by Ware Wilkins
He gives me a gentle tug, pulling my body flush with his. Instantly I feel a creep of heat from me, flooding my cheeks and chest and, well, lower with warmth. “What are you doing, Benji?” My heart is racing a mile a minute and I did not see this coming.
“Showing you a non-wolf option,” he says, voice low and husky.
“But you’re gay!” I protest. “You’ve only dated men since I’ve known you! And Queen Jeremy!”
“How long have you known me, Sadie?” His eyes are dark and full of humor and interest.
Not that long. “Maybe a year and a half. But people talk, and—”
“And I’m old. That’s a long time to only be interested in one gender. You keep saying I’m gay, but I never told you that. You just assumed.”
My pulse thunders and I have to admit, there’s something about an insanely powerful, broody vampire asking you to consider making out with him. I mean, I’m pretty sure there are wildly popular books written solely about it. “I did, so I just never... considered...”
Could I? Our faces aren’t far apart. A few more inches and I could be kissing him. I’ve never kissed a vampire before. I’ve also never kissed a werewolf. Really, I just kissed a few dudes in high school and that was less than impressive. Suddenly my world-view of making out is exploding. It’s tempting but...
Abe.
My heart still yearns for him and, despite Benji’s warning, I can’t help but feel like I owe Abe, too. Not just the kiss promised in a basement. But for yanking him into all of this. For changing his life forever, and without his permission.
“You know this is just going to make things incredibly weird between us, right?”
He laughs and stops leaning, adding some much-needed distance between us. “Only if you let it. Remember—vampire, old. Pursuing a love interest isn’t new for me.”
“What about rejection?”
“That’s quite a bit rarer,” he says after a minute before giving me a smile that doesn’t reach his eyes. “But it would be okay, I think. Just... not yet. Give me a chance.”
Closing my eyes, I take a deep breath. The crisp, cold air bites in just the right way, making me feel an illusion of clarity. “I won’t say no now, but I’m not saying yes, either. After everything that’s happened, I think I need to—”
“Rest,” he says, finishing my sentence for me. Benji cups my cheek and his thumb brushes over the purple circle under my eye.
My breath catches. “Yes. That.”
I don’t say goodbye. I just turn and walk toward the staircase. Behind me, a car door shuts and his engine, expensive and powerful, is quiet as it cranks and he pulls away.
Upstairs, Ingrid’s waiting for me, along with my bed. Before I can go, though, Ms. Nickles hurries out of her porch and points a finger. “I’ve got words for you, Sadie Salt,” she hisses.
It takes every ounce of patience I have left not to jump straight to hostile. “Ms. Nickles, now isn’t a good time.”
“You need to be careful, young lady,” she warns.
“Careful? You’re going to call the cops no matter what. So just do what you have to do, I guess.”
“No, Dummy. You reek of the magic. You new witches always want to screw it up for the rest of us.”
“Excuse me?” I know I heard her correctly, but my brain is sort of over-processing, chewing on her words like cud. “Did you just say—”
“Come inside my home. One time offer.” She turns and shuffles in, not waiting for my decision.
Cranky Ms. Nickles, a minor thorn in my side for the entire time I’ve lived here, has just outed herself as a witch. I keep making the mistake of thinking that things can’t get weirder/worse, and yet...
Obviously, I go.
The first thing that hits me is the smell of sage. We’re talking a lot. Not just the kind you burn once or twice if you’re cleansing your home (Asheville, remember? Lots of hippies), but continuous burn. It saturates my senses and, while not unpleasant, it block out any other odors I might have picked up.
What I do sense, though, is a low hum. Like a muted version of what I feel when I’m near teeth or bone. “Ms. Nickles-”
“Tea?”
“Is it rude if I refuse?”
She laughs and thank god it isn’t a cackle. “No, it’s smart when you don’t know if you’ve met an adversary or not. Sit down, I’ll be back with my own cup.”
