Page 12 of Soul of a Witch

“Hello?” Only silence greeted me.Someonehad to light all these candles, but it was so quiet.Tooquiet. The tapping of the pouring rain sounded so far away.

Goosebumps prickled over my skin. There was a tingle in the air, subtle but distinct. Like the crackle of electricity before a lightning storm.

There was magic in this house.

Pulling my cell phone out of my bag, I groaned in despair when it wouldn’t turn on. Completely waterlogged. What the hell was I supposed to do? The Eld would eat me alive if I went outside, but I had no idea what horrors awaited me in here. Father would be furious if I didn’t make it home tonight. How could I ever manage to explain this to him?

At least the door was locked, offering me a little protection from the creatures outside. My jacket was drenched, so I peeled it off and slung it over my bag. Meandering around the room, I ran my finger along the surface of a table along the wall, leaving a long trail in the thick dust. It looked as if no one had been here for years.

The painting hanging above the table caught my attention. It portrayed six people dressed in black, their somber expressions staring at me. The blue-eyed gaze of a blonde woman in the center of the group drew me closer, and I brushed my fingers lightly against the old canvas to wipe away the dust. She looked so much like my mother; it was uncanny.

Along the bottom of the portrait, an elegant cursive script listed their names. It was difficult to read, and I traced my finger along the text as I tried to discern it.

Thomas Caroll, Rebeccah Anton, Grand Mistress Sybil Laverne—

My trembling finger froze in place. That surname was my mother’s own maiden name, which meant Sybil…

Sybil was my ancestor. The one Mama had told me to seek out, the one who supposedly held the secret to my escape, was right here before my eyes. Or at least, the memory of her was. Looking to the very bottom of the portrait, I read the words that made my heart clench with both dread and wonder.

Laverne Coven and Family, 1902.

The words swirled in my head like leaves caught in a whirlpool. Grand Mistress…Sybil…Laverne Coven…

This was a house of witches, but not just any. This was my ancestor’s house.

How could Mama never mention this to me? How could I have gone all these years never knowing of its existence?

“It’s about time you got here.”

Jerking back, I whirled around in shock. But no one was there. It must have been my frayed nerves getting to me, making me imagine things.

Pausing for a moment, I concentrated on the lack of weight at the back of my mind. The absence of pain, the void of emptiness where my anxiety usually lay. It was gone.

I couldn’t feel the Deep One’s presence here.

Approaching the stairway, I tried my weight on the first step. It creaked, but it felt solid. Despite being abandoned, the house was incredibly well-preserved.

“Is anyone there?” No one answered.

So up the stairs I went.

The halls above were long, with so many turns and locked doors I feared I’d become lost. I inspected every doorknob for more barbs and found none, but I did find several locked doors bound with rope. Thin black strands had been intricately knotted across their surface, just like the entry doors, in elaborate designs I couldn’t make sense of.

It was some kind of old magic. There were runes carved into some of the doorframes and Latin inscriptions, but none of them gave me a good idea of what I was dealing with. It was such a big house; surely it would have been home to dozens of people.

Where had they all gone?

Tap, tap, tap.

A shiver shot up my spine. The sound was soft but distinct, like fingernails tapping on wood. Glancing over my shoulder, I surveyed the empty hallway. A clock ticked somewhere nearby, the old walls creaking in the wind.

The sound was gone.

The sheer size of this place made it impossible to know if anyone else was here, but perhaps I could find a room to rest in until morning. Once the sun had risen, it would be safer to wander out into the trees to find the road.

The thought of returning to my father made my stomach coil in terror. The aftershocks of this night wouldn’t be small. I could only imagine the chaos my disappearance would cause, let alone the turmoil that would be unleashed when Marcus went missing too. Or when evidence of his murder was found…

“Tread carefully, my dear.”

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