Page 148 of Devil's Deal

Outside the window, a small, black bird swoops by, giving a sweet cry. I drag in a ragged breath.

Nawka.

My front door bangs open, and Darobor barges in.

“She’s dead!” he screams. “She died just after you left! Jaga, what did you do?”

I can’t speak. I hold the baby I just delivered, so sweet, so tiny, and so very still. My heart is frozen in my chest, and I can’t say a word, not even when the baby is taken from my arms and wails of grief surround me from each side.

I am numb, lost in the chaos, until one more person comes in. Ida.

She looks at me as I kneel by her sister’s side. She looks at the baby in her mother’s arms. She looks at the window, where the tiny bird swoops again, despite the heavy rainfall.

When her eyes come back to me, they are filled with vicious hate.

“You killed them. You killed them all!”

She points a shaking finger at me, her face terrible with wrath.

“She’s a witch!”

Chapter forty-seven

Fun

I am yanked to my feet. Darobor is in my face, roaring out his grief and fury. Then I’m spun around, and Roza screams at me, tears falling down her cheeks. Maja and Alutka wail with horrendous grief, and Ida screams, tearing out her hair.

“I should have told her! I should have told them what you are!”

I, too, am sorry she didn’t. My world burns and crumbles around me, and I keep waiting for this nightmare to end. Because it can’t be real. It can’t.

Through the open door, I see more people gathering in front of my cottage. A lightning splits the sky, and thunder follows.

“You will pay for this!” Darobor spits, yanking me by my hair until I fall on my hands and knees.

Shadows press at me from every side, dark and cold and slimy.

“Run,” Woland whispers in my ear. “Run, little witch.”

Everything is shrouded in his dark smoke, so I feel my way out through the door, stumbling and almost falling. I make it out to the gate when the shadows release, and I’m thrown back into reality.

“Magic!” terrified voices scream behind me. “Seize her! She’s a witch!”

Hands reach for me, my curious neighbors who just came to watch the commotion trying to stop me. But I knock them aside and run, gripping my dress in my hands. I run like that day when my eyes changed color.

They chase me just like then, too, except this time, they have every right to do so.

I am a witch. I killed the baby, I killed Jarota, I killed Sara, and all those others who will die because of me.

“Drown her!” they scream, and I think that yes, they should.

My heart beats out a cry of terror, and so I run faster and faster, fighting for my worthless, poisonous life. I can’t stop, I can’t give my life away, even though I should. But the animal in me is stronger than my conscience, and she wants to live.

So I run. Into the cold, into the wild, without a scrap of food or weapon.

“Tolimir, get your bow!” someone screams.

“I knew she was a witch!” Swietko roars, joining in the hunt.

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