Page 4 of Enchantra (Wicked Games #2)

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BERRIES

“I can take you back to the city,” Morello assured her. “No extra charge.”

Genevieve continued to stare through the gates. Something about the scene before her was scratching at the back of her mind…

“Miss Grimm?” Morello pressed.

For a moment she wondered if she should take this as a sign to accept his offer and return to the station. And then something beyond the gate shimmered . Like a mirage.

She blinked and it was gone.

A series of belligerent caws sounded above. Genevieve looked up at the sky, now turning black with the promise of rain. The three crows were now circling in an endless loop of anticipation.

She’d come all this way, risked too much trouble, dreamed about this for too long, to go back now.

There’s something here for me , she thought. There must be.

Squaring her shoulders, Genevieve turned to Morello and stated, “I will not be leaving. I appreciate the ride and do hope you return safely before this weather rolls in.”

“But I cannot abandon you here,” Morello insisted. “If it’s a place to stay that you need I?—”

“You can and you will leave me here.” She gave a flick of her hand. “I’ll be just fine.”

“There’s nothing else around for miles,” he protested. “You cannot possibly expect me to strand a lady in the middle of nowhere.”

She sighed. She forgot how deeply entranced some men became with the illusion of sweet innocence she’d crafted—but she didn’t have time to let this one down easy. She needed him to go .

Channeling the haunting stares her mother and sister were capable of, she fixed the most bone-chilling expression she could muster onto her face. Of course, Genevieve didn’t have all the creepy details of a Necromancer working for her like they did—the icy eyes, the pallid complexions—but she’d have to make do.

Reaching inside of herself for a kernel of her magic, she began to make her form flicker in and out of its invisible, non-corporeal state as she crooned, “Who said I was a lady ?”

Morello balked, stumbling back from her as she continued to flex her magic, his hazel eyes dancing from shock to terror as whatever charm he thought might have drenched her before melted away entirely.

She advanced a step. “Unless you want to end up as one of those whispered legends… of a man who wandered off with a beautiful stranger into the middle of nowhere only to disappear and never be heard from again… I suggest you leave. Now .”

Morello swallowed and backed toward the carriage, though, to his credit, he didn’t run.

“One can be only so intimidating when gifted with such a darling appearance, I suppose,” she mused beneath her breath.

While Ophelia’s icy gaze was often described as unsettling, Genevieve’s eyes were a warm, inviting cerulean, framed by thick lashes and a heart-shaped face—which had the most endearing freckles smattered across the bridge of her nose and pink cheeks. Not to mention her voluptuous figure—which made the soft lines of her curves anything but sharp, even in a corset. Details her suitors had fawned over time and time again.

Your freckles are adorable.

You have the most beautiful eyes.

You’re so sweet, you couldn’t hurt a fly.

She’d bet good money Farrow Henry had regretted letting that last one roll off his tongue. He would hardly recognize the person who had frightened Morello away.

And frightened she had, because now Morello was scrambling up into his driver’s seat, sans promised tip, and snapping the horse’s reins to pull away as fast as he could. As the sound of the carriage faded into the distance, it was replaced by the sky’s sudden grumbling. She glanced up to see several dark clouds rolling in and sighed. Her outfit was likely going to get ruined.

She turned back to the gate, squinting into the distance beyond it anew, gripping the silver bars and ignoring the stray thorns that dug into her palms as she concentrated.

A beat. And… aha .

The shimmer of magic.

“I know you’re there,” she whispered.

As if her words had awoken something, the sudden feeling that she was being watched sent a tingle down her spine. She glanced over her shoulder, but there was nothing behind her except the winding driveway and the rows and rows of berry-covered vines.

Squawk.

Genevieve jumped, tilting her face upward to find one of the large crows landing atop the gate’s arch. She watched, cautious, as it began to peck at the berries dripping from the sculpted steel.

Plus, the demonberries will be perfectly ripe.

Genevieve reached up to pluck one of the bright, purplish berries from its vine, holding it up in front of her face to inspect. It wasn’t quite a grape, nor was it a blueberry, but despite its strangeness, it certainly made her mouth water.

Of course they do , she could imagine Farrow’s voice saying. You’re a Demon yourself, after all.

Genevieve gritted her teeth.

She had entered Phantasma in part to escape him, but she’d found the manor’s hallways crowded with wispy illusions of Farrow, lurking in every cobweb-filled corner. His face had appeared to her in the middle of the night when she couldn’t sleep—and in her nightmares when she could—and he had somehow managed to follow just one step behind her everywhere she went, even after she’d escaped the haunted house’s bleeding walls.

He was in the reflection of her hot chocolate at every café. In the heat of every fire. In the faces of the few lovers she’d had since he shattered her heart to pieces. Some days the agony of what happened between them lingered in a way that made everything she thought she knew about herself hazy. Like all this time she’d thought she’d been breathing clean air, but now she realized the smoke had just taken a while to suffocate her.

She had hoped maybe the unwanted memories would stop when she finally left New Orleans, but as the dull memory of ocean-blue eyes watching her through a wall of orange flames flickered through her mind now, she knew no amount of distance would take the burn of his memory away.

Ophelia might be the Necromancer, but Genevieve dealt with Ghosts just the same. Only hers were still alive.

Forget him , she ordered herself as she popped the fruit onto her tongue, relishing the sweet taste of the juice that flooded her mouth when she cracked open its icy exterior with her teeth.

“ Mmm ,” she hummed in satisfaction.

She picked another. And another.

The berries were delicious enough that she didn’t notice the change occurring around her at first. When her eyes refocused, the last berry she’d plucked dropped to the ground in her slackened hand as the magic veil she’d seen rippling in the air finally lifted beyond the gates.

