Hawthorn Witches: Demons & Dracaena, Sorcerers & Sumac, Werewolves & Wisteria (Hawthorn Witches Omnibus Book 1)

by A. L. Tyler

  Her eyes softened and she dropped her hands from her hips before coming over to hug me. “Oh, Anise—”

  “Annie.”

  “—I’m sure she’s fine. And you burn sage to banish dark spirits and protect places. If you want to do something for Gates, maybe we could light her a candle or something. Would that make you feel better?”

  Of course, I had failed to remember that Lyssa was into all of this hippy bull. She had probably gotten it from Kendra. “Yeah, I guess. Is a dark spirit the same thing as a demon?”

  Lyssa pulled back, furrowing her brow as she took a breath to speak.

  “Mommy!”

  Her confused look cleared as she turned to bend down and pick up the little girl that had run to her, and then straightened up with a smile to kiss her husband on the cheek.

  Josh was a good guy. He was a little younger than Lyssa, and a little shorter, but I had always liked the way he kept his light brown hair just a little too long and wore sweater vests just about everywhere. He was like the straight-laced nine-to-five yang to Lyssa’s hippy dippy yin.

  “Hey,” Josh gave me a quick nod, which I returned, before looking back at Lyssa. “Ready for dinner?”

  “Oh!” Lyssa turned back to me, looking genuinely surprised. “I completely forgot; we’re having dinner at Josh’s uncles’ house tonight. Are you okay closing up shop without me?”

  She smoothed Rosemary’s dark red hair with a gentle hand, then leaned in to kiss her on the cheek. The toddler fidgeted in her arms until she was facing outward toward me, offering up her stuffed pig toy. I bent down and gave Piggy an obligatory kiss and Rosemary beamed up at me with a wide grin.

  “That’s fine,” I said, trying to stifle a yawn. “You go ahead. I’ve got it.”

  “Are you sure?” Lyssa asked me, but she was already turning to hand Rosemary to Josh and take off her apron.

  “It’s fine, really,” I said, as though I had a choice.

  Lyssa was already at the counter, taking her jacket off the peg behind the register and swinging it around her shoulders. Josh started some small talk about a wildfire out in the mountains, and they left together without any further ado, leaving me alone in the greenhouse, blissfully earlier than expected.

  I pulled the sheet of paper from my pocket and went over my inventory.

  Clay

  Kiln

  Paints

  Needle

  Black candle

  Knife

  Hemp cord

  Flint

  Coral

  Quartz

  Milk

  Apple seeds

  Wild honey

  Salt

  Ashes

  Egg shells

  Banishing

  Sage

  Cactus

  Dragon’s blood (dracaena)

  Juniper

  Areca nut

  Finding

  Poke Root (Phytolacca)?

  It had taken me a while, but after seeing so many recommendations for dragon’s blood in spell work, I had to figure the stuff was easier to come by than I imagined. I did a quick internet search, and lo and behold, dragon’s blood had nothing to do with actual dragons. It was a substance obtained from several types of plants, and one of them was the dragon palm—dracaena draco. And since recent droughts in our area had brought xeroscaping back in to fashion, I happened to know that we had several dragon palms around. They didn’t survive the winter in Colorado, but they were so neat looking that Lyssa kept a few indoor bonsais over by the drought-tolerant collection, and they sold well.

  The areca nut had been a long shot, and I didn’t find it in the greenhouse, so I had to hope the cactus and juniper would do the job. I had no idea how to dry sage, or how long it would take, so I gave that one up.

  We didn’t have poke root in the greenhouse, and I hadn’t expected to find it. The internet said it was classified as a weed by most gardeners.

  I found a lot of the staple working tools in Kendra’s little stash, and after some poking around the walls of the greenhouse, I found two other hidden wall compartments with everything (minus those few plants) that I needed. She even kept a little jar of dried dracaena—dragon’s blood—harvested, powdered, and ready to go.

