Page 92 of Witchy Woman
While there is relief in her eyes, it doesn’t fill her with light like it does Hazel. It’s as if she is the husk left over after souls dragged her down to Hell instead of me.
“I’m so glad you’re okay,” Hazel continues, sitting on the foot of the bed. Her hand rests on my knee, bringing with it the calming sweep of her magic.
I shoot a glare at Mom. “Not as okay as I should be right now.”
Both Hazel and Grandma turn to Mom without saying a word, their eyes questioning.
The silence hangs like a weight over the room, heavy and thick. Suffocating like smoke. Smoke I’m all too familiar with.
“Draven is stronger than we ever imagined,” Mom says, standing close to the door. As if she knows we’re all going to hang her out to dry when she’s finished. She needs the escaperoute. “He’s made a second home in Hell for his more unsavory actions, and already had a cage set up for me. It’s as if he knew I would sacrifice myself to save my family and planned for that exact scenario.”
No one replies. We all simply wait for her to continue in stony silence.
She exhales, shaky, as if she’s on the verge of tears. “It’s there that I learned he captured your dad’s soul and was holding it as some sort of trophy. That’s when I started calling for help. If it were just me, I would’ve stayed there for an eternity to keep him away from you all—but I couldn’t do that to Peter.”
Nice to know her love for Dad is still more important than the rest of us. She’s nothing if not consistent.
“In the time I was there, I realized that the four of us witches?—”
“Five.” Ash’s voice shatters silence and trembles the ground. “Five of us witches.”
Mom visibly retreats into herself. “Five. The five of us witches can’t defeat him alone. We need all the Pruitt witches we can find. We need...”
She trails off. As if admitting whatever this sister thing is to Hazel and Grandma is worse than admitting it to me. I’m the one who led the charge to get her back. I’m the one who actually went to Hell, but she’s still treating me like a little kid. It stings.
If I were standing, I would stomp my feet. “Just spit it out!”
“Your sister. We need your sister,” she whispers.
A beat of quiet. Two.
“We needwho?” Hazel asks from her perch on the bed. More confused than angry. If this conversation goes where I think it’s going, the anger will come swiftly.
Grandma’s as stiff as a statue.
“Before I met your father, I...I had a little girl. And I gave her up for adoption.”
Hazel’s mouth drops so low I swear it’s going to hit the ground. “Before Dad. That means she’s our half sister.”
“And I have one guess as to who the baby daddy is,” I say. It’s obvious.
“No.” Hazel shakes her head. “No, no, no. Nope. No. Nuh-uh.”
Denial is a river in Egypt, and Hazel is happily sailing away.
“How?” The quiet word comes from Grandma. The first word I’ve heard her say since I woke up. It’s small, heartbreaking, and so unlike her.
Mom stands up straighter and lifts her chin in the air. “Draven and I were friends, but sometimes things happened. And when I got pregnant, I knew better than to tell him. I cast a glamour and stayed at my apartment as much as I could. I wasn’t coming home that often those days anyway. It wasn’t that hard to hide.”
It wasn’t that hard to hide. What a line.
“So we’re on a mission to find our half sister to get her to help us kill her dad. Because that seems absolutely logical and likely to happen. What could possibly go wrong?” I throw my arm over my eyes. “Can I go back to being unconscious now?”
Ash snickers from my side for a second before trying to hide it behind a cough.
“We’ll lose without her. We have no other choice,” Mom says, full of that arrogance she’s basically famous for.
“What exactly happened in Hell? What were you and Draven doing down there for so long?” Hazel asks in a way that makes me peer out from underneath my arm.