I sit. Her couch is large and floral and straight out of the early nineties. Her walls are covered with posters of Elvis. There’s no television set, just five or six small tables covered in knick knacks like glass animals and ceramic angels. It looks like a grandmother’s home, complete with a large-print bible on a table by the door. The rug is thick shag and all that’s missing are the too-many cats.
She comes back in and sits in a green velvet wingback chair, steaming cup in her old, weathered hands. “Sadie Salt, you’ve made a right mess of things.”
“You’re a bone witch?”
She shrugs, noncommittally. But I realize she’s wearing a cardigan, long skirt, and tights. Searching my memory, I realize I’ve never seen exposed skin. Our summers, while not as hot as the Piedmont of NC, aren’t cool, either. Yet all my recollections of Ms. Nickles involve her being covered head to toe.
“May I see your arms?”
Her eyes narrow, but she delicately sets her cup aside and pulls up her sleeves. Sure as day there are the marks, the ancient text scrolling and winding around her forearms. There are symbols mixed in, unknown to me but clearly mystic in nature. “There,” is all she says before pushing her sleeves back down. “Maybe you’ll listen when I talk, then.”
After all the warnings, after all the scares and the tension and the sheer fear I’ve seen in others regarding bone witches, I feel like I should be more uneasy. Instead, though, I feel... happy. Another bone witch means answers that I can’t get anywhere else. And lord knows I have questions.
“I have so many things I want to ask,” I venture.
She shakes her head. “Not today. Today is just a friendly warning, and not many of our kind are generous for friendly warnings. You can’t use that much spell power without a coven to protect you. Right now you are a beacon and you’ll attract every predator and hunter on the east coast if you keep up.”
“It wasn’t exactly for fun,” I reply, starting to feel resentful. I keep getting lectured, when it was my life on the line that had made me use it in the first place.
“It doesn’t matter. A coven can protect you. As a lone witch, you’re vulnerable. Especially since you haven’t had training. I’m still trying to figure out how you’ve known to do what you do.”
I fidget on the couch, twisting at my fingers. “A deal with a fairy.” I don’t mention which one. “How do you know all this about me?”
Her smile turns sly. “I was sent here to watch for signs of you. We don’t often... misplace one of our own. But you managed to escape with your father and that hunter, and I was this area’s scout for many years. Never certain it was you, though, until this week.”
My chest squeezes. “Do you know my mother?”
“We are all family, Sadie. Descended from the one mother. You’ve got so much to learn.”
Frustration blooms like heat in my belly. “But my mother. Please.”
“Yes, I know your mother. All in good time. The one mother expects us all to do our part, and so too must you.” My hands itch to throttle her for withholding the information. To know she knows my mother, that I could know her, too, makes me livid. But it’s time for me to at least attempt to play things smart. Ms. Nickles is sharing, even if it’s in stupid, jumbled quips. I just need to hold on, figure out her game, and I can get a name. Besides, I need to understand this magic before it kills me.
“But my Uncle says it’s dangerous. And god, the need after casting. It’s this hunger and it hurts and—”
“Well of course.” She sips her tea and rolls her eyes. “You can’t possibly expect power to be fre
e? All things have a price. The pain is but one of many for us.”
There’s a clock on the wall, an old grandfather one, and my eyes are repeatedly drawn to its pendulum and the low ticking sound of the second hand. “How is it even worth it, then?”
Her laugh is harsher this time. “You’ve experienced the rush, though? The ease at which you can cast? There are rewards as well as punishments.”
We sit a few moments longer. Time stretches and the questions bombard my mind, making it difficult to order them. Besides, Ms. Nickles is dodging most of what I ask, and I have a feeling I’m not asking the right kinds of questions. “What happens to me now?” Because at the heart of it, Ms. Nickles was sent to look for me, and here I am.
“Now we both stay quiet,” she says before setting down her cup and reaching for the ottoman at her feet. She snaps her fingers and I watch a seam appear. A lid. She opens it and hands me a book. “Don’t show that to anyone. Especially not your vampire boyfriend.”
