Wanda stepped up and placed an uncharacteristic hand on her cousin’s shoulder, giving a little squeeze and a firm nod. “Show that bitch how a real magic user does it.”

  Astrid managed a smile, and took a deep breath and then there was a confidence in her eyes that hadn’t been there before. She stood tall and straight and proud and Wanda gave her a smile that echoed that pride.

  “You got this,” Wanda whispered and Astrid nodded.

  Roy cocked an eyebrow at Astrid who nodded to him, in turn, and he took a step forward.

  And kicked the door clean off its hinges.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Astrid darted inside the old schoolhouse, vanishing into a cloud of dust and wood rot.

  Wanda was next, right on Astrid’s heels, just as a flash of energy flared up through the fog as Astrid cast some kind of spell.

  Other than the sizzle of power discharging, it was eerily quiet inside. No gasps at our intrusion, no shouting or screams when Roy pulled the door off its hinges, no kids making any sorts of sounds at all. At least Wanda’s boot heels on the old wood drowned out the sound of that soft, hopeless weeping I’d heard earlier.

  Roy walked in next, his huge frame blocking the door for an instant. I was right after him, not willing to be left outside for another second. I needed to see what was going on and I needed to make sure Finn, and the other children, were safe.

  I squirmed through the doorway, waving a cloud of dust out of my face, eyes itching and my nose burning with the need to sneeze. I managed to clear the air just in time to see Astrid launching a hex at the woman at the front of the classroom, a woman who must have been Regina Rose.

  I wasn’t sure what I’d been expecting, exactly, but Regina reminded me of nothing so much as a spider. She was dressed all in rusty black, from her long skirt to her cardigan sweatshirt. The only shift in her monochrome appearance was her pallid face, and the streaks of gray in her long dark hair, pulled back into a bun so tight, it yanked the skin of her forehead up and gave her an extremely severe look. Her limbs were long and stick thin—like the legs of a spider. Her body was all angles, her elbows, her knees, the jut of her collarbone peeking out of the neck of her blouse. Her skin was yanked tight over the blade of her cheekbones. She looked desiccated, as if she’d been sucked dry of life—as if she were nothing more than skin and bones, a walking skeleton.

  Regina twitched to the side, just missing Astrid’s hex. Then she raised a hand and said a snarled word in what sounded like Latin before deflecting the next hex, this one courtesy of Wanda, that came hurtling her way. The magic blasted into the blackboard behind Regina, instead of hitting its mark. The slate shattered, cracks spider-webbing outwards. With a muted roar, a wave of slate shards cascaded to the floor, skittering across the old wood. A cloud of chalk filled the air, covering Regina in a dusting of white. Now, instead of a spider, she looked like a specter haunting an old, rotting building.

  Not one of the children responded. They were all still stuck in whatever hypnosis she’d subjected them to.

  Regina hissed through her teeth, lashing out with a bolt of power that streaked through the air like greasy smoke, dark gray and clinging. Just the sight of it made my stomach clench with nausea. The power that came from her wasn’t like anything I’d ever seen before. Instead of magic which sizzled with energy, almost like lightning, Regina’s power didn’t sizzle. In fact, whatever she’d launched out at Astrid with, it was almost like the absence of power—a dark void of charcoal mist like smoke that seeped out from her hand and then dissipated into the air.

  “Don’t let her power touch you!” Andre roared out as he, apparently, recognized the dark mist coming from Regina. “It will drain your life away!”

  Astrid brought her arms up across her chest in a gesture of warding, then dragged them down sharply, words tumbling from her lips in a rapid staccato. The leaden energy of Regina’s spell tore apart under a wave of Astrid’s power, the dark vapors of Regina’s signature disappearing into the air.

  Astrid blinked in shock, as if she hadn’t really thought she’d be a match for an older, more experienced supernatural. But then, Astrid was a red-headed witch, and they tended to be outliers as things went. That, and they tended to be powerful.

