Caroline's room was cold.
Her mother and sister had already gone to bed in the next room.
When I'd heard the door close behind them, I slipped out of my room and into Caroline's. I summoned a dim amber light and pulled a chair close to Caroline's side.
She looked so peaceful. As if she were only sleeping for a little while and would wake up refreshed and happy in the morning. But there were no guarantees that she would ever wake up.
I thought about the black stone I'd pulled off her chest. The priestess had said it was a form of dark magic that pulled a witch's power from her body and placed it into the stone for another witch to use. If her power was trapped in the stone, couldn't they just give it back to her and reverse the spell? Or would Caroline's power be lost to her forever?
I sighed and laid my head in my hands. It wasn't fair. I should have been the one lying helpless in that bed. Whoever took Caroline's power was really after my power. I was sure of it.
I spent the rest of the night thinking about who would possibly have access to dark magic and ancient rituals. It would have to be someone with a connection to the Order, right? Someone who had access to all of the spell books. It would have to be someone powerful, too. Someone capable of conjuring something so difficult.
And they had to be close by. When Zara and I came upon Caroline's body, there was no one around that we could see, but what if someone had been hiding in the woods? They'd gone to so much trouble to kidnap her in the first place, they wouldn't have just left her there. Besides, if it was her power they wanted, they wouldn't have left the stone just sitting there unattended.
I twirled the black crow feather between my fingers.
Priestess Winter said her trackers didn't find anything in the woods, but something like a crow feather wouldn't be so hard to overlook. They were looking for a human. A witch. They weren't looking for a witch whose demon could manifest as a crow.
Something tugged at the corner of my mind. Something important. I thought of Zara floating through the air as a butterfly. A shape-shifter. Then, I thought about the clear blue eyes of the crow and how they looked so incredibly human.
Then it hit me. The crow didn't belong to a witch.
The crow was the witch.