Free A Witch's Feast by C.N. Crawford

experiments. Which, Fiona suspected, wasn’t entirely implausible. “Is there anywhere else we can’t go?” she prodded. “Besides the crypt?”
    “Well, obviously you can’t go in the attic, but there’s no reason to anyway. The floor isn’t finished, so you’d fall through the ceiling.”
    Does she really expect anyone to believe her? Rules be damned. Fiona was going to find out exactly what was going on at Winderbellow.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Tobias

    Alan’s gentle snores filled the room. Tobias could see his reflection in a mirror lit by the moon. His vision was different now—sharper and more penetrating. He could hear things—distant birdsong, and the river lapping at the banks.  
    He felt a sudden pang of desire to see his familiar, Ottomie. He wasn’t as close with Ottomie as Oswald was with Meraline, but even so, the separation was starting to eat at him like an ulcer.
    The mark on his chest and his new power ignited his emotions. In the past few days, he’d been torn between wanting to kiss or to fight someone at all times, and this morning he’d had the strongest impulse to run his fingers over the back of Fiona’s absurdly tight T-shirt. But with his heightened senses, sometimes he was merely struck by the simple beauty of the world around him. Earlier today, the golden light trickling through hemlock leaves and the lonely cries of the river gulls had left him breathless.
    He stared at himself in the antique mirror, a faint golden glow around his skin. Though his rage had intensified, it now had a sharp focus. He now knew exactly what he needed to do. He gazed at the blackened wick of a candle below the mirror. Since he’d arrived here, he had yet to practice any spells.  
    The symbol on his chest burned with a dull heat as he muttered Queen Boudicca’s Inferno. When he finished the Angelic words, a fist-sized flame blazed around the tip of the candle. With a smile, he snuffed out the flame with his fingers.
    Just as he’d thought.The magical aura he could create was now several times stronger.  
    After pulling open the top drawer of the dresser, he took out the sheathed athame. With one last glance back at Alan, he crept toward the door and slipped out.  
    He tiptoed over the worn rug in the hall. On the stairs, he rolled his feet from the outside in so that his footsteps were undetectable as he glided down the stairs. He snuck through the drawing room and through the glass doors, taking his opportunity to slip out silently when the large guard had his back turned. He no longer needed the invisibility spell to go undetected.
    He crept through the gardens, listening to the rustling and whispering of the trees. A bright moon hung below the Milky Way like a fat jewel dangling from a silvery belt. Chorus frogs droned over the sound of the river’s gentle waves. This time, I will fight the battle against Rawhed alone. It had been a mistake to drag his friends into Maremount—a world they little understood. How could they understand the savagery of a place where children could be slaughtered in the street for breaking rules? They’d grown up with easy, sheltered lives.
    Tobias had trained for years, fighting demons and practicing magic. There was a war going on now, and the untrained were a liability. Maybe Eden would still be alive if his Boston friends hadn’t followed him into Maremount.  
    But death seemed to hover around him like a miasma. He’d tried to keep the memories locked up—his father pushing his mother and sister on the wagon after the plague came. But the memories clawed at their cage, and after seeing Eden die, there was nothing he could do to keep them from running wild.  
    He crept along a path shrouded by magnolia trees, until the lights from the house were no longer visible. Focus on your task, Tobias. He would need total seclusion for this next spell. A little incantation like lighting a candle might not create much of an aura, but there was no telling what kind of chaos