The Bitterwine Oath

by Hannah West

  “No one was fool enough,” Maggie corrected, glancing at the pages in my hand, a glint of savage fear in her green eyes.

  “This is a ritual for breaking the curse,” I said, unfolding it. “You ripped it from the Book of Wisdom, but Kerry stopped you from destroying it, didn’t she? Her last request was that you give me her unopened letter. But you knew what was in it, and you couldn’t resist. Your conscience wouldn’t let you destroy her messages to me, so you hid them and charmed the letter to make it look like you’d never opened it.”

  The room held its breath. I felt Vanessa and Lindsey shifting uncomfortably behind me.

  “Did you really hide that from her, Miss Maggie?” Heather asked.

  “We all did,” Maggie said, gesturing at the other two members of the Triad. “Kerry wasn’t well. Her words are dangerous.”

  “Easy for you to say,” I growled. “I’m the one the Woodwalkers are targeting most. You think it’s a coincidence that they went after my dad, my boyfriend, my dog? You think it’s a coincidence that Kerry’s fiancé was Shadowed and died in the last Claiming? They hate me. They fear me. They know that I’m the key to ending this.”

  “Think mighty highly of yourself, don’t you?” Maggie said, a cruel edge to her voice.

  “I’m sorry about your father,” Cynthia said, her benevolent tone contrasting with Maggie’s, but I wasn’t fooled into thinking she was on my side. “If I were you, I’d be desperate to try everything, too. But you’re not going to convince anyone here to give up her life for something that might not even work.”

  “What if it did work?” I demanded. “What if it’s the only thing that can?”

  “We don’t bank on defeat in battle,” Sofia said, crossing her arms. “Even thinking it gives the darkness power.”

  “As far as we know, the Shadowing of Kerry’s fiancé was coincidence,” Maggie said. “The town was even smaller back then, and everybody knew everybody. Kerry felt responsible for both Roger’s and Nora’s deaths, and that was hard on her. Over the years, she stewed in the guilt and began to blame everyone else. But the reason she finally left was because no matter how long and how hard she tried to convince us, we rejected her theory. And that, my girl, isn’t righteous conviction or bravery. It’s just pride.”

  My fists clenched again, sending tongues of fire over the frayed skin beneath my shoulder blades. A thin thread that was singlehandedly helping me retain my composure snapped. “She never should have trusted you.”

  “Is anyone here willing to try Natalie’s way?” Maggie spoke over me, ready to put a swift end to this. “Go out to the cabin and wait for the Woodwalkers to feast on your magic and drain the life out of you like they almost did to three of us last week?”

  No one spoke up. The finality of the response fanned a flame of indignation inside me, but I didn’t know what to do. It didn’t feel right to fall in line, to give up just because no one seemed to want to take a chance on this. And I knew I couldn’t march out of there without support. I would fail and die in the process.

  “Let’s move on,” Maggie said after a few painful moments, dismissing me. “We still have a lot to cover.”

  I stormed out, as well as anyone in my condition could.

  “I’ll bring her back,” I heard Lindsey say behind me. She caught up to me by the baptistery stairs. I turned to face her. “Now is not the time to buck authority,” she said. “You of all people should want to play it safe.”

  “There is no ‘safe,’ Lindsey!” I cried. “Don’t you get that? Or do you need someone you care about to get Shadowed so you can understand? Oh wait, that’s impossible, because you distanced yourself from literally every boy you ever cared about.”

  “Stop.” Anger ignited in her dark eyes, and a muscle twitched in her jaw. “The Triad has been doing this for decades. You may be your own Triad, but you’ve only been a part of this for a few weeks. You should be in there listening. They haven’t told you the brutal details of the Possession. It’s horrible. The fight they endured, the trauma and grief it caused them.…They survived a lot.” She gulped and smoothed down the already smooth hair pulled taut over her scalp. “Maybe you’re right,” she said momentarily. “Maybe Kerry’s idea could work. But maybe she was wrong. Maybe if we do what she wanted, the victims would still die, and we would, too.”

