The Witch Is Back (39 page)

“So her name's Pearl? Or maybe Justice?” Brooklyn asked me.

“Let me out of here!” Eve screamed then, startling all of us, including our captor, who began to run around the cavern, looking for a place to hide. She finally settled for the shadows of one of the entranceways.

“Shut it, Eve!” I yelled at her. “You're not in charge anymore.”

“We'll always be in charge,” she challenged back.

“Says the girl who's currently strapped to a wall,” I said under my breath.

Then I turned back to Brooklyn and Colette.

“Is it just me or is there something really familiar about her?” I said to them.

“A cousin of yours, perhaps?” Brooklyn said with a chuckle. I didn't laugh but tried to place her instead.

“She's familiar because we
know
her,” Colette said finally. Her eyes had grown wide and her face had paled.

It was almost like she'd just seen a . . .

Oh, shit
.

“Moll?” I called out in the direction of where the girl had disappeared. “Is that your name? Moll Brenner?”

A few seconds later, the girl stuck her head back out into the light and looked at me curiously. She took a hesitant step forward and then another. And then she ran over to me, until we were almost nose-to-nose.

“Moll,” she said. But that was it. No rhymes, no incoherent sentences. For the first time, she was clear.

“Omigod,” Colette said breathlessly. “It's really her.”

“Who is she?” Brooklyn asked, not following.

“She's the Witch in the Woods,” I said sadly as I watched Moll scoot backward a few feet and then sit down on the ground in front of us and hug her knees to her chest. She rocked back and forth, creating a rhythm with her motions.

She'd been so young and so lost back then. And it appeared she still was.

“No shit? The Witch in the Woods really exists?” Eve asked with a snort. “Well, that makes this easier. Hey, Moll. Let me go and we can wreak havoc together. Get rid of these
bitches
once and for all.”

Moll looked over at her, a frown on her face.

“Why are you keeping us here, Moll?” I asked her.

She shifted her gaze back onto me.

“You're cruel, and you hurt, and you bring so much pain,” Moll said in a sing-song voice as she rocked. “The bad must get punished and it will come down like rain.”

“That. Is. Awesome,” Eve said with an evil smile. “Because those girls over there? They're the bad people. They've hurt so many . . .”

“No, no, no, no, NO!” Moll yelled, shutting Eve up immediately. She ran over to Eve and covered her mouth with both hands. “You hurt the innocent and will reap what you sow.”

Eve's face fell. For the first time since I'd met her, she seemed scared.

“You've all hurt and deserve to disappear,” Moll said, quieter now. “I will take you with me and no one will shed a tear.”

I wondered where she planned to take us. To the place where the other campers had left her? Wherever she'd ended up when she'd died?

I looked over at the others tied to the walls. They didn't deserve this. Then again, neither did I, but maybe if she just took me, then I could find a way out eventually. . . .

“Moll,” I pleaded, terrified now. “I know we haven't exactly been the best examples of good twitches, but that doesn't mean everyone's bad. Please, let the others go. You can take me. And Eve—because let's face it, she's just an evil person. But let the others go. They're the good guys.”

Moll squinted at me. I could feel her weighing what she thought was true with what I was saying. Still, she didn't seem convinced.

“See Jinx over there? She saved my life once.” I motioned with my head in Jinx's direction. She seemed dazed from the spell Eve had cast on her and the others, but otherwise she appeared to be fine. “Jinx took a spell for me, right in her gut, trying to keep me safe from a really bad guy.”

I continued.

“And next to her? That's Jasmine. She's superprotective of the other members of our coven and looks out for them when she thinks nobody's looking. She's the most honest person I know,” I said. I flipped my head to the other side. “That's Colette. And she's actually related to you. You're her great-great-aunt. She stuck up for you when everyone else was saying you were hurting people here at camp. And she's really smart and brave and talented—she's everything your lineage wanted to be but couldn't because of crappy circumstances you couldn't help.”

Colette smiled at me, a tear running down her cheek.

“And Brooklyn, well she's really . . . fit,” I said grasping at straws. When she gave me a look that said, “are you kidding me?” I forced myself to try harder. “Brooklyn helps people fall in love. She just wants everyone to be happy.”

It killed me to say it, but I had a feeling it was true. There had to be a reason that Asher still thought so highly of her and I don't think it was because of a love spell.

As much as I wanted her to be the villain of this story, she wasn't.

Moll considered all of this and after a few silent moments she nodded her head.

“So be it.”

And then, Moll raised her hand and the others disappeared. Everyone except for Colette, Eve, and me. The three of us remained pressed against the wall, unable to move.

Still, I breathed a sigh of relief to see that Moll had let the others go. I didn't like that Colette was still here, but Moll had at least given me
something
. She wasn't the ghost everyone had made her out to be.

“Thank you, Moll,” I said gratefully, as I began to devise a new plan to get Colette and me out of there, too.

The disheveled girl tiptoed over to Colette, who, shockingly, seemed to look happy despite the fact that she was still here.

“Hello,” Moll said.

“Hi, Moll,” Colette answered, still strapped to the wall. “My great-grandmother used to tell me stories about you, that her mother had told her. You know they never stopped looking for you. Where have you been this whole time?”

Moll looked down at the ground and then back up at her great-great-niece. When the two of them were next to each other, it was easy to see the family resemblance. Even with the dirt that marked both their faces, they still looked alike.

“I went away,” Moll said quietly. “Life was too hard. I couldn't brave the day.”

“But you did come back every so often, right? To prove that you were still here?” Colette asked.

Moll nodded.

