Page 21 of Night of the Witch
Her eyes widen.
“But you’ll wish you had by the time I’m done with you.”
7
FRITZI
The prison wagon sways, occasionally hitting a rut in the road that sends my body thumping against the wall, the iron manacles on my wrists shifting, smelling of old metal and rust. The jägers aren’t going particularly fast, and I wonder if it’s because the lead one thinks they’ll stumble across his sister.
Maybe we will.
But I’m hoping she got away. She probably saw the smoke from my spell—I still have no idea why itexploded; maybe there was something hidden growing among those herbs?—took the opportunity, and bolted into the forest. Now that the hexenjägers are gone, she has to be back at her cottage, picking up the remains of her trashed home.
While I’m serving out her fate.
Guilt seizes me. Guilt and fear and bone-shaking dread.
No. I won’t think about that. I won’t think about how I set out to save Liesel only to end up exactly like her.
My head falls back against the wall, a defeated sigh whimpering out of me.
Everything about the past few days has rapidly spiraled into the worst case scenario, so perfectly and with such lethal precision that I’d think I’m cursed if I didn’t know the truth.
It isn’t a curse.
It’sme.
My own actions have come to demand reparation. My own past has come to poison my future.
I force a brittle laugh. Schiesse, being stuck in this damp, dark box does nothing but seep exhaustion into my brain. I’d been surviving the past day and night on action only, moving forward, drowning in my mission to save Liesel. But here, now, the abyss of grief is waiting for me, the yawning stretch of everything I’ve been outrunning finally tripping my heels.
It’s good, though. I’ll gladly fall into this self-deprecating nothingness if it means distracting myself from the fact that I’m a prisoner of the hexenjägers. That I’m on my way to Trier, bound for an even worse fate than my coven.
A tremble rocks through me. My throat grates, a scream or a sob bubbling to life. No, no,no—I will not give these jägers the satisfaction of falling apart. I’m not in a Trier prison yet, am I? So all isn’t lost, and it’s at least a half day’s trip still, and they’ll likely have to camp for the night, or at least stop to relieve the horses. Once they do, the moment they let me out of this box—they’ll have to, won’t they?—I’ll act. Run. Fight them. Steal a pistol. They took my empty potion vials but left my coat and hat, so I can easily hide and survive in the forest, no matter how cold it drops.Anythingto get away.
Liesel is counting on me.
And I willnotlet her down. Not again.
The wagon heaves to the side, throwing me bodily off the seat, mymanacled wrists making it impossible to catch myself. I land on the rough wood floor with a tumbling crash, pain forcing a cry from my lips.
But the wagon stops.
I stay on the floor, staring at the barred window at the top of the doors. Sure enough, footsteps sound outside. Gruff voices.
“There’s a campsite a few paces off the road,” says the kapitän. The hexenjäger whose knees I can still feel on my shoulders, a line of blood now dry on my neck from his blade. “Scout it. We’ll stay here tonight. And you three, span out. Hilde Ernst may yet be in these woods. She couldn’t have crossed the river—if she ran off in the chaos and smoke this hexe made, she could be somewhere nearby. It’s a long shot, but worth it.”
“Kapitän, what about…” The voice peters off. Then, quietly, he adds, “Thewitch?”
I cut a gruesome smile. That’s fear in the young jäger’s voice. It bolsters me like a rope tossed into a long, jagged chasm.
“Scared, are you, Johann?” someone else teases. “Should we leave you on guard, then?”
A pause. “If that is my duty.” But Maid, Mother, and Crone, he soundspetrified.
I heave my shoulder into the side of the wagon, rocking the whole structure, which earns a satisfying chirp of terror from Johann and a scrambled muttering of prayer.
One of the other jägers laughs.
