The Castle of Water and Woe (Briarwood Reverse Harem Book 3)

by Steffanie Holmes

  Jane came bounding back just as I clicked the phone off. “You’re not supposed to talk on that in here,” she said.

  I shoved the phone in my pocket. “Since when do you play by the rules?”

  “Since Sheryl here has fandangled me a baptism the day after next,” Jane grinned. “And it happens to occur on my mother’s fortnightly appointment with her golf instructor, so she won’t even be able to come.” She lowered her voice. “I managed to wrangle a name out of her of another village harlot with an unbaptised child.”

  “Excellent.” I handed Connor back to her. “I’ll just get my purse, and we can go.”

  When I went back to the front of the church, my purse wasn’t on the seat. Odd, I swear I left it right here. I bent down to check under the pew in case it had rolled off somehow, but it didn’t seem to be there, either.

  “You lost it?” Jane asked, shifting Connor to her other shoulder.

  “I swear I left it here when I got the phone call.” I frowned, glancing around the church. The only people inside were the vicar and Sheryl, and unless the vicar was hiding my purse under his robes, I couldn’t see how either of them could have taken it.

  “I’ll check at the back.” Jane ran off. I got on my hands and knees and peered under the nearby pews. Surely it couldn’t have gone far? It wasn’t as if it had legs or was magically imbued like Aladdin’s carpet. I thought of the four magical protections inside, and a lump of panic rose in my throat. Had a fae escaped our warding spell? Had one of them snuck in to steal my purse so we’d be unprotected?

  “Er, do you need some assistance?” the vicar asked, although his voice clearly implied he thought our problem was beneath his concern.

  Now I was getting frantic. My stomach churned as I crawled around between the pews, pawing under every surface. It’s not here. The fae have it, but what are they going to do with it—

  “Oh, here it is!” Sheryl popped her head up from the next pew. She held up the strap of my purse in triumph.

  “Thank god!” I explained, ignoring the vicar’s stern face as I raced toward Sheryl.

  “It was hiding behind this pillar,” Sheryl explained, pointing to one of the large gothic arches lining the nave. “It probably rolled off and skidded on the floor. The marble gets quite slippery. Last week, Mabel’s heel came right out from underneath her and she took quite a tumble. The poor dear nearly had to get her other hip replaced.”

  Sheryl dumped the purse back in my hands. It rattled as all my things clattered around. “Thanks!” I replied. “For everything, really.”

  “You’re welcome, my dears. Please come back any time. There’s a weekly service schedule on the church noticeboard, and everyone is welcome.” Sheryl said that last bit with a glare at the vicar.

  Jane was smiling as we pushed our way through the door. “I’ve never felt this good after spending time in a church before,” she said, bouncing Connor’s pram down the shallow steps.

  “I think this calls for a celebration.” I pawed around in my purse, searching for Rowan’s cookies. “In three days time, Connor will be safe from Daigh, and we can get to this other woman and—”

  The words flew out of my mouth as someone barrelled around the corner of the steps and slammed into me.

  “Oh, gosh, I’m so sorry!” A familiar voice croaked. “Allow me to he—”

  The voice stopped mid-word as the figure backed up, and I recoiled as its face transformed from concern to venom.

  It was Dora.

  “You,” she spat at me. “How dare you step foot inside the house of our Lord?”

  I bit my lip. My heart thudded against my chest. We hadn’t had a chance to figure out what to do about Dora, about the fact that she would remember the fae in her head, moving her limbs without her consent, wielding that knife on her behalf. Now she was staring at me, a glob of spittle on the edge of her brown lipsticked mouth, waiting for me.

  “What are you talking about?” Jane demanded, hand on her hip. “Maeve has as much right to be here as anyone else.”

  No, Jane. Don’t make it worse.

  “Fine words from a harlot,” Dora’s penetrating gaze swivelled to Jane. She raised a finger and jabbed it at Jane’s chest. I noticed her wrinkled skin was speckled with red. Red paint, like the paint on Jane’s front door. “You dare to profane these walls with your presence, nursing a bastard on your teeth while your dear mother prays for your eternal salvation. I shouldn’t be surprised you’re colluding with this witch.”

  “Dora,” I said softly. “You know witches don’t exist. What happened the other day has a rational explanation.” The sentence was so ridiculous coming from my lips – the scientist who demanded a rational explanation for everything but had been forced to embrace the occult – that I almost burst out laughing. But Dora’s stormy face was nothing to laugh about.

  “I know you placed a demon inside me,” she snarled. “I could hear it inside my head, moving my mouth and body, forcing me to hurt my boys. Those boys are like sons to me, and you made me hate them. You made me try to hurt them. I’m here to see if the vicar will pray over me, lest my mortal soul be in danger from your foul, demonic touch.”

  “I thought Christians were supposed to be accepting of all people,” Jane’s eyes flashed. She shoved Connor’s pram forward, forcing Dora to leap out of the way. “Maeve owns the castle now, and those boys care about her. She’s a part of this village now so you should get used to seeing her around, and me. We’re not going anywhere.”

