Witches of The Wood

by Skylar Finn

I always wanted to discover a secret like that. Like a secret door that leads you to a world only you know about? Like an escape. Is that why you can hear me?

  “I guess so,” I said.

  You sound sad.

  “I had a normal life,” I said. “And now I don’t anymore.”

  Why would you want a normal life?

  “Because it’s easier?”

  That doesn’t make it better.

  “No,” I admitted.

  I had a normal life, she said ruefully. And now I don’t have one at all, so it seems like you’re winning.

  “Who are you talking to?”

  I jumped straight in the air. Cameron.

  He cradled an armful of what was presumably spleenwort as he approached me through the trees.

  “No one,” I said guiltily. “Just myself.”

  He shrugged. “You do you, sis. I have the spleenwort.”

  “Let’s get out of here,” I said. “This place is freaking me out.”

  “You and me both,” he said.

  We traipsed through the woods, Martha still gliding along beside us. We had only gone about ten yards when I stopped, reaching out to lay my hand on Cameron’s arm. He stopped. I heard several twigs snap after we were both motionless.

  We were being followed.

  18

  No Rest for the Wicked

  “What is that?” asked Cameron nervously. “Is it a bear?”

  “I’m not sure,” I said. “I think it’s a person.”

  I reached out with my mind and strained to listen in a different way than I would have normally. I listened only with my mind. Whoever it was had become perfectly still and perfectly silent.

  “Let’s walk very fast now,” I suggested. “And if you hear someone running, we’ll split up and take out our Mace. Okay?”

  “Oh, it’s the men of the wood,” moaned Cameron. “The bearded men of the wood! I knew it.”

  I kept my grip on Cameron’s arm, and we walked faster and faster down the path back towards the manor. I could hear the sound of twigs snapping louder and faster. Whoever it was wasn’t very good at tailing people. Assuming it was human.

  The thought made it even worse, and by the time we reached the back garden of the manor, we were running. Martha glided ahead of us, and I didn’t think she could do anything, but the sight of her comforted me and gave me something to run toward.

  Cameron crouched in the garden, bent over with his hands on his knees as he gasped for air.

  “Never…again…” he wheezed. “My Pilates cannot even handle that.”

  I looked behind us at the tree line, for any traces of our pursuer.

  There was no one there.

  The manor was silent and seemed oddly subdued. Les’s Nova was missing from the driveway, suggesting he went back to the city. His uncharged Tesla sat forlornly in front of the garage as if it missed him.

  Bridget had left a swirly note on the fridge’s marker board, explaining she’d gone to the farmer’s market. I knew she was upset about Les because the note contained far fewer stars, hearts, and exclamation points than it would have normally.

  Margo appeared out of nowhere in the kitchen. I jumped and shrieked, placing a hand over my heart. Margo looked at me, nonplussed.

  Way to be subtle, I could just imagine Tamsin chiding me.

  “Calm down, Samantha,” she ordered me. “I told you, I can’t have you going to pieces. I need you to start releasing cryptic hints on my feeds that I’m up to something new. Can you do that?”

  “Of course,” I said, my heart still rapidly pounding. “I’ll just make some coffee.”

  “Delightful idea,” she said. “I’ll have one, too.”

  “I’ll steam the milk,” said Cameron.

  “Did you get what you were looking for?” asked Margo pointedly.

  “More than any one girl should ever need,” he said, patting his coat.

  “Good.” Margo glided out of the kitchen, not unlike Martha Hope, and I watched her. Just strange? Or magically so?

  Martha had disappeared somewhere between the garden and the house, and I wondered where she went when I couldn’t see her. I thought about asking her, but maybe it was better that I didn’t know.

  “It’s much quieter without the others around,” said Cameron. “I like it.”

  “Bridget always was a bit of a fireball,” I said. “Is that the expression?”

  “Firecracker,” he corrected me. “Like the Katy Perry song. Fireball is that horrible cinnamon liquor all the children are drinking these days.”