  Collecting everything I needed into an empty crate, I set it by the register, helped the last few straggler customers to find what they needed and check out, and then set to locking the doors and turning out the lights.

  When the last car left the lot and I had finished closing all the gates, I came back in to collect my stash, and found Charlie unloading the box from behind the cash register.

  He didn’t look happy, and I nearly peed myself when he looked up at me with angry eyes that seemed to flash red in the drooping sunset light.

  “Little Hawthorn,” he grated, holding up the cactus and juniper clippings. “Unless you’re worse at this than I imagined, you’re trying to get rid of me.”

  “They’re for a finding spell,” I lied, trying to shy away back to the door. “I found it on the internet!”

  I turned to run, and ran right into Charlie’s chest. The smell of burning sulfur hit me so strongly that I made a face and tried to step back, but Charlie had me firmly by the shoulders. I followed his gaze down just in time to see the piece of paper sticking from my pocket. He grabbed it before I could even react.

  “Banishing?” He raised his eyebrows, releasing me. I didn’t know what to do, so I turned around to watch him pace back into the greenhouse, resigning myself to lean against the wall. I wasn’t going to be able to outrun him or fight him. Not yet, anyway.

  But surprisingly, he didn’t look angry as he read the list.

  “This is cute,” he said, turning back to me with a sarcastic grin. “I mean, really, where did you get this? The internet, you said?”

  I raised my eyes to meet his, but didn’t say anything, and he laughed. Leaning over my box and studying the contents again, he pursed his lips and nodded before looking back up at me.

  “None of this will work,” he said decidedly. “If you want to learn, I’ll teach you finding spells, but that’s it.”

  “To find Kendra,” I said quietly.

  He nodded.

  “We don’t carry poke root,” I conceded.

  “I can get you poke root,” he said flatly. “But marigold works just as well. I hope you’re a good enough greenhouse to carry marigolds?”

  I nodded.

  Charlie raised his eyebrows. “Then go and get some. Opened flowers only. If they’ve gone to seed, they won’t work.”

  I went outside to the little covered porch where the popular annuals were stored and retrieved what he asked for. When I came back, he had already lined up a mortar and pestle, a pint-sized caldron, an ornate candle, and a piece of clear quartz. The quartz was from my box, but as for the other things, I didn’t know where they had come from.

  He might have conjured them from the air, or he might have traveled to the other side of the world to steal them away. I just didn’t know, and it was mysteriously terrifying.

  “Clear your mind and grind them down in this,” he said, lifting the mortar and pestle and setting them in front of me.

  I scoffed and nearly laughed, but his grave expression stopped me.

  “It’s just… clear my mind?” I raised my eyebrows. “You could snap me into a cat any second. I’d need a total lobotomy to clear my mind right now.”

  My heart leapt into my throat when he reached for a pair of sharp clipping shears, but then he handed them to me.

  “If you want me to promise your safety—well, relative safety—until I have found Kendra and returned your little friends to health and wellness, you know what I need.”

  Part of my mind knew it was a mistake to keep trusting him, but I didn’t see what choice I had, or how it could possibly get any worse. I took another lock of my hair from behind my ear, and gripped it tight as he reached for it.

  “Do you swear—?”

  “Yes,” he s
aid, looking me in the eye. “I won’t cause you any physical harm.”

  “Mental torment?”

  He let the lock go, smiling again.

  I nodded, taking a deep breath. “Fine. That’s fine. No physical harm, and no tricks. I’m out of bounds until we find Kendra.”

  “I’ll give you one better,” he said, bringing his hand back up to rest on the table. “If you honestly help me to find her and take what I’m owed, I’ll take you as an apprentice after our deal is done. I’ll teach you the real craft for a fair price.”

  I could feel the grimace on my face deepen. “I’ll be bald, won’t I?”

  “Well…” Charlie shrugged. “Hair grows back.”

  “You’ve got some sort of weird fetish, don’t you?”

  He gave a little smirk. “What I do with it is my business. Do I have yours?”

