Witches of The Wood

by Skylar Finn

  “Sure, Peter,” I said. “I mean, who moves hours away for someone they just met?”

  “I’m not,” he said. “It’s something that I need to do, that I’ve needed to do for a while now—”

  I studied my nails, feigning indifference. “I don’t care why you’re doing it, Peter. I’m pretty hung up on somebody and it’s a moot point.”

  “You can’t be serious,” he protested. “Les? The man is an idiot. He’s a black hole of despair—”

  “It’s this really annoying, know-it-all journalist with a chip on his shoulder,” I continued. “He thinks he’s devastatingly good-looking, and is just frankly all-around intolerable.”

  Tamsin glanced back and forth between us, exasperated.

  “Can you guys just like, pretend to be openly in love?” she asked.

  Someone crashed through the back door. I screamed and knocked over my glass of wine. I looked over, scared, expecting to see Gwyneth or one of her followers.

  It was Bridget.

  “Ooooh, did you find more wine?” she squealed.

  It was just after midnight. The former followers of Margo Metal were passed out all over the manor: Ferrari and Tapia on the heated porch, drunk off entirely too much pinot noir. Kimmy, Bridget, and Paulina had taken over Margo’s bed, passing out after trying on all of her shoes. Peter was asleep in my bed and Tamsin was stretched out on the floor next to the radiator. I sat in the window seat overlooking the yard, which was decimated with empty beer bottles and crooked torches. The moon had returned.

  For the first time, I didn’t feel confused or conflicted about what I had learned since I came here. If anything, I felt like I had found something that I’d lost. What had Tamsin said in the apothecary? I felt complete. I felt like a whole.

  One thing was still bothering me: if I hadn’t seen Peter in the woods, who had it been?

  45

  Incarnate

  I decided to make tea. Maybe while I was up, I could talk to the ghosts. I wanted to know what would happen to Martha and Colin. Gwyneth hadn’t exactly been brought to justice, though she’d definitely been dealt with. But where did that leave them?

  I crept down the stairs, careful not to wake any of the manor’s slumbering inhabitants. There was a light on in the kitchen, which was weird because I thought Peter had shut it off.

  It was then that I saw his glimmering gold hair, his wooden crown. Cameron. I’d forgotten all about him, in the chaos of the night. I didn’t remember seeing him after we’d left the manor. Where had he been all this time?

  At the same time, I felt a sliver of fear. Had he really been Margo’s familiar? Or Gwyneth’s? Was he working for her? Could he bring her back somehow? Did he mean me any harm?

  Cameron looked up and over at me in the doorway, as if he could hear me thinking. He smiled benevolently. I forgot all my fears. What was I thinking? This was Cameron. Cameron, who’d lent me the dress I met Peter in. Cameron, who I’d known from the beginning. I thought of what Tamsin said about him not being human. She could have been wrong.

  “Hello,” he said. “Will you sit?”

  “Where have you been?” I said, sliding into the seat across from him. “I haven’t seen you all night. Do you know what’s really going on here? Because Margo wasn’t who you thought.”

  He studied me, his pale eyes somber in the early morning light that poured through the kitchen window. It was that odd time of day when it’s no longer night and not quite morning, dark blue sky shifting slowly to gray.

  “No,” he agreed. “She was not.”

  “Tamsin thinks you’re not human,” I said abruptly. I didn’t know why I was blurting it out like this. It seemed reckless, yet I seemed unable to stop myself. “That you’re some kind of, I don’t know. Changeling, or something.” I laughed, as if to demonstrate how ridiculous I found this.

  Cameron removed his crown, setting it gently on the table. “And what do you think?”

  I stared at him. “You’re not, right? I mean, not everybody’s caught up in this just because they were here. You’re just Cameron.”

  “It was I that you saw in the woods,” he said. “Hidden in the bushes, watching.” He sounded odd, like Cameron and yet not Cameron at the same time.

  “What were you doing?” I asked.

