The Witches of Snyder Farms (The Wicked Garden Series)

by Henson, Lenora

  The Witches of Snyder Farms

  LENORA HENSON

  Copyright © 2013 Lenora Henson

  All rights reserved.

  ISBN-10: 061588153X

  ISBN-13: 978-0615881539

  DEDICATION

  For Mom and Dad.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Special thanks to my amazing editor, Jessica Jernigan; you get it. Thank you to all my soul sisters, especially Michelle Galyon and Joanna DeVoe. Thank you to Craig Hart, your open mind continually inspires me. Thank you to cover model RaeChelle Leiken, you are the best. Thank you to Jennifer Adele and Christal Finch for inspiring me with your leadership and creativity. Thank you to the fans who keep me perpetually enthused. Thank you to Sophia and Jack for keeping me laughing. Thank you to Jim Murphy for everything.

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  PROLOGUE

  PART ONE

  INTERLUDE ONE

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  PART TWO

  INTERLUDE TWO

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  PART THREE

  INTERLUDE THREE

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  EPILOGUE

  PROLOGUE

  Scotland, Early 1600s

  The crone dragged her granddaughter through the forest, as quickly and as quietly as the girl’s struggles—and her pregnant belly—would allow.

  Then she stopped, listening. She looked to the earth below and felt the shake of hooves.

  “They’re coming, Mage!” the old woman hissed.

  Terror pulled the young redhead away from the horror she had just witnessed. She swallowed her tears and—eyes wide with fright—buried herself in the undergrowth. Her grandmother followed, fear granting her an agility she hadn’t known in years. Burrowed deep into the hillside, they closed their eyes as horses thundered past them.

  The women waited.

  And they waited.

  After what seemed an eternity, the crone pulled her granddaughter up out of the weeds.

  “Grand Mama, ye should have let me go.”

  “Ye cannae be talking like that, girl. You’ve a babe to think of. You’ve yourself to save, too. Nothing’s worth taking yer own life fer. Nothing. No guilt. No man. There is no act that cannae be forgiven. Do you hear me, child? No act that cannae be forgiven!” The old woman was stern. She gave her granddaughter a piercing look and shook her head. They had no time—and even less inclination—to contemplate such niceties as Christian morals.

  “They’ll be coming back around for us, Mage! You must go. Take this bundle. Beer. Food. Herbs for healing and herbs that will help ye when yer time comes.”

  The girl shook her head ferociously. “I cannae go. What about Reid?”

  The crone sighed. “He’s fled, child. I sent him on his way.”

  “No!” the girl screamed.

  The crone clapped a wrinkled hand over Mage’s mouth and cringed. “Quiet!” she hissed. Then, more gently, “They be huntin’ us all.”

  The girl pulled away from the old woman and scurried back onto the forest path, her grandmother following behind. “Mage, ye mauna go that way. Heed me! He said for ye to wait for him by the water, by the—”

  She saw the black horse emerge from the forest before Mage did, but the young girl turned around when she saw the terror in her grandmother’s eyes.

  The rider caught his breath and pulled back on the reins when he saw who stood before him. Surely, this was the same lass he had seen burned at the stake just that morning, the same lass that he… She had gotten no better than she deserved, in life and in death. The fact that she was standing here before him proved it.

  “Witch!” He shouted the word, hoping that other men would hear his cry and come to his aid. “What kind of creature are ye, that hell’s fire cannae contain yer evil?”

  He reached over his shoulder for an arrow and knocked it to his bowstring.

  Mage, her fear gone, stood to her full height and faced her attacker. “Finish yer work, ye bastard. I’ve nothing more to lose!”

  She closed her eyes and began to whisper. Her hands moved before her, weaving intricate patterns in the air.

  The crone gasped. She recognized the magic her granddaughter was clumsily working, and she knew what might happen if her casting went awry.

  “No!” the crone cried.

  The horse bucked and whinnied. Its rider tried to take aim at the old woman.

  The air around the three began to swirl, whipping dead leaves and dry dirt into a maelstrom. The ground shook with a fierce rumble.

  The crone, the author of this chaos, stood still. She couldn’t let Mage unleash the curse she was weaving. There would be no redemption from that. The old woman crafted a curse of her own, one that captured the dark power Mage was raising and added the possibility of salvation. She stilled her granddaughter with her open right hand while she pointed one gnarled finger of her left at the man on the horse. Then she spoke.

  Violence and shame ye have sewn,

  violence and shame ye shall beget.

  Your children’s children willnae be redeemed until

  my child’s children are redeemed.

  So mote it be.

  A wolf’s howl reverberated through the forest as the curse was sealed.

  An arrow thrilled in the old woman’s heart.

  The wheel will turn, and turn, and turn.

  Violence and shame will be the fate of their descendants,

  generation after generation.

  The water will take them under.

  It will take their daughters,

  and they will not be redeemed.

