Just a moment after Jesse had spoken, the whispering vanished. I peered around him, chest doing backflips from my terror, until my eyes landed on her too.
From where we stood, several yards away in the darkness, a woman had emerged from the other side of a tree. She had pin-straight black hair and mauve colored lips. She wore baby's breath flowers around the crown of her head just like the other witch who had been captured.
When she locked eyes with Jesse, she had frozen also, mirroring his confusion and intrigue.
"Who are you?" she asked, confusion clear in her voice.
Jesse swallowed, nervous to approach her by even a single step.
"I'm Jesse… I'm- we're werewolves. And you?"
The woman eyed him, dark orbs pouring over his wide shoulders and frowning. The wind roared around us, hot and lively, comforting the involuntary shiver threatening to crawl down my spine. Being in Sleeping Hollow for even a moment too long made my skin crawl.
"Your people have taken Ghana. She's too young for this treatment- can you help me retrieve her?"
The question was simply spoken but it was hardly a simple matter.
Jesse breathed out and ran a head through his disheveled hair before answering her honestly rather than overpromising for sake of bringing her near. Around us the sound of crickets chirping did little to stifle the mutual horror and perplexity between them.
"The people who took her are soldiers, they have a compound near the woods where they hunt Sisterhood witches. I could try to get them to free her, but I am nothing to them. I don't have any power here."
The woman's lower lip dropped in a pout as she eyed him softly. She stepped around a rotting log and in our direction again, pleading this time.
"We are not members of the Sisterhood. Ghana has only recently been initiated, she is seventeen years old. Please help me."
I swallowed the lump in my throat and spoke, voice cutting through the mysterious tension building between the two of them. The night air was warm and having three of us in this cursed woods comforted the primal part of me that still felt in danger.
"The leader of the people who took her is my mate. I can ask her to free Ghana."
The woman frowned, but stepped closer hesitantly in her hopefulness. She moved like a cat, cunning and careful but with the correct amount of confidence. She eyed me distrustingly in the dark and muttered.
"She would do as you ask? Without requiring a reason from you?"
I answered quickly, words flooding from my lips as the image of Val's calm face when she slept entered my mind. Even not seeing her face for years, I could never forget how peaceful she had looked.
"She would do anything I asked."
My certainty shook her and she moved even nearer to us. She eyed Jesse with a curiosity and a desire that she didn't seem to understand and spoke again, this time to him.
"I have heard stories about your people, that you do foolish things because of love."
There was a storm in her pitch black eyes. There was something reflective about her gaze, a look that cut through you rather than simply observing.
"It is a mystery to me."
Jesse sounded pained in his answer as his eyes refused to leave her. He seemed to be unable to comprehend her, to understand if what he was seeing was real.
"You couldn't understand it."
Staring between the two of them, and suddenly being struck by the implication of my own promise to help them, I cursed the Goddess. Fate can be so cruel.
We started to cut back through the woods and towards the campsite. I felt the two of them behind me as I moved. The air was so thick with tension it could be cut through with a butter knife. Any excuse to get the hell away from these woods was a win in my book.
Still, I found myself growing impossibly more nervous as we moved in Val's direction. I opened my mouth to question the strange woman. More to distract myself than anything.
"What is your name?"
The woman answered as we exited the woods into the clearing, meeting my nervous eyes as she did.
"Lapis."