Lucy opened her eyes and found that she was looking up at a very dark and tall ceiling that rose above her like a small cathedral. She groaned and tried to roll over but flinched as the movement caused a shooting pain to race up her arm, making her painfully aware that the cast was no longer there.
"I hope you don't mind, ssshadow eater, but the cast wassss in the way," a voice spoke in the darkness, and Lucy stopped moving as a feeling of déjà vu came over her. She recognized that voice and lifted her head to try and see who it belonged to, but when she looked around the room, all she saw were shadows—unmoving shadows that made it hard to see more than a few feet around her.
"Itssss an honor to be chossssen by the moon," the voice spoke again, drawing closer to where she lay but still staying in the darkness. Lucy turned her head around, trying to glimpse who she now assumed was the witch that Tony and Daisy had spoken of, but why did she recognize his voice? It was breathless and snake-like and made her shiver with a dread that she could not place.
"Do you remember me?" the voice said into her ear, making her flinch and the little hairs stand up on her arms. She moved back from the face that was suddenly in front of her. A dark cloak covered the man's head, but his face was still visible beneath it. He had a long nose and skin that looked as though he were suffering from some sort of disease. His breath smelled like rotten flesh, and it wafted over Lucy now as the beetle eyes leaned closer to her, examining her with an almost paternal expression.
"Itsss been a long time. I know I have…..changed," the witch said this casually with a shrug, as though he were describing a new beard or a change to a goatee instead of a mustache.
"I don't know you," Lucy said flatly, trying hard not to show how scared she was, as a wave of weariness washed over her and she closed her eyes. What were Tony and Daisy, Maverick, and that strange woman Dodge doing right then, she wondered? Had they realized she was missing? Were they looking for her? Were they even alive? The thought of losing the people she had just begun to get to know made her feel sick inside. Were they friends? How could she tell? Lucy wasn't sure if she even knew what a friend was, let alone whether she had any, so she pushed the thoughts from her mind and opened her eyes to find the witch standing beside her, gazing at her with a look of adoration that made her feel like throwing up.
"Tell me, shadow eater, what are your great and awesssssome powerssss?" The witch said as he pulled back and began to walk around the stone table, dragging one blackened and pointed fingernail along the stone so that it squeaked like fingernails on a chalkboard.
"Can you fly? Walk through wallssss? Ssstrip the bonessss from a persssson?" He asked this last question with a hopeful tone that suggested that was a power he wouldn't mind seeing.
"I can't do anything," Lucy replied flatly as a thought occurred to her suddenly, and she added, "I'm not the one with powers."
"You are lying," the witch said with a soft chuckle that made Lucy's skin crawl.
"I'm not. Whoever you think you have, you're wrong. I can't do anything," she replied.
"Do not lie to me!" the witch said through gritted teeth. "I know you are the ssshadow eater! You have power. I can feel it!"
"You're wrong," she replied evenly, trying to calm her heartbeat, afraid he would see her pulse throbbing in her chest.
The witch was silent for a long moment, and Lucy thought for a moment that he had left until there was a shuffling noise near her right side, and the witch appeared holding a black stone the color of midnight.
"Touch it!" he commanded her, holding it out so she could put her right hand on it.
"Why? What will it do?" she asked. An uneasy feeling of déjà vu broiled inside of her again. The stone looked familiar to her, just as the witch had, but again she couldn't remember why.
"Touch it, or we will make your friend touch it!" the witch said with a sneer, and then he shouted over his shoulder, "Bring the girl!"
There was the sound of a chain and more shuffling in the darkness, and then someone in another dark hood came out of the shadows holding up a frail form that Lucy did recognize for once.
"Bali!" she cried as the hooded figure brought the woman closer for her to see. She was wearing a hoodie and jeans now, and her face looked gaunt and sallow as if she were sick. Sweat was beading down her face, and Lucy could see that she wasn't well.
"You look better than you did the last time I saw you," Bali croaked quietly, giving Lucy a weak smile that Lucy returned somewhat shyly. She wanted to reply that Bali looked much worse than the last time she had seen her but decided against it.
"Enough! Touch the ssssstone now, or the girl will do it for you!"
Lucy wasn't sure what the stone did, but she had a bad feeling about it in her stomach. It was too familiar and not in a good way, but still, she wasn't going to let Bali suffer anymore for her sake. The woman had already been kidnapped and possibly tortured for her. Lucy wouldn't be the reason anything else happened to her as long as she could help it.
Reluctantly, Lucy put her right hand onto the stone. It was cold—colder than ice even—and Lucy couldn't help the shiver that ran up her back at its touch. She squeezed her eyes shut, waiting for something terrible to happen.
