This chapter is a catalyst and was hard to write, not because of the content’s difficult nature, but because I want to make sure I get it right. It’s still a draft, though. Just a draft for now.
Excerpt:
Nathaniel looked around and met Sloane’s eyes, smiling, as the blue light winked out and the witch slumped against her restraints. A jolt backwards, Sloane fell back into the grandpa chair, still speaking and not hearing herself. There was just a buzz of static and light focused onto a figure in the left bay window. Trilby smiled, as Nathaniel had, his teeth longer and sharper, tinged in yellow. The light fell, pulling his shadow high above his head.
A voice rang through the shadow, vibrating its edges, digging out eyes and a mouth, gaping and solid as it stepped from the wall and ceiling, moving toward Sloane and reaching with a long, disjointed appendage.
“My dove,” its voice was lyrical around its long, needle teeth, its tongue sucked at the air as it passed through its mouth. “My storyteller.”
Sloane heard the voice before, she fell back and waited for the long grass in the backyard to catch her, the only grass that was in the garden, soft and springy, as if it curled around her in welcome. She spoke to this voice, coming from the woods, the other side of the rose bushes.
“There, there,” he spoke. Sloane couldn’t find his name, she knew it. She gave it to him.
“I’ll see you soon.”
“Naldius.” Sloane choked on his name and the world broke around her.