by Kayti McGee
Tears were streaming from my eyes with no bidding from me. Sure, I hardly knew him. And yeah, he was obviously more than a little crazy. But he’d been kind to me, and even if he hadn’t, no one deserved this. Except whoever had done it. That one deserved it all.
And then she stepped in front of me.
I was disgusted to feel relieved it wasn’t Thorn. Because of course he wouldn’t have done that to an innocent dog. He wouldn’t have done this at all. Although the chill that ran through me at the sight of the man who had was the same chill that had run through who-knew-how-many that had seen Thorn.
But they were not me, and they were not my uncle, and they mattered not at all. The only thing that mattered was happening before me, in this reality, in this living nightmare.
“Just in time,” the new woman confirmed, his brown eyes flashing red as she raised an arm and closed her fist. With that small move, seemingly meaningless on any human, my uncle’s breath stopped and he fell heavily to the floor of the cabin.
I screamed.
For once, I didn’t have to chant to bring on the trance.
A vision of this witch dead in front of me swam up fast, and I welcomed it. She had long, dirty hair hanging unkempt around her face in contrast to Thorn’s neat dark ponytail. The messiness suited her to death. Her pale eyes would cloud over so easily. Her skin was already the shade she’d be on a morgue slab.
My mind thought it. My heart reveled in it. I felt a warm pulse of happiness to answer Rune inside my chest at the thought of this wolf’s death. I smiled at my uncle’s murderer, with the joy of a child.
“Just in time,” I agreed.
And I reached out my arm, closed my fist, and stopped her heart.
As she collapsed to the floor, so did I.
But not in shock. Not in remorse. I was so, so disappointed that my brand-new magic had killed her too fast for suffering. It was the last thought I had, as I crawled to Rune, and curled my body around him. After that, my mind went as dark as Juniper Hollow.
Thirteen
Thorn
The night folded like great wings around Juniper Hollow and it was so thick and complete that I could have reached out and touched it. Nobody stirred in the town. Too late, too cold, too dark. I stopped on Main Street and let my car idle.
Three paths branched before me: To Rune, to Marion, and to the tomblike emptiness of my home. Because I was naïve, each path seemed open. I did not know how late the hour was for Rune, how cold Marion’s heart had become, and how dark the night.
I wasted time staring through the windshield, contemplating my options. If I went to Rune and harmed him, Rose would come running and I would be expected to murder her. If I spared them, Marion would surely find out and my family would turn against me.
I could plead my case to the Maven, I could explain that Rose was untaught and harmless, but doing so might expose my sympathies for the girl. That would only cast me into suspicion and further endanger Rose.
So I turned toward home. As far as I could see, which wasn’t far at all, I needed time to form a plan to secret Rune out of town. Time to let Rose get as much distance from Juniper Hollow as possible. For her, the valley was a curse. She should never have come. I should never have met her.
Again, but more viscerally, I felt the meaninglessness of our encounter. My front door slammed shut behind me. Bitterness rumbled through me. I didn’t hate my predicament; I didn’t hate the net that fate had cast. I didn’t even hate Marion for making me choose between my family and the girl. I hated Rose for leaving. Twice she had run when I’d told her to run, first in the forest where I cloaked her, then again after we kissed in the café, and both times I had foolishly wanted her to stay. Hadn’t I shown her my beauty and my darkness? Hadn’t I opened the book of wonder for her?
I drove my palm into the wall, fissuring the paint and plaster. An answering jag of thunder cracked the sky. If Rose didn’t want me now then she never would, but the same was not true for me. I wanted her desperately. At last, I admitted it to myself. I looked into the mirror of my desire and saw her face reflected there, and I saw my yawning hunger and boredom. Fate was cruel. Rose was not the lioness I had envisioned; she was the shrew, shrinking from danger. She should have stood at my side. She should have cast with me. Instead, I had seen real terror in her eyes after our first kiss at Toil and Trouble.
