A Witch's Feast

by C. N. Crawford

  “I think we should go back now,” whispered Mariana.

  Fiona had hoped to come back with something concrete—something that would force Tobias to tell her what was going on. She pressed her face between the iron bars, closer to the glass. Something scraped against the floor on the other side of the glass, and Fiona shivered. “I hear something. But all I can see is my enormous hair.”

  Byron flapped around her head urgently. Mariana pulled on her arm, but she inched closer to the glass. It must have been a trick of the light, because her eyes looked enormous—black and cavernous below her furrowed brows, and her skin was pale as bone. The curls around her head seemed to writhe like snakes. Shivering, she edged back—but the reflection lurched toward her. A horrible thought sent ice racing up her spine. She was invisible. I shouldn’t have a reflection. Transfixed, she could see sunken eyes full of fury, a tear of blood rolling down a hollow cheek to an open mouth, contorted in rage. A pale hand pressed against the glass, and a broken chain hung from an emaciated wrist.

  She couldn’t breathe. “Guys.” She stumbled back. “It’s not me.”

  “What?” shouted Mariana. “Oh God.”

  Thunk. On the other side of the door, the grotesque reflection banged against the glass, leaving a drop of blood where the forehead hit. A deep, guttural wail rumbled through the cemetery. Am I screaming, or is that the monster?

  A long hand smashed through the glass, chains rattling. Yellow-clawed fingers wrapped around Fiona’s wrist, a thumbnail spearing her skin, drawing a fat drop of blood. Fiona stared at it and screamed.

  Mariana shrieked along with her. Someone—either her or Alan—battered at the creature’s arm to break its grasp. With a sickening crackle of bones, Fiona yanked her wrist free.

  She stumbled backward, tripping over a stone and tumbling to the ground. Her face slammed against the dirt, the fall knocking the wind out of her. Disoriented, she pushed herself up. Byron darted around her head.

  “Fiona, where are you?” Mariana shouted.

  Is she on the other side of the cemetery already? Fiona stumbled toward the entrance, refusing to look back. “Alan! Mariana!”

  The hag’s anguished wail ripped through the still night, making her senses falter. Fiona broke into a sprint through the angels. She was only fifteen feet from the wall now, her feet kicking up clods of earth. Behind her, the iron crypt gate rattled louder.

  “I’m coming!” she called. “Are you here? Alan?”

  “Mariana’s over already,” said Alan.

  He waited for me.

  She collided with Alan’s invisible body. “Ow,” he said, grabbing her to hoist her up. She clambered up the vines, eager to get as far as possible from the crypt. In her panic, she lost her grip on the top of the wall.

  “Fiona, get over!” he shouted with frustration, pushing her back up.

  At last, she scrambled over the edge and threw herself down, landing on the other side. A jolt of pain shot through her right ankle.

  “Are you okay?” asked Mariana. “What was that?”

  “I don’t know.” With effort, she righted herself. It was at least a quarter of a mile to the house, and a searing pain screamed up her leg.

  Behind her, Alan thumped to the ground. “Let’s go!”

  They were off running into the hedge maze, but after a minute, the pain in Fiona’s ankle slowed her down. She gave up on sprinting and sputtered to a pained limp. Where’s Byron? The howl from the cemetery pierced the air as she stumbled toward a hedge wall.

  “Mariana?” she said, but there was no reply. They were far ahead of her now. Fiona had been left behind. And if her ankle was broken, she’d shatter her bones if she transformed.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  Thomas

  Thomas stared at the sneering guests around him, no longer quite as beautiful as they’d appeared before. His anger nearly took his breath away. He and Oswald were nothing more than a joke to them.

  “Dancers!” the King bellowed. His reddening nose suggested that he’d slammed more than a few glasses of wine by now.

  Fortuna emptied her goblet and grinned, parroting the King. “Dancers!” For the first time, Thomas noticed that her cheeks were painted a lurid pink.

  Lithe women clad in silver gossamer leapt onto the windowsills and into the hall, each with lilac hair streaming behind them. Floral tattoos snaked around their bodies.

  Delicate string music swelled from the gardens, and the dancers twirled and spun over the tiled floor. Thomas would have enjoyed this, if only his own death weren’t hanging over him.

