Chapter 4: The Witch's Diagnosis
The silence in Sarah’s study was a physical thing, thick and velvet and stuffed with memories that weren’t her own. Lila didn’t move from the edge of the bed for a long time. The quilt under her fingertips was soft from a hundred washes, the floral pattern faded. She traced a petal, wondering how many times Sarah had done the same.
The ghost of that vacuum-cold feeling was still in her bones. The pull of the Hollowed’s emptiness into her own. It had been instinctual, a reflex of survival. But the look on Kade’s face… ‘That is what they do.’
She wrapped the blanket tighter around her shoulders. It smelled of him—wild air, cedar, something sharp and clean like ozone after a strike. It was better than smelling the lavender-and-dust of the room. She felt like a stain on a sacred relic.
A soft knock, hours later, startled her. She’d drifted into a nervous doze, her head propped against the headboard.
“Yeah?” she called, her voice scratchy.
The door opened just enough for a figure to slip through. It wasn’t Kade. This was a woman, older, with a crown of silver braids woven through with what looked like dried leaves and tiny flowers. She wore a practical waxed coat over a colorful sweater, and she carried the scent of rain, damp earth, and lavender inside with her. Her warm brown eyes swept the room once, a flicker of profound sadness passing through them, before fixing on Lila with open curiosity.
“Well,” the woman said, her voice a rich Irish brogue. “You’re a sight.” She shrugged off her coat, revealing a satchel slung across her body, lumpy with books and bundles.
“Who are you?” Lila asked, sitting up straighter.
“Maggie O’Malley. And you’re Lila Monroe, who’s been making quite the ruckus in the fabric of things.” Maggie dropped her satchel on Sarah’s desk with a thump that felt blasphemous. “Kade’s pacing the halls downstairs like a caged beast. He’s no good for this part. Let’s have a look at you.”
Lila bristled at the command, a spark of her old defiance flaring. “A look at what?”
“At the maw you’ve got inside you, girl,” Maggie said matter-of-factly, pulling a worn leather-bound book from her bag. “The one that ate a piece of the void and asked for seconds.” She gestured for Lila’s hand. “Come on. I don’t bite. Unlike some people in this house.”
Cautiously, Lila stretched out her hand. Maggie took it, her grip surprisingly strong and calloused. She turned Lila’s palm up, tracing the lines there not with mysticism, but with the clinical focus of a doctor reading a chart.
“Hmm.” Maggie’s thumb pressed into the center of Lila’s palm. A jolt, like static shock, made Lila flinch. A faint, sickly silver shimmer, thin as a thread of mercury, pulsed under her skin and died. “Interesting.”
“What?” Lila whispered. “What is it?”
“Residue,” Maggie said, releasing her hand and rooting in her satchel again. She pulled out a small, cloudy crystal and a sprig of something that smelled acrid and sharp. “From your little snack. Hollowed essence isn’t meant to be consumed. It’s anti-life. It unmakes. You… inverted the process. You pulled un-making into a making thing. Yourself.” She held the crystal near Lila’s fingertips. It clouded over completely, turning dark gray. “And you’re not corrupted. Not yet, anyway. Your magic is fighting it, trying to digest it. Fascinating.”
“It doesn’t feel fascinating. It feels like I’ve got Chernobyl in my chest.” Lila hugged her knees. “What does it mean?”
Maggie ignored the question, placing the crystal aside. “Kade said you felt a pull. That you saw things in the storm. Grids of light.”
“Yeah.”
“Before that? Any odd occurrences? Emotions that felt… outsized? Grief that came with a physical ache? Joy that made lightbulbs flicker?”
Lila thought of the weeks after the breakup. The crushing weight that had pressed her into her mattress. The way her apartment lights had buzzed and dimmed for days. She’d blamed Con Edison. “Maybe,” she admitted quietly.
“Your grandmother,” Maggie pressed, her eyes sharp. “Tell me about her.”
“I… I never knew her. My mom said she was volatile. Unstable. She died when my mom was young.”
“Name?”
“Eleanor. Eleanor Reed.”