“He’s not my boyfriend.”
“I don’t care. Do you know how hard you’ve made my life, inviting all the fae up into your home? Each night I was afraid someone would figure out what I was.”
“Sorry,” I mumble.
“Save it. Read the book. It’s our history. Don’t come knocking on my door for a while. I want distance from you until I’m sure you haven’t brought the cavalry down on our heads.”
“Like I said, I didn’t meant to—”
“And no more casting. Not until you know how to hide what you are.”
“Um, okay, but I still have a bunch of things I want to ask you—”
“Not tonight. Invite rescinded.” Her fingers point at me, then the door, and I feel magic pushing at me a bit.
“Are you... casting on me?”
Ms. Nickles frowns and makes the movement again. The magic is a little more insistent, almost a tickle. “I can just get up and go, you know.”
“Huh.”
It’s not much of an answer, but I leave anyway, book in hand. I guess that, despite fulfilling my end of the bargain, I am still resistant to magic thanks to Tee. It’s not reassuring.
Sitting on the staircase, I hold the book in my hands. All this time and another witch lived just below me. It’s infuriating, really, and if she wasn’t my only connection to my mother, to a part of me I understand so little, I’d be more vocal about my anger. I should tell my Uncle. Another bone witch in Grimloch. On some level, I know no good can come from this.
The book feels heavy and it smells old. Musty. It’s bound in leather and on the front is a weird, thatch-roof cottage. It’s weird because instead of sitting on the ground in the illustration, it’s got what looks like it’s resting on a single chicken leg. Bone witches are into some weird shit, I guess.
Thumbing it open, I have to slow down almost immediately because the paper is thin and yellowed and incredibly brittle. With care, I flip until I’m at the first page. There, hand-written in English below printed cyrillic, is what I can only assume is the title.
Baba Yaga, Bone Mother
My eyes widen and my ‘can you believe this’ meter is off the charts. Someone’s translated the whole book in the margins, written in tiny, precise handwriting. The daughters of the mother are few, but they are powerful, it begins.
Chapter Seventeen
I read the book far longer than I should have, finally forced to shut it because my eyes are so bleary and heavy it hurts to keep them open.
Then I sleep. And sleep. At one point Ingrid wakes me up to feed me a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, then I fall asleep again.
In a way, I luck out. By sleeping so much, I'm able to avoid the worst of the magic detoxing. So when I wake up to someone knocking on the door, I feel the best I've felt in over a week. Checking the clock on my way to the door, I see it's after three in the afternoon. On what day, I'm not sure, but Ingrid has probably already left for her job.
The knocking becomes more insistent.
“Okay, okay,” I grumble as I open it. My Uncle Oliver is there, his eyes locked downstairs. I stand a little straighter. Can he tell what Ms. Nickles is? God, I hope not. She’s the only person who has answers for me and seems at least a little willing to give them. Like the book.
Seeing him brings all the anger I’d felt while caged boiling to the surface. I wonder how much he knew, or knows, about my real mother. I wonder how much he’s held secret all this time. I thought lying about the magic was bad, but this? This has the potential to ruin our already delicate relationship.
“Come in,” I step aside and hope it distracts him. For a moment, I’m not sure it’s worked, but then he slumps in and goes straight to the kitchen. First things first: don’t give away the witch downstairs. Then I can deal with the rest.
“Do you have any tea?” He asks while making himself comfortable at the bar.
“Of course.”
His eyes narrow. “Do you have any real tea? Not that shit that comes in boxes with funny names and promises for sleep and well-being?” He means loose-leaf and expensive. Yeah, right. I can barely afford rent but I just keep fancy tea sitting around.
“Do you want ‘uplift’ or ‘tiger spice’?” I ask, opening a drawer and pulling out the exact boxes he despises.
“Neither. Sadie, I taught you better.”
It’s true that he always had the best teas and, while I’m a coffee drinker by choice, there’s nothing better than a really good cup of jasmine tea. “Sorry.”