  “Still die?” I repeated. “Do you hear yourself? Still die? Even you don’t believe tonight is going to go any differently than last time.”

  Her lips turned white, but she didn’t yield. “I thought your joining was the best thing for us. Now I can see we were better off without you.”

  Before I knew it, she was gone.

  My knees nearly buckled. That effort had taken all I had left to give.

  Maybe my grandmother and I were the same: searching for answers, ready to defy anyone who didn’t see eye-to-eye with the ones we unearthed. Was it worth rebelling against the Wardens? What if I was wrong?

  The hidden door in the wall opened again, and Vanessa slipped out with fresh bandages, a cloth, and a sweater. “Let me help you before you go,” she said.

  I almost rejected her offer, but she guided me to the baptistery steps and sat me down. She worked the bodice of Lindsey’s ragged dress down over my shoulders and started peeling the soaked bandages away. I hissed. Vanessa maintained her composure when she saw my wounds and dabbed my back with the wet cloth.

  “If we fail to stop the Possession, I’m in,” she whispered in my ear. “You have your Bone Warden. You should hurry and get to Emmy before they bring her here to protect her. Then all we need is a Blood Warden.”

  “I don’t think Lindsey can be convinced,” I said.

  “I know. Rules and promises are important to Blood Wardens. Bone Wardens trust our intuition. But I’ll work on her.” Vanessa finished wrapping the new bandages and helped me slip back into the dress, topping it with a sweater to cover the dried blood. “Now, time to betray your boyfriend’s trust so we can end this once and for all.”

  THIRTY

  I hadn’t wanted to need the bitterwine and collyrium when I’d left Malachi’s house. Needing them would mean the other Wardens had turned their backs on me. And using them would mean breaking my word.

  Yet here I was.

  The wind blew hot and carried the stink of death, like roadkill warmed over. One would think it would drive away the tourists, but they swarmed the downtown square, filling the quaint shops and diners to capacity. I passed two squad cars and a uniformed officer directing traffic at one of the crosswalks.

  I jerked to a stop in Kate’s driveway, nearly knocking over the trash bins. Unless Kate had given her the day off, Emmy would be here babysitting Avery, protected by wards and charms.

  I left my weapons in the glove box and locked the truck. Kate had never asked for her house key back, so I let myself inside, the bitterwine in one hand and the collyrium bulging in the pocket of the sweater Vanessa had given me. Avery yelled my name and launched out of her chair to hug my waist. I yelped in pain but wrapped my arms around her shoulders, thinking of her future.

  I want to end this, I thought. Not just for my family or for Levi, but for you, too.

  “Nat, what are you doing here?” Emmy asked. She was stirring macaroni on the stove. “Are you okay? You look tired.”

  I wasn’t the only one. Emmy’s thick red braid was messy and wild, her ivory skin washed out, her hazel eyes dull and ringed from exhaustion. My guess was that she hadn’t slept much since the Shadowings began.

  “You know something’s out there, don’t you?” I asked.

  Tired as she was, she managed to look startled. “Um…” She shuddered.

  “Avery, can you go in your playroom?” I asked. Usually, there was a scant chance Avery would do anything she was asked on the first try, but she skipped away and rummaged through her toy chest in the adjacent room.

  “You know something’s hunting you.”

  Emmy’s pale throat bobbed as she swallowed. “I
t has to do with the massacres, doesn’t it? With Malachi?”

  “Yes. I’ll explain, but I need you to know that Levi is in danger. I’m doing everything I can to protect him, even though I promised him I’d do everything I could to protect you. Turns out, I can’t do both.”

  I saw something register in her eyes when I said Levi’s name. She knew how I felt. An innocent smirk touched the corner of her mouth. “He’s going to kill us both if we risk our lives to keep him safe.”

  “I know.” I took her hand, relieved. “My family left yours in an hour of need, Emmy. I’ll tell you everything later. But we’re going to save him.”

  “What do I need to do?”

  I clunked the bottle of bitterwine on the counter and fished the collyrium out of my pocket. “You have magic. And it’s been trying to claw its way out of you. This will set it free.”

