Bright Young Witches & the Restless Dead

by Beth Byers

  Ariadne stuck her head in the window, bumped her head, cursed, apologize for cursing and then muttered, “There aren’t any Wode left, but the old house is about. Shall we find the house and see if we can find where they were buried?”

  “I’d like that,” Echo said, glancing at Circe, whose scowl had been deep since they’d arrived in London—unless a man was around. It was like Circe had been dipped into a well of meanness. She’d always been snappish, but now—it was untenable.

  Medea didn’t react at all other than to tuck her face into the kitten while Cassiopeia nodded. With a chipper voice, their little sister said, “Fun!”

  “Mmm,” Circe agreed, not meeting Ariadne’s gaze, and Echo smiled gently at Ariadne. Ariadne wanted to yank at her hair and scream.

  Was it really so hard to try to be happy? London was very different from Nighton, which was no more than a few buildings cut from the woods. Even New York City with the grand buildings didn’t compare to London. There was much to see and do. Much to be happy about.

  They’d seen Buckingham Palace, they’d visited Big Ben, they’d wandered museums and seen great works of art that they’d only read about. It had taken quite a while to track down where the Wode were to have lived and even finding the neighborhood was shocking. The houses were huge. Giant mansions owned for generations by the same families. It had seemed quite luxurious to live in Wode house until they’d seen the neighbors their kin had brushed shoulders with.

  “That one makes even Mrs. Langford’s house look small. May we please go to the party?” Cassiopeia asked once again.

  “No,” Circe and Echo answered as Ariadne got into the black cab and took her squashed place in the corner with Medea on her lap and Cassie to her right.

  Ariadne shook her head and tugged Cassiopeia’s braid. “We’ll go do something extra exciting tomorrow, shall we? I was wondering about taking a boat and seeing London by the river. What do you think?”

  Cassiopeia nodded, but her disappointment didn’t fade. The party Mrs. Langford was throwing that evening sounded like magic on display to Cassie. She was, however, distracted by the house where the cabbie stopped. All of them slowly turned. Ariadne got out of the car a moment later.

  “My heavens,” Ariadne said, but she didn’t listen to any replies. She was encompassed in the house itself. It was all she could do to walk without tripping.

  The house wasn’t even a house. That was too trite a word. This building was a white mansion with four stories. Three or four of the Wode house in America could fit into this behemoth. Each half of the house mirrored the other half with large bow windows on the first and second floors. The third floor had the same canted shape but there was a balcony instead. The fourth floor might have just been a roof-top garden. It was difficult to tell from below. The curtains were closed tight and the gate was locked. The fence was more wall with a balustrade-style top half.

  Ariadne’s younger sisters got out of the auto and asked the cabbie to return in an hour.

  “It’s clearly been closed with magic,” Echo said. “It’s like our house at home. No one can get in there.”

  “Maybe enough witches with enough power,” Circe suggested sourly. “I think I could do it with some help and the right instruments.”

  Echo scoffed while Ariadne bit back her own snort. Circe was powerful, but this house had layer upon layer of wards on it. Ariadne could feel them echoing in her skin. They almost called to her, but she suspected it was just being near something powerful like the Wode house at home. She had become attuned to such things tending to the family homestead.

  “Perhaps whoever inherited doesn’t live here,” Cassiopeia said, holding Medea’s hand tightly. “Maybe we can find them and we’ll still find other living kin.”

  “Where would they live?” Medea whispered, glancing up at the house with eyes as wide as half-dollars. “If they don’t live here, do they not have a house? Could they be in the hotel?”

  “They might have two houses,” Circe explained, humming low and pushing back Medea’s hair. “Look that way, lovey. See the bird.”

  Medea’s gaze turned and there was a glint of interest before it faded. She hadn’t recovered from having men burning crosses and shooting guns on their lawn. It didn’t help that since then they’d fled their home and had been fighting amongst themselves. Medea needed to be somewhere that felt safe. Somewhere where she could sleep without needing to cling to Ariadne and where she dared to play, run, and laugh. Ariadne was grateful Circe wasn’t so blind to everything that she could see that Medea was still fragile.

