8 Gone is the Witch Read Online Free Page A

stomping on Tony’s words. “Let’s just leave it at that. Shall we?”
    I would have thought Tony might have more to say on that matter. I knew it was a particularly sore subject with him. But just as I had buried certain parts of my past, so too did Tony, if not for entirely different reasons.
    The old room looked different from what I remembered, colder, smaller perhaps, even though the big oak tables and chairs were gone now. Late afternoon sunlight tripped into the room at a precarious angle, slanted as if peeking around the corner and through the windows.
    I remembered looking through the glass there one cold night in March after Travis Webber died. The Stalker took him first, slicing his body open on the steps of the research center to harvest his liver. We watched the tragic event unfold in a thought-form manifestation so real it made grown men cry.
    “Hey, look at this.”
    Carlos directed our attention to a full-length mirror he found mounted behind the door.
    “I don’t remember that,” said Tony. “Was that always there?”
    “ Don’t know,” I said. “I don’t remember it, either.”
    Dominic pointed to my EMF meter. “ Geez, look at that thing. It’s reading off the charts.”
    I held the meter higher. “This is a hot spot. I’ve never seen vector readings so strong before.”
    Tony asked, “So, what do we do now?”
    “We shut the portal down,” Dominic replied. “That’s what we do.”
    “No. We can’t. Leona will never find her way back if we do that.”
    “Leona’s never going to find her way back here.”
    “ We can’t just leave her.”
    “ Well, we can’t very well go in and get her, now can we?”
    Tony wasn’t buying it. “We have to do something. Lilith, what do you think? Is there any way that I can go through the portal to get Leona myself?”
    I shook my head doubtfully. “I don’t know.”
    “ Doctor Lowell went in and came back out, so why can’t I?”
    Dominic grabbed his arm. “Tony, you can’t. You don’t know what’s on the other side.”
    “ I have to try. We’re talking about Leona. She’s completely helpless out there.”
    “It’s too dangerous.”
    “I’ll go with you,” said Carlos.
    Dominic’s grip loosened. Tony smiled at Carlos. “Thank you, Carlos.”
    “ If you go, I go,” I said.
    “What?”
    “You heard me.”
    “No . You’re not going.”
    “Am too.”
    Tony really tried to put his foot down on that one, but he never had a chance. “If I say you’re not going, then you’re––”
    “ Going. It’s final.”
    “ It’s not final.”
    “ It’s not your call. If I don’t go, you don’t go.”
    “What do you mean?”
    “I mean I won’t tell you how to do it.”
    “Lilith ––”
    “Tony, it’s decided.”
    “I shall go as well,” Ursula said.
    “You will not ,” Dominic insisted. “I forbid you.”
    Ursula’s eyes f ound mine. A year ago, before she and Dominic married, I would have stepped in and fought Ursula’s battles. Now I felt it was time she stood up for herself. I turned my eyes down and away, breaking a connection I thought would cripple her resolve.
    It didn’t . Turns out, the girl has spunk. I can’t say if it was because or in spite of my neutrality that she responded as she did, but I couldn’t have been more proud. She turned to Dominic, who visually shrank from her advance, and when she opened her mouth to speak, I felt as if she had finally come of age.
    “Thou art my husband , aye,” she said to Dominic, “but not my keeper.” She pointed a stiff finger as if scolding him. “True, my love for thee doth rule what breath I take, what thought I hold when none but thee art with me and when not. What voice I have I shall not squander, lest I forsake my rights what till now hath deemed equal in thine eyes and mine.”
    “But Ursula, I think––”
    “Nay, methinks not. Thou hath decided for me without consent my future for last and nevermore. Be it so true my love for you, I