CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

 

“Ahh!” Gabriel jumped back and smacked his head against the rock, jarring his already aching skull. The woman in front of him—Cadence—stared at him like he was a ghost. It probably wasn’t every day that boys climbed down Fool’s Well to visit a witch.

White straggly hair hung over her shoulders and surrounded the pale skin of her face. She mumbled against the ragged black scarf that gagged her mouth, but he couldn’t understand what she was trying to say. Her white, dirt-marred nightgown hung heavy around her ankles, and thick chains wrapped around her like a boa constrictor. The chains secured her to the small, raised, concrete platform that she stood on.

Gabriel pressed his back into the wall of the well as the witch’s wide eyes scanned him. He cleared his throat. “Are you Cadence?” he asked. The second he said it, he realized how lame a question it was. How many witches were chained to a bottom of a well? Of course it was Cadence.

Andimian growled from above.

Lifting her gaze to the opening in the well, her eyes widened. She made a faint sound, then shifted, making the chains rattle.

“I’m okay,” Gabriel called to the tiger, even though it felt like fingers were wrapped around his throat, squeezing. He bit his lip and turned his focus slowly back on the white witch. “Don’t worry about him, he’s a friend. Listen … um, if I let you out, you won’t hurt me, right?”

Cadence shook her head, but when the floorboards rattled above them, and Andimian made a high-pitched growl, she froze. Slowly, she looked above, then back at Gabriel, panic covering her face. She tried to talk, but it came out as a muffled mess.

“Hold on, Andimian!” Gabriel snapped. The tiger wanted to hurry, he got that. Andimian was the empress’s guardian after all. But seriously, he’d just gotten down there. No one wanted to get out of the stupid well more than Gabriel, but this was a witch he was dealing with, not a puppy.

He turned back to Cadence. He wondered how she had even survived. And he figured it wasn’t every day she heard a tiger growling in her barn. Made sense that she seemed so freaked out. Gabriel needed to talk to her, to find out how to get the chains off—which meant he had to take the scarf out of her mouth. Slowly, he stretched out a shaky hand, pulled the fabric out of her mouth, then yanked his arm back as if she would bite him.

“We have to get out of here,” Cadence said, except she said it so fast it sounded like, wehavetogetoutofhere!

Above, Andimian seemed to be pacing. The floorboards above Gabriel creaked, and Andimian’s irritated cat sounds filled the air. The ropes attached to the tiger that were still wrapped around Gabriel’s wrists, yanked him back a step, splashing dark water against his face.

“Everybody needs to calm down!” Gabriel yelled. He wiped his cheeks with the sleeve of his jacket and realized he needed to take his own advice. “Okay, I’m gonna try—”

“Wait.” Cadence cut him off. “You don’t understand. She’s here—Caprice is here. She comes every day before sunset to give me just enough food and water to keep me alive.”

Holy crap.

An icy chill tiptoed down Gabriel’s spine. The walls of the well spun. Of course Caprice would feed Cadence. The black witch couldn’t let Cadence die, because then she’d die too. Gabriel’s gut clenched while he tried to come up with his next move. He tilted his head back and caught a flash of black and gold fabric whooshing over the well opening. He froze. Those were the same colors that the black witch wore. Andimian’s white paw swiped through the air.

It hit Gabriel then—the tiger had been warding off the black witch, not rushing him!

“Don’t look into her eyes, Andimian!” Gabriel yelled. The creepy well and the white witch suddenly didn’t seem so scary compared to a soul-robbing black witch bent on revenge. He eyed the chains attached to an iron ring embedded in the concrete block. Tugging at the shackles, he asked between huffing breaths, “How do I get you out?”

“Only Caprice holds the key,” Cadence said in a quiet voice, lowering her gaze to her feet. “Please just leave me. You need to get away before she hurts you.”

Gabriel ignored that comment. He couldn’t leave now. Sinking to his knees in the shallow water, he searched for a key, a release button, something—anything—when suddenly his hand landed on something hard. He lifted the object out of the water and eyed the big rock. Grunting, he stood and rushed to the iron ring that held the chains in place. “I’ll smash it away from the concrete!” he said, landing a blow against it.

“It’s iron,” Cadence said, sounding defeated. “It will take forever to break.”

“I’m really fast,” Gabriel said, desperate to free her.

He drew his arm back, ready to take his first swing, when something yanked him from behind. He flew backward through the air, the ropes on his wrists unwinding as he went. He landed on his back, splashing in the cool water. Sitting up, he spit out the liquid that tasted like minerals and gaped above. The rope—his only lifeline—flicked high into the air and back through the hole in the well.

“No!” Panic drilled through him. With no rope to pull him out, he was trapped.

Andimian let out a high-pitched, predatory tiger growl. It was followed by more rumbling.

He willed himself to stand and concentrate on freeing Cadence.

He couldn’t give up.

Not now.

He raced the few steps back to her and picked up the rock he’d dropped on the concrete slab. Above, banging on the floorboards continued, mixed in with Andimian’s growls and the black witch chanting odd words. Not wasting any time, Gabriel put his supersonic speed into action. With his arms moving so fast that they looked like a whipping blur, he banged the rock over and over against the iron ring that locked the chains in place. He might not have been super strong, but he was crazy fast and could pound hundreds of blows per second.

Gabriel paused for a moment to take a breath and shake out the cramps in his aching muscles when he caught sight of a crack in the cement next to the iron ring. “There’s a crack in the cement,” he whispered.

“Good,” Cadence said. “Try banging on that area.”

Again he pounded the stone. The loud clanking of the rock smashing against the cement sounded out, his arms moving at freakish speeds. With fatigue growing in his muscles and the crack in the cement starting to spread, he huffed for breath, but pushed harder. He had to get Cadence out before Caprice tricked Andimian into looking at her. If he did, she’d steal his soul. Gabriel was sure that was why the tiger hadn’t just killed her already—he couldn’t get a good enough look at her. Either that, or he knew the story about if one witch died, the other did too.

The iron ring had lifted on one side just as a voice shot down into the well and echoed around them. “Where’s my soul vase?” Caprice shrieked. “Give it back to me!”

Gabriel tilted his head just enough to see Caprice leaning over the side of the well. In the next second, she swooped toward them, a mix of her black dress with gold swirling through the air. Andimian whipped a giant paw through the air, swiping the tail end of her dress.

The rattling of the chains brought Gabriel’s attention back to Cadence. The chains wrapped around her sagged. He snapped his gaze to the iron ring.

It was broken!

Cadence lunged forward and wrapped her arms around him in a bear hug. Then she shot upward, quick as a bolt of lightning.