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  Lila silently hoped that no one made Elsie dress, or had to be told about the conditions of her existence on this plane. If the battle had been any indication, Elsie was a powerful curve ball that no one expected, and could well be the thing which got them out of here if they won.

  “Ask Rose why she isn't wearing her collar.” Lila asked. She'd been working on getting through to this world with the veils added thickness when it had been taken off.

  “I can answer for you. Rose's collar was removed on account of good behaviour, as a show of good faith. They know we're on their side. Troy and Grace are still encumbered with theirs, I suspect as a contingency plan.” Elsie responded, and Rose looked around the room, trying to find out where the source of the questions was.

  “That doesn't sound a whole lot like them.” Lila continued.

  “It isn't. It was the repayment of a debt.” Elsie continued, as vague as she had been ever since November.

  “Debt?” Lila punctuated the word carefully so that Elsie would realise that she needed to know these things, and that having to ask additional questions was time consuming.

  Particularly since she could only ward this place against Beth for so long.

  “You didn't just save the lives of your coven and friends. Jeffrey Mathis was also in attendance. As he personally held Rose's life in his hands, he decided to return it to her own possession. It was hardly selfless. I suspect he disliked owing something so precious to a filthy witch.” Only Elsie could sound this bored whilst divulging such critical information. “Rose, she's over by the cabinet.” she added, pencil making a snk sound against the paper as the tip broke. Elsie frowned, then touched the tip, which charred beneath her finger. She then continued drawing, occasionally smudging.

  Rose glanced around, almost perfect in her estimation of her presence, though her eyes didn't meet hers. On the contrary, Rose seemed to think she was around six feet tall.

  “Thank you.” she smiled gratefully. “You didn't just bring me back, or get that awful collar off. You saved my brother, and the covens will be grateful for the fact their leaders are still alive.”

  “That'll make a nice change.” Lila huffed out, and when Elsie repeated this, Rose looked confused, so she continued. “Right now they distrust me for getting Elsie killed.”

  Surprisingly, Elsie repeated this with the same level of disinterest as everything else. She was so far removed from her life, but sometimes Lila allowed herself to be fooled into thinking she was the same girl. Moments like this reminded her otherwise.

  “Oh. Well, they weren't there for that part. No one who was blames you. We were all fooled.” Rose answered maturely, and Lila wondered if she'd be this way if she hadn't been dragged into these messes. She smiled fondly; Rose was made of tough stuff.

  Elsie glanced up at her, her eyes widening. From this cue alone, Lila ducked, hearing Elsie's cry of, 'Look out!' accompanied by a whistling wind. Beth missed her by inches, and Lila let the veil fly back up. She needed all of her attention and energy on this.

  Fighting had become second nature in the days since she'd fallen into her coma, and Lila managed to mostly avoid Beth's attacks, lashing out with her magick. It was mostly ineffectual, and she knew that beating her was going to take something more, something she didn't have at this precise moment but was important. Without it, clearing the Keres witches of the spirits inside and exorcising them would only leave them trapped in this realm.

  She needed to create a prison. It was a simple solution, and with the help of her coven it wasn't beyond the realm of possibility. She had a suspicion that the problem they were facing against the dark witches was simply a matter of strength – their blood had been diluted by generations of only marrying into their own magick type. Lila and the others might be the strongest witches ever to master their particular craft, but they still had nothing on the ancient witches who had mastered them all.

  She would have to lift the law preventing them from intermarrying, too. Witches were stronger together, with all of the elements at their command.

  Fending off an attempt to grab her shirt, Lila felt a wave of dizziness overtake her, as well as an insistent buzzing in her ear.

  “You're dying, girl. You hear the monitor?” Beth chuckled, taking advantage of the moment and Lila's distraction to grab her round the throat and squeeze. Lila brought her foot up, kicking her in the stomach in an attempt to get her off. It worked, marginally, and she pulled the spirit tendrils up to secure around Beth's lower legs.

  Her mind was getting hazier, when she felt an intense heat burn at her chest, crackling as if flames licked at her. It was replaced by another burst of heat, on and on. The Spirit realm was fuzzy, and she knew that she was going to black out, which in the Spirit world meant only one thing.

  She was waking up.

  “Maybe next time, Beth.” she grinned.

  Beth's howls of frustration and anger followed her as she slipped from her grasp, her eyes opening to the sight of her coven around her.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Lila choked, the ventilator in her throat catching her off guard. The doctor who was treating her shifted around, disconnecting the tube from the oxygen and reassuring her, telling her not to panic. Of course, this went against her natural instincts, and it took her a moment to realise she could actually breathe. Refocusing, she took in the instructions he told her, coughing as he removed the tube from her throat, missing the fact that they were also removing a tube from her nose. She made the mistake of immediately grabbing for the glass of water which was placed by her bed, gulping it down. About halfway down the glass, she coughed again, twisting her head to the side and sending water splattering over the floor and part of her covers. The water did nothing to ease the pain in her throat, and after a few croaked attempts at speech, Liam leaned over and touched his fingers to the soft skin of her neck, a heat spreading through her throat and soothing as it healed.

