Page 96 of Witches of Dubious Origin
“Once she mastered it, your mother left you in Agatha’s care, thinking you would be safe so long as she kept the grimoire and herself away from you. She’d hoped to find a way to defeat Ariana and be free of her, but Ariana managed to catch your mother coming to see you and cast the Waning Curse upon Juliet.”
“That’s why she ended up at Mystwood and never told us,” I said. The thought of my mother choosing to die alone broke me.
As if reading my thoughts, Mamie said, “She didn’t choose to die alone any more than I did. The Waning Curse takes away a witch’s ability to communicate in any way. Trapped in her body as she wasted away, your mother had no way to reach out to you or warn you about Ariana, just as I’d had no way to warn her before I died.”
That only made me feel worse.
“Your mother was afraid that Ariana would murder you and bring you back before you even had the grimoire in your possession. She realized she’d been wrong to ask you not touse magic and hoped you’d reconsider once the grimoire appeared. She trusted that Agatha would assist you in finding the help you needed.” She glanced past me at the others. “And she did.”
“How do you know all this?” I asked.
“Because your mother and I have talked about it.”
I blinked at her. I had so many questions, not the least of which was what did she mean they had talked?Recently?I was about to barrage her with questions when one of the boards on the barn door was smashed and an arm appeared. The fingers on the bony hand twitched as it tried to grab for anything on the other side. I felt as if I were an expendable side character in every terrifying zombie movie ever created.
“What do we do, Toni?” Miles asked. “How do we stop her?”
“Wedon’t,” Toni said. “Ido. The rest of you must protect Zoe and the grimoire. No matter what happens, she can’t have that book. The spells in it would make her invincible.”
I turned to retrieve the grimoire, but Jasper already had. He handed it to me and I clutched it to my chest. I felt the book press itself more firmly against me as if it knew I would do anything I could to protect it. When I glanced up, Olive, Miles, Tariq, and Jasper formed a circle around me. They were facing out and I knew without being told that they would sacrifice their lives to keep the book from Ariana.
A horrific crash sounded and I jumped. I peered over Miles’s shoulder to see Ariana’s undead horde in various states of decay spill into the barn like a ripped bag of beans. Surprisingly, they didn’t attack. Instead, they moved intoformation, creating an aisle, which Ariana strode down like a queen inspecting her troops.
“Darkwood.” Mamie stood facing the door with her chin tipped up and not a bit of fear in her eyes. I was in awe.
At the sight of Mamie, Ariana faltered but caught herself. She glanced from Mamie to where I stood within the circle of the BODO staff. Then a terrifying smile spread across her lips. It was without mirth and full of malice. “I see your granddaughter finally managed to work a decent spell. Excellent.” She practically purred the last word and it made goose bumps rise on my arms.
She flicked her wrist in the direction of Mamie, and her horde of undead attacked. Mamie stood no chance against so many. I tried to push out of the circle, but Jasper locked his arm around me, keeping me in place.
“No, Zoe, don’t,” he said. “Remember what your grandmother said. We have to protect the book.”
Mamie held up her hand in astopgesture but the undead ran right over whatever shield she was trying to contain them with. The smack of their bones colliding as they covered Mamie in a thrashing pile of limbs was a sound I knew I would never forget.
I strained against Jasper’s hold and shouted at Miles, “Do something!”
He held up a finger, indicating that I should wait. I tried to twist my way out of the circle.
“Relax, Ziakas!” Olive ordered. “She’s already dead. What do you think they can do to her?”
“Rip her apart?” I said as an arm—not Mamie’s—was flung out of the mass of bodies.
“Toni can handle this,” Miles said with complete confidence.
“We need to help her,” I insisted. A leg was jettisoned out of the pile. Then a torso. The pieces came faster and faster, flung farther and farther, until the entire barn was littered with the dismantled bits of Ariana’s army. Then, one by one, they simply wentpoofinto a cloud of smoke and vanished.
Mamie emerged completely unharmed, not a hair out of place, standing right where she’d been all along.
We were all mesmerized by how Mamie had evaporated Ariana’s army, so much so that we didn’t notice when Ariana appeared right outside our circle. Tariq saw her first and let out a warning cry. It was too late.
Ariana grasped me by the hair and forcibly yanked me out of their protection. Jasper didn’t let go of me, and as I was clutching the book to my chest with my right hand, I couldn’t fight Ariana with anything more than a few blind punches with my left, which she deftly dodged.
“Let her go!” Jasper demanded.
Ariana laughed. “No.” She grabbed my neck with her free hand and started to squeeze. “Release her.”
I wanted to tell him not to, but Ariana’s hand tightened, cutting off my air. I choked and Jasper dropped his arm from around my waist.
“That’s better. I’m going to enjoy killing her and then I’ll bring little Zoe back as my minion with her grandmother watching. How delicious.”
