Page 84 of How to Seduce a Slender

Melody didn’t want to look at the bones. But she did anyway. Up, up, up, her gaze rose till she saw a floating web of knotted twine with bones dangling from it. Her heart skipped a beat. “Giovanni.”

“Come on! Mel, look.”

She was tired of looking but she followed his finger across the spell to the other side. A large bat, maybe the size of a wolf, was spread out, nailed to a circle along the outer ring of the circle. Melody stood up, studying the spell. There was a bat, nailed down, a pig’s head to its left, a crumpled collection of bird parts to its right. Then, nearest to Melody was a leg. It sat perfectly carved above the knee with a bite in the center like someone tried to take a big chunk out of the thigh meat.

“Well…well…well…”

Melody jerked forward, leaping over lines to be next to her brother. They both whirled back in the direction they came. A woman dressed in a heavy, black cloak lumbered out of the woods. The hood fell off her head, showing off a head full of long blond hair, ruby eyes, and sunken in cheeks. Her arms were long sticks that ended in dagger-like fingers. Blood caked and dried on her face from her sharp cheek bones down to her claws.

“I couldn’t have asked for a better outcome. Here I was hoping just one would show up. But two? My lucky day.”

Giovanni raised a paw full of claws. “You stay back.”

“Or what?” The lady snickered, flashing long fangs in her jaw, “You’ll scratch me?”

“I told you we shouldn’t have come here,” Melody whined, tugging her brother further back.

“Shut. Up. Mel,” he hissed. Her brother backed them up further as the woman crept after them. The second Melody saw her hoist up her long skirt to show blood caked feet with gnarled toenails, she knew they were in deep trouble if they didn’t book it. They needed an exit.If we get out of this, I’m screaming a big ‘I told you so’!Melody glanced around, tiptoeing backwards with her brother. And that’s when she saw the pig’s head again.

Knowing her twin would know her plan without having to say it, she ripped away from him. The lady screeched but Melody already had the decaying head in hand before words formed in the air. Then Melody launched with all her wolfy might. The head collided with the woman flying through the air at her. Giovanni and Melody bolted, but it wasn’t enough. Not as the lady hit the ground on the other side of the spell.

The head fell into a different circle.

“No!” the witch yowled. “Not there! I didn’t want it there!”

But that’s all Melody and Giovanni heard as their feet hit the center of the circle and they fell through a portal into the Nightmare Realm.

Melodytensed,pullingbackfrom Smith’s body. He called her name, but she couldn’t hear it. Everything was warbled and blurry as she stared into her own reflection. She’d planted Leonard in the school, but why? Elyth Rosemont had been there since the beginning, but why?

“Why did she lure us out there,” Melody breathed, glancing down at the countertop.

“Who?”

“Elyth,” Melody blurted out. She caught Smith’s puzzled pinch of his hollow face, the static swirling in strange circles. “The day I disappeared and fell into the Nightmare Realm, it was her portal we fell through. She’d lured my brother out there. She needed us for something, but I fucked up her spell. I moved a component, and she was really mad that I changed it. Said she didn’t want it to go there. I think…I think she needed Giovanni specifically. We’d gotten into a fight and this kid only told Giovanni about the witch’s circle. Normally people told both of us.”

“Do you remember the circle?” Smith breathed.

“Better. I can recreate it.” Melody tugged away from Smith only to be ripped back where she was. Smith only pointed down and she spotted the dribbled cum caked to her legs and the obviousness of her naked body. “Right, right, clean up and clothes first,then I recreate it.”

“Preferably, yes.”

And so, Melody let Smith clean up his portion of the mess with a warm washcloth while she wrangled chunks of moss and dead leaves from her hair. Then she pulled on a simple sundress from the closet. While Melody collected paint from Smith’s office, he collected Dahlia and company out to the front lawn. Ophelia and Kayla sat on the porch steps while Sebastian followed Melody along the edge of the circle with interest. He asked her questions, but her mind was focused on recreating it. She’d stared at it in that moment. With every swipe of her paintbrush across the lawn, she watched it come back to life.

Then she stood back and stared at her masterpiece. She swiped her sweaty brow and fully left a mess of bright pink paint across her forehead.

“And you said there was a pig head here?” Sebastian peeked up from a spot on the lawn, scratching the back of his head.

“Yeah, but when I grabbed it, I threw it at her and it landed here!” Melody pointed to the other end.

Silence filled the yard. Slowly, Sebastian pulled his mask off and Melody lurched backward in shock. A green face, missing a chunk of meat from a cheek, large fins for ears, but still a beautiful face. Scales lined where he should have had eyebrows. He held the mask to his chest as his dark eyes scanned the circle in horror.

“And you’re certain this is the spell you saw?” He glanced up.

“Exactly. But she made it with blood. A lot of blood, it smelled awful,” Melody sniffled as if the smell could haunt her.

“Sebastian?” Dahlia breathed.

“It’s a trap portal. Meant to lure something into its clutches. This rune here, it details the strength of the spell. And that one dictates the collar for the person or thing she was going to trap. Given the size, the strength, and all the directions set into the spell…I’d say our necromancer was trying to capture something massive or something powerful. But when you changed the components, it must have changed the direction. Each component is specific to a realm. When you placed it there, it directed it to the Nightmare Realm. Ideally, then, all of these would lead to some realm of dream, because it wouldn’t be any material or mortal realm, and so easily changed to the Nightmare Realm. So where was it going be…”

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