Page 82 of Night of the Witch
I scramble for the healing potion and nudge her away, doing a quick sweep of her body for wounds. A few scrapes, a few bruises, but nothing severe—and no brand. Would it even burn her, who controls fire?
Still, I encourage her to drink the healing potion, and she gulps it down and clamps her arms back around me.
He imprisoned her. In a closet worse than a cage. In darkness and foulness and fear.
I hold Liesel to me as I stand, fury draping in a red veil over me.
Stop him, says the voice.This is his office. You have to stop him.
Liesel clings to me like she used to when she was small, arms around my neck, legs knotted around my hips. Her weight makes me stumble, but I survey the room, eyes snapping from the desk, to the shelves, to—
“Fritzi,” Otto says, low at first, then again. “Fritzi. We don’t have time.”
“His office. His secrets are here. We could—”
“He doesn’t store anything of importance here.”
I whip a look at Otto and shift Liesel in my arms, wordlessly saying,Oh, he doesn’t?
Otto holds up his hands. “Nothing he doesn’t want anyone else to find. It’s too public. We won’t get anything else worthwhile here. Trust me—I’ve looked in the past.”
My jaw clamps, lips stiff.
“I want to burn it,” I whisper.
Liesel pushes back to look at me, and I recognize my own rage in her sunken, bloodshot eyes.
“Set me down,” she tells me.
I comply.
Otto’s brows pinch, his gaze flashing between us tentatively, as though he knows he should intervene, but holds himself in restraint.
Good.
Liesel takes a shaky step toward Dieter’s desk. She fumbles in a top drawer and pulls out a tinderbox—she must have seen him use it. Did he taunt her with it? My stomach turns.
My cousin flicks the flint against the steel and cups her hand over it.
Her palm begins to turn red. Scalding, wavering heat palpitates the air over her skin, and a spark flares. She twists her hand to place it palm flat on the desk, and flames start to eat across the top, hungry, tearing fingers of orange and yellow.
“Let’s go,” says Liesel. She snuffs the flame and pockets the tinderbox. When she takes my hand, her palm is still warm.
The two of us are halfway to the door when Otto finally manages to speak. “How far will it spread?”
Liesel blinks up at him. Then looks at me. “Who is he?”
“A…friend,” I say dumbly. “A rogue hexenjäger.”
“He doesn’t want his precious church destroyed, hm?”
Behind us, the desk is a slowly building inferno, the chair catching now too. A few sparks drift off, snag on scrolls stacked on wall shelves; soon, the whole of the room will be engulfed in flames. Then the hall, fire spreading through the grout of the bricks and the wood in the ceiling. Then the floors beneath, the chapel and altar and pews, all of it burning, burning—
“I’ve laid traps of my own for them,” Otto says. His tone is soft, talking reverently, and I know that’s the only reason Liesel doesn’t set her blaze on him. “I falsified records and made a mess of their organization. If you burn it all, they’ll regroup far faster, out of spite.”
Liesel sniffs. When she gives me a probing look, I shrug.
She snaps her fingers and all the flames go out. But her mark is left in Dieter’s office, the lot of his things utterly ruined.
