creepy hollow 05.5 - scarlett (11 page)

“Can you help with dinner?” Malena asked. “It will be so much easier if you do it. I haven’t wanted to ask you before because I thought it might make you uncomfortable.”

“Uncomfortable?” Beth asked as she followed Malena to the table she always prepared food at. “Why is that?”

“Oh, just because I know that most humans don’t kill their own food. It would be good for them if they did, of course. Everyone should know where their food comes from.”

“I—uh—you’re right. I’ve never had to kill my own food.”

“No time like the present to get started then,” Malena said. “What have we got tonight, Thoren?” she asked her son as he approached the table carrying a wriggling sack. Instead of answering, he dumped the sack on the table, and out jumped—

A hare. Spotless white, its tiny black nose twitching and its body shivering. Malena’s hand came down upon it before it could move another inch.

“Why—um—why did you say it will be so much easier if I do it?” Beth asked.

“We have numerous ways of killing the animals we eat, both magical and non-magical, but some can be messy. You, however, need only touch it.”

Of course. Finally, a use for her special power that didn’t involve hurting other people. It would, unfortunately, hurt the poor hare, but it was necessary if she and her new witch family wanted to eat. She pushed down the urge to hug the creature to her chest and run her fingers through its soft white hair.
Food
, she told herself.
This is food, not a pet.

“Well, come on,” Malena said, “or it’ll be midnight before we eat anything.”

“I’ll hold him down,” Thoren said. “You can get started with the vegetables, Mom.”

Malena moved to the mountain of vegetables at the other end of the table while Beth pulled one glove off. She hesitated for several moments, during which she reminded herself that she didn’t want to appear weak or squeamish. She would be a witch soon, and there was no place for either of those things in her future.

Do it. Just do it.

As she steeled herself and moved in, Thoren’s hand squeezed tighter around the hare. A muted flash of light pulsed from his hand, and the hare went limp. Thoren’s eyes flicked toward Malena, but she was busy chopping carrots. “My mother can be a little pushy,” Thoren said in a low voice. “She should have warned you earlier, given you a little more time to prepare yourself.” His eyes rose and found hers, his cool blue gaze sending a pleasant tingle down her spine. “You can do it next time.”

* * *

“We have much to do to prepare you for the Change,” Malena said to Beth as the five of them sat around the table eating dinner. “You probably won’t be ready when Tilda goes through the process in a few weeks, but certainly next time.”

“Is it supposed to happen at a certain age?” Beth asked.

“Any time after the age of sixteen. Tilda could have done it four years ago—” Malena frowned at her younger sister “—but she enjoyed playing around too much to bother with the requirements for passing the preliminary assessments.”

“What does it matter?” Tilda said with a wave of her hand. “I’m ready now, so let’s not dwell on the past. Or,” she added as she paused with her spoon between her bowl and her mouth “—I could wait until Scarlett is ready and do the Change with her.”

“More delay tactics?” Sorena said.

“Of course not. I just thought it would be fun training with Scarlett.” Tilda grinned at Beth over her bowl.

“We can talk about it more in the next few days,” Malena said. “For now, Scarlett needs to start learning about the energy rituals. We can do one tomorrow night.”

“She won’t need to do those, Malena,” Tilda said. “She can draw the energy herself. That’s what will make her such an incredible witch, remember?”

Malena sighed through her nose. Foreign words rolled from her tongue at lightning speed.

Tilda dismissed her sister’s annoyance with an eye-roll and faced Scarlett. “Malena says that
obviously
you need to witness the rituals so that you know how other witches draw energy. And, of course, you’ll need to know how to release the energy from your body so it can be stored and used later on.”

“Exactly,” Malena said. “So we’ll do one tomorrow night. What energy are we low on at the moment?”

“Human,” Sorena said between mouthfuls.

Beth coughed as a piece of meat caught in her throat. She swallowed hard. “Did you, uh, say human?”

Sorena looked up. She finished chewing. “Yes. Mostly we use energy derived from magical beings, but there are a select few spells—important ones—that require human energy.”