  “That, too.” I pictured Bridget on a bar at Johnny Brenda’s, drinking straight out of the bottle.

  “How did you get wrapped up with those people, anyway?” Cameron asked me. “They don’t seem like your crowd. You strike me as the academic type, if you don’t mind me saying so.”

  “I don’t mind.” I pulled two shots of espresso and poured them into a tiny ceramic mug. “Just business, I guess. You meet all kinds of people in this line of work.”

  “That’s entertainment for you.” Cameron sipped his 8.88 pH water. “It takes all kinds.”

  “I should go through her social media stuff before this caffeine wears off,” I said.

  “I should bring her a coffee before her Xanax wears off,” he said dryly.

  I went out to the heated porch with my laptop and pulled up Margo’s social media feeds. Coco had gotten all her passwords and accounts from her former social media manager, an assistant who’d recently quit. I hadn’t asked why and was only curious about it now that I thought of it. Margo had a strangely high turnover rate for her employees, losing her producer and two personal assistants all within the span of a month. I assumed she was just difficult, but the thought that she might be practicing black magic seemed to suggest that something had potentially happened to them.

  If anything was going on, I thought, I would almost certainly find it in her social media. It never ceased to amaze me what people didn’t think would create problems for their brand: hate speech on their Twitter feeds, nudes on their Instagram. You’d think the last several years of public executions, slated for people who said the wrong thing on the Internet, would make people a little more cautious. But it didn’t.

  I started with her Facebook, which was clearly curated by a third party, and consisted solely of concert announcements and album updates. Her Twitter feed was equally dry, announcing signings and retweeting only sterile, bland, fashion-related Tweets by other pop stars. She had over five thousand posts to Instagram, so I had my work cut out for me.

  It was pretty typical stuff: photos and videos of Margo in clothes you could never afford, taking trips to places you’d never see. Like many profiles, hers seemed engineered to elicit envy in the eye of the beholder and advertise what a cool life she had. Helicopter rides to music festivals, men on her arm who looked like arms dealers.

  At least, these were her initial posts. I was curious to know what would happen once I reached the end of the Miss Behavior propaganda, which took me literal hours. I knew at some point the rainbow had ended and Margo had disappeared, dropping off the map and everyone’s radar for some inexplicable reason made even more mysterious by the fact that no one had any privacy anymore.

  I went through hundreds of photos backstage at concerts, charting the progress of her friendship with Cameron, which was fascinating. He started out as one of her back-up dancers, and I wondered about Tamsin’s claim that he possibly wasn’t human. Could somebody not entirely human have gone to Julliard and then landed a coveted spot in Margo’s squad?

  At some point, he sustained an injury and started doing Margo’s hair and make-up. I clicked on his profile, where he was known simply as cameronthelovegod, and it was filled with look books and sketches. He’d gotten deep into design.

  At the height of Miss Behavior mania, the arms dealers disappeared. Instead of ominous men in suits and sunglasses, Margo was pictured with a very tan, bleached-teeth magnate, a face I
knew well: Les Rodney.

  Les? Les and Margo? I leaned forward until I was practically inside of my computer. I thought she hated Les Rodney. Then again, I thought the same thing about myself, and look where that led.

  The photos were from four years ago and depicted a younger-looking Les and much-younger-looking Margo drinking copious amounts of Cristal, dancing on yachts, playing blackjack in Vegas, and otherwise engaging in nonstop mayhem.

  It was strange to see this obvious yet secret history laid out so clearly before me. It was completely accessible, but having never followed Margo on Instagram, I didn’t even know it existed. Les had adamantly denied there was anything going on between him and Margo (currently, anyway), but he never acknowledged they once had a thing.

  Judging by the progression of the photos, which spanned two years (a decade in Les Rodney years), it had been more than a thing. And then, just like that, there were no more. There were a few photos of Margo looking artistically sad, then some of her traveling the world, which I guess was what ridiculously wealthy people did when they were troubled. Between then and now, there were no new posts. In spite of her lengthy hiatus, she still had millions of followers.

