Eliza chuckles. “I think you’ll really like this story. See, my parents visited a Strega to become pregnant with me. The Strega pulled my soul back to earth—back to a human life. But she made one teeny tiny mistake.” She leans in close to Isabel. “I’m not an Igbo witch like the rest of my family. I’m a meiga, just like you.”
Isabel growls and jerks her body within the forcefield. “Is that growl you figuring out that my magic is just as powerful, if not more, than yours?”
A frustrated scream escapes Isabel’s mouth with great fury. She begins to mutter a rhythmic chant. Eliza laughs at her once again. “Alexander is dead. He won’t be coming to help you.”
“These are lies you are telling me!”
“If you don’t believe me, you can keep calling him. But it seems like a waste of energy. And energy isn’t something you have to spare right now.”
Eliza tightens the forcefield around Isabel. The beams of light crackle and spark, burning into her flesh. Isabel screams in agony. Her eyes close and her head falls backward. She briefly loses consciousness, but quickly regains it.
“What are you doing to me?” she wearily asks.
“Oh, I’m not doing much of anything. But someone else is. They’re weakening you. Taking everything you have collected to make yourself strong and ripping it away.”
She falls in and out of consciousness again and again. “No. You’re destroying me. Stop. Please.”
Eliza paces around her, relishing in the power she holds over Isabel. “Sadly, no. This won’t destroy you. But it will make you so weak that you won’t even have the energy to capture one single little soul. You’ll just be trapped here yourself, in this dark world of your own making, begging for mercy. Falling victim to the creatures you created to destroy innocent humans.”
I sit silently on the ground, too afraid to move. Charlie lies motionless next to me. I’m too scared to touch him, for fear that he is dead. Would he disappear if he were dead? If he were killed here?
I can’t believe what I'm witnessing. I can’t believe that Eliza has the nerve to anger an incredibly powerful witch. I can’t believe that Eliza has overpowered her.
“Take a good look at Emma, Isabel. It’s the last time you’ll ever see her. Your last obstacle to becoming human again. So close, yet so far away.”
Isabel’s head bobs to the side. Her eyes roll back in her head. She grows weaker by the second and is no longer able to fight against it. The only thing supporting her is the forcefield. Each time it flickers, she seems to become less of who she is. Faint cries of the word “no” escape her lips.
Finally, the forcefield stops flickering. Isabel’s head hangs motionless. Eliza brazenly steps closer to her. “Now comes the fun part.”
She outstretches her hands and takes hold of Isabel’s head. She chants the same words over and over again, “Eu eliminar os poderes da meiga escuro para a seguridade de toda a humanidade.”
Isabel’s eyes fly open. They are no longer the deep brown they have always been, but a silvery gray color, full of terror. Eliza continues to chant the spell, gripping Isabel tightly between her hands.
An icy wind blows through the trees. A cloud of blackness radiates from Isabel, twirling in an angry twist in front of her, fighting Eliza every step of the way. Distant screams circulate inside the blackness. Voices overlap, begging for help, crying for mercy.
I crawl to Charlie and lean over his motionless body. Being alone is suddenly more terrifying than moving.
Isabel’s body shakes uncontrollably within the forcefield. The blackness twirls wildly and erupts out of her in one final blood-curdling scream. Eliza releases her hold on Isabel, who crumbles to the ground in an immobile heap.
Eliza steps backward, her hands in front of her, the ball of blackness spinning between them. “Emma!” she shouts to me. “Bring me your pendant.”
I stand up and tentatively walk over to her. “Quickly, Emma. I can’t hold this much longer.”
I stand in front of her, my hand wrapped around the pendant. “Move your hand.”
“Eliza, I—“
“Move it now!”
I drop my hand. The swirling ball of blackness makes a beeline for my pendant. It narrows itself into a snake like pattern and furiously disappears into it. I stand frozen in terror as the pendant takes hold of the entire cloud of darkness. It lies icy against my