  Long strands of tulle unfurled from the arches and the dancers grasped the fabric, climbing upward. They spun around the hall with astounding grace and agility, swinging from the high arches and pushing off the stone walls. Night had fallen, and the stars glittered.

  Thomas’s heart thrummed in his chest, and he took another slug of wine to steady his nerves. Would it be possible to stage some kind of escape while everyone watched the entertainment? But even if he escaped the fortress, he had no way out of Maremount. The King’s forces would surely hunt him down. And he couldn’t leave without Oswald.

  As the music drew to a close, the dancers leapt to the flowery ground near the table, pulling handfuls of colored jewels from their bodices. They tossed the gems into the air, and the stones transformed into colorful birds that flew around the hall. Blue, red, green, and gold sparrows circled their heads.

  The dinner guests clapped and cheered, and the dancers slipped back into the gardens. Thomas’s hands trembled. He was going to be suspended in a glass vat, eternally stung by scorpions.

  Celia rose, grinning. “Oh, how I love birds!” She chased a golden sparrow as it flew around. “Come to me, golden birdie!”

  Idiot. Celia’s obviously no help. She certainly seemed mad, or at least simpleminded. “I’ve caught one!” she trilled.

  The rich food churned in Thomas’s stomach, and he dragged a hand across his mouth.

  Just as he picked up his goblet, the golden sparrow landed on his plate. The bird clutched a small, coiled piece of paper in its claws.

  “Father, I can dance, too!” Celia twirled, laughing loudly. The guests’ attention turned to her, giving Thomas the chance to pry the paper from the bird’s foot. He held a small, handwritten note his lap:

  We’re both in danger. They keep me locked in the Gold Tower. If you can get to me there, I have the spell to get us out of Maremount.

  Dizzy, Thomas rose from his seat, pushing back his chair.

  Asmodeus stood next to him, glaring. “Leaving so soon?”

  “I’m just wondering what the plans are for my return to Boston,” he stammered.

  The Theurgeon grinned. His cheeks were flushed from the wine. “You didn’t really think we were going to let you go, did you? You assaulted one of the King’s advisors. And you consort with a Ragman.”

  Thomas shot a glance at the King, who was ogling Fortuna’s cleavage over his goblet.

  “So you mean to keep me here?” Thomas bellowed. The dinner guests went quiet, glaring at him. He was ruining their evening now, but the wine and rage simmered away his fear. “And you didn’t send Oswald home.”

  A glimmer of amusement flickered across Queen Bathsheba’s face.

  The King thinned his lips into something between a smile and a sneer. “How could I send you home? You’ll make such a charming ornament on Fishgate.” He threw back his head with laughter, and the others joined in. “In any case, an execution could liven up the Mayflower celebrations.”

  “I will wave at you when I pass by,” Fortuna chirped.

  Asmodeus guffawed before turning to Thomas. “Of course Oswald remains in the Iron Tower. You should have heard him whimper when I crushed his little familiar.”

  Thomas’s thoughts raced. They were torturing Oswald somewhere nearby, and he’d been sitting here among them, gorging himself and watching dancers.

  Anger gripped him. He had nothing to lose. H
e glared at the King. “You’re a plague on this city,” he spat. Adrenaline coursed through him. “And do you know what rids cities of plagues? Fire. When the Tatters rise up to burn the fortress—”

  Strong hands grabbed him from behind, yanking him toward the exit. “—they will cleanse the pestilence—”

  A hand clamped over his mouth, and an arm tightened around his throat. Someone was choking him, and as his lungs burned, a small part of him felt relief. In this world, a quick death is a mercy.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  Fiona

  If she screamed louder, would it attract unwanted attention from the guards? As she contemplated this, the creature’s howls stopped. Fiona could hear only her own breathing, fast and rasping. The crickets, so loud before, no longer chirped. In the silence of the night air, her breath was deafening.

  She looked up to the sky. “Byron?”

  There was no reply, no winged form fluttered in front of the moon. She had a sudden urge to look behind her to see if the snake-haired wight had followed her out of the cemetery. She stumbled around another hedge corner into a dead end, pain searing her ankle. Something told her that if she glanced over her shoulder, those haunted black eyes and the bone-pale face would drag her under the earth, into Hell itself.