Maggie went very still. A slow breath whistled out between her teeth. She opened her leather book, flipping pages filled with tight, spidery script. She found an entry, her finger landing on it with a soft tap. “Eleanor Reed. Practitioner of uncommon arts. Specialization: Transference and Inversion. Last known location: Upstate New York. Status: Deceased. Cause: Magical backfire.” She looked up, her gaze softened with something like pity. “Your mother probably called it a psychotic break. It wasn’t. Your grandmother was a very powerful, very unstable witch. The gift—or the curse—skipped a generation. Lands right in your lap.”
The world tilted. Lila’s reality, already cracked, splintered further. Her weird, reclusive grandma wasn’t just difficult. She was… this. “So I’m a witch?”
“Labels are sticky things. You have a latent ability, likely amplified by your emotional state. Heartbreak can be a powerful catalyst. It cracks us open. Lets all sorts of things in… and out.” Maggie closed the book. “What you did today, inverting a Hollowed… that’s not just witch magic, Lila. That’s something rarer. Darker. Your grandmother’s path.”
The door swung open without a knock. Kade stood there, filling the frame. He’d changed into a clean black t-shirt and jeans, but he looked more frayed than before. “Well?” he demanded, his voice tight.
“She’s her grandmother’s granddaughter,” Maggie said, not looking away from Lila. “The potential is there. So is the contaminant.”
Kade’s jaw worked. “Can you get it out of her?”
“I don’t know if I should,” Maggie mused, almost to herself. “It’s integrated. Forcing it out could cause a feedback loop. Unmake parts of her along with it.”
“So she’s just supposed to carry that… that poison inside her?” Kade took a step into the room, the air suddenly charged with his tension.
“It’s not poison, Kade. It’s power. Tainted, yes. Dangerous, absolutely.” Maggie finally turned to him. “But it’s hers now. She used it to survive. You saw it.”
“I saw her become a beacon for every lost, hungry thing between here and the cliffs!” he shot back, his control snapping. “She’s not a weapon. She’s a person. She’s scared.”
“I’m right here,” Lila snapped, her own fear sharpening into anger. “Stop talking about me like I’m a faulty appliance.” She stood up, letting the blanket fall. “You want it out of me? Fine. Get it out. Cut it out. I don’t want it. I never asked for it.”
“It doesn’t work like that,” Maggie said calmly.
“Then show me how it does work!” Lila’s voice broke. The frustration, the terror, the sheer absurdity of it all boiled over. A book on the desk next to Maggie’s satchel shuddered and fell over with a slap.
All three of them stared at it.
“That,” Maggie said, a slow smile spreading across her face. “That is how it starts. With a feeling.” She reached into her bag again, pulling out a small, plain river stone. “Here. Your focus. For now.”
Lila took the cool, smooth stone. “What do I do with it?”
“When you feel that… pressure… like you’re going to explode or implode or make a book jump… you focus on the stone. You push the feeling into it. Not out into the world. Not in deeper into yourself. Into the stone.”
“Like a lightning rod.”
“Exactly.” Maggie nodded approvingly. “Now. We need to see what we’re dealing with. The scope of it.” She looked at Kade. “We need the clearing. The one with the old stones.”
“No.” The word was flat, absolute.
“Kade—”
“It’s too exposed. The wards here are stronger.”
“The stones will give us clarity. They amplify. They’ll show us the shape of her magic, the taint’s reach. We can’t help her blindfolded.” Maggie’s tone left no room for argument. “You know it’s the only way.”
A silent war raged in Kade’s gray eyes. Fear against duty. Protectiveness against necessity. He looked at Lila, clutching the river stone like a lifeline, her green eyes wide with a vulnerability that scraped at his own raw places.
“We go at dusk,” he finally ground out. “We take Lachlan and Anya. We make it quick. In and out.”
“Fair enough,” Maggie said, already packing her things.
Lila just watched them, the stone growing warm in her hand. Dusk felt like a countdown. The clearing felt like a trial. And she had no idea if the magic inside her was a virus, a tool, or a live wire waiting to touch dry grass. All she knew was that the hollow feeling from the creature was still there, a cold, silent guest nestled alongside her own heartbreak.
And it was hungry.
The hunger wasn't a stomach thing. It was a hollow echo in her cells, a cold resonance that vibrated in time with her pulse. It wanted more of that void she’d consumed. The thought made her nauseous. Maggie and Kade had left her alone again, the silence now oppressive with possibility. She stared at the river stone in her palm, its ordinary smoothness a tactile anchor in the surreal.
