Page 23 of A Circle of Uncommon Witches

TWENTY-ONE

Stella and Kayleen had been trying to make their way into the Goodbye Castle for days. It was as though a wall had gone up, invisible and sturdy and refusing them entrance. They could see Doreen and Ambrose, standing on the edge of the ledge of the world. Margot’s shadow was just barely visible as well.

When they had gone to Storr, they found a crack in the rocks. Mischief of magic, a wrongness permeating the grounds. The castle had called to them both, each dreaming that first night of the wisteria. They circled the grounds, trying to call the ghosts that lingered there.

Even the ghosts it seemed were frightened.

“We’re going to have to cast,” Kayleen said from where she stood by a long hedgerow of bushes that made Stella’s flesh crawl.

“We’ve tried that—it’s not doing a damn thing.”

“Not to get in there,” she said, waving a hand toward the castle. “We can’t go that way, and I don’t want to go through the hedgerow, so we will cast to be open.”

Stella stopped and turned. “What did you say?”

“We open up.”

“If we open, we could lose ourselves. To be open is to allow ourselves to become lost.”

“But we could also be there when the girls need us. They will be able to find us in the underworld.”

Stella marched up to the castle and slammed her hands against the barrier. This time, the wards sent her flying back onto her ass.

“Stupid prick of a castle,” she snarled at it. “Wake up, Dore!”

The figures didn’t so much as flinch where they stood, on the precipice of their lives.

“Fuck it,” Stella said. Her fear and guilt were equally stifling. She loved the girls more than she loved herself, and she was failing them. Perhaps had failed them all along.

She thought of Jack, and how she had done what she thought was right at the time. How Doreen had still not forgiven her.

Perhaps they were all cursed to fail one another, over and over.

“Fine,” she said, marching back to Kayleen, who sat with her upright posture and ruby-red full lips, not a hair out of place and looking like a fashion model out for a stroll along the cliffs. Stella’s own hair was untamed, her clothes wrinkled and her face itchy. She felt as wild as she looked, and hoped Kayleen felt as poised and deadly as she appeared. “Let’s cast the circle. But if we survive this, you owe me five batches of that moon wine.”

Kayleen flashed a smile full of teeth that came nowhere near meeting her eyes. “Deal.”

They came to stand face-to-face. Their hands clasped with the other’s, they squeezed three times, and then, with the words of the ancients falling from their lips, they wrapped their arms around one another as uncontrollable blasts of wind gusted through the garden, coming up from the earth and between the two women, bending each of them back as they gripped each other tight.

They looked like a flower bowing as it opened, the petals unfurling.

Rain fell from the skies, but the two women remained in their embrace, hearts open, eyes unseeing, the door between them and their kin cracking open. They were braced and ready if Doreen called, their circle formed. They would be there no matter the cost.

Doreen blinked up at the craggy and crumbly Old Man of Storr. The creature was both human and alien: the face with its odd eye, the mouth a slash of marble.

“Are you a trapped soul too?” she asked, thinking of Eleanor and Sinclair, of the graves before the chapel.

“I’m a punished soul,” the old man said, his bright eyes tracking Ambrose’s movements like a hawk watching a field mouse.

Ambrose studied the old man warily.

“Don’t recognize me, do you, boy?” the old man asked. “Not with stones for my bones.”

Ambrose gave his head a slow shake, looking to Doreen. “I don’t want to know what he’s talking about.”

The rocks shook. “You bound me to the queen of the order. Delivered me to the feet of Ada and left me stuck in this world. She had a piece of my soul, but she never had me until you.”

Ambrose’s eyes closed. “Shit.”

“Hastings?” Doreen said, her voice a note too high. “You’re Hastings MacDonald?”

“Aye, of course I am,” he said, sitting down with a crack and a boom that resounded through the canyon. “For five hundred years I have been mostly trapped in these stones, splintered as the bones of the gods themselves.”

“Angels wept,” Ambrose said, swallowing, his eyes fluttering open. “I didn’t know you would be stuck here.”

“No? Didn’t think there would be a cost?” He let out a harrumph that sounded like thunder. “Never thinking, playing with magic beyond your skills. It’s the plight of all witches born after the splintering. When the gods took back their power from Avarice, before Ada took too much back from them when she won the trials, it left us cockeyed. Magic is tricky now. Each spell asks if you will be a better man or woman because of it, or if you will let your will and desire corrupt you.”

“Did magic corrupt you?” Doreen asked, stepping up to stand at Ambrose’s side. Shifting as though she could shield him.

“Nay,” he said. “It corrupted Ada, and it was Ada—and my love for her—which corrupted me. It broke my heart after she broke her own.”

“When Margaret died,” Doreen said.

Hastings shifted, the rocks crumbling down toward them, and Doreen jumped out of the way.

“Yes, when beautiful Margaret went over the cliffs, everything might as well have turned to ash. I have spent a long time waiting, watching, and coming to grips with the truth. Being bound to Ada has allowed me to witness her pain, and to come to a reckoning over the pain I caused her and Margaret. Time is slow to change, but the winds do bring change to us all. Love, at the end, is all I have held on to.”

“Can you stop moving?” Margot called up. “You’re worse than an avalanche.”

He let out a dark chuckle and nodded. “I can try.”

“She’s punishing you still, isn’t she,” Ambrose said. “Ada.”

