Last week we watched Bella slip ever closer to a dangerous transformation. Bullied by three vicious girls, she decided to break into Liberty University's dangerous plants lab to obtain a sample of nightshade. Then she spoke to a professor of mystic arts who advised her on the impact of her spell. Now, Bella faces a choice. She has the ingredients for her spell of revenge. But will she use them?

The question swirls around in her mind, back and forth, twisting about as stares down at her upended pencil case in a room in the back of the library. On a table in front of her sits a collection of odd objects. One leaf of nightshade, the glossy shine of the plant concealing it's true nature. One pencil case with a rotting stench emanating from it sits next to the leaf. Next to the case is a sweater.

Staring down at it, Bella murmurs to herself, "The tears aren't fresh but I've got a lot of them right?"

Fingers trembling Bella reaches for the pencil case. She slowly unzips it and then dumps the contents out onto the table. A rotting banana falls out along with a collection of tissues, some covered in dried blood. Then her hand reaches into her backpack and pulls out a blank book. Staring at the empty cover for a second, Bella collects herself and reaches over to a steak knife she confiscated from her kitchen this morning.

Breathing slowly she allows the blade to play along her bare arm. The cold metal causes her to gasp, the sudden noise disturbing the silence of the room. Bella wraps her hand around the blade and closes her eyes. Then she starts whispering to herself, "Come on Bella, come on you can do it. Just one cut this time and then nobody will hurt you ever again."

Carefully she starts to squeeze, trying to test the waters. "Auuuggh!" Her hiss and the subsequent sound of the knife hitting the table, however, reveal Bella's fear.

Shaking hands retrieve the knife. "Come on Bella, COME ON BELLA! Dammit!" Tears start to leak from the corners of her eyes. She screws them shut and continues to press her hand to the knife. "Come on, come on Bella do you want to be a loser, a freak, for the rest of your life? It's just some blood, you did this before."

Her hand falls limp to her side. Bella stares at the knife in her other hand, watching it shake slightly. "I, I can do this. I can get revenge. I can hurt Maggie, Trishia, and Ally. I'm just getting even, they've done enough to deserve this. They've earned this. All you have to do is just one little cut Bella, one little cut and then you read from the book and then you get revenge. But it all starts with one tiny little cut Bella."

Fixing her free hand back around the knife blade, Bella shakes herself for a moment and starts to psyche herself up. "Okay! I can do this!" Suddenly, with a hiss and exclamation of pain, Bella slides the shining blade down her wrist slicing open a jagged cut. Moving with purpose, she twists her bleeding wrist over an open book sitting in front of her and lets the blood drip down onto the pages.

Slowly the curling script of the witching tome begins to unfold in front of her eyes once again. Running her bleeding arm across the pages Bella flips through until she finds her spell of revenge. Mouth slightly curling into an angry smile, Bella reads the bloody words sitting on the page.

Now she moves back to the ruined altar in the corner of the room and pulls out a box. Into it, she crams the items sitting on the table in front of her. Then she takes out a box of matches and begins a low chant. As her voice rises, filling with an unholy power, the entire room begins to glow and hum in a soft fashion. Out in the library proper, a group of friends sitting around a study desk notices the noise.

"Hey Theo, you hear that?" Missy Anderson asks.

"Hear what?" Theo replies, cocking his head to the side and concentrating on listening for a moment.

The two then share a knowing look and turn their eyes towards the third member of the table. "She's probably snoring again." Theo says in a sage tone.

Missy adds with a laugh, "and just how would you know she snores in her sleep, huh buddy?"

Theo blushes, then answers in a flustered tone, "I... she... look she was the one in the hospital... I mean I had no choice I was in the hospital and she fell asleep on top of me is all I'm saying."

Missy leans over and punches him in the arm, her playful tone now readily apparent as she says, "hey I'm just messing with you. Although she has been falling asleep in class more often lately and considering she's the one who organized these study sessions you'd think she would try to stay awake through them. Not that you can really call them study sessions if the tutor doesn't show up."

Theo nods and looks away from his slumbering beau to share a troubled look with Missy. "Yeah, did Bella ever say why she's couldn't make it? Or did she just bail on us?"

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Missy huffs, "well she could have at least continued to help Jake out. You know he's stuck doing an extra credit project right now because she skipped the study session before his test?"

Shaking his head in disappointment, Theo replies, "I think we might need to talk to her, something is obviously bothering Bella even if she doesn't want to admit it and we're her friends. I thought it might be girl stuff, maybe about Jake, so I was hoping you and Hailey might say something but I have a feeling that it’s bigger than that."

Missy's expression falls and she says in an ashamed tone, "I know. I've noticed it too and I should have said something but Jake and I have just been having a hard time lately and I've gotten too caught up in my own problems to see what should have been obvious. I think Bella is being bullied again."

Theo reacts instantly, slamming his hand down on the table, "WHAT? Dammit Missy! You should have said something; do you know what she's been through?"

