Page 138 of Shadow Witch

She squeezed her fingers into fists, digging her nails into her palm and wincing as the gashes on the back of her hand pulled. She used the pain to distract her from her increasingly fatigued body.

“Hey!” Dewey shouted. “There’s something up ahead.”

Paige’s heart skipped a beat and the shot of adrenaline that went through her helped temper her fatigue for a second. “What is it?”

“Looks like an opening to another chamber or something.”

“Oh, finally,” Paige said with a sigh. “Please be something good.”

“Yeah, like a buffet.”

Paige shot him a frown. “A buffet?”

“I’m hungry.”

“Maybe something better…like my mom is in there.”

“Or that. That’s good, too. Or…hear me out…your mom at a buffet.” Dewey raised his eyebrows at her.

Paige couldn’t help but chuckle. “Yes, that is perfect. We both get what we want. I get my mom, you get food.”

“And not a moment too soon. I’m starving.”

Paige approached the dark opening, her stomach twisting into a knot. “What if there’s something bad in there? Like another…werecat or werewolf or were…something.”

“You can use your bracelet. No biggie. Come on, Paige. We walked thirty miles for this. We have to find out what’s inside.”

“You’re right.” She paused at the opening, hovering there before she finally stepped inside.

As her eyes adjusted to the dim light, cast by only one flickering torch, she scanned the room.

Her heart skipped a beat, and tingles shot through her body making her hair stand on end as she spotted a stone slab in the middle.

On it, lay a redheaded figure.

Paige’s breath caught as she raised a trembling hand to her lips. “Mom!”

She raced forward to the woman with Dewey clinging to her. “I think it is Reed! Too bad there’s no buffet, though.”

“Forget the stupid buffet,” Paige said as she clasped the woman’s cold hand. “Mom! Mom?”

She patted her cheeks but got no response.

Tears filled her eyes as she tried to revive her, still holding Reed’s limp hand. “Mom?”

Dewey fluttered from her shoulder, landing on the edge of the slab and assessing Reed.

“No, Mom,” Paige cried, her voice thick with sobs.

“She’s breathing,” Dewey noted. “And I’ve got a pulse. Weak and thready, but there.”

He peeled back one of her eyelids. Paige gasped as she stared at the odd discoloration, turning her eyes pink.

“Ohhhh,” Dewey answered.

“What does that mean? What’s ‘ohhhh’?”

“She’s in a Twilight Trance,” Dewey reported. “She’s not dead…but she’s close. We need to get her out of here fast and research how to reverse this.”

---