Dan’s face brightened at the mention of Granny’s name. (Although she had only one grandchild that I was aware of, she was unfailingly called Granny by everyone in town.) “Oh, well if she invited you, I’m sure it’s okay. You can go on down.”
I pretended not to hear Arabella’s snicker as I thanked him. Downstairs, we found a table laden with dip arrangements and dainty pastries, and Granny already seated in a circle of gray plastic chairs. I took a seat next to her and surveyed the room.
Helen was just as I remembered: thin, haughty, and overdressed. Beside her sat Emily Talbott, the only other Garden Club member in attendance. I recognized Tricia Landry, of the failing antique shop, and three others I knew only by their faces. Dan came down a few minutes later to complete the circle.
“Well, before we get started, it looks like we have some new members joining us tonight.” Helen perched a paper plate on her knee and gestured at me. “Would you like to introduce yourself?”
As if you don’t know who I am. As if your coven hasn’t been trying to kill me for nearly a year.
I pasted on a fake smile and gave a little wave. “Hello everyone. I’m Verity. Love Dickens.”
Arabella introduced herself a bit more tersely, but as nobody seemed to be staring at her glass eye, I thought we were safe from a fight breaking out.
“All right then, let’s begin as we always do,” Granny said. Helen gave her a resentful look, but said nothing; it seemed even the Garden Club was reluctant to cross Granny. I filed that away as a useful fact.
“If you had to choose a single word to describe this book, what would it be?” Granny went on. “What’s this story about?”
“Obviously, it’s a story about love,” Dan said.
“I don’t see it that way.” Helen glared pointedly at me. “I say it’s about vengeance.”
My gaze didn’t falter. “No. It’s about sacrifice.”
I had to admit to Granny later that I enjoyed that evening much more than I expected. Most of the group was welcoming, and the discussion was lively. Arabella even chimed in once or twice. My bruise stayed still, and for a while, the curse left me in peace.
When it was over, I stopped Tricia Landry on her way out. “Can I have a quick word?”
She gave me a suspicious look from behind mousy brown bangs. “I suppose.”
“Lance has been wanting to acquire some antiques for the hotel, quite a few I believe, but he just has no idea where to start. I’m afraid neither of us is very knowledgeable in that area. I wondered whether you would be available to work with us?”
A few minutes later, Granny was nodding her approval as Tricia walked out looking a good deal happier than she had all night.
I smiled, and made a mental note to inform Lance that the Mount Phearson was now on the hook to buy enough antiques to keep a store open. He would not be pleased, but ownership had to come with some perks.
That was the last time I would have fun for a good long while.
I went to bed early that night, worn out by the anxiety of socializing. At some point I became aware that I was dreaming, and that awareness was indistinguishable from waking. I found myself running through the snow.
Through the maze.
It was daytime, although the dense gray sky made it impossible to tell the time. The maze was usually deserted, especially in the wintertime, but not today. There were a lot of footprints in the snow.
I’m dreaming. It’s the curse. I’m dream-hallucinating.
(dreamseeing)
Spiders and snakes were everywhere, and what must have been thousands of beetles. Things were biting me, getting inside my boots, stinging my ankles.
Just a dream. Just the curse.
The creatures came in and out of focus as my vision blurred. Something was falling down my nose. I reached up a small hand, much smaller than my real one, and pushed against cold plastic.
Glasses. Those are my glasses. My red glasses.
The glasses slid back into position, and the world around me became clear again.
I’m seeing through Harry. Like Max did. Like Serena did.
dreamseeing
Somewhere in the distance, Jeeves was singing his own special version of “Three Blind Mice” again. I understood, because Harry did, that Jeeves was in a very good mood.
That was because the trap was working. The trespassers thought they’d gotten away with it, that they had forced that guard to tell them the secret of where the witch’s body was. They thought Jeeves didn’t know they were there at all.
But he knew. He knew, and he was ready for them. They were going to get caught in a web that belonged to something much worse than a spider, if I didn’t run faster. If I didn’t warn them in time.
I rounded a corner, and found the snow soaked with blood.
Just a dream, just the curse.
I ran faster, so fast I thought I might collapse. Were those my own cursed lungs, or little Harry’s that were struggling so hard for air? I took another corner too hard, and lost my balance in the bloody slush.
So much blood.
I hit the ground sideways, biting the inside of my cheek, tasting blood even as I was rolling in it. Jeeves was nearby now. He wasn’t singing anymore. He was laughing.
There was something in the snow, half-buried beneath the hedge. I didn’t want to look. I’d seen this thing once before, in the grass at Cayuga Lake.
(but not the real Cayuga Lake it was just the curse)
But just as before, I was compelled to look.
I crawled forward on Harry’s belly, snakes slithering over me, until I could make out one open eye staring from between the branches of the hedge.
A set of lips that would never smile again.
A neck with no shoulders below it.
Just a dream, just the curse.
dreamseeing
No. It’s not the curse. It’s not the curse at all.
seeing
Was it ever the curse?
This is real.
Or it will be.
As I watched in mute horror, snowflakes began to fall into Cooper’s glassy, lifeless eye.
