But then he thought of that thing lurking somewhere in the unseen ether and shook himself out of his daydreams. He gripped his clippers and cut. The new tendrils always overshot their ambition, clinging too tight to where it was impossible to remain.
A week later the first fruit appeared on the vine, whispering its promise of a new vintage. Elena spent the morning tying protective charms of amethyst crystals to the trellising. If he hadn’t seen what he had that horrible night, he would have put a stop to it. And he never would have let her stir salt into a bowl and chant rhymes to cast out the grotesque thing perched atop the old canes. Instead he went about his light plowing, observing, surmising, and staying out of her way as she walked among the spreading canopy with a bowl and candle held before her. Though ready to jump at the first hint of trouble, he trusted in her ability to flush the gargoyle from the unseen world. And though he would not know with his own eyes if she succeeded, he thought he might feel the difference. Likely the assumption was his mortal ego at work, but there were moments just before dusk he thought he could sense the thing watching him.
After an hour she put aside her tools.
“Will it come back?” he asked.
She lifted her chin to the sky as if listening for a particular sound. “Only if summoned, but I’ll know if he steps foot inside the vineyard again. He’ll run screaming from the salt curse I wove around the perimeter. Gargoyles aren’t so different from slugs.”
Her smile disarmed him, and he forgot again there was anything to fear from the supernatural. “Come, let’s get inside before the rain pelts us.”
“You’re predicting the weather now?”
“Madame warned me this morning there’d be a downpour.”
He walked beside Elena on the path, still uncertain if he should take her hand. It wasn’t only his aversion to the manifestations he’d seen that prevented him from pursuing her, not when the thought of kissing her distracted him daily to the point he could hardly concentrate on anything else. But he couldn’t deny the barrier that stood between them. Love with this woman would be a master class in complication.
And so he slid his hands in his pockets, held back by the restraint of logical thought.
His mind was dead set on the matter, but the constant torment the desire created between his head and his heart had him half believing she’d put a spell on him. He’d seen the love potions the street witches sold on market day. He’d always assumed the vials contained a shot of Vin Mariani or, more mildly, a spritz of lemon verbena oil. Harmless fun when you needed to believe your heart’s desire could be won with a swig and a wish. But that was before he knew the potency of real magic. It was against the covenants, of course. She couldn’t put a spell on him or any man without his consent. But what if he had willed it? There was a brief moment after he first learned the truth that he’d wondered if her powers included the ability to read minds. A damning notion if true.
To test the idea and know if he needed to guard his thoughts, he’d decided one evening to let his natural mind wander as he sat across from Elena in the salon. He began at her ankles, then inched his thoughts up along her calves, her thighs, and the soft curve of her derrière, but the only person in the room to flinch from the improper entertainment was himself, left to adjust the crotch of his suddenly too-tight trousers. He thus faced the astonishing confirmation that he was under no spell and there’d been no unintended invitation to manipulate his thoughts. The mundane truth was that he was utterly, completely enchanted by this woman.
Attraction was its own powerful potion, able to conjure unsolicited desire out of thin air.
Elena kicked mud from her shoes and then entered the kitchen as he held the door open for her. He’d hardly followed her inside when Madame slumped to her knees and clutched her chest.
Elena ran to the old woman and put her arms around her. “Grand-Mère, what’s wrong?”
“Don’t you feel it?”
“Feel what?”
The old woman glanced up at the sky through the window. She swallowed hard. “Like last time, only worse.”
Jean-Paul shook his head in confusion. “Is she ill? Shall I fetch a doctor?”
“She has premonitions. She feels the warning in her chest when it’s strong enough.” Elena glanced at the gathering clouds. “Last time she suffered this badly we had a killing frost. We lost half of the vineyard that year.”
“Frost?” The threat sent a jolt through him. “Can’t you do something? Say a spell to keep it off the vines?”