  Wanda chanted almost under her breath, her voice a low background noise as she held her hands out towards Astrid’s back, thin lines of bloody light stretching from her fingers and drifting towards the teen’s back. Wanda’s power flowed into Astrid, buoying up the younger witch’s powers, allowing her to draw not only her own strength, but that of her Blood Witch cousin.

  Astrid’s smile turned savage, all gleaming teeth and wicked intent, and she launched another hex towards the front of the room. Roy, meanwhile, placed himself squarely at Wanda’s side, letting the others duke it out, but keeping his strong body between Regina and the room full of kids.

  It was clear that between the three of them, they had Regina handled, at least for the moment. So, I finally gave in to what my maternal instincts were screaming at me to do, and ran for Finn. I could hear the drum of Andre’s shoes against the floor close behind me, but every bit of my attention was on my son, on the slump of his narrow shoulders, on the way his blue eyes were glassy and seemingly staring at nothing.

  I fell to my knees beside the old desk he was sitting at and immediately threw my arms around him, needing to feel him, to make sure he was still warm. He was like a rag doll in my arms, unresponsive and unmoving.

  “Finn? Finn, can you hear me?” I cupped his face in my hands, tilting him towards me. His eyelids fluttered, lips moving soundlessly, but otherwise he didn’t react. It felt like he was looking right through me.

  Tears pricked the corner of my eyes as panic started wending its way through my whole body. His skin felt cool to the touch, and a little clammy.

  Were we too late? Had the damage already been done?

  Andre approached us then and laid a hand on the back of Finn’s wrist, where it lay on the old, scarred desk top. He murmured a few words underneath his breath and silvery blue light began twining around his fingers before soaking into Finn’s skin.

  And there was… nothing from Finn—no reaction. Not so much as even a twitch.

  “What’s happening?” My voice broke on the last word, panic surging, whirling into the storm inside my chest, as I looked from Finn’s empty eyes to Andre’s concerned ones. “Why isn’t he responding?”

  Andre’s lips pressed into a tight line. He brought his hands up on either side of Finn’s head, fingers spread wide, but not quite touching Finn. He spoke again, and I was pretty sure it was Latin that was now tripping off his tongue, low and rolling, vowels blending together. Silver light haloed Finn, burning like a brilliant crown, before it sputtered and died. The power wisped away, like fog burning up at the first touch of dawn.

  Andre shook his head, rolling his sleeves back with short, sharp turns. The skin of both forearms were covered in dozens of numbers, the ink standing out sharply against the otherwise white of his skin. As I watched, the numbers began to move, some began to shake while others began to swirl around his arms, changing size, saturation and location.

  “Andre?” I asked, looking up at him with concerned eyes. I needed to know, to understand what we were facing.

  “She’s been working him over for a long time,” he answered, his voice low and quiet. “I’m surprised he’s been able to hold out this long. If he weren’t a magician…”

  He didn’t finish the sentence, but he didn’t have to. I smothered a sob with the palm of my hand.

  A roar of displaced air, and a snap like a moth hitting a bug zapper caused me to jerk my head up. Astrid was still holding her own against Regina at the front of the room, with Wanda and Roy standing at her back like a protective wall. And Wanda was still siphoning her magic into Astrid, feeding it to her on a line of bright light as Wanda’s mouth moved with the words of the spell.

  Regina looked the worse for wear. Her gray-streaked hair had come partially out of its bun, hanging in a scraggly curtain in front of her face. Her lips were pulled back off her teeth, expression screwed up into a grimace of twisted fury. Her eyes were wild, the whites showing all the way around her irises.

  None of the kids had reacted to the magical duel happening at the other side of the room. They continued to stare ahead of them, without actually seeing what was in front of them. Others had their heads on the desk, without even their arms on the tables to cushion them. They looked like discarded marionettes, all loose limbs and broken strings. Bile surged up the back of my throat in an acid wave.

  “How have they all held out so long?” I gestured to the kids around us. “Are these kids all magic, like Finn?”

