**Hey everyone! This is a bit of a shorter chapter but thank you for continuing to read and review this! I always read them even though I may not always respond. Enjoy!**

By the time we reached the second elevator we were both shifting out of nervousness. Lin and I hadn't spoken a word to each other, and she kept fiddling with the ends of her bob.

"Sen," she whispered. We were the only ones in the elevator. "If I don't make it out of this, I want you to know that I love you, and I'm glad that you're back here so I could see you before I go."

"LIN!" she hushed me with her hands. I quieted back down to a whisper. "You're not going to die. Nothing is going to happen to you. You'll be okay. And I'll be okay. I'm going to make this right again."

Once the elevator stopped, we looked away and then back at each other, and then towards the door.

"Here we go," Lin whispered.

I stepped out first, walking down the long ornate hallway once again. The colors of gold and red in the arches sparkled in the chandelier lights onto the matching carpet. Dark red tapestry-like curtains that swept onto the floor covered the windows in their full 10 feet of length.

The door lurked at the end.

Lin knocked once, ready to knock again, but the door opened slowly before she could make another.

It was Boh. He was tall, and strong, and so much older than I had last seen him. He probably stood at least 7 and a half feet tall, and when he saw me, his brown eyes lit up, yet his mouth didn't turn into a smile.

"Sen."

"Boh," I nodded.

Yubaba was sitting at her desk, while Ayako was sitting in a throne-like chair beside her. Lin pulled at my ponytail and I looked at her. She pointed to Haku lying on a loveseat, skin pale as snow against the blood red upholstery.

"Kohaku!" I yelled as I hurried over to him. Before I could reach him, I was drawn backwards away with one fell swoop of Yubaba's pointer finger in the air. Her magic was too powerful.

"What did you do to him?" I had fallen on the ground, and struggled under some invisible weight on my shoulders.

Yubaba didn't look up, but kept writing with a quilled pen the length of my body on her mahogany desk. Ayako stood up and smiled at me.

"Sen don't worry, Kohaku is just resting. He needed to sleep. He's running out of energy."

"Why is he so pale? He looks sick…"

She walked over to him and sat next to him on the couch. She stroked his face, and as her hand left off of his cheek a scale of his skin plucked off, revealing silver underneath.

I gasped.

"Tell me! He could be dying! You need to help him!"

She tousled his hair in front.

Yubaba stood up and walked over, throwing Lin in a cloud of whooshing air into the wall.

"LIN!"

I attempted to run over to help her but Yubaba pushed me backwards into the other wall closest to Ayako. Vines grew around me, constricting me closely into the wall paneling.

Yubaba turned to me and smiled her squeamish grin.

"I know you've been plotting against Ayako, Sen! Everybody knows, and has heard what you said!"

She nodded towards Ayako who flicked her finger towards Lin. She squirmed and struggled.

"SEN! Don't let her get to your head! You're STRONGER than her. She's just trying to cut you off from your… AHH!"

She started to shrink. Her face and her body was deforming and twisting. Her screams of agony transformed into silence as she shrunk down into stone. She wasn't able to move.

Before I could scream vines strangled my mouth. Tears streamed down my eyes that were hot on my cheeks.

"Oh quiet, you." Yubaba floated closer to me without a sound in the room. Haku gasped for air every few seconds while Ayako played with his hair and whispered in his ear. "You stupid, stupid girl. I gave you a chance to go back to your family and now look what you've done to yourself."

I spat out leaves from the vines but they refused to wane.

"Disrupting my plans once again… well, I'm going to do exactly what I should have done the first time you were here."

She turned toward Kohaku, whose smooth fair skin had turned to silver scales once more. She looked almost concerned as his strength faded.

"Yubaba!"

She turned back to me. The vines had finally subsided. Her eyes were wide with anger. "How did you speak?!"

"Why are you using Ayako to get to Kohaku? After all he's done for you… you go and betray him by stealing his mind?"

"Stupid girl," she sat down in a grand oak chaise. "I was losing his control! Don't you see? Ayako was only there to manipulate him into staying and slaving for the bathhouse. I created her with my own powers. Kohaku is mine, and I own him. Nobody, not even you, Sen, can stop that."

A blast of blue flames exploded in front of me where Yubaba had been standing.

Ayako appeared from behind the smoke, eyes ablaze.

"But I can."

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