Elena ignored him and hurried to the parlor. She pulled the almanac she and Grand-Mère had made out of the drawer and spread it open on the sideboard table. Her finger traced over moons and stars, suns and symbols. She double-checked dates and forecasts.
“Is it true?” asked Jean-Paul. “Can you see it in your calculations?”
Elena shook her head. “No, there’s nothing to warn of frost. Unless we missed something. A sun flare could throw off a prognostication, but that’s rare. And it’s too late in the season for a serious threat.” She tapped her fingers on the almanac before returning to the kitchen. She gripped Madame by her shoulders. “What do you sense now?”
Madame’s head wobbled atop her neck, uncertain. “It’s getting closer.”
Losing even a quarter of the vineyard would ruin him after three bad years already. “If it’s frost, we should prepare,” he said, tired of waiting. “I’m going out to set up the char cans for the fires.”
“I’ll come with you.” Elena followed him out the door, her eyes searching the horizon. She got as far as the center of the courtyard before she stopped and called out. “It isn’t a frost.”
He swung the workroom door open and lowered the bellows and a box of candles to start the fires. “I’m not taking any chances. I’ll walk the fields all night if I must to keep the fires going.”
Elena stared at the road. “It’s not a frost.”
The tone and certainty of her voice the second time she spoke made him set down his tools. With one hand pressed to the door’s edge, he peered around the corner to see what had her frozen to the flagstones. A black coach-and-four, the red crest of the Region of the Chanceaux Valley emblazoned on its side, headed straight for the château. Even without the power of premonition, he knew its approach was as threatening as any storm front bearing frost. In that one vision he saw more than just lost crops. An instinct he rarely gave credence to shouted up from the deepest well inside him that something terrible had happened. Was still happening.
He joined Elena in the center of the courtyard, standing shoulder to shoulder as they faced the danger bearing down on them. The coach rattled around the last bend in the road. Three helmeted men on skeletal motorbikes followed at a rumble. The driver lashed his team with the whip from his high perch and then made straight for the gate. The wheels gyrated under the weight and speed of the careening coach, yet it held to the pavement without tipping.
He threw a protective arm around Elena, ready to pull them both to the ground to avoid the speeding coach if he must. The driver shouted “Halt!” and the horses responded, coming to an unnatural stop a yard in front of them. The motorbike riders circled, then shut off their engines.
“Reckless fool, you nearly ran us over,” Jean-Paul shouted as the three bikers surrounded him and Elena on the cobblestones. The coach driver sat silent, his face forward, eyes as placid as the dead.
The cab door opened and the Chanceaux Valley constable emerged, his uniform cape flapping in the wind as he descended in one graceful stride. He wore a look of mild concern as he straightened his gold-corded kepi and glanced at the couple. “You are Monsieur Martel?”
Jean-Paul swallowed. “I am. What business do you have at the vineyard, Constable?”
The policeman, a captain as indicated by the bars on his shoulders, flipped open a small notebook. “And you are Mademoiselle Boureanu, a vine witch employed at Château Renard?”
Elena telegraphed her growing fear w
ith a nervous sideways glance at Jean-Paul before answering. “Yes. What is this all about?”
The constable ignored her and signaled instead to the bikers. They set their helmets on their motorcycles and then spread out in the courtyard at his command. The captain clicked his heels together with military precision, took a regimented step to his left, and held open the coach door. Inspector Nettles poked his balding head out, smiling at them with all the appeal of a rabid dog. He exited the coach with an air of cockiness until his short legs forced him to jump the final gap from the steps to the pavement. Jean-Paul felt Elena reach for his hand at the sight of the insufferable inspector. He gripped hers back and squeezed.
“Well, well,” Nettles said, slapping the collar of his jacket up against the first drops of rain. With a little too much self-satisfaction he walked up to Elena, looked her over in her proper work clothes, and smirked at the change in her appearance. “It seems our conversation is not yet finished after all, goatherd.”