“Benji told me what happened.”
That’s a relief. So far I’ve avoided thinking about the abuse of magic, basically disintegrating a human body, and making the awful choice to let the wolves try to turn Abe. I’m totally blocking out being hit on by a vampire and the fact that my downstairs neighbor of several years is a bone witch like myself. It also lets me simmer my anger, and try to think of what I want to say.
“It was scary,” is all I say because, not only is it true, but I’m not sure what Oliver wants.
“You need to start learning to defend yourself,” he says, propping his elbow on the counter and resting his chin on his hand. His gray eyes dart around the kitchen a bit, as if measuring it up. “Your home will need ample wards, too. Far more than you have.”
“Okay, but I’m not supposed to use anymore bone magic. Besides,” I shudder, “I don’t ever want to touch the stuff again.” As soon as I say it, I know it’s a lie. I might not be jonesing just yet, but it’s like I can feel the potential for it beginning in my bones. Oliver doesn’t need to know about that, though.
“Of course not. Don’t be stupid. I’ll work on the wards, and Benji has agreed to help you with defense. In the meantime, what do you plan to do?”
“What do you mean?”
“You paid off the tooth fairy.”
Oh, right. Something that would have changed my life in the best way had happened, but it had occurred during the scariest moments of my life, which overshadowed it. I was free from my debt. “Yes, I suppose I have.”
“Well, I hope you know better than to make deals with fairies and demons now,” he says in this offhand manner that really rubs me wrong.
“I never would have if you’d told me the truth.”
“I lied about the magic because I wanted you to have a chance at a normal life.”
“You also lied about the teeth going missing, Oliver. And the fact that my mom wasn’t my real mother.” Like a hawk, I watch his every facial feature, and it’s good that I do. I catch the flicker of fear and it confirms it. He knew.
“How did you find that out?”
“David was the hunter’s sister.”
Uncle Oliver curses and gets out of his chair. “She told me she didn’t have any family. No one to come after her.”
“Well, lying seems par for the course in the Salt family, doesn’t it?”
He turns on me, stepping close. “You still don’t get it, do you? Your mother—the one who raised you—sacrificed everything t
o keep you safe. My brother did, too. I didn’t agree with their choices, which is why I didn’t speak to him for so long.”
“What choice? To steal me away from my real mom? She loved me and they took me from her!”
His mouth opens in disbelief, eyes wide. “Are you joking? They saved your life, Sadie. Your ‘true’ mother was going to kill you.”
Anger flickers into wrath. “Jesus, you’re lying again! She loved me! I read it! She was trying to keep me and she loved me and they took me away! I don’t even know if she’s still alive!”
I can tell he wants to escalate: to get as angry as me. Volatility must come from my father’s side, because Oliver is fighting the urge to go toe to toe. Finally, his fists releasing, he drags his hands through his hair. “I don’t know what she said in the journal. I only know that bone witches will steal another’s power, borrow from their precious and limited capacity for spells. Many of them have children in the hopes that they can manipulate their daughters into spending their magic for them, so they don’t pay the price for the power as quickly. Your father saw that potential in your mother and in the end, he wanted to protect you from that.”
“It’s more than that, Sadie. If you’d been born into that life, think of how many spells you might have done by this point? And where would you have gotten the bones or teeth required for it? How far would you have gone and at such a young age?”
He sits back down and points to the uplift tea. “I guess we both need some of that shit.”
Numb and processing, I start heating water for our cups. “But why the hunter? And why did you disagree with it?”
“Your mother, the hunter, was sent to kill your father. She found him, alone and trying to care for a baby. She could have killed you both. She was supposed to kill you both. But whatever your father said, he convinced her he wasn’t evil, shouldn’t be executed solely for being a magic user. And she fell in love with you. They agreed to hide you, but that meant tucking you away from both communities; the Hunters and the Warlocks. Neither group allows a bone witch to live. They took you and hid here, in Grimloch.”