Witch in Hiding (#1 in the Witches Trilogy) (EDITING)

Twenty-Five: A Dark Known Well

ANGEL SPECTRE ARRESTED; FINAL VICTIM FOUND

A headline from two years ago I barely remember. The Angel Spectre case was sensationalised to death across the country, locking down schools, pushing up curfews. Some psycho was kidnapping these perfect kids—good students, innocent cherubs who'd never done so much as push a door that said 'pull'—and no one knew how or why. The guy was invisible—hence the name. Less invisible, however, were the bodies left out for the public to find. The kids were always left in a high place, dressed the same way: in white, perfectly made up. The media exploded with the five angels scattered across the country.

The police finally caught the killer, and found his last victim perfectly laid out in a child's bedroom in the attic. According to articles I drag up, her parents refused to let the media release her name, but some intense Googling and I dig it up on a trashy news site, along with a crime scene photo clearly leaked from the police.

Her face is powdered, stark white, even her eyelids; her skin is pale from lack of sun, her hair glossy and spread out under her and she's wearing a white lace dress, but Jess is still recognisable. I think of the photo I saw briefly on her phone—her dad, tied up somewhere—and I suddenly don't blame her for snapping.

I keep staring at the news article with transfixed horror until I force myself out of it and call the first person my mind jumps to.

Rae picks up on the fourth ring. "Vinni?"

"Jess is missing."

Rae goes quiet. "What happened?"

"She..." I press my lips shut, not wanting to tell the story again. "What can you tell me about wraiths?"

"Wraiths?" I can tell by her voice that she's guessed what happened. "Well, other than how they become wraiths?"

The dread in me threatens to make me throw up. "Yes. I've heard that story. I just need to find her, and maybe you know something that can help."

"I don't know where she is," Rae says slowly. She doesn't ask how I know about the transformation. "But okay. There are a lot of theories about the formation of wraiths—there are a few camps. Some people say that the wraith is a sliver of the murderer's soul, leeching onto the ghost's soul permanently. A lot of people say that the wraith is a shadow of impurity—during the transformation from human to ghost, the nature of the death haunts the spirit and manifests as a wraith."

"What do you say?"

"There are basically four types of magic, right? Physical, cognitive, spiritual and supernatural. A major part of cognitive magic is emotional magic. I say, and I'm supporting a rather unpopular theory, is that the wraith isn't a separate entity at all, but a native part of the ghost."

I think of the thing Jess became and feel sick. "That's not Jess."

"No, I mean... okay. What's agreed on is that the wraith essentially is born from an unwhole soul, where the horror of the death causes a... dissonance in the soul at death. I believe, that rather than attach something else, the murder causes a part of the soul to be split from the rest, consumed by hatred, vengeance and injustice at what was done, and powerful emotions like that can do a lot in emotional-spiritual magic. Ghosts and wraiths are notably similar in a lot of ways, so my camp suggests that dark part of the soul hides—inactive—until triggered by sufficient emotional stress."

"You're saying that thing was... a bundle of bad feelings?"

"Anger and injustice warping an otherwise clean soul, yes."

Something clicks in my mind. "Injustice."

"Generally, the younger the death, the stronger the injustice—and the more powerful the wraith. I'm going to go out a limb and guess Jess is pretty strong."