  Even when the water takes them,

  they will not be redeemed.

  Then the huntress will have a son,

  and her son will have two loves.

  The first will be a girl with hair as dark as blood

  and scars that go deep beneath the surface.

  He will give her the stone that saves her,

  and she will give him despair.

  When he finds the stone again,

  He will find his heart,

  and all may be redeemed.

  The first and the second and the psychopomps

  will follow the Horned God to the underworld.

  Amethyst is the key that will open the buried box.

  When the spirits are set free,

  all will be redeemed.

  Look to the twenty-first to find the second.

  Find her, and all shall be redeemed.

  Part One

  Scotland, 1960s

  Epona stood on an old, worn path in a dense Scottish forest. The morning was cool and ominously still. The billowing fog felt clammy on her skin. She shook herself, but the chill clung to her as stubbornly as her growing sense of apprehension.

  She was staring at a flat stone. The Celtic knot carved into its surface was the most complex she’d ever seen. The green moss grown into its grooves looked like a tangled riot of branches, but Epona could feel an order that she couldn’t quite see. Th
is was a symbol of protection. There was something else there, too, something just beyond her comprehension. The stone was speaking to her, but she couldn’t quite hear what it was saying.

  Frustrated, she swept her long red hair up into a quick chignon, hitched up her favorite pair of dungarees, and sat down next to the stone.

  First, she let her hand hover an inch or so above the carving to read its energy. It was both urgent and weary. She closed her eyes and nodded, acknowledging her understanding and thanking the stone for trusting her. Next, she gingerly rubbed her hand over the knot. She pulled her fingers back almost instantly. They crackled with electric messages, too many for her to make any sense out of them.

  “Aye,” Epona said soothingly. “I know that you have things that need saying. But I am just one woman, and it might take me quite awhile to decipher everything that you say. Have patience with me, wise ones, for I have patience, too. If nothing else, surely I have patience.”

  She was right. She did have patience. Patience with the laborers on the 2000-acre farm she had inherited; patience with the weather, which could be the difference between a bountiful harvest or a ruined crop; patience with her too-passive daughter, Elphame; patience sufficient to endure her own guilt; and patience enough to confront the ancient curse she had spent most of her life trying to eradicate.

  It was true she’d had had no patience for the dirt bag she’d married, but that was for the gods to deal with now, and she hoped they dealt with him swiftly and justly. But, over all, Epona was a patient woman, and she would wait until the end of her life if she needed to see her family free from its terrible legacy.

  Patience.

  Epona touched the stone again. She felt electricity surge into her fingertips as she traced the knot, and then it dawned on her: It was more than a symbol of protection. This mass of tangled fury was a map. The labyrinthine detail was becoming clear as she followed the path it made.

  She pulled out her Cannon SP 35mm and took several shots of the stone. Then she pulled out paper and a piece of charcoal and traced a rough copy of the knot.

  She had seen the pattern before, of course. Mainly in her dreams, but also on a box that her mother had possessed. She had seen the stone itself, too, in visions guided by her ancestors.

  Epona put her things back into her knapsack and settled in next to the stone. She stared at the path for a while, and then she turned to look into the deep ravine behind her. She closed her eyes…

  … and felt a sharp thump.

  Epona looked down and saw the ghost of an arrow trembling in her chest. She looked up and saw the specter that had loosed the arrow, sitting astride his horse.

  She gasped and choked as blood filled her lungs. Then she shook herself and let the phantom pain dissolve.

  Epona stared the ghost in the eye. “I even have patience for you, bastard. You may be dead, but you’ll see justice for what you did to that girl.”

  The lordly spirit simply stared at Epona in shock, just like he’d stared—dumbstruck and confused—when he’d killed the oldest witch in the countryside several hundred years before. It was a look of raw fear. It was a look of regret and pitiful cowardice. Epona almost felt sorry for him—almost. But then, no. Not at all. She’d seen more courage in a boy of ten. This was no man. He had no honor, no dignity. He had nothing but family name and wealth.

  “You’re running out of time, you lily-livered cur. This has gone on a few centuries too long for my liking. You’ll have to deal with me now. Visit the Wicked Garden if you’d like to know the wrath of Miss Poni,” Epona growled. She raised her spread hand, directed her energy outward, and the phantom’s mist dissipated into the already wet Scottish air.

  Epona’s anger lingered even after the offending ghost left. She closed her eyes and centered. This wasn’t the time for anger.

  She pulled a dried poppy from between the pages of a journal and laid it on the stone.

  “For you, my ancestors, I offer a poppy in remembrance. They bloom no more at Snyder Farms. It is my wish that my daughter and my daughter’s daughter, and her daughter’s daughter, and her daughter’s daughter, might see them bloom again as I once did. I’m listening. Please keep guiding me.”

  Epona was still for a moment, letting her prayer sink into the stone.