  “It was I who discovered Margo, not the other way around,” he said. “She came to me, sad and broken. I was moved by her, as I often am: by a particular human being with great art in their souls, locked away and bastardized by some sequence of events or another. I thought perhaps, as I often think, that if I gave her a chance, I could unleash it. That perhaps she could change the course of things to be less dire, less insipid and ridiculous; then influence others to do the same.” He sighed. “It appears that I was wrong.”

  “Wait, what?” I was utterly confused. “What about Gwyneth? Gwyneth possessed Margo. Gwyneth influenced her.”

  “And it was I who first gave Gwyneth the magic to do so,” he said gently. “But I was, unfortunately, mistaken about her as well.”

  I glanced down at the table. It was then that I noticed that Cameron’s crown was in the shape of antlers.

  “I often am,” he said. “And yet I try. I’d so hoped that I’d finally found one who might change the course of things. So I gave her my book. As I always do, when such a thing occurs.”

  He reached inside his robe. He withdrew his hand and placed a small black book on the table between us. The book I’d searched for in the shelf on the study. He waved his hand over it. A title appeared on the cover, embossed in gold letters: INCARNATE.

  “It says something different to everyone,” he said. “I want you to read it, Samantha. For them, it led to a dark place. But you? You are filled with light. I was in the dark so long. You make me feel like I am in the light again.”

  His eyes were orange now, shifting to gold. I understood as I looked into them, helpless, that he was very much not human.

  His eyes fell shut. He exhaled. A long arc of gold dust hung suspended in the kitchen. As I watched, the dust reformed. It had impossibly long legs, ending in something with the body of a deer, a face I couldn’t see, and antlers that towered to the ceiling. It made its loping way through the kitchen and out the kitchen door to the darkness beyond. As it passed through the ring of torchlight, it gradually disappeared and flickered out of sight. I stared after it in shock. Giving myself a shake, I turned back to where Cameron sat, swaying, his eyes closed.

  “Cameron?” I said uncertainly.

  He opened his eyes and smiled at me sleepily. “Well, hello,” he said, sounding not entirely unlike the deer. “Where did you come from?” He glanced around the kitchen. “Dear me, I must have fallen asleep sitting upright at the table again. I do seem to be doing quite a bit of that recently. I should probably stop drinking.” He laughed merrily, picking up one of the many bottles of wine scattered around the room. “Like that will ever happen.”

  He held the bottle of wine aloft in my direction. “Good night, good night! A thousand times, good night.” He lurched drunkenly from the room, swaying from side to side.

  I stared after him, dumbfounded.

  I slowly climbed the stairs, my mind full of my conversation with Cameron. Or Not Cameron, as it were. Had it really been who—or what—I thought it was? I’d shoved the book in a velveteen drawstring bag meant for a ludicrously over-priced bottle of wine that I’d found on the counter. I planned to hide it when I got upstairs. I knew how dangerous it was.

  I wasn’t paying attention to where I was going and I was so in my head that I didn’t see Colin and Martha until they were practically on top of me. I screamed. They regarded me with startled expressions. I was loud enough to wake the dead, just not anyone presently passed out in the manor.

  “Didn’t mean to catch you off guard,” said Colin. “It seems we can finally leave, though.”

  “Since Gwyneth went away,” added Martha. “Wherever it was she went.”

  “Where will
you go?” I asked, feeling sad. I might have uncovered what happened to them, but it didn’t do them or their families any good. It seemed especially tragic at their ages, with all their potential and full lives ahead of them, that they could no longer pursue their original dreams.

  “I’m going to a Brony convention,” said Colin brightly.

  Or maybe they could.

  “I’m going to the witches of Main Street,” said Martha with a smile.

  “My family?” I asked, confused. “They can see you?”

  “Your mother can,” she said. “And your grandmother. I went in to talk to them after you and Tamsin left. I said I didn’t know what to do. It seems like I should go somewhere, but I don’t know where. They said they didn’t fully understand it themselves, but that they would help me to figure it out.” I was moved by their vow to help Martha move on.