“Dear God,” I rasped to the moonlit room, only realizing I was awake when I heard the sound of my own voice. “They’re walking into a trap.”
Yesterday or tomorrow?
It was the only question that mattered.
I called the disposable phone Cooper had taken with him. No answer. I called Phineas. No answer. I called Cooper’s regular phone, even though I knew perfectly well that he’d left it in the top drawer of the dresser I was now leaning on.
No answer.
Yesterday or tomorrow?
It was one o’clock in the morning, but it had been daytime in the vision. Either I could still stop this from happening, or I was too late.
Had I seen what was, or what would be?
Please let it be tomorrow.
Lydia answered on the third ring, sounding half asleep and confused. “Verity? What’s wrong?”
“Did they go back to Pennsylvania?”
“Are you sick?”
“LYDIA, WHERE THE FUCK ARE THEY? DID THEY GO BACK?”
I heard her intake of breath when I swore, something I did so rarely that it must have shocked her awake. “Yes. I can explain. We didn’t have any luck in Boston, and th—”
“I don’t need you to explain,” I interrupted. “I need you to tell me when they left.”
“Yesterday afternoon. I’d be surprised if Cooper is even there yet, with the routes he takes.”
Tomorrow. It will happen tomorrow.
It’s not too late.
I started pulling on clothes at random. “Do you have any way of getting a hold of them that I don’t?”
“On the same plane of existence? Only the normal ways. I can try Phineas’s—”
“He’s not picking up. Lydia, listen to me. They’re walking into a trap. Wick knows. Or at least Jeeves does.” Even as I spoke, I prepared for her to try to
soothe me into believing that it was just the curse, a hallucination, a nightmare.
But I knew it wasn’t. I was sick, as I always was after an attack, but my mind was clear, my thoughts focused. I wasn’t even panicking. I couldn’t afford to.
I decided that if she argued with me for more than ten seconds—the amount of time I could spare while I shoved on some shoes—I would hang up.
“Are you sure?” Lydia’s voice was all business now. I heard her moving around, probably putting on clothes herself. “How do you know?”
“I had a vision. And I promise you, it was a vision.”
The witch binds you.
I still didn’t understand that bond. But since Serena’s death—maybe even before that—my hallucinations seemed to be tinged with truth. As if some of her sight had passed to me.
As she once was, so now am I.
I picked up my keys. On the other end of the line, I heard a metallic clip followed by a low whine. Lydia was getting Wulf ready to go. She wasn’t going to argue.
And indeed, she asked no more questions. “Okay. At this hour, it’ll be faster to drive than to wait for morning and a flight. I’m back in Charlotte. Phineas left me the coordinates of the place, and I’m leaving now.”
“Me too.” I was already in the hall.
“Go get Arabella.”
“There’s no time, and I am not staying here if that’s what you—”
“Verity!” Lydia’s voice was commanding enough to stop me, even as determined as I was. “You are in no condition to drive a long way, and frankly, I do not have time to come and scrape you off the side of the road! Get Arabella.”
She had a point. If I had a hallucination or some other curse-related problem, I might end up in a ditch, doing no good to anyone. I reversed direction and headed for Arabella’s room.
“Fine, but if she tries to talk me out of it, or delays me in any way, I’m going alone. I’ll call you from the road.”
Accordingly, the instant Arabella answered her door I said, “I’m leaving for Pennsylvania. Either you can come with me right now and I’ll explain on the way, or you can go back to bed, but those are the only two options.”
We were in Arabella’s car in three minutes.
“How can you be sure it was a real vision and not a hallucination?” she asked after I explained myself.
“I know the difference. I just do. And remember, I was seeing everything through Harry’s eyes. I’ve never had a hallucination like that.”
“So they couldn’t summon Serena’s spirit, then what, they just ran off to get her body without telling anyone?”
“They told Lydia. I’m sure they just kept it from me so I wouldn’t worry. Or try to stop them.”
Arabella punched the steering wheel. “Why would that idiot go rushing in there without taking the time to plan it out properly?”
“Because he’s afraid the curse will kill me before much longer.” I shrugged. My head was pounding. “And because he blames himself for the entire situation, and guilt has made him reckless.”
At least he took Phineas with him. They probably figured that one man who was (mostly) impervious to bullets and one who could teleport made a pretty invincible team.
Great. So Phineas can die, too.
Nobody is going to die. I won’t let anybody die.
“Anyway, they do have a plan,” I said. “They’re going to capture a guard and force him to tell them where to find the remains.”
“Not a very detailed plan, is it?”
I had to agree that it wasn’t, but surely there was more to it than I’d seen.
“So what’s our plan?” Arabella asked.
“We keep frantically calling them, hoping against hope that one of them answers and we can warn them. Otherwise, I guess we just storm the castle and try to get to them before it’s too late.”
“Also not much of a plan.” Arabella smiled at me, although there was little humor in it. “So here we are once again, driving all night to go and rescue the men. This is becoming a pattern, and don’t think I won’t be bringing that to Cooper’s attention.”
Yes, but the last time we did it, one of the men died.
She pressed a hand to my cheek. “But you have a fever, and I’m willing to bet that’s not just excitement you’re shaking with. It would have been better if you’d stayed behind. You’ll slow me down.”
