Page 14 of The Witch's Heart
Tilting my head, I try to pick out which direction it’s coming from, but the way sound echoes down here makes it impossible. And after everything I’ve seen, I’m hesitant to call out or try to befriend anyone else.
Resigned, I shuffle back to my bed and burrow underneath the thin blanket. But sleep doesn’t come, and I find myself wandering back over memories of happier times. Inevitably, those are short-lived before my walk down memory lane brings loss—and grief.
Estelle was my best friend. My confidant. The only one who truly understood me. She was my entire world.
And now she’s gone. And I’m here.
And nothing will ever be the same.
“It’s not your fault.”
I gasp and sit up then go still, hoping my sudden movements won’t chase away what I know is a hallucination of my own making.
“Estelle,” I breathe. After our exchange last night, I half-expected her to abandon me, but here she is again.
Her form flickers like a projector with interference. Floating near the bars of my cell.
“I’d yell at you for getting yourself into this, but you always did have to do everything I did.”
I smile despite the horror of my reality.
“Actually, you were the one always copying me,” I say.
She grins, and in that split second, everything is okay. But then her smile slips, her form flickering in the shadows. I shiver, a cold dread stealing into me that, real or imagined, my entire life is now a nightmare.
I ask the question that’s haunted me since the moment I lost her. “Why didn’t you let me help you?”
But she doesn’t even react to my question. “Come. There’s something I must show you.”
She turns and floats through the bars into the hallway beyond.
I get up and walk to the iron bars. Without them, we’d be close enough to touch. But Estelle drifts out of reach before I can try.
“Hurry up,” she says.
I shake my head. “I can’t just walk through walls like you.”
“Sure you can.”
For one horrifying moment, I wonder if she’s right. Maybe I’m dead. And she’s come to escort me to wherever I go next. But my hand closes over the cold iron.
I’m not sure whether I’m relieved or disappointed.
“Estelle,” I say, when she drifts a little farther away.
“Come on. You’re wasting time,” she says.
Her bossy tone is so like her that I want to laugh. Under any other circumstances, I would. And then I’d fire back at her with something equally sassy.
“How?” I ask instead. Because if I’ve learned anything since arriving here, it’s that nothing is as it seems.
“Just close your eyes and picture yourself out here with me. And then you will be.”
“Just like that?” I say wryly.
She shrugs.
I sigh and close my eyes, doing as she says.