  Her attempt at sitting up had been completely subconscious, but Lila quickly realised how weak she felt as soon as she tried to sit up fully. Sadie and Adam worked together to put the back of the bed up into a reclined position, and with their help, she slid back against it. Just because she was awake didn't mean she was completely okay.

  “How long was I out?” she asked, her voice box feeling oddly disconnected from conscious attempts to use it. She only had a vague recollection of how she'd gotten here, but Rose's gratitude had explained some of it.

  “Seven days and at least eight hours on top of that.” Sadie answered, leaning against Adam. She looked exhausted; they all did. “But most of us were out for a long time that first night.”

  “The hunters showed up in time to get us out of there before they could come back. We woke up in beds on a different floor. They seem to have moved us inside the compound.” Adam added.

  “No one could wake you up, though. You were having trouble breathing after the first few hours, so you were moved down here and put on the ventilator.” Troy continued, sounding subdued. He sounded as though he were blaming himself for it all, which was ridiculous.

  “I'm just so glad to see you all.” Lila admitted softly. She looked at them each in turn. Liam slipped his hand into hers, lacing their fingers together and bringing her hand up to kiss the back of it. It made sense that they should no longer care about being outed; A near death experience (another one, in Lila's case) put things into perspective. The others wouldn't care about something like a relationship when the world was falling into ruin.

  “You saved our lives.” Liam spoke softly, his voice full of adoration he didn't even try to hide. Lila found herself blushing, not that it was a difficult thing to do when she was so pale.

  “Well, you know, I just didn't fancy saving the world by myself.” she retorted, and everyone laughed. The sombre mood was broken and everyone had the chance to forget, just for a little while, that out there, there were still people they had to defeat. They couldn't do it without figuring out how, so they put it to
once side for now.

  Not that they left it completely. Over the next few hours, Lila found out that while she'd been out, the others had been watching her on a cycle while they all went up to the command room (she found out that the hospital complex was underground, part of the building which could be sealed off from the world above in the event of an attack... including nuclear bombs). Up there, they had been working on new weapons, imbuing them with power to take down witches and spirits. Gloria had helped, in her place. They had been sure to make the weapons in a way which meant they couldn't be used out of the hands of a witch, but had been fully aware that they were releasing more methods to kill their own people out into the world. It was a risk they had to take.

  Apparently, Noah had become indispensable (Troy had informed her proudly) and was in charge of overseeing the operation, since he had both magick and technical knowledge, both of which were necessary to make it happen. This led to a conversation about how hard it was to work with most witch hunters, but how they'd met a few younger members who were disenchanted with their lives and were only in it because both parents, or at least the one they had left, were hunters. Liam was particularly skilled at finding these people, and everyone thought it was because he'd been here before. According to Liam, however, he had mostly been a field agent other than when he'd been trained, so he only knew a handful of people who were still at this particular facility.

  It opened up new possibilities, though. Maybe somewhere down the line they'd be able to establish an alliance which ensured that only witches who broke a certain set of rules was punished. It was something to think about.

  They spoke for hours, and at one point food was brought in. Lila ate ravenously, starving after a week of being fed through a tube. Her friends were forced to leave so that the doctors could check her over and remove all of the drips, lines and wires she was attached to, since she seemed to be fine. This was because of the small amounts of healing Liam had been giving her all night; she'd felt it passing through her fingers on numerous occasions, but had allowed him to do what he needed to in order to feel better. Such small amounts of magick spread out over hours wouldn't hurt him.

  To the doctor's exasperation, everyone came back in after they left, and they decided to ignore them. Lila was secretly pleased, since the staff all treated her with a sense of disdain and disgust; they couldn't believe they were trying to keep a witch alive, but their momentary truce demanded that the leader of the group be kept alive to the best of their abilities, or the witches might revolt.

  This time, even Elsie and Noah joined them, everyone crowding into the small room.

  “Where's Grace?” she asked, wondering why her friend hadn't been in to visit her.

  “Ah... um, well.” Noah began. “The witch hunters have decided that, aside from the doctors, this floor is out of bounds to everyone who isn't a witch. Meaning them. They were going to offer Grace an exception, but it came with a pretty heavy price. They told Grace that if she were down here, she had to hand over her phone and told her she wouldn't be able to contact her family, since she's the only one who can't be honest with them. It's just in case they send out a search party. She's allowed to leave the complex, since they changed her collar into a bracelet and it basically has a bug in it so they can listen to everything she says. She's been covering our backsides in our day jobs.” he admitted.

