by Ruby Loren
Almost the only one.
“Urgh, who here smells like wet dog?” Hemlock complained, peering over the top of a kitchen cabinet. “Never mind,” he said to himself and shrank back out of view.
I glared at the space where he’d been. He really was the world’s worst familiar. I’d have to get him a mug with it emblazoned on the side… if I got through the next five minutes.
“It’s her,” I heard the others whisper. Chairs ground against the floor as the coven instinctively huddled together away from the imposing woman who stood in the doorway. She’d dispensed with the power-suit and was now wearing a far more relaxed leather jumpsuit that made her look like a fictional assassin… a really dangerous, really cool one. Now I knew what ‘dress down Friday’ looked like for devils.
I stood up from my chair and waited for her to approach. Inside, I silently tugged on the new bond I’d forged earlier today. I hadn’t realised I’d be putting it to the test so soon.
“What have you done with my hellhound?” Chloe barked at me. Next to her, the three black beasts growled at the anger in her voice, their eyes glowing bright. I suddenly understood that they were bonded, the same way I now was to my hound.
“He’s fine,” I told her, which was the truth. Then I watched her face as she tried not to show any signs of confusion, but failed.
“Liar. I don’t know how, but he’s gone. If what I’ve been hearing about you is true…” She looked at me in disgust. “…Wherever you’ve sent him, he’ll find his way back. But for you… there’s hell to pay.”
Chloe raised her gaze and took in the cramped coven behind me. “I’d say let this be a lesson to you… this is what happens to dealbreakers and those who interfere… but the Witch Council want you all dead. Ironically, they want Hazel alive. It seems like she’s worth something to them. But I’m sure they’ll forgive me for being a little too thorough. Two birds, one stone. Or in this case… three hellhounds.” Her lips curved up into a devil’s smile and the hounds prowled forwards.
The glass patio door that led out of the kitchen and into the garden shattered, showering the coven and most of the kitchen in glass. Some of them screamed as the storm came raging in. What they couldn’t see was that something else had entered the fight.
The smile had gone from Chloe’s face. “Erebus. What have you done to MY hellhound?” Her voice rose up with fury as she looked upon the hound which had once been hers and was now - I was sure - very definitely mine.
“I guess he liked me better,” I told her with a smile of my own. Inside, I was peeved he’d chosen to make a dramatic entrance, rather than sliding into the room through something solid. I had another drama queen on my hands.
In front of her, the dogs hesitated in their attack motions. Erebus looked around at them and growled, shaking more glass off his glossy black coat onto the floor.
“A fresh breeze! Maybe it will blow the stench away,” Hemlock muttered from somewhere on the kitchen cabinets. “Urgh, there are even more of them now. I can leave you to handle this, can’t I, Hazel? I’ll be catching up on my beauty sleep…” He jumped down and trotted across the kitchen and up the stairs beyond.
I was definitely getting him that mug. Or maybe a t-shirt, I thought to myself as I waited to see what the devil and her dogs would do next.
The answer was apparently, nothing. We appeared to have a standoff.
“Something tells me that my hound is the alpha,” I said, reading it from her expression.
Chloe did some growling of her own in response, before finally, she spat out: “What are you?”
I smiled back at her, borrowing a devil’s trick. “I’m your worst nightmare,” I told her, before willing Erebus forwards. As I’d guessed, her hounds shrank back, unwilling to challenge their larger and tougher leader.
Chloe looked at them in disgust and then back at me. “This is not over,” she said, borrowing from the ‘Things Villains Say’ handbook.
“It might be if you tear up the deals you made with my coven. And leave town,” I tacked on.
She opened her mouth to make some kind of snappy retort, but she was shaken, and it showed. “I’m staying right here. But I’m cancelling the deals. I don’t deal with cheaters,” she said, reaching into a concealed pocket in her leather jumpsuit (it had to be magic - the thing was skintight!) and pulling out several official looking papers. She tossed them high in the air. As I watched them start to flutter back down, they ignited, smouldering to ash before they ever touched the ground.
When I looked back at Chloe, she’d gone, and so had her hounds.
I looked down at Erebus who lifted his shaggy head and whined at me for approval. I reached out and patted the damp over-large dog with the glowing red eyes. “Good boy. We need to have a conversation about how doors work,” I muttered, thinking about the new sliding door I’d have to order. All things considered, the demise of a glass door was a decent price to pay for having half of the coven’s deals written off.
When I turned around to face the witches, something had changed.
They all had the same look on their face.
At first, I thought they were all still in shock from everything that happened, but then I saw it for what it was… respect.
“What are you?” Ally asked, with awe in her voice - a very different echo of Chloe’s words.
“I’m still working that out,” I told them honestly, “but what I do know is that it doesn’t matter. I am your high priestess for as long as you want me to be. I will stand with you in the tough times I think we can all sense are coming… and I will fight with you.”
“Hear, hear!” Heather said. There was a glimmer of something in her eye.
“No more stabbing each other in the back. Alone, we will die. Together, we will survive,” I said, repeating words I’d read in the witch history books whilst searching for answers. It was the core principle of a coven - safety in numbers.
