Page 17

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

The Hall is under attack .

Fear would’ve crippled Lilac had it not been for Allen’s arm around her propelling her forward. Where was her family? How could they call upon the Power of Three if they were separated? She’d never been alone like this before.

Of course she had been trained to fight, but she never relished a brawl like Boar and Rose did. Hers was supportive magic, and she wasn’t ashamed of it. But that wasn’t what was going to save her here if things got bad.

She risked a glance up at Allen. Something in the steady focus of his golden-brown eyes and the set of his jaw comforted her. His stride was purposeful but not panicked, and his body against hers was like a controlled spring.

Green Mother, help me. Can I trust him?

Her heart desperately wanted to, especially after all the deliberate thoughtfulness and kindness he’d shown her today, but her mind wasn’t ready to give up its convictions.

“I need my family,” she blurted as they rushed to the Hall’s front doors. “Rose, Boar—”

Allen inhaled deeply. “Boar’s outside. Rose is—”

“Lilac!” Her younger sister barreled into them and grabbed her hand. Relief poured into her at the contact. “Blight me, why am I hearing someone got poisoned off of our punch? It’s not like it had raw eggs in it like our breakfast did.”

Allen didn’t take the bait. “We need to get you two to your brother. I need eyes on all three of you.”

“We’re safer inside the Hall,” Lilac protested, trying to squirm free of him now that she had her sister. He was making her . . . uncomfortable, and she had to focus. Curse his insufferably strong grip. “Why are you—”

“You’re safer when all three of you are together.” The man’s voice brooked no argument. It was assured, commanding, almost . . . militant. It was the same tone he’d used on Boar before pulling the star anise pod out of Landen’s throat. It was a voice that when heard, was obeyed.

It wasn’t the voice of a grocery delivery boy.

Lilac finally pulled free of him, the suspicions she’d suppressed resurfacing. What was he keeping from her? Rose yelped as Lilac’s hand tightened down on hers, and Allen’s golden-brown eyes flashed a warning: Do not disobey .

Lilac’s expression returned her own warning: Who are you, Allen Sharpe?

Then suddenly they were outside, squinting against the gray light reflecting off the snow. When Lilac’s vision cleared, she saw red staining the snow and Boar berating a Cat & Cauldron server who held the empty punch bowl. Judith , Lilac remembered.

Allen hustled them over, then surprisingly abandoned them, continuing on into the snow-covered field to get a better view of the Hall—and, she supposed, its barrier. He rubbed the opal ring without looking at it—no doubt it allowed him to see something she could not—then his head snapped to the trail of visitors meandering to the village below. Before she could demand an explanation, for his word “attack” seemed a mite overexaggerated now, Boar’s shouting dragged her attention to the scene in front of her.

“You idiot! You threw away the evidence!”

“I’m sorry,” Judith blubbered. “I heard ‘poison’ and, well, I couldn’t just leave it there for some kid to come by and—”

“And now we’ll never know what it was or who did it! It could be you for all we know.”

“ Me? ” The server’s blotchy red face turned as white as paper birch. “I would never! My family’s been loyal for—”

“Because no one’s been betrayed by an ally before.”

“Boar, that is enough!” Lilac held out her hand to the server. “Judith, come here.” She turned to Allen, who had returned, and plucked the handkerchief from his vest pocket to offer to the woman.

“Boar.” Allen didn’t look at her brother as he spoke to him, instead eyeing the stream of people leaving Hawthorne Hall and traipsing down the hill back to the village. Some were just done with the fair, some were spooked by Landen’s choking and were whispering about curses. “Somebody tripped the wards just minutes ago. I felt . . . malicious intent.”

“You felt it too late, didn’t you?” Boar snarled. “You should’ve felt it before when someone spiked the punch!”

“Someone more than spiked it,” Rose said.

She had squatted down in the snow, pushing the red slush away with a stick until she had uncovered something brown.

“What is that?” Boar demanded.

“You got me,” Rose said, backing away. “Reeks of bad juju. Just look at it steaming.”