  Emmy didn’t look surprised to hear the word magic. Just how much had this poor girl been pretending not to know for the sake of holding her family together? “Okay,” she said.

  I went straight to a cabinet with drinking glasses. I uncorked the bitterwine bottle, sniffed to make sure it hadn’t soured, and poured her a glass. “Drink it all,” I said.

  Emmy set it to her lips and gagged, but she steeled herself and managed to polish it off. She leaned her head back for me to drop the collyrium in her eyes.

  “What now?” she asked as she blinked the drops away.

  “We have to go.”

  “But what about Avery?”

  “There’s an extra booster seat somewhere, right?” I asked. “The one I used to use?”

  The sun stole to the west as we drove to my house. I did my best to explain everything to Emmy without alarming Avery or giving her something damning to repeat to her Sunday school teacher.

  Lindsey had lied well for me to my parents. She’d painted me as a basket case after Ranger’s attack. My dad was under the impression that I’d been too shaken up to go into the police station myself, so Lindsey had reported the attack for me and then taken me to her house. The warrior inside me rose up in indignation over sounding like a coward, but I was too grateful to mind. My dad didn’t think the worst of me for not being at poor Ranger’s side. That was what mattered.

  At the vet office next door, I smoothed back Ranger’s velvety ears while he slept, then gave my dad a hug that I swore to myself wouldn’t be the last.

  “What do you want for dinner?” Mom asked Avery in the living room, flipping through channels to find a kids’ show for her unexpected guest. Avery was content on the couch, petting Maverick, who had curled up beside her. Rules had gone out the window after Ranger’s injury, which my parents were struggling to explain to themselves. I told them I’d found him already hurt and didn’t know what animal had attacked him.

  We’d left notes on Kate’s front door, the back door, the door to the garage, and the counter explaining where Avery was. I didn’t want to call Kate. Letting her know Emmy and I were together would tip her off to my plan. She would stop me before I convinced Emmy to do anything reckless.

  The summer class excuse wouldn’t cut it this time, so I was as candid with my parents as possible. A friend was in urgent but not dire trouble. Emmy and I needed to hand off Avery while we dealt with the crisis that they weren’t allowed to ask questions about. If Kate called, my mom would assure her that Avery was safe at our house.

  “What now?” Emmy asked as we shut the door and crossed the front porch. I’d grabbed Lillian’s book from my shelf.

  “We restage the casting of the curse,” I said, jogging down the steps to the driveway. “And then we wait.”

  “Wait for what?”

  “For the Wardens to inevitably fail,” I said.

  Even though I hoped they wouldn’t.

  The day drooped like a tired eyelid. Night was inescapable.

  Determination became fear, and fear became doubt. The idea of four walls and solid doors created an illusion of comfort that made me want to give up and return to the church. What if the Wardens could hold out until the end of the witching hour? As dark descended, the idea of a siege, of fighting—the thing I knew how to do best—felt safer than beckoning evil and letting down my defenses.

  But when I looked at Emmy in the passenger seat, I didn’t see the trembling, fragile porcelain doll from earlier. She rebraided her red hair with surprisingly steady hands and offered a supportive nod. “I’m with you, Nat.”

  Bolstered, I bore down on the gas pedal. We passed a squad car at the turn to the dead-end road to the cabin, but the beguilement spell I’d cast spared us any more attention than an appraising glance. We rumbled to a stop in front of the fence.

  There were even more animal carcasses than there had been during the ambush.

  “Sorry, I should have warned you,” I said when I saw Emmy halt.

  “The—the Woodwalkers did this?” she whispered.

  “Yes,” I said, resisting the instinct to sugarcoat for her, reminding myself that she had agency. She had chosen to be here. “We’re only safe inside Malachi’s circle. The rest of this place is theirs.”

  I crooned with pain as I boosted her to the other side. “Are you hurt?” she asked, resituating herself at the top of the fence in an attempt to clear the piles of carcasses. “Did they hurt you? The Woodwalkers?”

  “Don’t worry about me, just get to the circle.”