“Alone we will die, together we will survive!” the ten other witches repeated. I looked around and no one avoided my gaze. For the first time ever, we were a proper coven. I no longer felt the divide that had always been present. I knew that the witches weren’t suddenly all getting along because I’d seen off the devil and her dogs. The terror of the moment had impressed upon them just how serious all of this was… and just how dead we could all end up. Friendship was something that would always be hard to come by in a coven like ours, but in war, we were united.
Epilogue
Doom and gloom seemed to hang over Wormwood like a cloud three weeks after the night of the hellhound showdown. I’d gone to see Jesse the next day to persuade him to tear up the contracts he had with the coven witches, but when I’d visited the grim little shop, I’d found the door boarded up and a piece of paper pinned to the door had informed me that the owner was taking a break from his business. No more information than that had been given. I hadn’t seen hide nor hair of Jesse Heathen since then, and the shop remained dark and empty every time I looked down that street. I knew Jesse was a troublemaker, but it bothered me that he was missing. The way we’d spoken about what was happening to Wormwood and his suspicions about the mayor, I’d never expected him to leave town without a fight… which was why it was so strange that he’d vanished.
Even more annoyingly, it meant I was unable to fulfil my promise that all deals would be undone. But I could tell Rebecca was grateful for being able to eat calorie free cake… and the rest of us slightly jealous.
Okay - very jealous.
Aside from that, all things coven related were going well. There’d been no further sign of the Council’s hand in anything since Chloe had turned up at the shop with her hounds and, even better, Chloe seemed to have disappeared around the same time Jesse had.
Considering that, I was surprised that the mayor was so chipper about everything. Perhaps he had reason to be. Change was certainly afoot in Wormwood. Even though there was that same growing oppressive feeling hanging overhead, of a storm on its
way, the town was dressing in its party colours. I’d been stunned when Jane’s hastily shut down bookshop had been transformed into a spooky sweet shop complete with a smiling blonde woman named Lana, who seemed simply too sweet to be true. I guessed it went with the job.
The weirdest thing of all was that beneath the flurry of action and the addition of a shiny new veneer to tired old Wormwood, it actually seemed to be working. The tourists who’d once visited to get their fix of all things weird were slowly venturing back, apparently having short memories once there were special offers and events being pushed in the local interest magazine. The murder town was gone and the weird, but weirdly intriguing tourist attraction was back.
I probably should have been grateful. My shop was busier than it had ever been and my teas were selling so well, I was starting to remove some of the never-selling crystals in favour of more tea display space. Tristan kept ordering for The Bread Cauldron Bakery’s cafe, and customers kept buying.
I’d seen less of Tristan since we’d broken up our fake relationship. After everything Jesse had hinted, and everything I’d thought I’d observed, I’d imagined that Tristan and Melissa would be a thing and she might end up sticking around town for a while. Instead, she’d left a couple of days after Daryl had been arrested, charged with murder, and everything had been tied up now that the evidence was, well… evident. Jesse must have been teasing me after all about the feverfew love spell. It just went to show you needed to know which friends you could trust and which you couldn’t. And which ‘friends’ weren’t your friend at all.
Daryl Hex was going to prison for a long time for what he’d done to both his partner and Sarah May. Detective Admiral had confided that the police had cut a deal with Daryl for his sentence to be reduced if he would tell them where he’d hidden Sarah’s body. His lawyer had warned him that the finding of a second body could harm his defence, but the detective had told me that Daryl had appeared to be overcome with remorse for what he’d done - almost as if he couldn’t believe he’d been capable of it.
He’d told the police the location and, according to Sean, she’d been buried beneath the corpse of what everyone had assumed was a pet’s grave. It was apparently a poor dead critter that Daryl had been charged with cleaning up in his work as an odd job man. Sean had further mentioned how furious the dog handlers were, as it was a fairly well known ruse. Only the dogs’ general excitement and strange behaviour in the woods had led them to dismiss it as a false signalling and not dig any deeper.
Even without Sarah’s corpse, the evidence had already been overwhelming against Daryl. The bloodstained overalls matching the blood at Sarah’s house had been found screwed up in a plastic bin bag in the unit Jane had told us that he used to store some of his work materials. Rat poison had also been recovered - which was what he’d laced the tea I’d made for Helen with.
I was glad he hadn’t kept quiet about where he’d put Sarah. Everyone deserved to be laid to rest properly, not be forgotten out in the woods - the victim of one last cruel act of a killer who doesn’t want to answer for his crimes.
When it came to me solving my own mysteries, things were going less well. Even though I was now pretty certain, and pretty concerned, that I was barking up the right tree by trying to figure out why I had so much in common with the local devils, I couldn’t answer why. Chloe had said that some devils were born and I was definitely toying with the idea of my father being one of them. But I’d researched into that phenomena, which wasn’t as uncommon as you might think, and witch/devil spawn usually turned out to be gifted one way or the other, sometimes both - which Jesse had become when he’d been made a devil whilst having the talents of a magician. The knowledge that devils could have magic was alarming, but nowhere did it mention anything about that magic opening up gateways to alternate dimensions.
