurs of air and earth magick. She stopped as she stepped onto the back porch, unwilling to venture into the deep snow. Air magick filled her uninvited, and she shivered. She didn’t fight it, instead comforted by the element. It mixed with her magick, and both moved in and out of her as she breathed.

Autumn looked around for the dark-haired girl. Her gaze found the apparition at the other end of the Square, past the dorms by the edge of the road. Invisible hands pushed the snow out of her way to clear a path leading straight to her, the ghost.

Autumn gripped the handle of her cane more tightly. She’d hoped the answers she sought showed up in a document on her iPad, not in the form of a ghost on a snowy night.

Heart pounding hard, she walked onto the path. The air pushed the snow back over the path behind her, as if forbidding her from backing out. Autumn kept her eyes forward.

The dark-haired girl waited. Her features grew more real as Autumn approached while the fog moving and shifting around her obscured her body. The ghost was gorgeous, with large, dark eyes, fine features and a clear complexion as pale as the moon. Autumn had avoided studying the image in the mirror, but she saw how pretty the girl was as she neared.

When Autumn was a few feet away, the girl turned and fled towards the forest. Air cleared a path behind her for Autumn to follow. Uneasily, she realized there were no footprints. The apparition wasn’t a part of this world, and the air magick was determined that Autumn follow her.

The girl stopped at the edge of the forest, beside the memorial plaque on the forbidden trail.

Autumn’s gaze moved from her to the deer path. The trees lining it were weighed down on one side by heavy snow and untouched by winter on the other, causing them to lean away from the path.

As before, when Autumn neared, the girl spun and ran down the path. Autumn swallowed hard as she stepped onto the trail. She reminded herself nothing bad happened earlier in the day, when she’d ventured this way. She’d wondered why the path was off limits at all.

The girl paused at the clearing until Autumn approached. Autumn stopped to take a deep breath. Her leg was starting to ache. She hadn’t thought about putting on her brace before leaving her room. She stopped to stretch, eyes on her guide running across the field.

More fog drew her attention as she set foot into the clearing. She paused, puzzling over the strange display. There were patches of white and black fog in the field, moving with more discipline than smoke. They hovered around a large, flat stone in the middle of the field before two of them – one black and one white - raced away towards the canyon. Almost like … people? She squinted, trying to see more. The clouds seemed to reset suddenly, with all of them returning to the stone in the center. As she watched, they milled once more, before the two broke away and fled once more.