  Andre held his palm just above Finn’s chest, over the spot where his heart was. He frowned, dark brows pulling down until they almost met over the bridge of his nose. He raised his other hand to Finn’s forehead, not quite touching it. Silver blue light danced over my son in rippling waves, lifting his hair with an invisible current. And then Andre moved that light to the rest of the room and it enveloped each and every one of the children before dimming. When Andre brought his hands back to Finn, the light returned again.

  Andre rocked back on his heels, surprised. “I think… I think Finn’s been shielding them.”

  “Shielding them?” I glanced between Andre and Finn, my hands fisted in the fabric of my coat. “What does that mean?”

  Andre looked, not quite grim, but very serious. It didn’t fill me with reassurance. “I think he’s been drawing the brunt of Regina’s thrall, keeping it from affecting the other children so strongly. He might not have even realized he was doing it. But it means he’s been taking the worst of a ‘Magicless’s’ ire for a while, now.”

  I wanted to scream. To stand up and throw something. The Druid’s Curse roiled inside me, winds buffeting my lungs, the roar of a torrential downpour filling my throat, waiting to be released.

  Finn was strong. I’d always known that—he’d always been the kid who marched to his own beat, who didn’t give a care in the world what other people thought of him. He was strong, and he was curious and he was funny and now he was… almost catatonic.

  I went up on one knee, one hand cupping Finn’s face, and the other on his closest hand. His eyes fluttered, brows pinching together.

  “Finn,” I called, softly but firmly. “Honey, I need you to hear me. You have to wake up now, Finn. I need you to be as strong as you’ve ever been and fight whatever this is. Don’t let her do this to you, Finn. You’re strong, you’re so so strong, and you can beat her. I know you can.”

  I took a deep breath, and let the Druid’s Curse flow through me, let its power completely engulf me. Golden green light flickered to life around my arms and shoulders, but I could only see it out of the corner of my eye. The smell of fresh grass and green growing things filled my head, sharp and herbal. The storm broke loose then, wind and rain, thunder in my chest. There was lightning in my veins. The world around me grew sharper, every detail clearer, like I was an eagle honing in on all the minute details surrounding me: the bead of sweat at the edge of Finn’s hairline just ready to fall, the chalk dust and ozone smell from the front of the room, the rasp of Andre’s slacks against my jeans as we knelt side by side.

  But mostly, I saw Finn.

  I saw the happy, laughing, generous boy I loved so, so much. Every freckle was a miracle. His blue eyes so like mine, yet all his own. His mussed golden hair. The little silvery scars on his elbows and knees, and the stories of how he’d gotten every one of them.

  I couldn’t lose him to this dark magic.

  I wouldn’t.

  Chapter Eighteen

  The power flowed, and it emptied from my fingers into Finn, connecting us, filling us both with feelings of hope and happiness, of strength and muster. I breathed that power into my son like I was trying to keep a candle flame from guttering out.

  “Finn.” My voice sounded different, fuller, and more resonant. Commanding. “Listen to me. You can win this fight. You can break free. I know you can. I believe in you. I need you to believe in yourself, too.”

  His fingers twitched under mine, and I clutched them hard enough, it had to hurt.

  “Keep going,” Andre whispered and from the corner of one of my eyes, I could see him holding his hands out towards me as light streamed from his fingers and sailed into me, surrounding me with a glow. All of a sudden, I could feel my own strength increasing, my own power growing almost exponentially. And I immediately took that added magic and siphoned it, with my own, into Finn.

  “Finn.” His name was a plea, a demand. “Come back to me.”

  Thunder rumbled behind my sternum, and Finn took in a huge gasping breath like someone who had been underwater for a long time and had just broken through the surface of the water.

  It was like watching color flood into a black and white photo. Finn’s cheeks went from waxy pale to healthy pink. His eyes shifted from flat gray to bright blue again as he blinked awake. I could have cried when his hand curled around mine, our fingers lacing together. As I watched the color return to his face, the dark circles underneath his eyes blanched away.

  “Mom?” Confusion warbled through his voice as he looked from me to Andre, who was still standing above me, his hands outstretched in the air, palms facing my head. “What’s going on?” Then he looked around himself and frowned even more. “Where are we?”