Lilac abandoned Judith to have a look in the snow bank. She immediately recognized the collection of twisted sticks. “That’s an ill-wish,” she gasped.

“A what?” Boar asked .

“I think the term defines itself.” Lilac took Rose’s stick and began poking it. “It’s a crude weaving spell of sorts, and they’re inert until activated.”

“How do you know that? I don’t remember Aunt Hyacinth or Aunt Forsythia ever teaching us about those in spells class.”

She rolled her eyes. “Because I read , Boar. That’s why.” And Edith’s Forgotten Lore of the Arcane was proving quite handy right now. “Though,” she had to admit, “I’ve only just recently learned about them myself.”

Lilac pointed with the stick. “See how these twigs are all bound together to resemble a wreath? Except these aren’t twigs. They’re cinnamon sticks. And this piece in the middle? It looks like star anise, but it’s not. I’m not sure what it is, actually, but usually the ‘heart’ of such a spell is in its center, so this must be what’s giving the ill-wish a very specific set of instructions.”

She tapped it, and the not-star anise disintegrated. What looked like thousands of tiny brown spheres dotted the snow like miniature caviar. “To dissolve and release its spell slowly, apparently. It also seems to be the origin of the brown grit I saw at the bottom of Laden’s punch cup.”

“Was anyone else affected?” Boar raked his hands through his brown hair. “By the Green Mother, this is going to be a disaster if we get a mass poisoning on day one.”

“I didn’t see or hear anyone else choking,” Allen answered.

“Me neither,” Rose agreed.

“Did any of your drink it?” he asked, panicked.

They answered in the negative.

“I didn’t either. Lilac, get away from that now ,” Boar ordered.

But she wasn’t done poking around. Something nagged at her. Landen’s poisoning/choking event happened immediately, but only after drinking his second cup of punch. The cup that Lilac had rejected .

Magic is specific , she remembered from her lessons all those years ago.

It was impossible to tell how long the ill-wish had been marinating in the punch bowl, but it was safe to assume more than Landen’s cups had been contaminated by the little brown spheres. Truly, they were hardly larger than snapdragon seeds—easily swallowed, easily unnoticed. Yet no one else had suffered a similar fate.

Because the ill-wish had a target.

Hoping she was wrong and that it was just her pride talking, Lilac abandoned the stick and made a little cut on the side of her finger with her thumbnail. She reached forward with her hand and squeezed her finger until blood beaded there like a glittering jewel.

“Don’t do that!” Allen exclaimed, lunging for her.

But the blood dripped onto the disintegrated ill-wish before he could stop her.

The snow exploded with a hundred prickly pods, each the size of horse chestnuts. Each large enough to block her throat and inject their venom into her veins.

Allen snatched her arm and hauled her away just as the heap of pods tumbled like a miniature rockslide after her feet. He kept her tight against him as Rose and Boar blasted the pile with their magic, forming a hasty containment barrier. Squashed as she was against his chest, Lilac heard the frantic beating of his heart. She felt the micro-vibrations in his skin, even through his clothing, like he was trembling on a cellular level. Both were at such odds with his controlled facade that it further convinced her he wasn’t at all what she thought he was.

Lilac shoved herself free of him and straightened her dress. “I wasn’t going to touch it with my bare hand—I’m not stupid. And I’m not a damsel, Allen.”

“I . . . I know that,” he choked out .

It looked like he was fighting to say something else, but she couldn’t spare the time to wait for him to spit it out. Nor did she want to. He confused her—teasing and boyish one moment, a man with secrets the next—and she had to stay focused on her mission to prove herself to her family. And, at present, to help that family get rid of this vicious ill-wish.

She joined her siblings, and the three of them linked their glowing hands. Green light flowed from their joined hands and speared into the cluster of pods. As one, they chanted a variant of the familiar Cleansing Spell,

“By the Power of Three, let us decree:

Remove this blight, this pestilent sore,

Return to Nature, be clean ever more.”

A green sphere encapsulated the cluster of pods, turned opaque, and with a flash of light, disappeared. Nothing but a circle of winter-yellow grass remained. The punch-contaminated snow and the ill-wish were gone.