  “I’m glad, Martha,” I said. “I’m sorry I couldn’t help you more.”

  “You’ve helped me more than enough,” she said.

  “Agreed,” said Colin.

  “Have fun at your convention,” I said to him.

  “Oh, will I ever.” He chuckled.

  They linked arms and glided down the stairwell, disappearing through the front door without opening it.

  The next morning, everyone woke up with wicked hangovers, utterly disoriented. I couldn’t wrap my head around the fact that no one considered the events of the previous evening could have been anything more but special effects, but the individuals in question were not known for their introspection. No one even seemed very concerned about what happened to Margo, who was still at the apothecary with Minerva.

  Over breakfast, Tamsin explained to me in fuller detail about why she had led Peter away from the truth of what happened.

  “Look Sam,” she said once we’d poured our coffee, as the rest of the house still slumbered. “I know you want to be honest with Peter. I know that’s how you are in your relationships. But you need to understand, this isn’t a relationship-thing. This is an age-old secret thing. It involves protecting not only our family, but our family’s history. If you wanna marry Peter someday and revisit the issue, fine. But I’ve known Peter all my life and I have exactly zero qualms about keeping our powers a secret from him.”

  I said that I was willing to go along with it. But the truth was, however much the events in Mount Hazel had altered me, I didn’t need a lifetime of experience to assure my decision. Keeping this one secret from Peter seemed important for reasons besides just protecting ourselves from the outside world.

  Truthfully, I was deeply reticent about the notion of telling a man I had recently started dating that I was a witch. As an early relationship revelation, it seemed on par with revealing that I was married, under house arrest, believed I could talk to animals, or a smoker. In other words: somewhat of a deal breaker.

  I was startled that Peter had caved so willingly to Tamsin’s vague insistences she was merely exercising teenaged hijinks, and said so.

  “We’ve been doing this for a long time,” said Tamsin. “We know how to keep our secrets by now.”

  “Either that, or he’s just pretending to believe you in order to keep investigating what really happened,” I said, sipping my coffee.

  Tamsin regarded me, startled, over her coffee mug. At that moment, however, Peter entered the kitchen and our conversation ceased.

  I didn’t tell Tamsin about my conversation with Cameron in the kitchen the previous evening or the book he’d given me. I had no intention of reading it. I buried it at the bottom of my suitcase, which would I would inevitably store on a shelf once I got home, procrastinating unpacking for the next six months until I wondered where my galoshes were.

  Then there was the matter of Margo. According to Minerva, she’d mostly recovered and was now in the state of someone getting over a bad flu. She had severe memory loss of the last month, during the times Gwyneth had possessed her—which was most of the time. Aside from that, the coven said she seemed profoundly depressed and largely silent on the matter of what she’d experienced. The coven told her she’d undergone an exorcism after dark spirits of the house got the better of her and she’d apparently accepted this with little argument. I was to pick her up from the apothecary on my way out of town.

  No one saw any point of remaining at the house after Margo disappeared. The pop stars chalked it up to her fraudulence. Bridget, Kimmy, and Paulina had largely determined that Les had manipulated them into doing his bidding, as usual, and that Margo was unlikely to come through in any significant fashion in their aspiring careers. Everyone planned to pack up and leave.

  “So you’re going back to the city today,” said Tamsin, watching me pack. I said good-bye to Peter after we finished our coffee. Something in me held back when I did. I wanted to believe he’d honor his word and end up in the city, but my experiences had made me a cynic the likes of which one week couldn’t cure. I would believe it when I saw it. And if I didn’t, my life would go on.

  “Yup,” I said. I tried to think of something else to say, but it was difficult to distill the overwhelming emotions the past week had produced in me. “This has been a lot to process. I think I need to do that at home. I’m glad you’re okay, though. You better call me every night.”

  “Yeah, I think I prefer that to direct mind-to-mind communication,” she said. “It gives me a headache.” She watched me in silence for a while. “You sure you’re not just going to go back and forget all about us?”

  I looked up from my suitcase, surprised. “How can you even say that?”