I laughed and shook out my hair. “Damn you,” I whispered, but I couldn’t bring myself to curse her. She had gotten the better of me and I was not a graceful loser. It would have served her right if I had gone to Rune’s house that evening and strung him up by his scalp. She would come to me then, alright, and I would show her how I had protected her, how I had gone after her. I would show her something worth fearing.
My own pettiness made me sneer. I wanted her safe. I wanted her at my side. My head was full of her—how she had looked in Tessa’s home, soft and glowing, and the warmth of her eyes when she laughed, the way she had traced my tattoos. My mistake, it seemed, to have imagined longing in her touch. And perhaps it wasn’t lust that I had felt between us, but the lingering effects of her binding spell.
I went out onto my deck and leered at the night. Wrath blustered inside me. I wanted to let it out. I could have deadened the forest for miles; I could have made the ground shake with thunder. But I wouldn’t risk it. Marion hadn’t called on me yet and I was dreading the touch of her voice to my mind. If I cast in anger, the current of magic would alert her to my presence. Then I would have some explaining to do.
That was the worst part of it—keeping my anger at bay. Again and again, it surged up inside of me, only to break in an impotent froth. She doesn’t want me. She isn’t interested. This was obviously true and yet my ego wouldn’t let me believe it.
I don’t know how long I stood there like that, harrowing the dark, but however long it was, it was too long.
Rose’s scream shattered my thoughts. My anger, my frustration, my confusion went in every direction. I gripped my head.
There is a scream, mortals like to say, that curdles the blood. Hers was that scream.
If I had not given her the yarn and bone bracelet, or if she had discarded it along the highway, I would never have known she needed me. In spite of everything, I felt hope. I vaulted the balcony railing and cut into the night. A wave of magic rolled through Juniper Hollow. It slammed into me like wet cement; it all but stopped me glancing through the dark. I pushed past it, following the ping of Rose’s anguish. I smelled bones and blood. A sticky slick of death clung to me.
What had Marion done?
Rose, I thought. Rose! I called to her with my mind. Nothing came back.
I broke into the clearing where Rune’s miserable little cabin stood. The myriad chimes around the house hung still. A dog lay torn in the dirt. All was silent, even to my preternatural senses. The wave of magic I had felt was passed, rolling outward into the universe. I knew that every witch in Juniper Hollow would feel it.
I stepped into the house and found Rose unconscious on the floor, curled around her Uncle’s corpse. Rue Blackmane lay sprawled nearby, her fingers contorted as if she had been trying to cast. She, too, was quite dead.
I held my breath and listened for a fourth presence. Someone had killed Rue, after all, and Rue was a powerful witch. I didn’t dare touch her body. I shouldn’t have lingered. Still, I couldn’t stop myself staring at her pallid face. A dead witch is a rare sight indeed, and though I didn’t know Rue well or care for her much, she was family nevertheless.
She was also the witch that Marion called upon to tidy up messes whenever I was indisposed. I looked from Rue to Rose to Rune and back. A morbid constellation.
At best, Marion had become impatient and sent Rue to do my job. At worst, she knew that I had protected Rose and warned her to leave. As to whatever had happened in the cabin, only one witness remained.
I gathered Rose’s body quickly. She was limp, cold, humming with energy. It hissed as I lifted her, but i
t didn’t hurt. In fact, Rose’s warding spell seemed to be broken. Her heart beat faintly and her shallow, uneven breaths washed over my neck.
With a word, I ignited her car and whatever worldly belongings she had brought to Colorado. Then I cradled her close and disappeared into the woods.
I have always believed that no matter what happens in our present reality, infinite other realities exist in which all possibilities play out, but I am not so sure anymore. I believe in that splintering multiplicity. I believe the so-called line of time is in fact mansions within mansions. I also believe there is no version of reality in which I left Rose there on the cabin floor, the wolves closing in around her.
Though my home had several guest rooms, I laid Rose on my own bed with its soft sheets and down comforter. I removed her coat and boots and tucked her in. The clammy touch of her skin disturbed me, but I couldn’t help her yet.