Jean-Paul took a threatening step closer to the man. “I warned you in the village you have no further business with her.”
“Oh, did the constable not spell out the official reason for our visit?” Then he dropped all pretense of civility. “I have a warrant for this woman’s arrest.” Nettles nodded at the constable, who removed from his vest pocket an official-looking paper with a red wax seal displaying the mark of the magistrate on the bottom.
“Arrest? You can’t be serious.” Jean-Paul looked to each man’s face, hoping Nettles had it in him to make a joke. “On what charge?” He took the warrant from the constable and scanned the document.
“The murder of Bastien du Monde. I think you’ll find everything is in order.”
The last sliver of sun was swallowed by cloud; the temperature dropped and a north wind gusted through the valley.
“Murder?” Elena gasped. “Bastien is dead?”
“Very, mademoiselle. Found gutted like a cat this morning on the edge of the village.”
“Du Monde? Dead?” Before he could stop it, Jean-Paul’s mind blamed the witches—the nameless, faceless creatures he’d feared as a child. Then he looked at Elena, so vulnerable as she stood before the law, and had to swallow his shame, knowing how wrong he’d been in the past.
“This is madness. I didn’t murder anyone,” she said, her arms going limp at her sides. “I haven’t left the property in days.”
The inspector turned to Jean-Paul. “Can you verify this?”
“Of course. She’s been here with me the entire time.”
Nettles licked his bottom lip, which on his face translated into a lascivious sneer. “Day and night, monsieur?”
He stuttered at the implied accusation. “I . . . no, not at night.”
“I sleep in my workroom in the cellar.”
Nettles raised an eyebrow. “Among your spell books and potions?”
Jean-Paul frowned and folded up the warrant. “What does that have to do with anything?” He turned toward Elena. “Don’t say another word to them.”
Nettles ignored him and took a step closer to her. “And do you ever fancy a moonlit stroll alone in the shadow world when everyone else is fast asleep?” Rain fell on Elena’s hair, raising a cloud of mist around her. She stared back at the man with cold blue eyes but said nothing. “I suspected as much the moment I first saw you,” he said, leaning in. “I have a knack for these things.” He straightened and crooked his finger at the bikers. “Take her into custody. And search the premises.”
Two of the riders pushed past Jean-Paul to get to Elena while the third strode toward the house.
“Wait. You can’t do this. Where is your evidence?” Jean-Paul pushed back and was immediately knocked to the ground by the constable, who’d struck him in the back of the legs with a club. He watched helplessly from his knees as they twisted a pair of thick metal handcuffs around Elena’s wrists. His eyes did a double take as a faint blue glow emanated from a circle of runes engraved into each metal cuff.
“The modus operandi is the evidence, monsieur.” Nettles tightened the gloves on his small hands, stretching them so the ridges of his knuckles showed under the leather before plucking Elena’s knife from her belt. He held it with the tips of his fingers, as if careful not to smudge any evidence that might be found, then glanced down at Jean-Paul in triumph. “Are you at all aware of who I am?” When Jean-Paul did not answer, the inspector lifted a brow as if he yet again was faced with the task of informing the ignorant. “I inspect acts of illegal magic. Constable Girard here inspects crimes against mortals. When the two branches of law enforcement overlap, we have a crime that violates the covenants. In this instance we have a dead mortal obviously killed by a witch. Our victim was found dead by means of a specific form of exsanguination. A ritual only a few skilled witches are capable of.”
Elena paled as if reading her fate in the foggy air. “Blood magic.”
“Dark, evil magic that runs contrary to the laws of the All Knowing itself, mademoiselle, and for which you will meet a most gruesome fate when judgment is passed.”
The inspector’s eyes shifted to the house as Madame hobbled outside, clearly distraught.
“Is it true? He was murdered?” She pressed her hand against her chest when she saw Elena in chains. “You can’t take her. No, not again. She’s done nothing.”