  Was this Margo’s rumored heartbreak? The one that caused her to cease creating? I wondered if Bridget knew about this. She basically had a PhD in social media, so I was pretty sure she did.

  I closed my computer and considered what I’d just discovered. It would explain why Les had sunk so much of his money into this project—even while he’d lied to me about it, pretending he thought Margo was a joke. I narrowed my eyes, remembering it. He was a master manipulator. He’d say whatever he thought you wanted to hear in order to get what he wanted.

  “Seen anything scandalous?” Cameron struck a pose in the doorway.

  “Cameron,” I said thoughtfully. The topic was unrelated to witchcraft and seemed fairly safe to navigate. “Was Margo involved with Les Rodney?”

  “Are you for real, sis?” He fluttered over to my side like a butterfly, alighting in the chair opposite me. In his hand was clenched a mug of tea, but I knew the real tea Cameron lived for was about to come spilling out of his mouth. “I thought you knew. How did you date Les Rodney, work for Margo Metal, and not live under a rock for the last five years without knowing about that?”

  “I did live under a rock for several years,” I admitted. “I was very goal-oriented.”

  “Well, that would do it, I guess.” He pulled a long, ivory cigarette holder from the pocket of his silk robe. I watched curiously as he pressed a button on it, revealing it was a vape.

  “Margo certainly never talks about it or acknowledges that it happened,” he said, taking a long, elegant drag off his ivory vape. “And Les, well. I think Les is like one of those, what do you call them? Chocoholics?”

  “Someone addicted to candy?” I said, puzzled. Of all the ways I’d heard Les described, this was new.

  “Yes, exactly. Anything with sugar, he just has to have. He’s relentless, like a kid in a candy store. Even the stuff no one in their right mind likes—candy corn, Milk Duds, those Valentine hearts that taste like chalk—Les loves them. But every so often, Les will save up enough money to get himself a gingerbread house. And he wants to live in it forever, but he can’t stop devouring it. Pretty soon, there’s nothing left of the house. He’s eaten it all. And so, he goes back to the candy store to see what he can get.”

  “I assume the candy in this metaphor is women,” I said.

  “I tried to think of something pleasant,” he said. “Something that would make it easier for you to hear. And you’re no gas station Zagnut, girl, so I’m sure Les thought he could take over your house, too. Just like he took over Margo’s. And when he ruined her career, I think it affected him. Les Rodney don’t seem like he has a conscience, honey, but even your dog will get sad if he accidentally bites your arm off and sees how much it hurt you. And his human emotions are a little more complex than a dog’s, I would say.”

  “He ruined her career?” I asked.

  “He devastated her,” Cameron said. “Margo didn’t leave her house for weeks. When she did, it was to leave the country. She couldn’t work. She couldn’t write, she couldn’t sing. She was completely incapacitated. She thought he was the love of her life, and it paralyzed her. I don’t think she ever got over it, to tell you the truth. I don’t know that she ever will. She thought he was it. That man doesn’t even know how to be it for himself. All that craziness he does, throwing himself out of planes and off cliffs—he’s just trying to get away from himself. Probably hopes that he’ll die one of these days, so he doesn’t have to live with himself and his actions anymore.”

  “You really think Les is that complex?” I asked skeptically.

  “Well, no,” Cameron admitted. “But I think when someone is that messed up and then exhibits something resembling a soul, you tend to give them a bit more credit than they actually deserve.”

  “So why is Margo working with him now?” I asked. “If he ruined her life and everything?”

  He raised an eyebrow at me. “Why are you?”

  I blushed. I was embarrassed and felt like a hypocrite. Cameron shook his head, as if reading my mind.

  “Don’t beat yourself up about it. Don’t you dare,” he said. “That man is like a black hole. Your little spaceship gets anywhere near him, and you’re a done deal. He’s got reach and influence. He’s got money. He seems handsome and charismatic, like someone you’d want to be around. Not much hope for us Davids when a Goliath like Les Rodney comes around.”

