Page 29

TWENTY-FOUR

Bandit didn’t even cry out as four smoky white tendrils emanated from him and curled around the amethyst blade like ghostly snakes.

Then his eyes went wide with terror, and he kicked and scratched wildly, shredding her arms. Shrieking with pain, Lily dropped both cat and dagger.

She scanned the ground for the blade but didn’t immediately find it, then she grimaced.

Blood oozed out of the gashes on her arms. She turned to Bandit.

“Don’t you dare!” Thorn yelled, picking up the broom again.

“Bloody fool!” Lily said through gritted teeth before disappearing out the door.

Thorn ran to Bandit. He was so scared he was frozen to the spot, not even enough wits left about him to scurry under the bed. He only trembled and cried.

“Bandit! Bandit! What should I do?” Thorn cried.

There was nothing she could do to save him.

The panic and helplessness she’d felt that day he’d been hit by the bicycle returned.

But the memory of the accident brought with it images of Walls.

Walls taking care of Bandit, Walls saying that he knew what to do.

Thorn took a deep breath. She might have never dealt with the extra lives of cats, but she had dealt with souls. She looked around the cottage, and relief flooded her when she spotted the Dire Dagger—it had tumbled under the table.

Thorn picked up the dagger, the four wispy white snakes of Bandit’s lives still writhing around the blade.

She grabbed the ordinary box of matchsticks from the mantel.

Steadying her breath, she brought the red tip of the matchstick to the tip of the blade.

A white snake slithered off the dagger and curled around the tip of the matchstick, turning it white.

“Hold on, Bandit,” Thorn said. “Three more.”

She used three more matchsticks to store the rest of Bandit’s extra lives.

I’m scared.

“I’ll return these now.” She held a white-tipped matchstick over Bandit and scraped it against the amethyst like she was striking a flint.

White powder sprinkled onto Bandit and disappeared into his fur. Even though he was still shaking and his eyes were still like saucers, he’d stopped crying.

“I think it’s working, Bandit.”

After he regained another life, he stopped trembling. And he got back enough courage to dash under the bed. She crawled after him.

After the third of his stolen lives was returned, his eyes went back to normal.

I’m not sure what happened. The last thing I remember was following the raven.

I knew he was purposefully luring me away from the cottage, so I got him to a bin and shut him inside.

He’ll be there until someone throws away their trash.

When I came back, Lily was here, but after that, my mind’s a blank.

“Don’t worry, Bandit. Everything’s all right.” She returned his final stolen life to him.

He trotted out from under the bed . So what’s for supper?

“Welcome back, you turd.” Thorn hugged him too tight.

He bit her.

“I just saved your life!” she yelped, but she still fixed him his dinner—a bowl of just toppers. While he ate, she fixed the mess.

She tucked the dagger and Lily’s matchbox safely into her pocket.

Tomorrow, she’d return the extra lives to those cats.

There was no way to tell how many matchsticks Lily had already used for her Never Love Again potion, but Thorn hoped that all the cats would get at least one of their spare lives back.

She heaved the cauldron off the fireplace, the purple brew inside sloshing and splashing, and carried it to the bathroom, then tipped it into the bathtub.

As the Never Love Again potion disappeared down the drain, she wondered about the person whose heart had been broken so badly they never wanted to put it back together, lest it be broken again.

Unhand me, servant , a tortoiseshell cat named Turtle hissed as her fifth extra life was returned to her.

Walls’s face lit up with a smile. He quickly placed the hissing cat back into her crate. “Turtle’s the last one. Thank you, Thorn.”

Thorn had spent all morning returning to the cats their extra lives.

By the time the matchbox was empty, all the affected cats had at least two extra lives returned to them.

“I don’t know how you persuaded the vets at the other clinics to convince their clients to bring their mysteriously ill cats here. ”

“I didn’t tell them you were using magic.”

“You lied?”

“I told them you were a cat whisperer. It’s not a widely accepted treatment option, but it comes with no risk, and they were all stumped, so they were willing to give it a shot.”

Let us out! Pepper stuck a paw through the bars of his cage.

This is an outrage, Pumpkin yawned.

Walls opened the stray cats’ cage first. “I’m guessing you two are meowing for freedom now that you’re all good. If you see Lily again, remember to stay away from her.”

Thorn studied the dagger in her hands.

“Thorn.” Walls sounded serious now.

She looked up to see him studying her with both worry and relief.

“I’m glad you didn’t get hurt in that confrontation.”

“Me, too. Let’s go, cats.” She tucked the Dire Dagger back into her pocket. Then she stood in front of the cage to let Pepper climb onto her shoulder. Pumpkin settled into her arms. “See you around, Walls.”

As she walked briskly out of the clinic carrying the stray cats, she was so deep in her thoughts that she didn’t see Walls extend a hand toward her and open his mouth to call her back.