  Then she watched as a poppy bloomed in a place where poppies had never been.

  CHAPTER ONE

  Irvine, 2010s

  It was Saturday morning when Ame awoke to the smell of a country breakfast. She opened one sleepy eye to glance at her alarm clock, raised her head in momentary panic, and then let it drop just as quickly. She had been going non-stop for two weeks. Truth be told, it was probably much longer than that.

  Today was the last day she would have to run ragged for a while, and she even got to sleep in for the first time in… She couldn’t remember. It was the beginning of spring break and her last day of scheduled nonsense for a week.

  She took another whiff of her mother’s culinary goodness and let it lure her up out of bed. Thoughts of all she had to do to that day invaded her mind. “Stop it,” she whispered aloud. Then a smile spread across her freckled face as it occurred to her that she would finally get a chance to talk to Eli and her mother, in the same room, at the same time.

  Miss Poni had kept the girl away from the cottage for a week after Gretchel’s breakdown in the Wicked Garden. No one was willing to tell Ame much about what had happened that night. She had figured out for herself that it was probably a good idea to steer clear of the ghost she had met—Ame knew enough to know that she shouldn’t even say her name if she could help it. Miss Poni had gone so far as to explain to her great-granddaughter that this malign spirit was one manifestation of an ancient family curse, although the old woman was stingy with further details. She did tell Ame to tell her or her grandmother immediately if she ever heard strange voices in her head or felt a burning sensation that she could not explain, but Miss Poni responded to most of Ame’s questions with a shake of her head.

  Those unanswered questions had consumed Ame. Not so much the idea of the malevolent spirit. Being secretly raised by witches had prepared her for strange phenomena. Hell, she had already committed herself to kicking that spirit’s ass if she dared to show herself again. What truly tormented Ame were thoughts of her mother’s breakdown. How much of Gretchel’s behavior was a result of the family curse? How much was simply mental illness? And how much was Ame’s family refusing to tell her about both?

  Ame felt ready for any supernatural threat, but the thought of an inherited mental weakness terrified her. She had no tolerance for weakness. For as long as she could remember, she had refused to let her father see her weak. She still regretted that dumb luck had killed him before she had let him know what she truly thought of him. Ame knew that the memory of Troy would always haunt her relationships with men, and she hated him for it.

  Even though she still had plenty to do, Ame had never been more ready for summer. The last few months had been… intense. It was hard enough to be a normal teenager when you were a six-foot, three-inch witch with flaming red hair. Remembering that your father tried to rape you the day before he died didn’t make things any easier, and trying to care for a mother prone to psychotic breaks—while nobody would tell you what the hell was going on—made any sort of attempt at normalcy pretty much pointless.

  But Ame was trying. She was definitely trying.

  She stretched like a cat and realized that she’d actually had a solid night’s sleep. She hadn’t heard her mother scream once. Maybe the nightmares had ended for good. Maybe.

  Ame pulled an old sweatshirt over her camisole and tiptoed down the cottage stairs. Glancing into the kitchen, she saw Eli kissing her mother’s neck. She had never seen Gretchel being doted on—loved—by a man before.

  Ame cleared her throat and spoke a little too loudly. “Good morning!”

  Eli smiled exuberantly. “Good morning, Ame-with-an-E!” he stepped forward, going in for a huge
hug, but when he saw her flinch, he settled for a soft embrace and light pat on the back.

  Ame accepted Eli’s show of affection as gracefully as she could and released herself as quickly as politeness would allow.

  Gretchel dispelled the awkwardness by sweeping in with a hug of her own. She kissed her daughter’s cheek. “Hello, stranger! Do you have an open slot in your planner for breakfast at home?”

  Ame took the breakfast plates off the counter and began setting the table. “I totally have time for breakfast at home, especially if there’s biscuits and gravy.”

  Ame watched her mother bustling around the kitchen, humming while she cooked. She watched Eli as he watched Gretchel, a goofy grin spread across his face.

  “I knew that we were meant to meet, Eli-with-an-I.”

  Ame’s words pulled Eli’s glance away from Gretchel—reluctantly.

  Ame continued. “I don’t have the same psychic abilities as Holly, but I felt that I should know you when we met in that elevator.”

  “Was that a psychic moment, or was it intuition?” Eli asked, giving Ame his full attention.

  “What’s the difference?” she asked as she poured a cup of black coffee.

  “Well, a psychic episode usually involves awareness of something that is going to occur. If it were intuitive insight, it would have been like knowing something that you already knew, but didn’t know you knew, until you knew that you knew it.”

  Ame gave Eli a deadpan stare. “You lost me at episode.”

  “I think what he’s trying to say is that, if you were psychic, you would have known you were going to see him before you saw him, but you didn’t. Instead, when you met him, you had a strong sense that you were supposed to meet him. That’s intuition.” Gretchel pulled herself up to the table. “Am I right, Eli?”