  I began to see the situation from a distance, as if hovering over it from above: Les Rodney breaks Margo’s heart, then dates three other girls in rapid succession at the same time. Les Rodney sinks a bunch of money into backing Margo’s new album, in order to make amends to her. Les Rodney sucks me into his new venture when he shows up at my door on my birthday. I felt like I was a rat in a maze: a maze built by Les Rodney.

  “Why did they break up?” I asked.

  “I heard he met some girl-next-door type, got stars in his eyes,” he said. “One of those ordinary girls that the mightiest of men jump out of windows over.”

  I looked at him, shocked. Was he talking about me? Cameron refused to meet my eyes, gazing into his tea.

  “The things we do for love,” he said, shaking his head. “If it didn’t make the world go round, we’d all die of it. Love is a disease, honey. No rest for the wicked, and no cure but common sense.”

  19

  The Briar Rose

  I was lying in the bathtub filled with steaming hot water, steeping like a human tea bag. I tried to think of one thing that had gone purely right since I got here, but pretty much everything was fraught with unwanted complications.

  A light tap tap tap on the door got my attention and I removed the washcloth from over my face. It sounded like a little mouse was scratching at door.

  “Yes?” I said.

  “Samantha?” Bridget’s voice was a high-pitched whine, like a sad collie that had been left at home all day. “Can I come in?”

  “Um…yes? I guess.” I wasn’t super jonesed at the idea of sharing my day’s sole respite with someone whose relationship to me was best described as your ex-boyfriend’s other secret girlfriend #2, but she sounded frazzled and I felt sorry for her.

  She slunk into the bathroom, her head down. Her luxe platinum hair with its single defiant blue streak hung limply. She wore no make-up on her normally apricot-and-orchard-peach highlighted face. It was sad, like seeing a Barbie without legs.

  “I bought you a chocolate cherry sea salt bath bomb from the farmer’s market.” She set it carefully on the edge of the tub, then sat on the closed toilet. “It made me think of you.”

  “Thanks.” I eyed it curiously. I’d never actually used a bath bomb before. “What, do I just like, drop it in?”

  She laughed. It was a half-hearted laugh, less mirthful than her usual peal-of-bells chortle, but still amused. “What e
lse would you do with it, silly?”

  “I kind of want to eat it.” I studied it briefly before dropping it into the water. It fizzed menacingly before releasing a smell like birthday cake candles.

  “I think it’s toxic.” She propped a chin on her fist. “Do you love Les?”

  I considered this. “Have you ever taken a lot of satisfaction in something disgusting, like snaking your shower drain?”

  “No.” She looked simultaneously grossed-out and fascinated. “How would you even do that?”

  “What about cleaning your hairbrush? Or the lint trap in your dryer?”

  “Oh, when it all comes off in a fluffy gray ball, and you try to get it all in one scrape?”

  “Exactly.”

  “Oh, yes,” she said, nodding. “I love that.”

  “That’s what Les is like to me.” I sank into the water, steam rising from the surface, and closed my eyes. “Scraping lint out of the trap in one giant gray, fluffy ball…of something totally insubstantial that nevertheless still has the power to set your dryer on fire and burn down your entire house.”

  “I get what you mean.” She gazed contemplatively out the frosted glass window. “I think it was just, like, flattering? That this much older man thought I was so cute and fun and stuff. But I think I just made him feel younger. You know?”

  “Aging is anathema to men like Les,” I said, my eyes closed.

  “Is that like Botox?” asked Bridget.

  “Anathema? No, it just means like…horrible for him. He can’t stand the idea of decay, because he needs to pretend he can live forever and never age.”

  “You always were the smartest one of us, Sammy,” she said, shaking her head. “I always thought you were too smart to let yourself get attached to Les.”

  “I wasn’t.” I opened my eyes and turned the hot water knob on with my foot. I watched the water as it rushed into the tub. “But it’s nice of you to think so.”

  “I’ve been spending a lot of time with Margo,” said Bridget. “She’s really helping me out.”