  She limped faster, gasping in her panic. There was a crunching noise in the distance. Footsteps? Hair rose on the back of her neck. She glanced around. There were just stupid hedges everywhere she looked. Who builds a hedge labyrinth? She hobbled in the other direction.

  Crunch. The footsteps were closing in. She tried to run again, but pain shot up her leg. Crunch. Her heart beat fast as a hummingbird’s wings, and with a trembling hand, she covered her own mouth to stifle the sound of her heavy breathing. Crunch. She was being hunted by her own monstrous doppelgänger.

  I can handle this. I helped defeat the bone wardens. She tried to make herself as still as one of the cemetery’s marble angels. If the crypt-demon couldn’t see or hear her, it couldn’t hunt her.

  Crunch. Except that it had seen her.

  The footsteps drew closer over the gravel, and she could hear its breathing as well as her own. Maybe she could call up a small flame, just long enough to distract it while she slammed a fist into its face. She’d taken a self-defense class at Mather, though most of the moves assumed she’d be fighting a man and not a crypt-demon. Still, a well-placed elbow could do a lot of damage.

  Crunch.

  She held her breath.

  But the hand that touched her shoulder was gentle. “Fiona?”

  She squinted in the darkness. She could just make out a pair of broad shoulders. “Tobias?”

  “There you are. What the hell are you doing out here?”

  Despite her doubts about his honesty, she was relieved to see him, and some of the tension in her shoulders relaxed. Whatever he was up to, he wasn’t trying to murder her. “There’s something after me. A demon thing. With snake hair.”

  “There’s nothing there. Where are the others?”

  “I think they’re back at the house already. I landed funny on my ankle.” She leaned into him as they began walking.

  With Tobias’s arm around her, her racing heart began to slow, and she caught her breath. “How did you find me? Those stupid hedges are a safety hazard.”

  His body was warm in the chilly night air. “I could hear your panicked breathing. You sounded like an ox tilling a field.”

  “An ox? Wait—what do you mean you could hear my breathing?”

  He shook his head. “You didn’t answer my question.”

  “I wanted to find out what was in the crypt.” She leaned into his arm, tight around her waist. He smelled like a campfire in spring.

  “I told you not to throw yourself in harm’s way, and then you run out and wake up a demon.”

  “You woke the demon first with whatever you were up to by the river,” she snapped. “And I wanted to find out what it was.”

  “I have nothing to do with the Purgators. Why can’t you just trust me?”

  “Because you’re so obviously lying, and for all I know, you could be sneaking out at night to eat people or drink blood.”

  She could see a vein pulse in his forehead, and they were silent for a few moments. Even before, when he hadn’t been lying, he’d never told her much about himself. He never spoke of his family.

  He glanced at her. “You’re starting to become visible. You’ll need to chant the spell again.”

  “Right.” She squinted at him. He was dressed in a loose white T-shirt. “Why are you visible? Won’t the guards see you?”

  He stared ahead. “I slipped out quietly. I forgot the invisibility spell. Can you say it for both of us?”

  Another lie. There was no way he’d forgotten the invisibility spell. True, he’d forgotten it in Maremount, but she was certain he’d committed it to memory since then. He’d been beating himself up for his lapse in Maremount. It was what had prevented him from saving Eden.

  She shoved away the image of Eden’s corpse and Tobias’s grief-stricken face after he’d watched her die. Limping along, she fluently intoned the spell.

  Tobias’s body disappeared into the darkness. “Thank you. And while we’re at it…” With his arm around her waist, he pulled her to a halt. He crouched down, lifting her ankle slightly.

  “What are you doing?”

  “The mending spell.”

  “Will that work on an ankle?”

  “It worked on a dead man’s skull. I don’t see why it wouldn’t work on you.”

  He chanted the Angelic spell, and when he finished, the pain subsided in her leg. He released her ankle before standing again.

  She rotated her foot. “That was a good idea.”

  “I can be useful sometimes. When I’m not drinking blood.” He led her out of the hedge maze, and crickets began to chirp again.