“You're the one who left the message at the theater, didn't you? ‘I'm watching'?” Colette said, watching her face. “You wanted us to know that you were watching us. Making sure people treated each other right.”

Moll nodded again.

“But the whole world's not like the kids who hurt you back then,” Colette said. “There are some great people out there. People who care about you and invite you into their lives and treat you like a friend. You just had a
really
bad experience. Life can be magical—if you let it.”

After a pause, Moll smiled. “Then you let it,” she said. “Let it be magical.”

And, suddenly, Colette dropped down from her place on the wall, freed from what had bound her. Colette steadied herself and then reached her hand out slowly until it hung in the air next to Moll's.

“I will. Promise,” Colette said “But one more thing. Hadley is
not
a bad person. She is as good as they come. The world needs heroes like her in it. Someone to make the hard decisions and be brave when the rest of us can't. If she'd been around when you were here, things wouldn't have turned out like they did. Please. Don't take her from us. We still need her.”

Moll remained silent and stared at the girl who had her own blood running through her veins. It was nice to hear what Colette thought of me, but I knew it was a desperate plea. After all, I
had
made some questionable decisions in my life. I'd been selfish, unthinking, and often argumentative. I'd been jealous and plotted against others. Who knows, maybe that qualified me as a bad person. Or a good person doing bad things. Either way, what was about to happen was out of my hands.

“Stop with the vomit-inducing family reunion!” Eve shouted, breaking up the moment. “All of you are just sheep who should've been slaughtered a long time ago. You're an embarrassment to our kind and I'm going to wipe you out the first chance I get. And if I don't, then the reverend will, because he knows that people like you don't deserve to walk this—”

“Good-bye,” Moll said and just like that, Eve was gone. Her last words echoing through the passageways as if she was drifting away from us.

“What did you do with her?” I asked, shocked at what had happened.

Moll looked at me with a childlike smile on her face. “I will take care of her,” she answered and then gestured to Colette, “if you will take care of
her
.”

“Okay,” I said, scared to ask Moll to elaborate on just what was to become of Eve.

“Make your lives magical,” Moll said again and then Colette and I disappeared too.

In a blink, we were back at the beginning of the Brighton Challenge, amidst a now frantic crowd of counselors and stunned campers. Brooklyn was busy trying to explain to everyone what had happened in the caves, which wasn't very easy considering the other girls couldn't recall a thing after starting the competition. There was just a huge chunk of time missing and they each had roaring headaches, like they'd been magically roofied. The counselors had impatiently listened to Brooklyn give her version of the story, but as soon as she'd mentioned the Witch in the Woods, they'd pretty much shut down.

An evil witch they'd believe. But a
ghost
witch? Yeah, that was out of the question. Maybe the adults had never experienced a visit from an ancestor before or possibly they just didn't want to believe that ghosts could exist too. Whatever their reason, our counselors dismissed our explanation.

Beyond that, they were also having a tough time believing that it was Eve who'd created most of the chaos. They'd never suspected a twitch was actually behind the girls' going missing from the counselors' radar. They'd just assumed it was a glitch. Eventually they'd noticed that those who'd been disqualified weren't making it back to camp, and knew something was wrong.

So, they'd gone looking for us, but we were nowhere to be found. Even the boys' side had gotten involved in the search, but all it accomplished was getting both Asher and Fallon so worked up over our disappearances that the male counselors then had to focus on keeping them from starting a riot.

By the time Colette and I finally
did
show back up at the cabin, Asher practically tackled me. He was so happy to see me that he smashed my face into his chest and held me there until I forced him to let go.

“I don't ever want to be away from you again,” he said.

It was what I'd wanted to hear from him all summer, but it wasn't enough. Not anymore. After nearly getting killed, calling a truce with the girl I'd thought was my sworn enemy, and facing a tragically angry ghost-girl, my patience was gone. No more tiptoeing around the subject of us. I was too tired to worry about how I sounded. It was time to be a hundred percent real with the love of my life. And if he couldn't handle it, then tough.

“I'm all yours, but you're going to have to start being honest . . . beginning with what you've been doing every night,” I said. “And speaking of . . . I need to be a priority in your life again. I'm glad you have friends, but I miss my boyfriend.”

Asher looked at me totally confused. “I told you, I've just been hanging out with the guys. . . .”

“Doing what?” I responded, feeling like we were heading into yet another fight.

Asher looked like he was trying to work something out in his head and finally he sighed and gave in. “Fine. There
is
something I haven't told you,” he said, looking down at the ground.

“Just say it, Asher,” I said, my stomach tightening.

He was nervous, I could tell. “The guys and I sneak out at night to . . .”

Here it comes

“. . . we play Witches and Warlocks, okay?”

I blinked at him, completely stunned.

“That Dungeons and Dragons for witches game?” I asked, raising my eyebrows.

“It's not nerdy like D&D. It's sort of more like a fantasy football game, but for witches. There's casting and role-play and I just made Witch-Master, and completely destroyed Hudson's coven and . . .”

“Please stop,” I said, closing my eyes and pinching the bridge of my nose like I was fighting off a headache. This was what I'd been stressing over? “How did I not know that my boyfriend is secretly a . . . big-ass nerd?!”

Asher's face went from concerned to annoyed to playful in about five seconds.

“Yep. That's me. I'm a closet nerd and you're stuck with me,” he said, leaning forward and kissing me deeply on the lips.

“Well, at least now I won't have to worry about you attracting other girls,” I said, walking away. “What with the possibility of your secret getting out and all.”

His eyes got real big. “You wouldn't dare!” he yelled, running after me.

“After the day I've had, I think I'm capable of just about anything,” I said, looking back and giving him a wink.