Stretching across the grounds in front of her was an intricate hedge maze, the lush green walls too tall for her to see what it might hide in its center. But even the looming labyrinth couldn’t block out the glittering silver villa it sat in front of. Two squared structures that looked like towers bookended the front facade, stretching so high into the gloomy sky above that they nearly kissed the clouds. The entire stone exterior was encrusted with pearls of silver and draped in the same climbing, thorned vines as the gate. She could see that the driveway continued just beyond the locked entryway, forking before it reached the hedge maze and circling around to either side of the estate. And all of it was dusted in untouched, powdery white.

Snow? How odd …

She pressed herself closer to the bars as if it would make her vision clearer, confirming that she wasn’t hallucinating the flurries of ice covering everything beyond the gates. The silver fence enclosed the entire perimeter as far as she could see, but with the sheer size of the grounds, and the eyes of a mere mortal, she couldn’t tell exactly how far back the property actually went.

“I suppose I’ll have to just go see for myself,” she said, but before she summoned her magic, she hesitated.

She wondered whether this decision was going to be as irrevocable as some of the others she’d made. Once she stepped beyond the gates, she knew whatever she found might change her, and she’d already changed so much over the last year. Her reflection in the mirror not the na?ve girl she used to be.

Yet all those changes were precisely what had led her to Enchantra now. There was something more waiting beyond the bars, the answer to a need she’d had for a very long time. A history that she hoped might help her understand why her mother had never been able to give her what she needed. Companionship that might make her feel like there was somewhere she might fit in outside of Grimm Manor.

Squawk.

Genevieve straightened herself up and glared at the crow, then let her magic warm in her veins as she turned herself non-corporeal long enough to slide through the bars. Once she slipped free of the gate and became solid once more, she padded down the remainder of the driveway, following its fork to the right to avoid the pruned labyrinth ahead.

A moment later the strange feeling of being watched flooded over her once again. She paused.

“Hello?” she called, peering into the thick bushes.

When a brief rustling sounded from within the hedges, she sucked in a sharp breath. A shadowy form suddenly leaped from the wall of greenery, and Genevieve let out a yelp of surprise as she stumbled backward, tripping over her skirts and barely catching herself before she crashed to the ground.

As she righted herself, her gaze clashed with a set of glowing amber eyes. A black fox.

The creature tilted its head at her as it fixed itself into a much too self-aware position, sitting with its front paws carefully crossed on the ground. As if it were waiting for an explanation on why she was trespassing.

“I was invited,” Genevieve insisted to the fox despite how ridiculous it felt. “See, I have an invitation?—”

The sable creature lunged forward and snatched the paper from her grasp before diving back into the maze.

“ Hey! ” she yelled as she swiped at the fluffy tip of its tail, but it squirmed right out of her grasp and disappeared. “Are you fucking kidding me?”

She instinctually shifted into her invisible state and plunged into the greenery after it. On the other side of the hedge, she found herself within one of the labyrinth’s many winding corridors as the fox skittered away to her right. She picked up her skirts and ran after it.

Fortunately for her, as the critter led her deeper into the maze, it began to slow its pace, thinking itself safe. Unfortunately for it, her invisibility made it rather easy to sneak up from behind.

As she became solid, she snatched the fox into the air by its scruff, letting it wriggle violently in her clutch as she tried to pry the black envelope from its maw with her free hand. It only locked its jaw tighter.

She clucked her tongue at the creature. “ Drop it! ”

The fox made a low, keening sound in its throat as its shrewd, gold eyes glared at her in a way that was much too humanlike.

“Don’t you growl at me! You’re the menace here,” she chastised as she continued to yank at the invitation. “If you don’t let go, I shall have to?—”

Before she could finish her threat, the fox, and the envelope, evaporated into thick black smoke. Genevieve blinked in disbelief.

What in the Hell just happened? she wondered, her heart pounding as she slowly turned around, looking for an explanation.

Squawk.

Her gaze snapped to the sky.

“Shoo!” she yelled at the crow as it dipped a bit too low in the air. She’d had enough. “I’ve arrived! You did your job! It’s time for you to fuck off and?—”

Before she could finish, the bird dropped to the ground with a lifeless thud. She stared for a tense beat, taking in its engorged belly.

The berries … ?

“Well, that can’t be good,” she muttered as her vision slowly grew blurry. She tried to take a step back, to leave the puzzling maze, but everything around her was beginning to spin and her feet were refusing to work.

A moment later the world slipped away entirely.

There was something cold and wet nudging at Genevieve’s face as the shadows crept back ever so slightly from the edges of her mind. Rapid, sniffled breaths huffed against her cheek before she was lifted from the ground and cradled against something hard and warm.

“Farrow?” she muttered, trying to pry her eyes open, to break her way out of the hold she was in. But she was too weak to fight, and whoever it was felt sturdier than Farrow, anyway. Their scent… sharp mint cut by something sweet… was nothing like the musky cologne Farrow used to drown himself in.

“Apuell abon, Umbra,” a deep, unfamiliar voice murmured.

And somehow she knew exactly what that voice was saying. Good girl, Umbra.

Genevieve couldn’t make out the rest of their words as the shadows flooded her mind once more, the sounds all mushing together. She tried one last time to open her eyes, to see who was there, but all she managed to glimpse was a brief flash of gold before the darkness swallowed her completely.

The nightmare was always the same.

He stood over her with a lit match as she desperately tried to disappear.

“You’re a Demon. I wish I’d never met you. And now you’ll fucking burn.”

When Genevieve finally awoke, it was on the outside of Enchantra’s gates, next to her trunks, with no recollection of how she got there and a bitter taste in her mouth.