She practiced pushing a sliver of feeling into it. Just a thread of her frustration. The stone grew warm for a second, then cooled. It was something.
The door opened without a knock this time. Kade stood there, a faded flannel shirt now covering his broad frame. “We’re going. Now. Dusk is coming.” His gaze flickered to the quilt, then away, a quick, pained gesture. “Lachlan and Anya are ready.”
“Who are they?” Lila asked, slipping the stone into her pocket.
“Pack. They’ll flank us.” He didn’t offer more. He just turned, expecting her to follow.
The main part of the house was a shock of warmth and noise after the study’s tomb-like hush. The scent of baking bread and simmering meat sauce wove through the air. A fire crackled in a massive stone hearth. Two people waited by the front door. A man with reddish hair and a friendly, freckled face gave her a small, cautious smile. The woman beside him was all sharp angles and watchful dark eyes, her black hair shaved close on one side.
“Lachlan,” said the red-haired man, nodding.
“Anya,” said the woman, her voice clipped. She looked Lila up and down, her nostrils flaring slightly. “You smell like ozone and wrongness. No offense.”
“Anya,” Kade warned, a low rumble in his voice.
“What? It’s true. The others are keeping their distance for a reason.” Anya shrugged, unapologetic.
Maggie bustled up, shrugging into her coat. “Less commentary, more protection, dear. The stones won’t wait.” She handed Lila a thick, wool-lined jacket. “Put this on. The mountain’s bite is worse at twilight.”
They moved out into the fading light. The forest was a different entity now, alive with creeping shadows and the first calls of night birds. Kade led, a silent, powerful shape. Lachlan and Anya fell in behind Lila and Maggie, their footsteps unnervingly quiet on the damp earth. The path wound upward, away from the house, the trees growing thicker, older.
“So,” Lila whispered to Maggie as they walked. “The stones. What are they?”
“A place of old power. Older than the packs, older than any witch-line around here. They amplify truth. They’ll show us what you are.” Maggie’s tone was clinical, but her eyes held a spark of anticipation. “Think of it as a magical MRI.”
“Great. I’ve always wanted one of those,” Lila muttered.
The clearing opened abruptly. It was a perfect circle of soft moss, ringed by seven standing stones, each twice the height of a man and covered in ancient, blurred carvings. The last of the day’s light bled through the trees, casting long, strange shadows from the monoliths. The air here was still and heavy, charged with a silent hum Lila felt in her teeth.
“Center,” Maggie instructed, pointing to the exact middle of the circle.
Lila walked forward, the moss springy under her boots. The eyes of the pack were on her, a palpable weight. She saw Kade stationed at the tree line, his posture rigid, watching the woods, not her. Lachlan and Anya took up positions at two gaps between the stones. Maggie began unpacking her satchel, laying out small bundles of herbs and a pouch of salt.
“What do I do?” Lila asked, her voice small in the vast quiet.
“Stand still. Breathe. Try not to panic.” Maggie sprinkled salt in a circle around Lila, then crushed dried herbs between her palms, letting the fragments fall. A sharp, clean scent, like rosemary and lightning, pierced the air. “Now, Lila. I want you to let the wall down. The one you’ve built since you got here.”
“I haven’t built a wall.”
“Yes, you have. Everyone does. It’s the wall between what you know and what you fear.” Maggie’s voice softened. “Let the fear out. Just a little.”
Lila closed her eyes. She thought of the Hollowed’s hollow face. Of the chilling vacuum she’d pulled into herself. Of Conor’s empty side of the bed. Of the grid of silver light in the storm. The stone in her pocket grew warm, then hot. She pulled it out, clutching it until her knuckles turned white. The hunger inside her stretched, awakened by her fear.
A low thrum started in the ground, a vibration that traveled up through her soles. The carvings on the nearest stone began to glow with a faint, milky light.
“Good,” Maggie whispered. “That’s it. Don’t fight it.”