But the intent of the threat still remained. Lilac wet her lips, her heart swelling with dread that it threatened to squeeze the air from her lungs. “I was the target.”

She hugged herself, wishing she had more than a simple shawl to comfort her. Warm arms, perhaps. She shook the thought away and focused on the one that mattered: who would do such a thing?

“It’s always about you, isn’t it?” Rose joked weakly. “But maybe not this time. Maybe it was meant for all of the Hawthornes. We didn’t test it before we scoured it.”

“It doesn’t matter if it was just Lilac or all of us,” Boar countered, “because the punch should’ve never been tampered with. The refreshment table was your job, Rose. Where were you? ”

Color ignited on Rose’s cheeks like a sudden explosion of fireworks. “I-I . . ..”

She had no excuse, and they all knew it. She’d left her responsibilities for Allen to handle so she could flirt with her mountain man, Darren Morton.

“Boar, I—”

“Save it. Had you just done your job, Allen could’ve been more mindful of the Hall. Sensed its alarm before this catastrophe could happen. A man almost died , do you get that? Are you even capable of understanding that importance, or is your head up in the clouds with the birds like it always is?”

Rose burst into tears.

“And you .” Boar rounded on Lilac. “You sold your potions after I explicitly told you not to? And how did you even—” His head snapped towards Allen.

The man was looking straight at the irate witch, shoulders squared and hands linked behind his back. There was nothing but barely concealed disgust on the caretaker’s face. Lilac wondered where the man got the balls to look at her brother with such disrespect, not that she was against it at the moment. It was so bold, so refreshing to see someone not cowed by a Hawthorne, and, she had to admit, somewhat—okay, very —attractive.

“I told you to throw that crate outside,” Boar seethed. “To make sure it shattered—”

“I did. And it did. Not my fault the bottles didn’t break.”

The pulsing vein in Boar’s temple threatened to explode.

“You leave him out of this.” Lilac thrust her finger into her brother’s face. “He did as you commanded. It’s not his fault that, that”—she cast a trepid glance at the caretaker, gaining confidence as he just looked back at her with wondrous disbelief—“that I went back because I couldn’t give them up.”

Lilac squared her shoulders, fully committed now. There was no heat in her next words, just humble yet pure self-assuredness. “And you know what? I’m glad I did. My potions are just as good as Mom’s. You know how I know that? Because one of them healed Landen. ”

“That is beside the point and you know it,” Boar snapped. “I assume you used the Roots’ booth when they didn’t show? Will I find any more of your potions when I go back there?”

That took the wind out of her sails lightning quick, and Lilac couldn’t lie fast enough.

“Allen,” Boar barked. “Stay here with the girls.”

It was only then when Boar swept past them that Lilac realized a small crowd had formed to watch the spectacle. She recognized all of them, recognized the uncertain look in their eyes for what it was—if her own brother didn’t believe in her ability, why should they believe in her products?

She looked for Edith, hoping to find a sympathetic face, but the little faun bookseller was nowhere to be found. Lilac spied Talia though, the server fidgeting and looking miserable for witnessing the confrontation between siblings. Or maybe she’d been apprehensive of a witch duel breaking out and causing collateral damage.

“Talia, do you have a moment?” she said in the clear, controlled voice of her serene persona. Inside, she was quivering with wrath.

The server quickly joined her side, and Lilac turned away from the others and lowered her voice. “I’ve had time to reconsider your request. About the love potion. Do you still want it?”

The woman’s eyes sparkled. “Seriously?”

Lilac glanced back at the open double doors of Hawthorne Hall where Boar had disappeared inside to raid the totes and make sure her potions were destroyed once and for all. No doubt he would issue recalls for everything else, despite the Healing Elixir’s success. He had ruined her dreams not once, but twice, and had publicly shamed her to boot. A little love potion—and the senseless fool he would become—weren’t payback enough, but it was a start.

She smiled her little serene smile, the one he and all the rest of her family expected of her. “I’ve never been more serious in my life. I’ll hide it in that yew bush by the front door and you can pick it up before the Hanging of the Green, okay?”