  There was something about the house. Something that spoke to Ariadne, distracting her from Medea who had been the focus of nearly every idle thought since they’d left Nighton.

  The house called to Ariadne. The large oak tree outside the property seemed to whisper to Ariadne. Wode, Wode, Wode, Wode. Ariadne felt the magic of the house inside of her bones, crawling over her skin. It wanted something from her, but she couldn’t decide what it was after.

  Ariadne stepped forward with trepidation. Why did it call to her so loudly? A quick glance at Echo and Circe, and Ariadne was sure they weren’t feeling what she was feeling. Perhaps it was her magic? Their skills were very different. Circe with her art mixed with magic, Echo with the darkness of necromancy and ghosts.

  Ariadne’s hands shook as she approached the gate. She could see that it was locked and knew she had no business trying to open the gate, but she still reached out and traced her fingers along the tops of the iron work. There was a silver tree on the gate with Ws worked throughout the branches of the tree. In the center of the tree was an overt W with more of the initial worked into the iron of the gate’s spires.

  “What are you doing?” Circe demanded. “The house is locked up. I don’t know why we needed an hour to see where the richer side of our family lived. It just rubs our nose into it that we’re not aristocracy.”

  “They weren’t either,” Echo reminded Circe, but she just scowled.

  “Ariadne says I’m a princess,” Cassiopeia told Circe. “That’s better than being aristocracy.”

  Ariadne heard them, but she couldn’t turn her attention from the house. The sound of her sisters had become as unintelligible as the whispering of the trees and the bird song. All Ariadne could hear was the thump, thump of her heart and the whisper of magic racing through and around her, skittering over her skin like a lover’s breath.

  She breathed in slow as something demanded that she grasp the gate.

  Ariadne gave in, and as she did, the gate fell open. Her sisters gasped, and the sound of them rushed back to her as if traveling a distance. Softer, louder, louder still, and then their words were hitting her at different times so she seemed to hear them out of order.

  “Do…how…Ariadne…locked…magic?”

  Ariadne blinked rapidly, rubbing her eyes as she stepped through the gate. She felt possessed as she walked up the red brick path that led from the gate. It was as though she’d become a puppet on strings without control of her movements.

  One step, two. The garden that had lain almost dead turned to her and curled into life like the plants were stretching from a deep sleep. Three steps, four steps, five. The plants, the tree, the house—they weren't just whispering Wode anymore, they were whispering Ariadne.

  Hecate, Ari prayed, as she approached the house. A dozen paces up the path and the red brick led up to six steps and stopped at a set of doors. The doors were black with wards worked into the wood. It was impossible to see them if you weren’t Other, but Ariadne could read them like a book.

  There was another tree carved into the center of the doors with the same W in the center. The carving was painted with gold paint and stood out against the shining black of the doors. More warding runes were carved into the tree, but you had to have the sight to know they were there to see anything more than leaves.

  More warding runes were on the foundation of the house, each of the windows, and she could feel them s
peak to her, call her name. Ariadne Wode. Ariadne Wode. Ariadne Eudora, Ariadne Eudora Wisteria, Ariadne Eudora Wisteria Wode. Wode, Wode, Wode. She could feel all of it. They pressed against her, called to her, wanted her.

  Ariadne pressed her hand against the door and closed her eyes, breathing in the magic, trying to understand what was happening to her. If she were a master spell-builder, she might have understood how the layers of these spells had been crafted. It wasn’t just a masterful combination of power, runes, and spellwork—though it was. They were put together in a way that used specific magical skills. Echo or Circe—powerful though they were—wouldn’t have been able to do what had been done here. But of the sisters? Ariadne could have done this. With her Wode magic and nature magic—it was as though what had been done here was done by someone just like her.