“No, I won’t. I’m the one who knows the place.”
The next seven hours were the longest of my life. I tried to comfort myself with the hope that, although I was sure the trap was real, all that blood (that head) in the snow might merely be a warning. Cooper was too valuable a hostage to waste, especially when Wick’s allies in the Garden Club were doing such a horrible job of breaking the sanctuary without my cooperation. If he wanted the North and West Seeds, Cillian needed us. I didn’t think he would kill Cooper.
But Jeeves might.
We got there ahead of Lydia, and didn’t bother with the precaution of leaving the car at the strip mall and approaching on foot. There was no time. It was already full daylight—gray and overcast, just as I’d seen it.
It’s not too late. I can still stop this.
I won’t let them die.
I had no choice but to believe that was true. The alternative was not even a thought I could hold in my mind.
We parked on the side of the road, and Arabella grabbed a duffel bag from her trunk before we headed straight for the same gate I’d gone in the first time. The cold air provided some relief to my feverish face, but nothing could help my racing heart. I wasn’t entirely certain it would have been racing any less without the curse.
“I hope you’ve got weapons in that bag,” I said.
“Among other things that are more useful in covert situations. There’s a chance we might be able to scale the wall or the gate. I don’t know why you guys didn’t try that the first time.”
“For starters, even leaving out my own limitations at the moment, there was no possible way Serena could have scaled a wall,” I said. “And we don’t know that we’ll find the men in any condition to do it, either.”
“Well, it’s a better idea than hanging outside the gate, hoping you can work some magic in a magical dead zone.”
“It’s not a dead zone,” I said. “I ended up being able to work some magic here. I beat the puzzle. I just have to be stronger than the place.”
Arabella gave me a sideways glance. “Yeah, you’re looking really strong right about now.”
All of this turned out to be moot. The gate was propped open with a perfectly ordinary, low-tech stick. It seemed Cooper was trying not to make the same mistake twice.
I had no idea whether they’d found a way to disable the cameras or not. We made our way to the hedge using as much cover as we could, although I resented every furtive move that slowed us down.
The maze was deathly quiet. I saw no snakes or spiders, which I took as a good sign. In fact, I saw no movement at all. Even the air seemed to be completely still.
Once again, it was like we’d walked through a portal into another world. A dead one.
Don’t even think the word dead. Nobody is dead.
Neither of us spoke. We moved cautiously, sticking close to the hedge, while I tried to remember the path Harry had taken in my vision, and guess where we needed to go.
It’s not too late. It’s not, it’s not, it’s not.
Finally I heard something in the near distance, maybe a path or two away. Digging. Sniffing. An animal? No, was that muttering?
We moved in the direction of the sound as best we could. But the maze was suddenly tricky, seeming to change course of its own accord. The fever and anxiety were finally catching up with me, so that I wasn’t as sharp as I had been—uselessly—in the car. We took several maddening wrong turns, twice thinking we’d made it only to find a dead end.
Then we came to a path I was certain would be the right one, this time. I moved faster, as fast as my cursed l
egs would go.
I rounded a corner too hard, and lost my footing in the snow.
I fell, sideways, and bit the inside of my cheek.
No. It was Harry who fell. Harry who bit his cheek. Not me. It’s not the same.
All around me, the snow was pink and red with blood.
no no no it’s not coming true that wasn’t me it was Harry not me
I stumbled to my feet, fell again, and crawled on all fours. There were bodies at the end of the path. Several of them.
no no no
I kept on crawling, scrambling through the bloody slush. Until I stopped.
Between one dead man’s shoulder and another’s back, I saw an empty aqua eye, staring sightlessly back at me.
Strange, how when I most wanted to scream, I found I couldn’t. Almost like a dream, one of those ones where you’re supposed to be able to fly, but when you jump off something you just drop to the ground.
Drop down like a dead thing.
My mouth was open. But no sound was coming out at all. My eyes were open too, wide open, so wide they hurt. But no tears spilled from them. I’d been frozen, turned to stone.
So I just stayed where I was, on the blood-soaked ground (Cooper’s blood), not screaming.
Snowflakes were falling into his open eyes.
He hadn’t been beheaded. At least my vision was wrong about that much. Cooper lay sprawled among the bodies of six or seven fallen enemies, with a single bullet wound in his forehead, just above his left eye.
I reached out with one shaking hand and touched his cold face. But even the feel of his skin against my fingers couldn’t convince me that it was true.
“It’s an illusion. Everything in this maze, in this place, is an illusion.” I was nodding now, hard enough to strain my neck. “It’s an enchantment. A trick. That’s all.”
“It’s not. I watched from behind the bald place in the hedge.”
I didn’t care whose small voice that was. I didn’t care about the arms grabbing me, trying to pull me up. Arabella hissing something. Harry crying, a little boy’s frightened tears.
“Or maybe it’s a hallucination.” I pushed up my sleeve to check my bruise.
It wasn’t moving.
Harry sniffed. “It’s not an enchantment. I followed him in here. I saw Jeeves shoot him.”
Witch Bound (Devilborn Book 3) Page 12