“And yet we have multiple witnesses, myself included, who heard her publicly threaten the man in the street just a week ago. I regret, madame, so much shame has been brought on such an old and respected house.”
Elena took a step toward Madame but was thrust back by the two men flanking her. “It’s all right, Grand-Mère. It’s just a misunderstanding. The magistrate will sort it out. I’ll be home soon. I didn’t use anything.”
The old woman fretted, pulling at her hair so that it frayed loose from its pins in long white strands that clung to her face in the rain. “You can’t honestly believe she had anything to do with this. We make wine, that’s all.”
“Inspector!” At that moment, the deputy sent to search the house came running outside, pointing to the wall near the gate. “I could see it from the upstairs window.” The young man ran to the wall and then reached atop the capstone with his upstretched hand. When he brought it back down he held a desiccated cat in his hand, one recently drained of blood.
The inspector clucked his tongue at the sight. “Madame, I believe in her guilt with all my heart. Take the witch away.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
The stone steps leading up to the witch’s tower had been worn smooth at their center, as if a thousand previous feet had trod the same wretched path Elena now took. With her wrists shackled, Nettles led her by the arm and prodded her through the main gate. The blue light of a spell-wall glowed in her shadow vision. She’d been nervous on the long ride out of the valley, watching the vineyards disappear behind her, but now she visibly quivered at the sight of the impending oak door and iron lock before her. How could this be happening? She’d returned home with the intent to kill Bastien, yes, but the thought had never made the leap from her mind to her hand. Not even when he’d stood before her in easy reach of her knife, the temptation slick as sweat in her palm.
The doors to Maison de Chêne yawned open as if prepared to swallow her inside the imposing granite walls of the tower. Was this yet another curse? Her mind careened back to the moment just before the curse touched her seven years ago. She’d been picking stems of eyebright along the road to make a tea when she got home. But she’d let her mind drift into shadow, anxious after her fight with Bastien, when a stabbing pain in her liver forced her to her knees. Locked in metamorphosis, her true self had been bundled and wrapped inside the skin of a toad, the confinement squeezing her consciousness until only the dimmest of mental light shone through the amphibious eyes. From that narrow point of view she’d watched the wheel of time turn round for seven seasons.
Tick.
Tick.
Tick.
She’d
had only a moment to grab on to something meaningful, something to trigger memory. Her nose pressed against the grass, the green blades a curtain before her eyes. The stems of the eyebright gripped in her hand. And then another hand reached down to retrieve a dropped pocket watch. A green eye with a yellow slit. With her last wisp of clear thought she clasped on to the color green, making it a talisman if and when she woke again. It was the last thing she saw before sinking inside the curse.
She stared up at the prison gate, the terror of a second imprisonment draining her veins of warmth until she shivered uncontrollably. The prison matron, a middle-aged woman dressed in an iridescent blue robe, cut her a measuring look, then greeted Nettles in a curt yet professional manner. “This is the one?”
“She is. Got her dead to rights on summoning dark magic for murder. We’ve got weapon, means, and motive, and we even found her with a dead cat.”
The matron tapped a thoughtful finger to her lip before turning a wormy eye on Elena. “In that case, welcome to Maison de Chêne. I am Madame Dulac. You will address me as Matron. You will be housed here until your trial. Know that we do not coddle nor cosset, and we do not give in to whims of privilege. We are here to take in the dangerous, the deranged, and the derelict. But I warn you we house only the harmless here. Done so by plucking out the stingers of would-be wasps such as yourself.” To emphasize her point, Matron withdrew a yew wand from her sleeve, running the smooth wood through her fingers before pointing it at Elena. “You will not cast spells here. You will not conduct magic of any kind. Be assured any witch caught trying to manipulate the physical matter inside her cell will feel the sting of this queen bee.”
“But it wasn’t me. I’ve done nothing wrong.”
The matron shook a weary head at Nettles. “Have you ever brought me one that didn’t say that?”
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