  I heard a yelp of disgust as she landed on the other side. I managed to mount the gate and heave myself over without letting on how much it hurt. I caught my breath and fell into step with her, stomping through the feral grass.

  “Is there a weapon for me?” Emmy eyed my revolvers.

  I dug through my satchel and produced a small ceremonial knife I used for cutting herbs and pricking my skin for spells, but it would have to do.

  “I feel like I should be more scared than I am,” she said softly, unsheathing it and touching her finger to the tip.

  “That’s good.” The bitterwine ingredients were hard at work, interacting with her hereditary magic. I picked up a stray bone on the way. “Hurry and grab a handful of dirt,” I said. Well aware that we were in enemy territory, I jogged toward the cabin. The sunset bled molten lava orange as we crossed the threshold.

  The sacred circle awaited us.

  Emmy dropped the dirt at the center without having to ask. It struck me that it might not have been my argument that had brought her here, or even desperation to save her brother. It was her own instincts.

  I placed the bone atop the pile of dirt. “Here, cut off a strip of my dress,” I said. “I have plenty of blood—no need to make a new cut.”

  Emmy helped me remove the sweater and sliced at the fabric, coming away with a jagged strip dyed red with blood. She sucked in a breath at the sight of my wounds. To her credit, she stayed steady even after realizing a fraction of the danger we were up against.

  Lastly, I unrolled the twine from my bag. “Now, all we can do is wait,” I said.

  The sun lapsed, leaving us in a realm of shadow. The old, ominous fears lurked in every corner of my imagination. I thought back to sneaking into Calvary Baptist as a kid, tiptoeing through the infamous sanctuary.

  But I’d chosen to take the dare. I was choosing it again.

  “Natalie!” I jolted at the sound of my name.

  No, Levi couldn’t be here. He had the power to convince Emmy not to do this. I couldn’t let that happen.

  “Emmy!” Levi called out.

  Don’t give in, Emmy, I thought. Please. I need you. I need you or I’ll end up like Nora and all of this will be pointless.

  “What should we do?” Emmy asked. “How did he even know we were here?”

  “We have to get rid of him,” I said, standing. “He’ll be safest at the church. I don’t know why the Wardens haven’t brought him there yet.”

  I walked outside. “What are you doing here?” I demanded as he crashed onto the porch. “You should be at the church.”

 
; “So should you,” he said forcefully. “And she should be nowhere near any of this.” His anger crested and buckled into something softer and more difficult to withstand. “You promised me, Nat.”

  “I didn’t have a choice.” I’d known he would be furious and hurt, but seeing him furious at me, hurt by me, was harder than I’d expected.

  “We can still get to safety in the sanctuary,” he said. “The Wardens want to hide Emmy in the basement.”

  The wisteria hanging over the doorway tickled my ravaged skin, sending a shudder between my shoulders. Bracing myself, I met his eyes. I hated the anger in his voice, the way it made me burn to win his forgiveness.

  “I’m not leaving without either of you,” he said.

  “If it’s either me or you that makes the sacrifice, why does it get to be you?” Emmy demanded, drawing even with me at the threshold. “Because you can’t survive without me? What about me?”

  His forehead creased. “You’re my little sister. I would do anything to protect you.”

  He reached out to her, but she pulled away. “Then protect me from grief,” she said. “Protect me from knowing I could have stopped you from dying and didn’t.”

  Levi had nothing to say to that. He turned back to me. “You’re an incredible fighter, Nat. I’ve seen it.” He took another step toward me. “I have faith that the Wardens can win with you on their side.”

  He wouldn’t rattle me. “We can’t win the way they want to.”

  “So there’s nothing I can say?” His hand twitched, as if he wanted to reach out and touch my face. Tenderness and longing passed over his features. I had to close my eyes for a second to gain my bearings. “I can’t reason with you?” he pressed.

  I opened my eyes. God, he was beautiful. Every angle, every plane, every rust-speckled inch of skin. In the burnished dusk, his eyes were bottomless reservoirs of emotion. I felt thrilled to have ever touched my lips to his, to have ever made him smile, even if those moments now felt lifetimes away.