Witching Tree (Alice Gray Book 1)

34

We drove to Anne's house in silence.

I held the manuscript to my chest. The remnants of its power pulsed through me: a low heat radiating from its centre through my veins to my organs, making my insides heavy and ripe. The pervasive feeling of dread that always accompanied the tree settled into my core bringing with it dense power, thrumming from me and leaking into the close atmosphere in the car.

It bothered me. After everything written in the manuscript, how could it not?

I still wasn't convinced that I was the witch that the manuscript described. Yes, I could see and sense the powers of others, but that was nothing like the magic of persuasion and attraction that the original Alice had used to escape the trial for witchcraft.

There was no denying that I resembled the girl in the manuscript, but so did my mother, and out of the two of us only one had ever been pregnant like the girl in the drawing.

What if my mother's early death had scuppered the manuscript's prophecy before it came to fruition?

All this would have been for nothing.

But then there was the silver tree.

And the manuscript.

Energy shone bright from both. And it wasn't the good kind. It was dark and it spoke of chaos. What if even Anne and Emily were susceptible to its influence? More frightening, if I wasn't the witch in the prophecy, what if I was being influenced by the madness the manuscript spoke of?

I glanced at Emily in the rear view mirror. A look of grim determination was focused on her phone. She was too preoccupied with texting Stephen back in the priory, to be concerned with anything else.

Emily had not been happy about leaving Stephen and Thomas together. But faced with the alternative, letting me return to the cottage with only Anne for protection, she hadn't even paused.

Her only interest in the manuscript was what it revealed about me, her assignment, and what that meant for keeping me safe. Emily was nothing if not professional.

And human.

She had no visible life-force to suggest witch blood. There was no heavy charge in the air around her to indicate vampire power. My analysis might not be scientific, but my senses were all I had, and if I couldn't trust myself, I really was up the creek.

No, Emily was human, and that was why she didn't feel the manuscript's influence.

That left Anne. Her life-force shone brightly around her; a golden halo. I wasn't fooled by its angelic appearance, not since the original Alice Gray had zapped me with her golden power. She'd drained my emotions, dulled my senses, and I still didn't know why.

Since my powers had begun to manifest last night, I'd gotten used to that soft golden light. So much so that its strangeness hardly registered now. But as I began to trust my new senses and let them thrive alongside the dark energy of the manuscript, my perception of Anne's life-force sharpened.

Tiny bolts of yellow lighting shot out from Anne's soft golden haze, fizzling to nothing in the dense power-ridden atmosphere of the car. The more I focused on the beauty of the spectacle, the stronger the bolts became. It was feeding from the residual energy created by the manuscript.

That wasn't what worried me, she was welcome to it. But the bolt-like tendrils of gold were not just focused on the manuscript.

The energy bolts built and then dissipated in waves moving ever closer to me. My heart beat slow and hard, pregnant with dense power that travelled through my blood, into my organs. The pounding in my ears rode the rhythm of my pulse, bringing with it distracting metal chimes: a warning.

Anne glanced over at me a couple of times, eyebrows drawn together, dimples non-existent. She wasn't aware of our conflicting energies. She couldn't see it like I could. But she knew something was wrong.

It was from her confusion that I began to understand.

To Anne, the energy was a mysterious force of nature. She accepted it as a gift and tapped into it when needed, with no sense of responsibility for the consequences.

It couldn't be like that for me. I could see the give and take, I could feel its visceral hunger and I wanted to know what the price was before I took the boon.

Unfortunately, I didn't have that luxury right now. Concentrating on the manuscript that I still held tightly to my chest, I knew what I needed to do. I could see the energy particles of Anne's life-force congregate on her skin and swell forward in waves.

Laws of nature, right? I needed to change the direction of the tide.

As the idea took shape in my brain, the manuscript heated, drawing my gaze down. Silver particles hovered around the book, multiplying out, pushing the heavy air away from me. Anne's life-force shrank back, hugging her form tightly in an intense band of bright gold.

The atmosphere lightened and I was able to breathe deeply again. The chimes in my head relaxed in response to the diminished threat.

That deep feeling of satisfaction that comes with finally understanding a complex problem wrapped itself around me until there was no doubt in my mind.

I'd done that.

The energy had responded to my will. Just as I'd instinctively known it would. But the knowledge didn't please me.

I still hadn't figured out the price.