Page 48 of Night of the Witch
“Then you have an incentive to free the prisoners. Will you help me?”
She narrows her eyes. “What do I need to do?”
I don’t believe she’ll like the plan Hilde and I came up with, so I say first, “What can your magic do to help? If I can get you into the basilica where the prisoners are kept, can you do…something? To free them?”
She snorts in bitter laughter. “I told you, magic can’t just do anything. It depends on the witch’s affinity. A little rosemary isn’t going to be enough.”
I shake my head, still confused. When Fritzi sent Hilde…elsewhere, itseemedenormously powerful. And just now, with the protection spell she cast on herself, that was clearly strong. Why can’t she just save the others?
“Think of magic like a well,” she continues, sighing at me. “Each witch can use their affinity to tap into the Well, and pull up a draft of magic. Protecting one or two people is like pulling up a bucket. Magicking out a hundred people from a well-guarded prison would be…”
“Like pumping it dry?” I guess.
She nods. “Sort of. Things that take a lot of power put strain on the Well. There are people who protect the source of magic, who ensure that doesn’t happen. I would simply be unable to pull from the Well if it was something that big.”
I frown at her, trying to understand her analogy. “Perhaps, if these keepers of the Well understood that we were trying to save innocents’ lives…” My voice drifts off as she shakes her head. “Do youhaveto get your magical power from the Well? Is there some other source…?”
“No,” she says, her eyes flash with rage. “No, we are not touching that sort of magic.”
Interesting. She did not say it was impossible. Merely forbidden.
I don’t press her on that—not yet, anyway. Instead, I pivot. “Youcansave one person, though, as evidenced by Hilde. Do you know other witches? If we have enough, perhaps you could all work together. My escape route and your combined powers…”
There’s a different look on her face now. Not fury—sorrow. Her eyes slide away from mine, but she cannot hide the grief painted within them.
“Birresborn,” I say. I’d guessed this before, when she mentioned the kommandant, but I’m certain of it now.
Her head whips up.
“You were a witch in Birresborn. Where Kommandant Kirch took an entire unit to root out a coven.”
She nods slowly, once, a quick bob of her head.
Everyone in the village had been murdered. Almost everyone.
Liesel—Fritzi’s cousin. That’s how she knew she was a prisoner.
“Dieter took Liesel,” Fritzi says. “Iknowhe took her alive.”
Two girls—all that remains of a whole village. My heart mourns for her grief. But then my mind locks on what she actually said.
She called Kommandant Kirch by his given name, Dieter. She spoke of him as if she knew him.
I open my mouth to question her, but I bite my tongue. Now is not the time to raise her ire, and besides, it could simply be a matter of her overhearing his name in the chaos.
“If we can’t use magic,” I say, “we’ll have to use my original plan.”
“Well, what is it?” she asks when I pause.
“You’re not going to like it,” I say.
Fritzi rolls her hand for me to continue.
“Okay.” I take a deep breath. “Step one, I arrest you.”
“No!”
“I told you that you wouldn’t like it.”
