Free Alchemy, Book Two of the Mercian Trilogy by K. J. Wignall Page B

moment before. She alone showed her face, almost featureless, only darker shadows where her eyes and mouth had once been.
    “My duty?”
    “To protect.” The other six spirits had started walking towards her and left him behind now on thefrosted park. “You need the girl, and the sorcerer knows it, which is why the girl needs you.” Will was about to speak when she raised her arm, pointing past him to the school, urgent as she said, “Now, William of Mercia, she needs you now!”
    He felt a sudden surge of fear for Eloise and glanced over his shoulder at the school, an ominously dark outline against the moonlight.
    “She’s in danger right now?”
    But when he turned back again, the spirits had gone.
    He ran at full speed across the parkland, his nerves torn, fearing what he might be running towards. The spirits hadn’t intervened the previous night, an attack that had been serious enough in itself, so what was happening to Eloise now that they had felt the need to come to him?
    He entered through the side door Eloise had showed him, leaping up the stairs and along the corridors with little concern for being spotted or disturbing anyone. He reached Eloise’s door, opened it, turned on the light so as not to alarm her and closed the door again as his eyes smarted.
    Even when he could see, he struggled to believe what he was looking at. Eloise lay on her back, asleep, wearing a long red cotton nightshirt – but she was not on her bed, she was floating above it and moving slowlyas if drawn by a magnetic power. The window had been thrown wide open and Eloise was drifting towards it.
    This wasn’t just an attempt to harm Eloise, but to kill her. If this was Wyndham’s determination, to kill Eloise, it meant that Will needed her alive to fulfil his destiny, whatever that destiny proved to be. He would not let Wyndham win, but he knew something else too, knew it in every fibre of his being – he would kill himself before he allowed any harm to come to Eloise.
    This time at least he could keep her safe. He closed the window first, pulling hard, as if against another hand that was struggling to keep it open. He locked it and drew the curtains lest her light be seen from outside. Eloise seemed to stop moving as soon as the window was closed, but still she hovered shoulder-height above the bed.
    Will moved his hands around her, trying to find signs of whichever force held her like that. There was nothing he could detect. He said her name quietly, moving his mouth close to her ear and saying it again, but she would not wake.
    He needed to get her back on to the bed, so he placed one hand on top of her stomach, the other across her thighs and gently pressed down, once again fighting against some unseen force, but gradually winning. And all the while he was tormented, by her warmth, by thesoftness of her flesh through the thin material of the nightshirt. Nor was this a longing for blood, that hunger almost disappearing when he was with her, but a longing for that other life he dreamt of.
    Finally she touched the bed and the force that had held her up seemed to subside, her weight easing into the mattress. At the same time, she opened her eyes, waking. She looked up, taking a moment to register his presence, then she smiled, puzzled and bemused.
    “Will? What are you doing?”
    “Forgive me,” he said, taking his hands from her body. “This is not what it seems.”
    She laughed and said, “Sadly, I know that to be true, but … how weird. I’ve just realised I was dreaming about you. Sorry, forget that, what are you doing here?”
    “The witches came to me. They told me that Wyndham knows I need you – that’s why he’s attacking you.”
    Eloise sat up in the bed. “So it
was
him last night? And by the way, it’s been the talk of the school today – sixteen dead crows found on the drive. But …” She smiled again, saying, “But just now …?”
    “The window was open and you were floating towards