“It’s what we excel at, isn’t it, boy? This world knows what goes on in the other, as sure as the sun rises and sets. We can’t help but bleed all over those around us, even when we’re wrong.”

“What did you get wrong?” Doreen asked.

“I was a child when I met the girls,” Hastings said. “Our clans were the three main clans on Skye, and we were in and out of each other’s pockets. I never thought Margaret and Ada would grow closer to each other than they were to me. I was the hero of my story, and I couldn’t see it coming—that I was just a side character in theirs. We were friends. Then we were ordered to be more, me and Ada or me and Margaret. It didn’t matter. The clans needed power, so joining with either family would have worked. I loved Ada and Margaret both, and yet I never saw them. Not until it was too late. I didn’t help Ada after she was broken. I went to war to battle my wounds and thought I’d leave her to lick hers. It was wrong of me to look away. She was alone in her pain, and she took the trials of the gods, asking for a power too great. It corrupted her, ate her from the inside out, and she was lost to us as much as Margaret was. Ada was family. We are all family, the witches of Skye.”

“Family can harm,” Doreen said. “We need to stop Ada. How do we free you and get out of here? How do we leave this world for good?”

“There is only one way out,” he said, his voice echoing. “You must go through. You completed the first two trials. You were brave to enter the cave of echoes and save Ambrose. You found your heart not long ago or you wouldn’t have gotten far enough to find me. You were strong to wake the rock man of Storr, using the power of your minds over the brawn of your hands. You have to prove your strength, but the cost to continue is high.” He sighed, a small and lonely sound. “You must pay the toll for waking me.”

Doreen shook her head. “I don’t like the sound of this.”

“I am free,” the old man said, “for you have woken the sleeping giant. There must always be a giant to guard this land, and one of you will have to take my place.”

“He’s worse than Ada,” Doreen said, her gaze going to Ambrose, who took a step forward as though to volunteer. “Don’t even think of it, Ambrose. It is utterly ridiculous.”

“It’s simply the cost,” Margot said, stepping up to stand between them. She placed a hand on Doreen’s shoulder. Squeezed it hard. “Dore, we know how often there’s a cost, and we’re so close. It couldn’t have been this easy. It’s okay. I will pay it.”

Doreen spun around to face Margot. “You most certainly will not .”

“I’m sorry, but I can and will,” Margot said. “I will take your place,” she said, turning to Hastings, giving him a firm nod before shooting her cousin a determined look over her shoulder. “ You will get us out of here, and you need him.” She bit her lip and looked up at the rock giant. “Tell me it’s like taking a long nap.”

“It’s as easy as closing your eyes,” Hastings said.

“This is ludicrous ,” Doreen said, and she stamped her feet in a way she had not done since she was a child and Margot stole her favorite book. “No one is taking his place, least of all you. I need you.”

“Then no one leaves,” Hastings said. As soon as the words were spoken, a rush of pebbles shifted forward, morphing into a wall of rock that closed in around them. “We will all be trapped in our little cave together. At least this time, I will not be lonely.”

The rocks began to wrap around them, snaking up and down. Doreen screamed and called a quick spell to try to blast them back, but they just closed in faster.

“I love you, Dore, and you must trust me and forgive me for doing what is right. I know you can do this,” Margot called. Then she looked up at the skies and her voice rang out clear and strong: “With my own free will I give myself in place of Hastings MacDonald; may he go free until those who are mine free me.”

Doreen let out a keening cry as the rocks rushed up, surrounding them. As swiftly as they’d rushed in, they fell apart with an abrupt snap. She turned to where Margot had stood, and found her cousin frozen into a statue.

Doreen stumbled over to her, shoving at the statue, trying to slam Margot free. She chanted a dozen different spells as tears streaked down her cheeks.

Ambrose moved to Doreen, his arms coming around her, gentle as he tried to hold her up. She lifted her angry face to Hastings.

“I will end you,” she said, and without thinking, Doreen dug deep into the magic of the land. She tunneled into the song of sorrow, gathered the threads of the song of longing, and bound them to herself and the hum of the earth. Then Doreen yanked .

Light erupted. The air thinned. Doreen pulled magic from the old man, his soul rising up as she did.

It tasted of honey and wine, smelled of cedar and anise, as his truth, who he had been and was, shifted into her. Memories and moments, of Ada and Hastings as children, of Margaret with flowers in her hair. His kindness and wickedness flowed through her.

“Doreen,” Ambrose said, stepping in front of her line of vision. “Doreen, please .”

She yanked hard again, and Ambrose was the one who stumbled. She tasted ale and tears, his sorrow and more—his love for her.

She let go, dropping the threads and gasping. Doreen had reacted on anger and instinct. She’d responded and didn’t realize what she was doing. How she was pulling on their magic, their line.

Their souls.

The shock of it left her staggering on her feet.

“It’s okay,” Ambrose said, his hand reaching for her. She hesitated, and then recalled the love inside him, how it flowed for her, into her. She stepped forward and threw her arms around him.

“I didn’t mean to hurt you,” she said, relieved to find him whole.

“You didn’t. You wouldn’t.”

“Your stone witch can be freed,” Hastings said, his voice riding the wind. “Do not give up, Doreen MacKinnon, or let your heart turn cold as Ada has. Witches are like flowers; the most potent ones don’t think about their magic. They do not try to control or change or guide; they simply bloom.”

Then Hastings was gone. Margot was silent. Ambrose and Doreen were alone.