“That’s what you want, isn’t it?” The witch’s voice brought him back. “That’s why you ran here. You could’ve gone anywhere and yet, here you are. They could find you still, you know.”
She was right. He knew she was.
Ethan exhaled the breath he’d been holding. He knew the legends, the stories. He could be trapped here forever. The witch could steal his life, his whole soul. He could go to sleep one day, like his mother, full of cancer no hospital could cure. He could wake up one day, like his sister, full of voices that weren’t his, and be locked away in a place where people whispered things like mental illness and coping. But what other choice did he have? To keep running and hope the cops didn’t catch him? Or accept this strange magic and stay in the place that he’d last known happiness