Instead, I took my grimoire from the wall and the athame from my altar, opened my arms, and cast a warding spell around the perimeter of my home. I bled profusely into the earth. The spellwork and the blooding exhausted me. Never had I needed to guard myself against my own coven, nor did any witch come to my home uninvited, but I couldn’t assume that Rose and I were safe. Even as I disguised my grimoire and hastened the healing of the cuts in my arms, my coven might have been gathering against me. I didn’t know. I didn’t dare reach out.
I also didn’t run, although the thought crossed my mind.
I burned mugwort and cedar in my room, lit lavender candles, and cleaned Rose’s face with a damp washcloth. I dabbed cedarwood oil on her temples. Her eyelids fluttered as if she were dreaming. Her limbs twitched and her breath caught.
“Rose,” I whispered, laying a hand on her brow. Dark, wild energy rolled off of her. The makeup she had carefully applied earlier was now smudged and streaked. Bruises spread along her cheek and wrist where she’d hit the floor.
I don’t mind saying it; it pained me to see her like that.
I dragged an armchair close to the bed and watched the window and waited. The curtains were drawn, yet I expected a ghastly face to appear. If the coven came against us now, we would be lost.
I wanted to stare at Rose, but that bordered indecency. She was at my mercy. I wouldn’t take advantage of her with so much as a glance.
The minutes dragged into hours and the late night into the early morning. The candles burned down and I replaced them. Tension scraped along my nerves. I checked the windows and the bolts on the doors. Outside, a gentle snow began to fall. The serenely swirling flakes seemed to mock my troubled mind. I paced beside the bed. I imagined Rose never waking. I imagined the coven discovering Rue’s body in the cabin. She was a Blackmane witch. She would be avenged.
Around three in the morning, Rose sat up sharply and gave a hoarse choke. Her eyes flared, her gaze darting around the dim room.
“Rune,” she gasped.
She pawed at the sheets, then looked down at herself, and finally located me. I stood beside the bed, tense and frowning. We stared at one another for a while. She had probably never expected to see me again.
“Where am I?” she said. “What happened?”
“You’re at my house. You’re safe.” The second part was a bit of an exaggeration, but it was at least partially true. “I don’t know what happened. Can’t you remember?”
My mind flashed over the scene at Rune’s cabin: The mangled pit bull, the corpses on the floor. I almost hoped she couldn’t remember.
“H-how did I get here?” She touched her face and looked at her hands. She threw back the sheets and seemed surprised to find herself clothed.
I smirked. “I brought you here.” I moved several paces away from the bed. “You’re my guest,” I clarified, because the room felt suddenly very claustrophobic with both of us in it. I didn’t want her to feel trapped, although I couldn’t allow her to leave. The woods spelled certain death for her tonight.
She slid off the bed and tugged down her sweater dress. I tore my gaze away from her body. Really, it wasn’t appropriate. She had dressed for our meeting at the café in a different spirit altogether. Now, the clingy garment, the makeup and the attractively styled hair, must have felt like choices from a different lifetime.
She noticed her boots on the floor, her coat draped over a chair. She took a few steps and hugged herself. She stared expressionlessly at a large painting on the wall. I thanked the gods it was a pastoral scene and not the Still Life with Skull replica in my living room.
“Where’s my stuff?” she said.
I cleared my throat. She meant, I supposed, her handbag and luggage and car.
“Rose...”
She shook her head. “Doesn’t matter,” she mumbled. “Rune...” She moved to scrub her fingers through her hair and found the tangled pile on her head. She began plucking out pins and dropping them, shaking her tresses free. “My uncle.”
I moved in front of her. Her eyes were wet, but she didn’t cry. I tilted my head and watched her loosening her hair mechanically. Her hands shook ever so slightly. I watched her in a state of open fascination. To me, she was half witch, half mortal—magical and emotional, not yet jaded, sensitive to both worlds.
She looked up at me and nodded, as if I had asked a question.
“He’s dead,” she said.
“I know.”