“Okay, we’ll get hold of a human and perform the ritual tomorrow night,” Malena said. “Scarlett, you can bring the human in. It will be good practice for you. For your siren influence. Actually, bring two men. You can use your own power to remove energy from one, and then observe the ritual to remove energy from the other.”

Hoping she wasn’t misunderstanding Malena, Beth said, “We won’t draw
all
their energy from them, will we?”

“Of course we will,” Malena answered. “We don’t want to waste any.”

“So you … you want …” Beth put her spoon down. “I’m sorry. We’re going to be
killing
two men?”

“Yes.”

“But … that’s wrong. We can’t kill people.”

“Why not?” Malena asked.

“Because …” Beth fumbled for the right words. “It’s … just … wrong!”

“According to whom?”

“I don’t know. The guardians? Don’t they have laws about killing people?”

Tilda chuckled. “I think we’ve already established the silliness of whatever laws guardians come up with.”

“Scarlett, dear.” Malena reached across the table and laid a hand on Beth’s sleeve. “Did you have a problem killing the hare?”

Beth paused for a second before lying. “No.”

“Why not?”

“Because we needed to eat it in order to survive.”

“Exactly,” Malena said with a nod. “Just as we need human energy to survive.”

“We do?” Beth asked, wondering suddenly what fundamentally important spells she’d missed. She shook her head, refusing to be distracted. “But animals and humans are different.”

“Not really,” Sorena said. “They’re both lesser beings.”

Beth looked at Tilda to see if she agreed with this craziness. Tilda gave her an apologetic smile. “I’m sorry. It must be difficult for you to think this way when you’ve grown up among humans. But honestly … they’re on a different level. A lower level. If they have something we need, then we have to take it. It’s an adjustment in mindset, I know, but you’ll soon see what we mean.”

Beth highly doubted that. “What if we take less energy from more humans? That way we get the same amount of energy, but we don’t have to kill anyone.”

At this, Tilda looked upset. “But that would cause them unnecessary confusion and suffering. We don’t want that.”

“Is this going to be a problem, Scarlett?” Malena asked. As she waited for an answer—an answer Beth was too afraid to give—her expression turned kinder. “You need to accept that this is part of who you are, dear. You, more so than any of us, were born for this.”

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

I was born for this
, Beth whispered silently to herself. The thought did little to convince her, though. As far as Malena and her family were concerned, Beth had chosen the witch way. She had sat in silence at dinner last night until eventually agreeing out loud that humans might not, after all, be worth the same as magical beings. But her heart believed something entirely different. And now here she was, tasked with bringing in two men, and she still had no idea whether she would go through with it or not—or what her options would be if she chose to disobey Malena.

“Does it matter to you where these men come from?” she’d asked last night, planning to search for a prison full of criminals. Perhaps her guilt would be assuaged if she took the lives of men who didn’t deserve to live in the first place.

“I’ll find you a suitable gathering,” Tilda had assured her, at which Beth had felt her heart sink even further.

The suitable gathering turned out to be a glamorous fund-raising event in some European city where no one spoke English. Not that the language difference mattered since Beth was supposed to be able to get men to fall at her feet without uttering a single word. As darkness fell and the tiniest of snowflakes began to fall, she and Tilda snuck into the city hall with the aid of a back entrance and an unlocking spell. They waited in a side corridor, peering around a marble column at the guests entering the building.

“Why not something a little more discreet?” Beth whispered to Tilda. “I could find a pub down the road, slip in quietly, choose two men, and get them to leave with me. No one will notice.”

“This isn’t about being discreet. Quite the opposite, in fact.” Tilda took Beth’s gloved hand and gave it a reassuring squeeze. “You have no idea, Scar, the kind of power you could wield, and we want to show you that. We want you to fully embrace your siren side so that you can become the powerful woman you were always meant to be.”

The powerful woman I was always meant to be.

