Witcha Gonna Do? (Witchington #1)(31)
Then we wait some more.
And some more.
“I don’t like this,” Eli says.
Birdie whacks the dragon’s mouth together again. “That makes two of us.”
I would have added “Three of us,” but that’s when the door opens.
Tilda looks like shit. Her nose is red. Her eyes are puffy. Her skin has a bloodless pallor that immediately has me concerned she’s run into vampires. I’ve never wanted to murder someone more than I want to strip the skin off of whoever or whatever made her feel as bad as she obviously does.
“Who?” The single word comes out as a snarl.
“Who what?” she sniffles.
My hands are curled into fists and I’m already prepping to snap, crackle, pop my way into the home of whoever is about to have the worst day of their life. “Who did whatever is wrong?”
She lets out a wail and drops her face into her hands. “Me. I did it. I froze my entire family—even Griselda and Barkley.”
Clamping down on the six hundred and forty-one questions that pop immediately to mind, I give Birdie and Eli a strong shove into the house as I look around to make sure no one is within earshot. I don’t spot anyone, but that doesn’t mean anything.
The trees have ears in the Witchingdom.
Literally.
They’d know immediately that they didn’t just have a juicy bit of gossip to sell to the highest bidder. No. This isn’t idle talk or rumors. This is information that will change everything.
Nature abhors a power vacuum and witches love to fill them.
If the Sherwoods were displaced from their place in Witchingdom’s hierarchy, another faction run by a powerful family—or, more likely, the Council—would fill it, and then anyone who didn’t subscribe to their very narrow version of what is acceptable would end up in The Beyond or worse, and those who were already in exile would never get out. A memory comes to mind of my parents in the magicless void trying to heat a drafty cabin on the tundra and forage for whatever creature they could trap with their bare hands. Icy panic squeezes my chest. Griselda told me that they were out of exile, hidden in a safe house, but I know better than to trust anyone. She could have lied. Or she could have been telling the truth and I’ll never find out the safe house’s location if she stays frozen.
Whatever has happened, whatever spell Tilda tapped into and juiced up to freeze her family, we have to fix it before anyone finds out what happened.
If we are lucky, we’ll have a week. Realistically, we have two days. Tops.
I shut the door behind me, wave the locks closed, and then turn to Tilda, who is crumpled on the couch, a silver pillow clutched against her chest like a shield—as if that would help against the impending doom we are up against.
“Tell me everything.”
Chapter Fifteen
Tilda . . .
So, I’ve spent the past day reaching out to anyone with even a smidge of Sherwood DNA. Everyone—every single one of them—is frozen.”
By the time I’m done explaining to everyone how my being a null glitched Effie’s spell so badly, I’m out of breath, out of tears, and out of Kleenex. Birdie is next to me on the couch, holding my hand and murmuring soft words of encouragement as she sneezes her way through a spell to conjure a new pack of tissues, which I gladly accept. Eli is sitting on the coffee table in front of me, his hulking frame making even the magically constructed piece of furniture groan under his weight. His eyes are damp with unshed tears; the man may look like the runt of a litter of giants, but he’s as soft and squishy inside as a warm gummy bear in August. Meanwhile, Gil is a little cloud of doom leaning against the door frame with his arms crossed and a scowl on his face.
Birdie lets out a gasp of understanding. “The connector spell in your house that acts as a magical link to everyone in your family.”
“Exactly,” I say with a nod.
“So where’s the book?” Gil asks as he looks around the living room.
My eyes get all watery again and my chin trembles. “Frozen in Effie’s hands.”
“So we unfreeze her.” Eli bounds up from the coffee table, rubbing his hands together. “We can use a ventus calidus spell.”
“Plus a little portum tutum sprinkled on top.” Birdie gets up and yanks me from the couch. “Come on, time’s a-wasting.”
We rush into the library—well, Eli, Birdie, and I sprint out of the living room, down the hall, and into the room where it all happened; Gil (I still have no idea why he’s here) moseys in behind us when Eli is in his third attempt to get the warm winds and a dash of safe harbor spell right. Gut churning and my lip starting to ache where I’m nervously chewing on it, I’m in the corner with my hands shoved in my jeans pockets because the last thing in the world I want is to accidentally touch anyone in mid-spell.
“Ventus kalidose porti talun,” Eli says with a wave of his hands, his nose crinkling up, no doubt because he realizes the words have gotten jumbled in his head.
Not surprisingly, nothing happens.
He shoves his big fingers through his shaggy hair and lets out a sigh that ends with his shoulders drooping. “Maybe if I wrote it down and read it. I know that lessens spell potency, but—”
“Here, let me,” Birdie says as she clasps her hands together in front of her belly like an opera singer about to go into a power aria. “Ventus”—her nose twitches—“calidu-uh-uh—” The sneeze explodes out of her like a projectile, then another and another. She holds up a hand. “I can do this.” She sneezes again. “Just give me a minute.”