  “Crookshollow will not suffer witches and Jezebels,” Dora yelled after as as we wheeled our way down the path.”You’ll pay for your sins!”

  “Christ, what’s her problem?” Jane fumed as we rushed down the street, just as Arthur pulled up in his ridiculous car and waved at us.

  “Us, I guess.” My hands trembled. I remembered the words written on Jane’s door, and the paint splattered on Dora’s hands. I had a horrible feeling that Dora wasn’t going to stop until she’d run us both out of Crookshollow for good.

  FIFTEEN: CORBIN

  The door swung open, and a face I hadn’t seen since the Christmas-before-last appeared in the gap, her features drab in the pale sky, her hollow eyes lighting up a little at the corners as she recognised me.

  “Hi, Mum.”

  She’d cut her hair since I’d last seen her – a short, sensible bob that cut off at her chin with a razor-sharp line. It made her look older, or maybe that was the sagging skin around the edges of her mouth and the haunted look in her eyes.

  “Corbin,” she said, not unkindly, but not with the longing of a mother who hadn’t seen her son in nearly two years. “This is a surprise.”

  “Yeah, it is. Can we come in?”

  “We?” Mum peered around me, and her lips pursed as she took in Rowan. “You brought him?”

  Rowan opened his mouth to speak, but I beat him to it. “He’s my friend, Mum. He’s changed since you last met him. He’s completely clean now.”

  “He doesn’t look clean,” She wrinkled her nose. “The girls will be home any minute. Is he safe in the house?”

  “Of course. I wouldn’t have brought him otherwise.”

  I watched the cogs turn in her brain, holding my breath for her decision. Finally, she stepped back and held the door open. I slid my boots off and placed them in the haphazard pile of shoes that always littered the entrance. My chest panged to see the girls’ school shoes and sparkly sneakers alongside Dad’s Oxfords and wellies. Their feet were so much bigger than I remembered.

  Mum led us down a hall that should have been crowded with family pictures but instead housed dull Debenhams artwork. She bypassed the sitting room and gestured for us to sit at the dining room table. “I’ll put the kettle on,” she said, shuffling into the kitchen.

  “How are things, Mum?” The question sounded so forced and wrong in this house. Rowan sat on the other side of the table and stared at his feet. I glanced around the room, noting again the lack of family photos on the w
alls. She opened the fridge to get the milk out and I noticed the door bulged under the volume of Tessa and Biana’s drawings and school notices stuck there. At least some things were the same.

  She launched into a story about the girls’ current obsession with hip-hop dancing. Tessa had decided she was going to be the next Beyonce and of course Bianca had to do anything that Tessa did, so they were currently at their weekly dance class. “Tessa’s writing and directing her own play at school,” Mum said, her voice listless, as if that wasn’t an amazing thing for an eight-year-old to be doing. Mum held up a mug. “Were you milk and sugar? I can’t remember.”

  “Milk, no sugar for me. Rowan has the same.”

  “Oh, right.” Mum set an extra mug down on the bench. She’d either been intending to ignore Rowan, or else she’d forgotten he was there. I wasn’t sure which option worried me more.

  Every second I sat in silence at the table weighed on me, pushing my body into the carpet. The family we’d been before The Incident existed only as a fuzzy memory, a dream that felt too unsettling in its perfection. Had we really been that happy? Had the kitchen at Briarwood really been alive with German nursery rhymes and silly games and arguments over who got the last of the chocolate milk? Looking around this barren, dead home, I couldn’t see it.

  Mum set down mugs of steaming tea in front of us. She slumped into the chair at the end of the table, as far from us as she could be while still putting on the British pretense of being polite. She talked about the girls and her knitting club and Dad’s hernia, and her face tightened into the pinched expression she always got when I came over. She filled the silence so I wouldn’t find any space in the conversation to talk about Briarwood or magic or Keegan.

  I let her have her delusion for a little while longer, but when I reached the bottom of my teacup, I leapt. “That’s all great, Mum.” I toyed with the chipped rim of my cup. “Listen, we came to ask you about something.”

  Immediately, her pinched expression turned hostile. “Corbin—”

  “The spell protecting the gateway to Tir Na Nog is failing, and more and more fae are slipping through. We need to know how that spell works so we can recreate it—”

  “Corbin, that’s enough.”

  Rowan cringed at her sharp tone, but I barrelled on.

  “Mum, I know you don’t want to deal with magic, and I’ve respected that. All these years I’ve never asked you for help with anything. But, this is serious. They took two babies from the village. We managed to get them back and stop the fae temporarily, but we don’t know what they’re going to do when—”

  “You made your choice when you chose that place and those hooligans instead of your own family,” she said this with a sharp look at Rowan. “Your father and I allowed you to throw your life away for it, isn’t that enough? Must you poison our home with your bad choices?”

  “This home is already poisoned, and this is bigger than me and the coven. You could all be in danger. I don’t know what they’re trying to do. They may come after the girls next—”

  “That’s enough. Not another word.” Mum stood up, dropping her mug into the sink with a crash. “If that’s all you came here to say, you can leave now.”