  “I don’t want magic lessons,” I said.

  “I won’t force them on you,” he said slyly. “Just consider it an open offer.”

  Thinking over my options, or rather lack thereof, I let the lock fall into his open palm.

  Chapter 5

  Charlie took the lock of my hair, glimmering softly in the dying daylight, and tucked it into his pocket with another smug smirk. He gestured once again to the mortar and pestle.

  “Now clear your mind,” he said, somewhat friendlier than before. “And grind the marigolds.”

  I took the flower heads and tossed them in, picking up the stone implements and beginning my work. “Why can’t you do this for yourself?”

  “Because I am taking a gamble that whatever spell Kendra used is directed at me specifically,” he said. “She’s a vain woman who likes to be served, and I fully believe she’s already enslaved someone else to do her bidding. She wouldn’t be able to do that, however, if no one could find her.”

  I nodded. “So it must be just you.”

  “Exactly.” He inspected my work, and his upper lip twitched. “Keep going until all the petals are loose, but try not to break any of them.”

  He instructed me through the whole process, from grinding down the marigold to dripping wax, and finally staring aimlessly into the quartz and feeling like a moron. When nothing happened, and persisted to not happen, for a full half hour, he finally gave up.

  “You’re worse than Kendra was,” he muttered under his breath, turning away and packing the supplies back into the box crate. “Go home and practice. We’ll try again tomorrow, after you’ve rested.”

  “Wait—” I said in frustration. “No, I need this to work. I need to make things right—I need to fix everything!”

  He waved me off. “Tomorrow, little ’thorn.” He looked at me, almost mocking. “Annie.”

  “But—”

  “I’ve given you a gift for your efforts,” he said as he walked away, disintegrating as he went. “You’ll find it when you get home.”

  I stared down at the box and the area on the counter where I had so desperately tried to work the spell. I was useless at all of the good kinds of magic, apparently. After several long minutes of moping, I packed my car and drove home in the dark.

  My dad had left a covered plate of food for me in the refrigerator, and I yelled a quick thanks to him down the stairs before sneaking a can of tuna and the manual can opener into my pocket and dodging up to my bedroom.

  “Sorry,” I said quietly as I entered the room, flicking on a light and shaking my mouse to wake up my computer. “Charlie was there, and he made me try to find Kendra. But I found some useful stuff, and I think he at least believes me now that I’m not hiding anything on purpose…”

  “Jesus…” The black cat muttered, crawling out from under my bed and stretching with an exaggerated back arch. “Took you long enough. I thought my ass was going to meld with the carpet. And God invented vacuums for a reason, Annie.”

  I stared at her. She stared back.

  “Charlie was here,” she said, overlooking the can of tuna and using her teeth to peel back the foil from my plate and nibble at the pepperoni pizza instead. “He said I get to be an even bigger freak now because you’re good at following directions. So, yay for that.”

  Dumbstruck, I stared at her as she continued to breathe cat breath all over my dinner. I let her. She was a talking cat, after all, and I figured it was kind of like having the flu. You got to eat whatever you wanted, as long as you could keep it down.