When she entered the park, Pepper and Pumpkin hopped off her and disappeared to relish in their freedom. She trudged on to the pavilion. This was the place where Thorn had grieved her sister for so many years. But Rose’s body hadn’t even been here.

All her life, Thorn had avoided thinking about that night thirty years ago. Now, she paced under the fir tree, trying to remember exactly what had happened.

When they were out in the woods, Rose suggested they split up to gather mushrooms faster. Thorn had Turnip with her; Rose had never had a familiar and refused to summon one. At some point, Turnip wandered out of Thorn’s sight, distracted by his own hunt for food.

“Thorn! Thorn!” Rose had called out, desperation in her voice.

Thorn went running to the riverbank to see Rose standing alone under the fir tree. Rose’s slender fingers were curled around a silver hilt, and the amethyst blade cast a violet hue on her pale skin.

Thorn ran toward her sister. “How did you get past Mother’s enchanted pocket?”

What happened next, Thorn wasn’t quite sure. There were chunks she couldn’t see. It was as if her memories were a series of doors, and she had lost the keys to some of them.

A flurry of white feathers speckled with bright red had rained upon the sisters. A black panther leaped down from the fir tree. It lunged for Rose.

The next thing she remembered was being alone in the woods. White and red feathers were scattered all around. Then something on the ground glinted purple. It was the Dire Dagger. She picked it up and ran home.

Mother had looked up from her spell book. She looked surprised and horrified. “Why is it you?”

Thorn told her about Rose being eaten by the black panther, and Mother wailed, “You ruin everything!”

Thorn never told Mother about the dagger. Perhaps she was afraid of what Mother would do with it.

The next two weeks after Rose’s death were a blur of Mother working on the Forever True Love potion without food or sleep.

After she dropped dead, Thorn had sat with her body for a few days before Madam Maude stumbled upon the macabre scene. Madam Maude arranged for Mother’s funeral in town and for Rose to be buried by the river in a grave marked by a stone cairn.

Madam Maude had then given Thorn two options, but Thorn chose a third: to stay alone in the cottage in the woods. For as long as Thorn could remember, she and Rose had taken care of themselves and Mother. She could make it on her own.

And now, centuries later, Thorn stood alone by the river. “I should leave the past in the past,” she said to herself. After all, she literally had left the past.

She traced the hilt of the Dire Dagger one last time. Then she took a step back and threw.

It barely made a splash as it was swallowed up by the blue-green water.

But Thorn couldn’t figure out why Rose would have had the Dire Dagger that night in the first place.

Sure, she could’ve figured out a potion to get past Mother’s enchanted pocket, but that kind of weapon wasn’t necessary to forage for mushrooms. Why did Mother blame Thorn for Rose’s death when it was Rose who’d wanted mushroom stew for dinner and insisted on ingredient-gathering after dark?

And why had the black panther never been seen before or after that day?

Thorn had assumed that her memories had been locked behind doors by time, but these questions now made her wonder: Maybe those doors hadn’t been shut by time but by magic.

“Liar Liar potion,” she whispered. It could have produced such an effect. And the person who’d slipped her this potion thirty years ago would have been either Mother or Madam Maude.

Thorn turned away from the river and marched toward the cottage.

On the way, she picked two tails of pony.

Once she got home, she dropped the leaves into the cauldron and added six more ingredients from the drawers.

She lit the fireplace, and a couple of hours later, she was downing a dose of Liar Liar antidote.

But a catalyst was required. The antidote was like the key to the door that locked up her memories, but there still needed to be a hand to turn the key.

She pulled out her cell phone and dialed for Meg.

Meg came over the next day around noon.

“I was driving Charlie from school to soccer just now,” Meg said as she walked into the cottage. “And she was just yakking away about how you curled her shoes, and how you promised to make her a very pointy hat.”

“And I will, but I have something very important to deal with first.” Thorn pulled out a chair at the table for her guest. “Meg, do you remember the picnic when your family found Pirate?”

“Of course. It was right by the pavilion. Though the pavilion wasn’t there back then, since the park was still a forest.”

Thorn paced around the table. “What else can you tell me?”

Meg hesitated at first, but finally, she said, “Something happened on that picnic when we found Pirate. I never told anyone because I didn’t think anyone would believe me.

To be honest, I wasn’t sure of it myself.

But what I saw that day thirty years ago was what sparked my interest in Covenstead and led me to join the Historical Society years later. ”

A lump rose in Thorn’s throat.

“That day at the riverbank picnic while my family was fussing over Pirate, I looked into the forest and saw a little girl. Maybe a tween. Strange clothing, especially for a kid. Long skirt and pinafore apron. Very cottagecore. Very out of time. She was just staring at my family. Then she noticed me looking at her. She turned and ran into the forest. All these years, I thought I must have imagined it.”

Thorn swallowed. “What else do you remember about this girl?”

“Brown hair. Oh, her eyes. I’ll never forget them. They were a beautiful shade of green.”