Missy looks up in surprise, but before she can reply a sleepy, "huh?" comes from the end of the table. The slumbering maiden, Eldritch Maiden that is, has just awoken!

Theo turns to the stretching girl and asks in anger, "Hailey did you know about Bella's bullying problem?"

She stares at him blankly for a few seconds before comprehension dawns in her eyes, "Oh, OH! Yeah, I mean a bit? My mom mentioned something about a week or two ago but I didn't really ask for details. Why?"

Theo leans in towards center of the table and motions both girls closer. Then he says, "the school tried to keep this quiet because Trishia's mom is on the school board and they could never prove who was responsible but Bella tried to kill herself last summer. She cut her wrists in a bathtub because of how badly those three bullied her. My mom was working in the E.R. that night, she said the only reason Bella survived is that she's afraid of blood and didn't cut deep enough. If she's being bullied again we need to do something now."

Missy gasps in horror and covers her mouth. Then in a sickened tone she says, "Oh my God I can't believe I was so stupid! Theo, Hailey, come on we need to go find her right now!" The pair begins piling books and notes back into their packs at a frantic pace.

Hailey, however, has just noticed the low humming sound. Her gaze is fixated on the hallway leading to the back room of the library and her expression is enigmatic. In a slow voice she murmurs, "Both of you go now. I have something I have to take care of first."

Theo looks at her incredulously, pausing in his packing. "Are you kidding me Hailey? Bella could be in real trouble!"

Hailey's eyes snap back to meet Theo's gaze. Her intensely blue eyes seem to darken before his gaze, turning from a calm sea to a storm in moments. When she speaks, it her tone brooks no disagreement and carries the authority of someone far more advanced in age, "Go now Theo."

Then, quickly as it came, the storm recedes and Hailey speaks in a more youthful tone, "I'm going to check around the library for her, maybe she just needed to be alone. If we split up we can find her faster."

Missy shakes her head, "If she was here she would have come to us! We should go to the office and get the adults involved."

"NO!" Hailey snaps at her friend. "No... we need all three of us split up and searching."

Theo disagrees, saying, "We should be smart about this. I'll give her a call and head to the office while you two check the library, then we can split up and search the rest of the building but there's no sense in splitting up until we cover the basics."

"Dammit Theo just go!" Hailey hisses in frustration.

Shocked, Theo stares at her. His voice quivers with anger as he replies, "What the... Hailey what is wrong with you?" Theo pauses as though waiting for an answer, then he shakes his head in disgust, "you know what? I don't care. We need to go find Bella. Come on Missy we can call her on our way to the office, maybe they can call her down on the P.A. system. If not at least we can tell Mrs. Anderson what’s going on."

Missy leaves, following the angry boy with reluctance. As they round the corner of a bookshelf, Theo pauses for a half second and reconsiders his anger. Turning to Missy he says, "I overreacted. I should apologize, you go ahead this won't take a second and I'll catch up."

But as Theo moves back around the shelf to cool things between him and Hailey, he finds only an empty table with her scattered books lying about. With the time constraint weighing heavily on his mind, he cannot spare the seconds required to search. Still, Theo smiles, secure in the knowledge that even if Hailey has her own path, she obviously cares enough about Bella to search the library.

Yet his smile contains a hint of sadness too, for the occasion marks the first argument, however short, between the pair. The fight also planted a seed of doubt in Theo’s mind, the heady infatuation he once held for the diminutive girl who stole his heart begins to erode as he starts to make the painful realization that she not quite what he had imagined.

Still, such ruminations will only reach his consciousness later. For the moment, Theo finds himself sprinting down the hallways next to Missy on a mission towards the office. If only he could see the scene unfolding within the library as even now the two girls that occupy his attention race towards one another in a meeting of destiny!

Striding through the stacks, Hailey Juniper Penze makes the transition into Eldritch Maiden. Furiously tossing her extraneous clothing aside, she strips down to a t-shirt and her pants, leaving her jewelry and sweatshirt laying on the ground behind her. All the while, she continues to chant in a low tone the harsh sound of her consonants ringing through the recesses of the library.

Yet even if her classmates were present to hear her guttural cant, they would not recognize the voice. After all, Hailey’s calm demeanor has never carried the same rage as the voice that shakes the books with preternatural force. She pauses before the hallway that leads to Bella’s sanctuary. Now she kicks off her heels and with a flourish plucks a shimmering cowl of blinding white from the air beside her. Then in an instant Hailey is gone and in her place stands Eldritch Maiden!

With a sharp twist of her tongue and flourish of her hands, she blasts the door open and marches into the room beyond. But what greets her eyes causes her to pause, faltering as she lays her eyes on the contents of the room!

What horrible effect of Bella’s desperate invocation is this that can give our heroine pause? What is the true nature of Bella’s spell? Find out next week in… “The Demise of Bella!”