  My body swayed forward, and it took everything in me not to collapse in relief. “Finn. Oh my God, I was so worried. Are you okay?”

  He raked a hand back through his hair, pushing it off his forehead. “Yeah, I… I think so?” He looked like he did in the early morning, when he was just waking up—still groggy, still caught in the snare of sleep. His gaze fell on Andre again and, this time, he seemed to register who Andre was and twitched in surprise. “Andre? What are you doing here?”

  Finn’s voice trailed off as he glanced around. I saw the moment that it dawned on him just where he was and what was going on. His head whipped around as he took in his classmates who were still slumped around him, some of them frighteningly pale.

  “Oh, no,” he breathed, panic filling his eyes. “Oh, no!”

  The chair legs shrieked against the floor as Finn shoved himself back, his hand slipping out of mine.

  “Finn, wait!”

  He didn’t listen, or maybe he didn’t hear me as he bolted for the back of the classroom. I’d just hauled myself to my feet when I realized where he was going.

  There was a girl at one of the desks in the back corner of the room. She had dark hair, and big brown eyes, and under normal circumstances, she would have been very pretty. But now her hair looked lank and brittle, her eyes only half-open as she sagged forward in her seat. Her skin was almost gray, lips bloodless. Her hand lay limply on the desk, fingers curled towards her palm like a crumpled flower.

  As he ran, Finn stuck a hand into the pocket of his pants and pulled out a coin. I could see his lips moving, almost unconsciously as he muttered a few words in what sounded like Latin—or the same language Andre and Regina had used.

  I rocked back on my heels, baffled. Finn didn’t speak anything but English. Or, at least, that’s what I thought. Yet, here he was, calling out some other language with the force of someone who knew what he was saying. The coin clutched in his hand started to glow silver, burning brightly like a chunk of phosphorous.

  Finn dropped to his knees at the girl’s side, clutching her hand with both of his own, and some of the horrible pallor leeched away from her face. The girl’s eyes fluttered, and after another second or so, opened fully. She looked down at Finn like she was confused as to how he’d gotten there, but then she caught sight of the classroom around her, and her head whipped back and forth, hair sliding over her shoulders with the motion as her chest heaved for breath.

  Her wide eyes flooded with tears, lips trembling. “Finn? Where are we?”

  Finn patted her hand awkwardly, and murmured something I couldn’t hear, but the tone was reassuring, and the girl calmed down a little, listening to whatever he was saying.

  At my side, Andre gave a low whistle. “That boy is going to make one hell of a magician, Poppy. Manifesting healing as a gift is impressive, especially at thirteen-years-old. Imagine what he’ll be able to do with a bit of practice.”

  Too choked with emotion to speak, I turned back to Finn just in time to see the stark black number two ink itself into the center of his forearm.

  I always knew Finn was special, that he was different. I just hadn’t fully understood how amazing he truly was. The smile stretching my cheeks was so wide, my face hurt. Feeling a few tears loosen from the corners of my eyes, I dashed them away before getting to my feet.

  Then I rounded on Regina.

  She was kneeling on the floor of the old school house, down, but still fighting. The mix of Astrid and Wanda’s power had wrapped around her in a glowing green cocoon of hair-fine lines of energy. That didn’t keep her from thrashing from side to side, spitting furious bits of some ancient language into the air, face twisted into a snarl. Only the tether of more shining threads of power anchoring her to the floor kept her from tipping over onto the ground.

  Astrid stood before her, hands at her side, fingers spread wide, dozens of green strings anchored in her hands like a puppet master. Her chest rose and fell with the effort of holding the spell, red hair a wild tangle around her face. She was all but glowing with a fierce triumph.

  Wanda stood just a little behind her, doing her best to look bored, but I could see pride in the little curl at the corner of her mouth.

  Roy stood off to the side, his arms crossed over his massive chest, glowering down in his best impression of a wall of protective muscle.

  But my attention was primarily focused on Regina.

  This woman had come to Haven Hollow, had hurt these kids, had threatened my son, and for what? A joyless attempt to crush their hope? Because she had none, herself?