The words had an intoxicating ring to them, and Beth couldn’t help admitting to herself that she wished them to be true. If this was her path to becoming everything she was meant to be, then why not embrace it? Why not run headlong toward her destiny instead of shying away from it like a scared little girl? Her gaze fell on the nearest window, on the aged, rippling glass with snowflakes drifting through the air on the other side, and she remembered those children—those
humans
—pushing her down and pressing her face into the snow until her lungs screamed for breath.

Her decision was made.

“Okay,” she said to Tilda. “I’m ready to do this.”

“Wonderful.” Tilda gave Beth’s hand a quick squeeze. “I’ll be waiting outside with Malena and Sorena. We’ll be ready to begin the ritual as soon as you join us.”

Beth stepped around the pillar and made her way toward the party. Through the wide doorway, she could see them all. The celebrities, the wealthy, the politicians, all chattering, laughing and sipping from their glasses of sparkling golden wine. She fit right in with her glamorous black dress. It was similar in style to the red dress, but longer and with a glittering shimmer running through the fabric. Black satin gloves that ended above her elbows completed the outfit. She’d looked in the mirror at home and seen someone else staring back at her. Someone older and confident and fully aware of her power.

Someone named Scarlett.

She wished she felt that assurance now as she stopped at the top of the stairs that led down into the crowded area. Instead, she felt suddenly ridiculous. She was a little girl playing dress-up in a room full of adults, and they would no doubt start laughing the moment they noticed her standing there. She considered turning and running. Running from this party, this life, this—

“No,” she murmured before her feet could catch up with her panicked thoughts.
I am not scared and I will not run. I am independent. I am strong. I am
powerful
.
She pushed her shoulders back and breathed in slowly and deeply. She had nothing to be nervous about. She pictured herself the way she had always pictured her mother. She was breathtaking, she was captivating, and men would fall at her feet and worship her before they’d dare make fun of her.

She walked slowly down the stairs, gliding in a way she’d only ever imagined herself doing. She stared straight ahead, the smallest of smiles on her lips, aware of the heads turning her way but refusing to acknowledge them. Let them watch. Let them long for her gaze like dying men longing for water in a desert. She reached the bottom of the stairs and continued her slow prowl through the crowd. She was a predator stalking the herd, searching for exactly the right prey. She could feel their energy, their very essence, thrumming in the air. It called to her, and she
wanted it
.

I was born for this
, her soul whispered to her.

She moved toward the edge of the crowd as people—women, most likely—restarted their conversations with murmurs and awkward laughter. She spotted two older men leaning against one of the many pillars that lined each side of the hall. They gaped at her, their lips parted as though they might have been about to say something before their words completely escaped them. She examined them—their silver hair and the lines that creased their faces—as she stalked slowly past.

You
, she whispered in her mind to the two men who’d lived many years already.
You want to come with me.
Nothing else in your world matters anymore.
She tilted her head to the side and gave them an alluring smile. Then she turned and headed for a side door she’d spotted, her hips swaying slightly as she continued her gliding motion. She glanced over her shoulder, and it filled her with exhilaration to see the two men following her, to know that whatever she willed, they would do.

She retrieved the fur-lined cloak and boots she had left beside the back entrance and pulled them on. She lifted the hood over her head, then led the men outside. They followed her through the snow to the outskirts of town where the witch sisters waited in the trees. By the time Beth reached the flickering green fire, the men were shivering and their hair and clothes were flecked with white. She might have expected them to move closer to the fire to warm themselves, but they had eyes for her alone.

“Well done,” Malena said to Beth. She walked forward with a vial in each hand. “Tell them to drink this. They will fall into a slumber and be aware of nothing else.”

Beth handed a vial to each man. She didn’t need to say a word to either of them. She willed them to drink, and so they did. As they swayed on their legs, she and the sisters caught them and lowered them to the ground. Their eyes closed and they lay there, peaceful and still as firelight flickered across their faces.

“It’s time, Scarlett,” Malena said. “You go first. Then we will perform our ritual.”