  As they stepped into the paths between the gardens, she heard a new set of footsteps crunching along the gravel.

  “Fiona?” Alan’s voice, whispering. “We thought you were right behind us, and then we couldn’t find you.”

  “I hurt my ankle. Tobias found me.”

  “There you are!” cried Mariana. “I was freaking out that Evil Fiona caught you.”

  “We’re not calling it that.” She crossed her arms. “Anyway, thanks for coming back for me.”

  Clouds crept across the moon, and in almost total darkness, the four of them slipped past the guards and into the still house. When she got to her room, Fiona crawled into her bed, shutting her window tight against whatever shadow-self lurked in the grim angel garden. Tobias still wasn’t telling her anything. What sort of deal had he made with the Ranulfs that allowed him to sneak around the grounds fully visible?

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  Tobias

  Below the portrait of Great-Grandfather Edgar, Mrs. Ranulf tapped her fingers on the table, her eyes flitting from student to student as they chatted over bowls of cereal. Her face was pale, the color of the puffed rice grains in her bowl. Munroe sat next to Tobias, and she peered over at him, ignoring her food.

  It was frustrating sitting around the Ranulf mansion while he had a philosopher to kill. But he might as well hole up here until Amauberge Bouchard sucked the life out of Jack. The old monster would be too weak to put up a fight against Tobias when the succubus finished with him. On top of that, he’d be fortified with Emerazel’s strength. Jack didn’t stand a chance. It should just be a matter of days until he returned to Boston to kill Rawhed once and for all.

  Jonah rubbed his eyes, only half awake. “So we have math first again today?”

  “Math, then English.” There was little enthusiasm in Mariana’s voice.

  Beside her, Fiona took a long slug of tea. Her slow blinking suggested she was struggling to stay awake. It must have been well after midnight by the time they’d both gotten back to their rooms. She knew he was lying about something, but he could fill her in once Jack was defeated. An
ything before that meant she risked getting involved.

  She wore a red ruffled shirt that looked like it was made for an eight-year-old, and yet the way it hugged her shoulders—

  Munroe touched his arm. “Did you sleep all right last night, Tobias?”

  Mrs. Ranulf frowned at her daughter. “Munroe. We don’t touch boys at the breakfast table.”

  Munroe whipped her head around, lashing Tobias’s face with her red hair. “I wasn’t doing anything,” she hissed.

  Sadie tittered from the other end of the table, and Fiona shot him what she referred to as her death stare.

  Mrs. Ranulf turned to Fiona with an approving smile. “You don’t spend too much time thinking about boys, do you, Fiona? With test scores like yours, I think you’re destined for great things.”

  Fiona glanced around the table as if looking for help, and Tobias shrugged at her. She’d somehow become a favorite of Mrs. Ranulf’s.

  Munroe’s mother pushed her bowl of cereal away. “I’m not sure how many of you know the history of the Sanguine Brotherhood.” No one spoke as her eyes scanned the room. “There are some who call us the Purgators, but I find that such an old-fashioned word.” Her eyes swiveled to Munroe. “Why don’t you fill in our guests on our culture.”

  Munroe’s chest swelled within her white blouse. “The Brotherhood dates back to antiquity. After the storm god wiped out nearly an entire Roman legion in Britain, the remaining centurions sailed to Denmark.”

  Mrs. Ranulf nodded, a smile brightening her face. “In Denmark, the Brotherhood established their own dynasty. And with the Vikings, our faith was spread around the globe.”

  Munroe stroked a strand of her hair. “For thousands of years, the Sanguine Brotherhood protected villages and cities from the evils of witchcraft.”

  Connor raised his eyebrows. “The Brotherhood sounds awesome. And some of the Founding Fathers were part of it?”

  Mrs. Ranulf sighed deeply, looking to her daughter with a wistful smile. “I’ll be honest. The republic wasn’t really our thing. We didn’t like all the nonsense about separating church and state, and between you and me,” she flashed a conspiratorial grin, “most people can’t be trusted to vote.” She leaned back in her chair. “Some families were made to rule. It’s in our blood. But the Brotherhood does what it can to remain in power, even if it means adapting for a time. I feel certain the country will welcome my son Harrison’s leadership someday.”