The light from the stones intensified, beams of it connecting them, forming a glowing heptagram on the moss floor. The air shimmered. In the center, where Lila stood, two distinct auras began to manifest. From her own heart bloomed a tangled, vibrant knot of threads—silver, green, gold—wild and knotted and beautiful. It was her magic, latent and messy and full of potential.
But coiling through it, like a black vine choking a sapling, was the other thing. It was the absence of color, a sucking, hollow tendril of the void. It pulsed with that cold hunger, intertwined with her own essence. It was far more embedded than Maggie had guessed.
“Oh, child,” Maggie breathed, her clinical detachment gone. “It’s in deep.”
A piercing shriek ripped through the clearing’s sacred silence. It came from the woods due north. Then another, from the east. They were answered by a savage roar from Kade, who had already shifted, his clothes shredding as the enormous black wolf erupted from his skin.
The stones’ light flickered violently. The holographic display of her magic vanished.
“They’re here,” Anya snarled, her own shift happening in a blur of motion and cracking bone. A sleek, gray wolf stood where she had been.
Lachlan was mid-shift, his human cry distorting into a growl, when the first Hollowed surged from the tree line. It was bigger than the others, its form less skeletal, more like twisted, petrified wood. It moved with purpose, not mindless hunger. It was heading straight for Maggie.
Kade met it in a collision of fury and decay. But a second creature slipped past the fray. It ignored the wolves. It ignored Lila. Its hollow gaze was fixed on Maggie, who stood frozen, a bag of salt in her hand.
The old witch fumbled for something in her satchel. She was too slow.
Lila acted without thought. The river stone was scalding hot in her hand. The hungry void inside her surged, eager. She didn’t push the feeling into the stone this time. She focused on the charging Hollowed, on the wrongness of it, and she pulled.
Not with her hands. With that cold, hungry part of her own soul.
The Hollowed stumbled, a thread of its black essence unraveling from its form and whipping across the clearing toward her. She gasped as it hit her, a shock of freezing, empty nausea. The creature reeled, disoriented.
It was enough. Lachlan, now a powerful tawny wolf, slammed into it, his jaws finding purchase.
Kade dispatched the first creature with a brutal snap of his neck. He wheeled around, his gray eyes finding Lila. She was on her knees, vomiting nothing but clear bile onto the moss, the river stone smoking in her clenched fist. She had used the taint. She had willingly drawn more of the void into herself.
The hunger inside her purred, satisfied for a moment, then yawned wider, wanting more.
“The stones!” Maggie yelled, pointing. The monoliths were dark now, their energy spent or shattered by the intrusion. “They’ve been profaned. This was an ambush. They were drawn to the power, yes, but they were waiting.”
Kade shifted back, his body glistening with sweat and speckled with black ichor. He stalked toward Lila, his face a mask of grim fury. He didn’t see a woman saved a friend. He saw a dangerous breach of protocol, a contamination worsening.
“You fed it,” he said, his voice hoarse. “You used it.”
Lila looked up at him, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. The world was swimming, the cold inside her battling the heat of shame. “It was going for Maggie.”
“And now it’s stronger in you!” He gestured sharply at her hands, where faint black threads now swam under her skin alongside the silver, visible for a second before fading. “You think that’s a tool? It’s a parasite. And you just gave it a bigger meal.”
Maggie hurried over, placing herself between them. “She saved my life, you thick brute. The instinct was selfless. The magic… followed.”
“We need to get back,” Lachlan said, human again, clutching a bleeding gash on his arm. “They’ll have felt that. More will come.”
Kade didn’t move. He just stared at Lila, a war raging behind his eyes. The duty to protect his pack warring with the dawning, terrible realization that the thing he needed to protect them from might be standing right in front of him, looking back at him with his dead mate’s eyes wide with fear and defiance.
“Get up,” he finally said, the words like stones. “We’re going back to the house. And you’re not leaving that room.”
He turned his back on her, issuing low-voiced orders to Lachlan and Anya. Lila pushed herself to her feet, her legs trembling. Maggie offered an arm, her eyes full of a complexity Lila couldn’t parse—gratitude, worry, and a flicker of pure, unadulterated fascination.
As they stumbled back toward the tree line, Lila glanced over her shoulder at the now-dark stones. They hadn’t just shown her truth. They had broadcast it. And something out there in the deepening dark had not only heard it, but had answered.