Speaking of barking, Erebus had settled in nicely as my invisible guard dog. Whilst it was still quite terrifying to wake up in the middle of the night and see him standing at the end of the bed staring at me, he was turning out to be a big softy - much like Hecate.
Hemlock was less impressed that I’d brought a dog into the house. I’d caught him trying to curse Erebus with long eyelashes to get him back for eating Hemlock’s food one morning. In time, I hoped that my familiar would learn to get along with the new guy.
Hedge had disappeared around the same time Jesse had (I was more worried about the little cat than Jesse) and I’d been left alone with no sensible, silent company to talk to. Erebus may be big and scary, but he was a good listener. Hemlock would just have to suck it up and make friends.
I didn’t want to push him too hard. Knowing my familiar, once he’d gotten over his initial aversion, he’d probably use Erebus to lord it over the other black cats in town, riding around on the back of his hellhound like a knight going into battle. I didn’t want to think too much about that… and I definitely wasn’t going to be the one to give him the idea.
With the Council keeping quiet, I’d even risked a trip over to Witchwood to seek out January. She’d been surprisingly happy to see me when I’d tracked her down to the new bakery she’d opened, expanding what was apparently becoming a chain of Black Cat Bakeries. (Tristan would have to watch his back!) I’d explained the little I knew about my powers, trusting her to not smite me with the power she was rumoured to possess, after I’d revealed myself to be some kind of abomination. When I’d finished, she’d just looked thoughtful.
My amber eyes apparently reminded her of someone she’d once known, but she had been someone like her… and she could see that we were not the same, so it was probably a fluke. Not all amber eyes meant you were gifted - or cursed - with devilish powers.
In the end the only thing January had been able to say to me was that it was curious, wasn’t it, that there were so many remarkable people in one small area of the country? I’d replied by saying something stupid, like that it must be in the water. We both knew that it was written into the fabric of reality itself - like the history of our towns and the heritage it had brought to us. We were both part of a bigger story, and I sensed we both also felt the uncomfortable sensation that we were unable to resist our destinies.
I shook my hair back from my shoulders where it fell in loose brown curls. I’d made my morning deliveries in the May sunshine, and I thought that I might even be developing a tan this year - which was a miracle for someone who considered themselves a writer.
My hands went to the pile of Tales from Wormwood I kept on the counter for any of the non-resident tourists who had been popping into the shop lately. I’d discovered that outsiders thought it was quirky, and stranger still - enticingly morbid - that the front page of the magazine was dedicated to the recent double murder. The only thing I’d been able to figure out was that tourists didn’t mind murder… just so long as it had been wrapped up neatly with a bow and the perpetrator behind bars. An unsolved case was a good reason to stay away. I said a silent prayer of thanks every day that passed without another fatal incident in Wormwood.
When I’d returned from my deliveries, I’d found Sean Admiral waiting in the shop and realised I’d left the door unlocked. Things like locked doors had become less of a problem now I had Erebus around to watch things for me, but I’d been a little alarmed to find him inside (unknowingly) with the hellhound. I’d calmed down when I’d observed that the detective was in one piece… and had seen Erebus snoozing on his bed behind the counter. Perhaps he wasn’t such a great guard dog after all when he was asleep… but I had a feeling he somehow knew that Sean was a friend. After all - Erebus wasn’t your average dog.
I’d taken full advantage of the situation and mercilessly joked about Sean ‘breaking and entering’.
For once, we hadn’t talked about murder. He’d wanted to check in on how I thought everything in town was going, but instead we’d chatted about his other cases and whether or not I would still be interested in looking at anything he thought was weird. Wormwood and Witchwood weren’t
the only towns in the local area with witches and other weirdness.
The chat over tea had made me realise how long it had been since I’d seen Sean in Wormwood. During the investigation into the disappearances, he’d been around almost daily, asking questions and searching for answers. I knew it was for the best that he was able to focus on his stomping ground of Witchwood - which had plenty of problems of its own - but I’d discovered I missed him.
Sean had bought some tea and made noises about coming back for more because he liked it. I still wasn’t sure if he was really much of a tea drinker - the way he looked when he was stressed and tired made me think coffee was his poison - but it was nice of him to say it. And it was nicer still to see someone I trusted and could talk to. Sean knew my aunts had left, although I had spared him the details in order to avoid dragging him into a whole new level of craziness… plus there was the awkward fact that I’d probably killed someone by sending them to another dimension.
I opened a drawer behind the counter and took out the letter I’d been glad I’d placed there before going on my delivery round. Sean would have had a lot of questions if he’d happened upon it during his time unattended in the shop.
My aunts had sent me a poison pen letter.
My best guess was that when they’d left and the case had still been unsolved, they’d imagined that sending a letter like that would go unnoticed.
Even though regular letters weren’t exactly noteworthy.
Scratch that - my best guess was that Aunt Linda had thought it was amusing and Aunt Minerva hadn’t managed to stop her. I was willing to bet that even now an argument was raging over it. I discovered I was smiling at the thought of my aunts bickering. I’d been unsure of who they were and their motives for moving in with me when they’d first come to town, but we’d grown to become true family and made up for all of those years lost.