  She felt a sudden link to her kindred much like Echo felt. These were her people, Ariadne realized. They shared more than pale skin, black eyes, and black hair. They shared the nature magic that had been given to Ariadne just as it had been given to them. Perhaps for the first time, she felt connected to the English Wodes. Whoever had placed these wards had been like her. Ariadne felt as if she could see them and feel them.

  Did they have black hair like she did? Did they feel connected to all nature but feel a particular call to the wood as Ariadne? Did they too enjoy curling up next to a window with a book? Did they enjoy meditating in a garden in the starlight? Did they find peace in the smell of freshly turned earth or the scent of a new rain?

  The Wode places in England were now more than a random destination chosen after a terrifying night. The Wode House in London, the graves of her dead, her heart…turned towards them. She felt a spark of love and connection that she’d never felt before.

  The doorknob called to her, and she placed her hand on it slowly. How desperately she wanted to turn it and walk in those halls. How deeply she wanted to look out the windows her kindred dead had looked out. What she would give to trace her fingers over their Books of Shadows and read the spells and experiences of her kin.

  “What are you doing?” Circe snapped from outside the gate. “This isn’t our house.”

  Ariadne looked back. Her hands were trembling against the handle, but she twisted even as she shook her head. What was she doing? Ariadne had no idea, but as she turned the handle, the door opened as though it had never been locked. Ariadne gasped and whatever magic had been pulling at her fell away.

  “Sweet Hecate,” Ariadne said and took in a shuddering breath. The house that had been shut tight blew with an inexplicable wind and while Ariadne stared, cobwebs and dust from years swept out of the house.

  “You know what this is?” Echo gasped. “It’s like when Mama died and Wode House turned to you.”

  Ariadne reached to her neck and took hold of the long necklace that hung from her throat, holding tight to the pentacle. She heard the house whispering to her. Wode. Wode. Wode. Ariadne Wode. Ariadne Eudora Wisteria Wode.

  Had the house just identified her as the Wode?

  Ariadne stepped through the threshold even though a part of her mind was telling her not to trespass. Right or wrong, she couldn’t help herself. There it was, she thought. The wards woke to her. They greeted her. The house whispered to her, telling her its secret so quickly and heavily she couldn’t hear them all. She could feel the magicks press into her mind, her heart, into her magic, but she couldn’t process it. It was too much. She was drowning in it.

  “I think,” Ariadne said slowly, shuddering at the onslaught from the house, “that I might be the eldest of the eldest of the eldest of the Wode. Even these Wodes.”

  Chapter 8

  MAY 1922. LONDON, ENGLAND

  ARIADNE EUDORA WISTERIA WODE

  “You would think correctly,” a man’s voice said from behind them.

  The sisters gasped in unison and little Medea shrieked, darting to Ariadne and throwing herself on the other side of her eldest sister.

  Slowly, Ariadne turned from the house, finding it difficult to focus on him when the magic was pushing at her. Medea was wrapped around Ariadne’s waist and as she turned, Medea stayed behind Ariadne, using her as a shield.

  A man in a tan suit, bowler hat on his head, red hair, and bright green eyes examined them. The look on his face was a combination of shock and bafflement. His gaze moved over the five sisters, mouth gaping. Whatever it was that he was seeing in them—they weren’t what he had expected.

  “I didn’t think it would happen. Are those American accents I’m hearing?”

  “What would happen?” Circe asked, fluttering her lashes. Her black hair was marcelled against her head, but she went through the process of tucking a non-existent stray curl behind her ear while she looked up at him through her lashes. Her lips pursed enough to show their fullness and somehow she colored becomingly. “Yes, we’re from America.”

  The man glanced at Circe and then dismissively turned his gaze to Ariadne. “I didn’t think the eldest of the Wode lines would ever come. We’ve been trying to find who it was—who you were—for years. With your absence and the death of Delilah Wode, the places of power of the Wode have been closed.”

  Circe giggled as she replied, “We were right there at home.”

  The man glanced at Circe, gave her a polite smile, and turned his gaze again to Ariadne. The moment his gaze was turned away, Circe scowled and shot Ari a dark look. “You are?”

  “Ariadne Wode.”

