Page 116 of Big Little Spells

Up on the stage, the moaning grows more intense.

“Stand back,” cries Felix Sewell, the Joywood Healer.

Thunder rumbles in the distance then, though no storm was predicted. The wind picks up. There’s another crash of thunder, far off, and yet a bolt of lightning strikes right there in front of the stage.

“This ends now.”

It’s Nicholas at last.

His voice booms, louder than the thunder, and he appears like a vision—or a nightmare—in midair above the stage. He looks like what he is—the most powerful lone witch in St. Cyprian, and therefore the world.

He lands on the stage and looks only at the Joywood, but I know he sees everything. Those poor kids. Me. All the familiars and Coronis in his tree.

“They will know what you have done,” he says in that voice that seems to start deep inside my own body and roll through me like an internal thunderclap. “And what you seek to do.”

Carol stands from where she’d been kneeling beside one of the children and glares at Nicholas. “You can’t do this. You might be immortal, but you’re constrained.”

But her eyes narrow like she’s not sure.

Nicholas does not back down. He seems to grow larger as he stands there. More dangerous. As if he really is the storm.

Gil Redd, the Joywood Praeceptor, moves next to Carol. “You know what happens if you do this.”

Nicholas nods. Grimly, I think, but he doesn’t hesitate. “Better than you can possibly imagine.”

Carol starts to say something, but Nicholas raises a hand and she is silent.

It is, truly, one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen. It brings tears to my eyes.

It also terrifies me. Because if he can do this, it means he always could do it, but didn’t. What did Carol say he was? Constrained?

What I know, without any magic involved, is that if he’s decided he doesn’t care about whatever constraints he’s been wearing all this time, it can’t be good.

For him.

He turns to the crowd. I can see the Joywood frantically trying to slap at him with their magic, but he is impervious.

No one looks at me in my frozen, bespelled state.

No one even hears me from the inside as I frantically try to access the usual channels we use to talk privately.

He’s sacrificing himself in front of me and there’s nothing I can do to stop it.

“Do not be fooled by your ruling coven,” he tells the assembled witches before him. “They are not interested in the good of witchkind and have not been for some time. Ask yourself why you can’t remember what coven came before them. And further, why you have no memory of the ascension rituals you are all encouraged to imagine took place. Tell me, does this sound benevolent?”

There’s a murmur in the crowd, but I can’t tell if it’s speculative or suspicious. The Joywood are busy trying to pretend they care more about the children than the raving of a madman. I can see how desperately they try to project one thing while doing another.

I’m muted and paralyzed, but I can see. They’ve pumped these children full of poison, and they’ll blame me for it. This is showy and deliberate, but...it’s not all they’ve done. Because what I know about them is that whatever you see them doing, it’s what you don’t see that you should worry about.

Zelda, I think, her name like agony inside me. An illness without name that shouldn’t have killed her, but did. What if they poisoned her too? And the seven other witches Jacob mentioned.

Eight total. Just like the eight teenagers on the stage.

What if they’re why Grandma died so early?

I try to scream out, tell anyone what I can see, prove Nicholas is right, but I can’t. I can’t reach anyone.

It’s like I’m alone after all, and this is worse, because I’m not thinking about me.

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