  I glanced at Rowan and shook my head. I knew this was pointless. We shouldn’t have even bothered. “Can I at least stick around to see the girls? I promise we won’t mention magic again, either of us.”

  Her expression softened an inch. She knew how much my sisters missed me and how little they understood about what had transpired between us to keep me away. “All right. But a single word about magic and you will be permanently banned from this house.”

  “Understood.”

  Rowan stood up. “Mrs Harris, could I use the bathroom?”

  She looked like she was going to tell him he couldn’t, but I broke in before her. “It’s right down the hall, man.”

  Rowan shuffled off, leaving me alone with Mum. She stood over the sink, her hands gripping the edge like it was the only thing holding her upright. She stared out the window, where a pair of starlings attacked a small bird-feeder made out of an egg carton stung in the fir tree. I stood up, my chair scraping against the linoleum, and went to stand next to her. I placed a hand on her shoulder. She didn’t shrug it off. I braced myself and went in for a full hug.

  She sighed - a visceral, terrible sound for all its sadness and finality. She rested her head on my shoulder, but she didn’t embrace me back. Her body felt thin and frail – not the buxom, cuddly woman who’d fixed my skinned knees and baked cakes with me. The Incident had stolen that mother from me, in the same way it had stolen everything good from our lives.

  “We missed you at Christmas,” she said stiffly. “I cooked your favourite – roast chicken.”

  “I know. I’m sorry.” I’d been in Arizona over Christmas, keeping an eye on Maeve and her family. I’d stood in the bushes at the edge of her house like a creep and looked in the windows at her and Kelly exchanging presents under the tree while her Dad swung his wife around the room in a giddy dance. I’d felt the same pang in my chest then that I was feeling now. “Did you get the presents?”

  “We did. Thank you. The girls coloured in their books in a day.”

  “Good.” I struggled to think of something else to say. So much of my life was Briarwood and magic and Maeve, and she wouldn’t let me talk about it. I hunted around for a subject she could engage with. “I’ve been learning Manx.”

  “Manx? You mean, from the Isle of Mann?”

  “Yeah. It’s only spoken by a few academics and some revivalists, but it’s got these really interesting diversions from the other goidelic languages.”

  “It’s just like you to add another dead, useless language to your repertoire.” Mum placed her hand over mine. Her fingers trembled a little. I looked down at her face, expecting to see tears streaking her cheeks. Instead, she was smiling. A genuine smile that took ten years off her aged face. I rocked back on my heels, surprised. I hadn’t seen that smile in so many years. “How many is that now?”

  “Fifteen. I don’t count my Spanish because it’s pretty shaky.”

  “Your Dad will be proud.” Her grin widened. But then, as quickly as it had appeared, it vanished, leaving behind the drawn, ghost of a woman my mother had become. “Oh, Corbin, when are you going to go to university and put that brain of yours to use?”

  “I don’t need a degree to put my brain to use. There’s plenty for me to …” I trailed off. I’d been about to mention the library and Briarwood, and that would’ve been bad.

  The front door banged. Mum leapt away from me, her head jerking toward the door.

  “Mummy, today we learned about twerking!” Tessa cried, her footsteps clattering down the hall.

  My sister stopped short when she saw me in the kitchen. “Corby!” She jumped into my arms. I held her tight against me, breathing in that milky scent of her. She’d got bigger and heavier since I’d last seen her, some of the baby fat gone from her face.

  “It’s a surprise,” I grunted, staggering backwards as I struggled to hold her squirming body. Bianca came running in and threw her arms around my legs. My chest ached as emotions I’d forced myself not to acknowledge forcing themselves to the surface. It’s been too long to go without seeing the girls.

  “It’s the best surprise. I wrote a story in school today about a dinosaur. Did you know people discovered dinosaurs in England? We’re going to go to the museum next week and look at their bones. Can you come to the museum with us? It’ll be way more fun with you.”

  “Tessa,” Mum warned.

  “What? Oh, sorry Mum. I didn’t mean that you’re boring. But we haven’t seen Corby in aaaaages. Will you take us to the dinosaurs?”

  “Corbin’s going back to Crookshollow tonight, aren’t you?” A hint of desperation clutched to Mum’s voice.

  “I am.” I set Tessa down and picked up Bianca, spinning her around until her legs flared out and she broke down into giggles. “I’ll tak
e you to see the dinosaurs another time.”

  I meant every word, but I knew it would never happen. The knowledge squirmed in my gut. You’re a horrible big brother.

  “But can you stay for tea? We’re having toad-in-the-hole.” Tessa jumped up and down. “I’m going to make the batter!”

  Behind Tessa’s head, Mum was shaking her head. But no way in hell was I going to say no to that face. “I’d love to,” I hugged Tessa again.

  The girls dragged me off to their room to show me their school stuff and their doll collections. As I sat on the bed and learned all about the love lives of their Barbies and Sindys and Bratz (Cathy and Barbara were girlfriend and girlfriend – for eight-year-olds, my sisters were pretty progressive), it occurred to me that Rowan hadn’t yet come back from the bathroom.