"Imposssible!" the witch hissed angrily, wrenching the stone violently away from Lucy's grasp and barking over his shoulder at the cloaked man, "Make her sssit up! Sssshe needsss to ussse both handsss."
The cloaked man set Bali down against a nearby pillar, not bothering to chain her up again as she was obviously too weak to escape anyway, and he approached the stone table, somewhat reluctantly, Lucy thought. She watched him as he drew nearer—something just a day before she never would have imagined herself doing, staring purposefully at another human being. She had spent so long avoiding people's eyes, hiding so that she would not see their faces and they would not see hers, that it still felt wrong to look intentionally at this man, to seek out his face. And when he got close enough for her to see, her stomach did a somersault inside of her. His eyes were green; even in the dark she could see that. His hair was black and poked out from the hood in curls, and his skin was pale and fine. He looked young—too young to be mixed up with a witch as evil as this one.
"Try to hold your arm still," he whispered to her as he gently put his arm behind her back and helped her into a sitting position. Their eyes met, only for a moment, but it seemed to Lucy as though it were much longer.
"Enough!" the witch hissed angrily. He grabbed the man by the cloak and yanked him backwards, hard.
"Put your handssss on the stone!" He stepped forward as he spoke and thrust the stone into her lap roughly. Lucy used her good hand to lift her broken arm carefully so that the hand could rest on the cold dark surface of the stone. A dull ache spread through her arm and into her thumb, but it wasn't the sharp pain she had been expecting. In fact, her arm felt significantly better than it had only a few hours before.
"And the other!" the witch said.
Lucy set the other hand on the stone and looked up into the cold black eyes of the witch, who had an almost giddy look of anticipation on his face. But after several moments of silence, his face began to twist into a hideous look of rage.
"Itssss not possssible!" he roared, grabbing Lucy's left wrist and yanking it up to examine it more closely. Lucy cried out in pain at the harsh movement of her broken arm, and the other man, who was standing a few feet behind the witch, made a move as if to stop the witch but then, seeming to think better of it, stepped back into his place and looked away.
"Ahhhhh….. What have we here?" the witch said, twisting Lucy's broken arm and then dropping it to pick up her other arm to look more closely at her other wrist. The delicate bracelet that had once been hidden beneath the cloak's heavy sleeve was now plainly visible on her small wrist.
"A dampener," the witch said in disgust. "Did you really think that would sssstop usss?"
"Seemed worth a shot," Lucy replied breathlessly from the pain.
"Take them off her! The Order will be here ssssooon!"
The cloaked man came forward again and approached Lucy with his face downcast, and Lucy gasped as the witch let go of her wrist and walked away, allowing the young man to draw closer. He took her wrist in his hands and examined the bracelets carefully.
"I've never seen anything like these. Where did you get them?" he asked her quietly.
Lucy didn't reply at first, but when the young man looked up into her face with his green eyes, she saw innocence there, and despite herself she replied, "A shop."
The man nodded as he carefully turned her wrist back and forth as if looking for a clasp or a latch. He found none and frowned.
"How do they come off?" he asked her.
"I don't know," she replied honestly, and then asked, "Have we met before?"
The man frowned but said nothing, and Lucy saw over his shoulder that Bali was nodding vigorously from her spot on the cold ground. But before either of them could speak, the witch came back and shoved the young man aside angrily.
"Why doesss everything you do take ssssooo long!" He managed to bellow while hissing simultaneously.
"Sorry, father," the boy muttered an apology as he stepped back into the shadows.
The witch held a large pair of wire cutters in his gnarled hands, and he proceeded to try and cut the bracelets off of Lucy's wrist.
"Ouch!" She couldn't hold back a scream as the witch turned her wrist painfully in an attempt to get it at a better angle.
"You're hurting her!" the man yelled suddenly, his fists clenched and his face red with anger. The witch turned in the blink of an eye and struck the man hard across the face, making him fall to the ground. The place that he struck turned bright red and puffy at once.
"How dare you ssspeak to me that way! You inssssolent child!" The witch practically screamed at him, turning towards him and letting the wire cutters fall to the ground with a clang. The witch towered over the young man, rage rolling from him as he moved towards the boy who was apparently his son as if to strike him again.
"The Order is here!" a harsh voice spoke suddenly from the darkness, and the witch stopped in his movements and stood still for a moment as if this news were at war with what he had been about to do. The witch visibly shuddered with the rage he was suppressing, and after a moment he relaxed, straightened his shoulders, and said, "Clean up," before walking past the man and into the darkness.