  As disappointed as Lila was, she was glad that Grace was spending time with her family, particularly as their lives could be about to end. It must be hard to return to her family with that knowledge and be unable to tell them, but even if she did it was unlikely that they'd believe her – firstly, she'd have to tell them why, and when she couldn't prove the existence of witches (no doubt the hunters had been infiltrating the media to twist magickal happenings into natural phenomena for decades), they'd think she was crazy. Lila felt a moment of remorse when she realised that she had limited the number of honest conversations Grace would be able to have with her family in the future. She felt especially guilty about the fact that it wasn't a consideration she had ever made before choosing to tell her everything. Her own inability to include civilians in her life had been first and foremost in her thoughts, and it hadn't occurred to her that anyone she did bring in would have the same limitations unless they chose to leave, though doing so meant that they'd only take the secrets with them and never have anyone to discuss them with.

  “I thought you guys were allowed to go up?” Lila asked, slightly confused about it all.

  “Oh, we can, they're just not supposed to come down. I think it's so they can seal us in if we become a threat to them, or maybe even just when they've had enough of us.” Troy answered, frowning at the thought.

  “C'mon, that can't be true.” Noah answered; it was clear he'd bonded with a few of the hunters while he'd been working with them. It was hard for him to think of them doing anything so nefarious.

  “We've got friends amongst them.” Liam answered softly, still holding Lila's hand. “I think we'd get out if they tried anything. Most of the younger lot don't hate witches the same way so, with any luck the years of being hunted like dogs is over – unless we do something to make them believe we really are a threat. It's a scary thought, but we could really be the ones to make it or break it for our descendants.”

  “Then we have to make this work.” Lila answered, her face grim. “I don't want to be the reason our future families have to look over their shoulders when they walk down the street.” If she could stop them from getting hurt, she would. Maternal instinct came easily to Lila; she'd been so busy trying to make sure her coven was well looked after, and this wasn't much different.

  “We can only do our best.” Adam pitched in. “They're going to be fed hate no matter what we do, so we have to counteract it. You did a pretty impressive job of that when you saved Mathis.”

  Liam pulled a face, but said nothing. His feelings towards his uncle were very clear, and he didn't need to point them out at every opportunity for them to know he wasn't bound to his uncle or his uncle's plans.

  For his sake, Lila briefly considered what it'd be like if she hadn't saved him. She knew that they all understood it was for the best – Rose had been freed from the threat of a painful death, and that was worth a little extra inconvenience. She'd also saved a witch hunter, proving that they weren't the monsters they'd been taught about, most from birth. This would go a long way into mending relations between them. Lila had absolutely no idea as to whether or not witches and hunters had ever been friends, or just always enemies. If she were back home, it was something she would do research on, but she was completely at the mercy of the computers the hunters used. As old as it made her feel, she couldn't figure out how their high-tech computers worked.

  Maybe, they could make friends with the future witch hunters, and the fear they experienced now would be a thing of the past. She could dream, right? Lying to herself, however, was something she was particularly bad at. She felt the incessant need to correct herself even inside her own mind.

  God, she even annoyed herself.

  Chapter Eighteen

  They spoke for hours about everything and nothing, and none of them noticed the time passing. Everyone seemed to be trying to keep it light after the conversation they'd had about Lila saving Jeffrey's life, but they were quickly running out of things to talk about which didn't involve the fact that they were going to have to go back up against the Keres coven sometime soon – they couldn't just leave the residents of Ontario to fend for themselves, after all. With that in mind, Lila changed the conversation to let them know that it was okay to talk about it.

  “So... how are we getting on with the weapons?” Lila asked. If they were going to face the witches again, they were going to need some serious firepower. She couldn't do what she'd done again, so protection was going to be necessary too.

  Noah's face lit up.

  “Pretty well, actually – we're working on something which should drag the spirits out of the
bodies and trap them inside it, Ghostbusters style.” he answered, grinning; he was pretty proud of his creation, and no doubt the inspiration for it was a point of pride for him, too.

  “Are you talking like, nuclear?” She asked, with a frown.

  “No, it's magickal. Fire and air, mostly. Gloria's been trying to help us weave Spirit into it, but the bonding process is tricky.” he added. “It's gonna take some time.”

  When he said that, Lila had a flash of memory from her time in the coma; The Beth problem. Beth had been seriously weakened by the athame which had driven her back into the Spirit world, but she was still a huge problem.

  “I'm going to create a prison in the Spirit world when I'm stronger. If we can trap them after that, Elsie can use the athame on them, then I can pick them up inside the Spirit world, maybe with a few of my coven members for backup, and force them into the prison.” Lila answered. “I don't think this is the last time we're going to have a problem with spirits. So many of them got out, and were long gone by the time we fixed everything.”