  I left the desk lamp on and spread out my notes and materials for her before taking a quick shower and climbing into bed. It was just around ten thirty, and I was immensely proud of myself for not having crashed yet after the lack of sleep in the preceding days. I slipped into bed and said a quick goodnight to Gates as she pored over everything I had brought home, her tail flicking in agitation that she didn’t have the thumbs to hold a pencil and make her own notes anymore.

  ~~~~~~~~~

  I slept all night and through the alarm. Gates had to wake me up, which she did by creeping up close to my ear and whispering an obscenity. I threw on my clothes while she delivered a prepared speech on how I was to personally kick the ass of anyone who wasn’t her friend and pretended to worry about her disappearance. When I asked her what I should say to her parents, she only laughed lightly.

  “Tell them I’m in Silicon Valley learning to run my own startup. That’s where they think I am now.”

  I paused, and then finished pulling my shirt down. “What?”

  “I called them first thing last night after Charlie paid his visit,” she said, and the image of a cat trying to dial the cordless handset in my room immediately came to mind. “But first I called my uncle out there. He’s still in his twenties and he always told me I should travel the world and have an adventure before I settled down and became an adult. So, he thinks I’m backpacking in Poland right now, and he’s covering with my parents, who would never let me go backpacking in Poland.”

  I turned back to face her, raising my eyebrows. “You’re an evil genius, Gates.”

  “Anise?” My dad knocked on my door before opening it, and Gates jumped under the bed. “Were you just talking to…?”

  He looked bewildered. So did I.

  I pointed at the clock radio on my bedside that I had left on to cover our voices. His eyes scanned the room, and seemed to settle on the conclusion that it must have been a commercial playing. I was too much of a nerd to sneak someone into my room, and the reputation came in useful on the rare occasions when I needed it. Like last night, when he hadn’t assumed anything about my staying out late, except that I must have been taking extra care in sweeping up the greenhouse floors.

  His eyes relaxed. “That girl from your school, the one with the rare peanut allergy, is on the news right now. Her parents are organizing a candlelight vigil by the school tonight if you want to go.”

  I wasn’t sure that I was someone they would want there if they knew. “Thanks, I’ll think about it.”

  That day at school was hardly any better than the first. Gates seemed to have stopped the alert on her disappearance just in time, as none of her teachers seemed to note her absence anymore. Her mother must have notified the school that she had chosen to skip graduating in favor of becoming a computer whiz like her uncle. Her dad wasn’t going to be happy about it, but he lived in San Antonio—it was hard to make a big deal out of it from that far away. If everything went according to plan, she would be back from her “trip” and her “internship” before Friday, anyway.

  I sat through my classes, but I had completely forgotten my regular homework assignments in favor of learning how to perform a magic spell that hadn’t worked. I begged two teachers for extensions, claiming that Gates’ sudden unexplained absence had pushed me into a worried depression. Then I tried to figure out how I was going to find time between my job at the greenhouse and Charlie to actually do the assignments.

  I did as much homework as I could over lunch and in class, and it wasn't nearly enough. I realized that it was stupid to be worrying about something
like grades in light of my current predicament, but at the same time, a lot of my classes had put most of the grade credit into projects or tests at the end of the year.

  If I didn't get this stuff done, I wasn't going to graduate with the GPA I needed, and that could mean being refused entrance at the college that had given me a preliminary acceptance. If that happened, I wasn’t going to have a future to return to after breaking the curses… not the one I had wanted, at least.

  When the bell finally rang, I retreated to the school library, hoping that I could sneak in another thirty to forty-five minutes before the librarian kicked me out and locked up. I picked a table at the far end of the room to avoid the hairy eyeball she had given me after our run in the previous day.

  I had just settled down and cracked open my math book when the shelf behind the librarian's desk broke, sending a dozen heavy books and two potted plants crashing to the ground. She yelped and stood up as her aid rushed to help her inspect the damage and clean up. I had risen to my feet, but once I saw that no one was hurt and the cleanup efforts were handled, I lowered myself back into my chair.

  “Trying to avoid me again, Little ’Thorn?”

  I nearly jumped out of my skin. Looking over as I collected the book, pen and paper I had just thrown to the floor, I saw Charlie sitting next to me. Thank goodness for the hubub over by the desk—no one even spared a glance at my weirdness.

  “Oh, they can’t hear me or see me,” Charlie said, examining his nails as he waited for me to get back in my chair. “This is all about you and me, Thorn. You honestly believe this busywork is more important than what we’re doing? Do I need to take my gift back, or maybe offer you some extra motivation…?”

  “No!”

  This time, the librarian looked over at me with a fierce glare. I lowered my voice and stared at my notebook, trying not to look conspicuous as I carried on a conversation with myself.

  “This is homework,” I whispered. “I have to do it or I won’t make the grades I need for college admission.”