  “Full name, please.” He placed his hand on an oak tree carved into the front door just over the threshold. “Place a drop of blood here and say your full name. Bit of a formality and the first step of fulling cementing what is yours as yours.”

  “Why her?” Circe demanded, all giddiness and flirting disappearing at once. “She’s not the only Wode here.”

  “I assume she’s the oldest. Like most witch families, inheritances are passed through the lines of primogeniture, though they don’t focus on the eldest male but merely the eldest witch. The spells crafted into the house entail it to the eldest of the eldest. We’ve been looking for you.” To Ariadne he said, “The house already knows, but if you want to complete the spell?”

  Circe shook her head, huffing, and crossed her arms over her chest. While Echo gaped, Cassie grabbed Echo’s hand and held tightly.

  Ariadne felt the call of the house so loudly, it was hard for her to feel or hear anything else. Slowly she pulled her athamé from her bag, pricked her finger, and placed it on the oak tree above the threshold, dragging the clinging Medea with her. “Ariadne Eudora Wisteria Wode.”

  Ariadne, Ariadne, Wode, Wode, Wode, Ariadne Eudora Wisteria Wode.

  The press of magic faded abruptly and Ariadne staggered. She was caught on the one side by the man and on the other side by Echo, who raced up the steps to help.

  “Wow!” Echo breathed. “I felt that.”

  “I was young when Delilah took on the role, but it was nothing like that,” the man said. He eyed Ariadne carefully. “Miss Wode, it’s an honor. You must be particularly well matched to this inheritance.”

  Ariadne blinked stupidly at the man. “Who are you, please? I—manners are certainly falling by the wayside with the wards and spells pushing at me. I fear we’ve bypassed what is acceptable.”

  “The spells and wards want to be renewed,” the man said, holding out his hand. “The house wants to remain what it has become. Hugo Weatherby. The estate of the Wodes has been cared for by my firm, Hanover, Weatherby, & Weatherby. The gate opening triggered us to your presence.”

  “You came quickly.” Ariadne wasn’t sure what she believed. That would make the firm owned by witches, which just felt—unlikely? She wasn’t sure. Perhaps that was just what these fellows were. Witches who managed estates and accounts. That seemed as unlikely as him being the oversized leprechaun she envisioned him to be.

  Mr. Weatherby shook his head and said, “The magic of the Wode house is deep. It felt like moments to you. It was longer, and I’m
not all that far really. It was most exciting when we realized what was happening. I confess to running and speeding through the streets.” He laughed and then held out his hand. “Miss Wode? We have much to speak of. I should like very much to make an appointment with you and converse about what all this”—he waved to the house around them—“means.”

  Ariadne nodded, but the question pressing against the back of her lips demanded to be spoken. “Please explain quickly for now. We can discuss more formally later.” She had a very clear idea of what it meant to be the eldest of the Wode. It wasn’t as though she didn’t already hold that role in America, but she needed it to be laid out for her here. What if things were quite different?

  “That the house recognized you and you are now the eldest of the eldest of the eldest of the Wode for England? Yes. Yes, it does. An American officially the head of the Wode?” He laughed a little nervously. “I’m sure your ancestors never would have imagined it.”

  Ariadne rubbed the back of her neck as she considered. “What does that mean? I thought there weren’t any Wode left.” The question was late. She should have asked, Ari thought, before she pressed her bloody thumb onto the house and formally accepted this much of the inheritance.

  “No, no. Just not the eldest of the eldest. Too many of the line merged into other families. The Wode house wouldn’t accept them. The magic reaches out, you know, for the right line and no one else will do. Who knows why it’s you instead of others. The flavor of your magic, perhaps? Simply that your line is closest to the initial line? It’s a mystery. The intent of the maker of the spell is what matters.”

  “I’d wager it was the flavor of Ariadne’s magic,” Echo told Weatherby. “Mother always said her magic was just like Grandfather’s. Ariadne is a nature witch. Mother said our magic came straight from the trees themselves. It’s why we’re call the Wode.”