“I’m a killer,” she continued flatly.
“No, Rose. I don’t think you are.”
“Not Rune. I mean, maybe him too.” She swallowed. “If I’d never come here...” she trailed off, shivering. “I killed the other one. I just...” she flexed her fingers.
I wouldn’t have believed her, and I almost didn’t, if not for the binding spell—if not for the way she had broken my spell at Toil and Trouble.
“Just what?”
“Wanted her to die,” she whispered. A single tear escaped down her cheek.
I needed to interrogate her about what exactly had happened tonight, but I was losing sight of the fact that she was a young witch and unused to death, which was my constant companion. I hadn’t been around someone like Rose for too long.
I touched the side of her face where skin met thick red hair. She sank against me, her tear disappearing into my T-shirt.
“You’re okay,” I murmured. This, at least, came naturally to me. Comfort is a language of physicality, and I have always been good with the physical. I pressed my palm into the small of her back and stroked her hair again and again. “I won’t let anything hurt you.” The promise was absurd, nearly patronizing. If Rose was to be believed, then she could take care of herself. And was she to be believed? Had she truly killed my covenmate? I held her and wondered at her strength.
She came closer, her arms linked around my waist. I ran my fingertips down the back of her neck. At last, the warding spell didn’t urge us apart. She shifted, crushing her chest to mine. A ripple of desire went through me.
I broke away abruptly, turning toward the window and taking a few steps. It definitely wasn’t the time for that. Rose had just lost her uncle. She had just murdered another witch. My desire was misplaced.
“I’ll—” Run you a bath, I thought, and then I pictured her in the water and rubbed my face. Keeping her here wasn’t wise. I could barely think.
She moved up behind me and touched my back, low.
“Rose...” I shook my head.
“Please,” she said.
I turned and gazed down at her. Her cheeks were flushed, her lips parted. Her chest rose and fell rapidly. Without hesitation, she reached for the front of my jeans and tugged apart the button, pulled down the zipper. I rolled my head back and gripped her face. “Rose,” I said again, this time achingly. It was getting too late for either of us to stop.
Her hand felt so small slipping into my pants between the denim and my undergarments. I let out a low moan when she touched my erection, sliding her fingers to the base, gripping it, and rubbing upward slowly.
I didn’t make
a secret of my pleasure. I moaned again, slow and guttural.
“Yeah?” she whispered. I knew she was staring at my face.
“Yeah,” I gasped. She stroked me once more, making my back arch. I brushed a finger over the swell of her lips. Her tongue touched my fingertip. I slid it into her mouth and she sucked once, hard. Her teeth clamped possessively.
Finally, I opened my eyes and drank in the sight of her. I tugged her against me and kissed her mouth. I forced myself to touch her slowly because I didn’t want to frighten her. I wanted all of her, all at once; I would have been too rough.
I kneaded her back to her ass and gripped it, spreading her cheeks, hiking up the short garment she wore. She moved her hand out of my jeans, into my boxer briefs. Skin to skin. I groaned into her mouth.
She wasn’t shy, that much was obvious. She jerked me off while I gathered her dress around her waist and got a hand into the back of her underwear. She was soaked. I pushed two fingers into her. She moved her legs apart and I shuddered.
“Soon,” I mumbled, biting her bottom lip. “Soon.” I squeezed the side of her breast. Her clothes were annoying me now, and so were mine. I drew back just enough to lift off my shirt and her dress, and then we were on each other again, frantic. The musk of her arousal made my mouth water. I lifted her breast, freeing it from her bra, leaning down and bringing her nipple to my teeth. I rubbed my slick finger against her ass. I would take everything I was entitled to. She moaned sharply when I started to finger her there. She stroked me harder, faster, as if she could rush me. Maybe she could. Her other hand scoured my chest, clutched at my hair.
“Stop... trying to make me come,” I growled against her breast. I bit the full, warm curve of it. She moaned and pressed back against my fingers, but she didn’t stop. Her hand raced up and down my shaft, pumping it between us.