  “It’s a lot to take in,” she said sagely. “Any reasonable person would run out of town screaming.”

  “Nah,” I said, scrunching a final ball of socks into the corner. “I think I’m over being a reasonable person for a little while.”

  “Are you going to call Peter?” she asked, raising her eyebrows at me.

  “Maybe.” I avoided her gaze as I zipped my suitcase shut.

  “Sam!” She sounded exasperated.

  “What?” I hefted my suitcase off the bed. Oof. Maybe I did bring more shoes than I needed.

  “You know you like each other,” she said in complete and total annoyance. “I don’t get why it’s so hard to admit. He’s not a jerk like Les. He’s not going to like, damage you.”

  “I appreciate it, Tamsin, I do. But that’s something I need to work out on my own.”

  She sighed. “Okay, okay. Fine. But eventually, you’re gonna look up, and you’re gonna realize Peter’s a good guy.”

  “Who’s a good guy?” Bridget peeped her head through the door I’d left ajar. “That hottie from the holler you’ve been slipping around with?”

  “Hey, Bridge,” I said. “What are you up to?”

  “Taking Kimmy back to the B and B to get all her stuff—everybody else cleared out when they heard Margo and Les took off, meaning the job’s over. I’m already packed.”

  “What about Ferrari and Tapia? And Paulina?”

  “Paulina and Kimmy cannot even be in the same car right now without pulling each other’s hair,” said Bridget with a roll of her eyes. “It’s so immature. Three weeks of the month, they’re fine, but the fourth week—forget it. And I’m like, well, I guess it’s that week. Paulina’s going back to the city with Ferrari and Tapia; they’re going to New York to watch some runway show this weekend, which just made Kimmy even more pissed off.”

  “Is everyone okay?” I asked, concerned.

  Bridget shrugged. “I mean yeah, why wouldn’t they be? Of course, everyone’s pissed to be out of a job, but I guess that’s entertainment for you, right?”

  “I guess so,” I said.

  “See you in the city,” she said brightly. She turned to Tamsin. A blank look stole across her face, followed by a look of mingled alarm and confusion. She’d clearly forgotten her name. “You, too!” she finally said in the same chipper tone, waving. She closed the door.

  “Are they all huffing bathroom cleaner,
or what?” asked Tamsin, looking amused.

  I shook my head. “They don’t need to.”

  “We should get to the apothecary,” said Tamsin. “My mom is still freaking out that I was kidnapped and nearly possessed by evil witches. She’s obviously trying to hide it, but I’m pretty sure she’s still anxious not having me in her immediate eyeline.”

  “Sure thing,” I said. “Let’s go.”

  I pulled out the handle of my suitcase and wheeled it out of the room, Tamsin following close behind. I didn’t look back when I went. I wasn’t sorry to leave the manor and I wouldn’t miss it when I went.

  We were on the landing when I heard it: an agonized and prolonged groan. I froze. “Do you hear that?” I hissed at Tamsin. I turned to see she looked just as spooked as I felt.

  “What is it?” she whispered.

  “I don’t know,” I whispered back. “I think it’s coming from the closet.”

  There was a linen closet filled with sheets and towels between the bathroom and Margo’s bedroom. It sounded like there was something inside of it, groaning softly.

  I approached the door. Just as I reached it, Tamsin gave a sharp tug on my coat. “Should we open it?” she asked.

  I remembered the banks of the river and our combined powers.

  “I think we can handle it,” I said, throwing open the closet door.

  The hallway light revealed the form of a man, naked and curled in a ball, groaning. Tamsin jumped back with a shriek. I leaned forward cautiously. There was something about this particular naked man that I found oddly familiar.

  “Les?” I said.

  46

  Revelations and Resolutions

  Les had been reduced to a primitive, pre-verbal state by the previous evening’s events. I placed my hand lightly on his shoulder as I said his name. He looked up and screamed.

  I jumped back next to Tamsin, then took a hesitant step forward. “Les? It’s me, Sam. Are you okay?”