Page 16 of Silk Skullduggery (Haven Hollow #40)

One of the best parts of being in a coven was the sharing of power and information.

At least, on paper, that was what a coven was supposed to be. We had some witches from all over the world in Circle Scapegrace, and they brought with them a wealth of knowledge from all over the globe.

There was less information about Japan than I would have liked in the coven library, but unlike my sisters throughout history, I also had access to the internet. Speaking of, there was a lot to dig through that was obviously pop culture, or western interpretations of things, or just straight up stories made by mundanes without any magical knowledge or background. But I did manage to find a few invaluable tidbits.

I studied, and I napped, and I bolted down some food and coffee when I needed it. My work saw me almost all the way around the clock, and it was nearing sunset again by the time I actually had anything resembling useful information. Most of what I needed to know was already summed up in the note. The Tsuchigumo was a spider demon, though there were actually more than one in Japan, but this one seemed to do more actual hunting and less seducing prey, so at least that saved me some nightmare fuel.

The things I looked up had me nervous. This was not a small or weak demon. The only saving grace was that it had been locked up for a long, long time, and it seemed to be taking a while to get its full strength back. I didn’t want to see what would happen to Haven Hollow if that was ever allowed to happen.

From what I could figure out, the Tsuchigumo was mostly being lazy in its hunting. It seemed to have gone for an easy target at first: an old, lonely man who wasn’t in great health, and since that point, it had been hunting mainly to contagion. If someone made contact with a victim while they were under the Tsuchigumo’s draining curse, they picked up a bit of the curse, and bam, next meal acquired. Like all major predators, it was letting the prey do most of the work as far as coming to it. Convenient for the demon, extremely frustrating for me, because I had no idea how to hunt down something that seemed to only have a tangential link to this plane of freaking existence.

Further issue, I didn’t know what to do with it once I did manage to round it up. The information that I’d managed to scrounge up didn’t paint a good picture about dealing with it. There had been a reason that the original weaver had gone to such extreme lengths to trap it in the first place.

Weaving silk threads into cloth, especially pre-industrial revolution, wasn’t exactly a simple or quick thing to do. And every thread, every twist and pattern, was set with the single purpose of keeping this creature away from the world. No one would go to that amount of effort for something that a can of Raid would deal with.

And of course, the obvious and most simple solution of binding it right back where I got it from, wasn’t going to work, because the silk was barely shreds now. Whatever enchantment had been protecting it from time and damage was well and truly broken. I just had a sad pile of threads and a whole heap of buyer’s remorse to show for it.

At least it explained why all the curse threads looked like spider webs. Well spotted.

I dropped my head into my hands. I was going to have to tell Taliyah about this and once I did, that was going to go over so very well. At least I was pretty sure she couldn’t turn me into a witchsicle over the phone.

I dug my phone out of my purse and was just about to dial when it lit up with an incoming call. The number wasn’t one I recognized, and my instinct was to send the caller to voicemail, or just plain hang up, because I didn’t have time for a scam or someone trying to sell me something I almost certainly didn’t need. My thumb hovered over the button, but something convinced me to answer it, if only to get whoever it was off the line faster.

“What.” I answered. No one said I had to be nice about it, and I had a lot of things on my plate.

“Wanda?”

“Yes.”

“It’s Andre.”

I shot up straight in my chair, already half way to standing. A cold, sick feeling crept through my belly. Why would Andre be reaching out to me? He was nice and all, but we didn’t exactly hang out. And if Poppy needed something, she’d have reached out herself.

Unless she couldn’t.

“What is it? What’s wrong? Is Poppy okay? Is it Finn?” My voice came out harsh, but I couldn’t have changed that if I tried. I wanted to know what the spell was going on, and I was about four seconds away from reaching through the phone to throttle answers out of anyone I could reach.

“I’m sorry to trouble you,” he said, his British accent particularly clipped. I could feel the cut glass edge of it. “But Poppy’s been feeling poorly the last few days, and it’s getting worse. Finn is worried. I’m worried… She didn’t even want to get out of bed today.”

That didn’t sound like Poppy at all. I’d seen her with a cold, and even the flu one winter. She’d stayed home to rest, except that her idea of rest involved a bunch of chores and work, and Finn had finally called me to come over and bully her into taking a nap. I’d had to threaten to hex the doorknob on her bedroom door unless she got into bed and went to sleep.

Andre’s breath shook a little when he let it out. “I know you have quite a lot going on, Poppy told me a bit of it. But I was wondering, if you had a moment, if you might drop by? I’m sure it would cheer her up to see you and… well, frankly Wanda, I’m quite concerned.”

I was already halfway to the door, tangled up in my coat and purse strap. I had to hop on one foot for a second to get my shoes that I’d kicked off while studying, back onto my feet. It was a good thing Hellcat had made himself scarce, because I would have rather been hexed bald than have him see me.

“I’m on my way,” I told Andre, and I hung up on him, hurrying for my car.

***

It was a good thing that the front door to Poppy’s farmhouse wasn’t locked, because I might have just blasted the whole thing off the hinges. As it was, I barged in without knocking. If something was wrong with Poppy, there was no way some wood panels and a couple of hinges were going to slow me down. I heard some voices and quiet puttering in the kitchen, but I ignored it.

I made it about three steps into the living room before I stumbled to a stop. It felt like there was frost in my lungs, and I was struggling to breathe around it. Poppy was sitting upright on her couch, wrapped in a half a dozen of those knitted afghans people always seem to accumulate. She wasn’t her usual chipper, smiley self, though. Even with the flu, Poppy had been upbeat and cheerful, just with a bright red nose and a dozen tissues around her at all times.

But now, she looked pale. Wan. Worn thin in a way I’d never seen her. She was huddled into the blankets like she couldn’t get warm and might never get warm again. All I could see of her was her face, part of her neck, and one hand, as well as her feet poking out the bottom of all the blankets.

Her eyes were red rimmed and puffy, like she’d been crying for a while, and she was laying back, sinking into the couch, but not like it was comfortable. More like she just couldn’t be bothered to hold herself upright any longer.

And every inch of her that I could see was covered in the thick white webbing of the Tsuchigumo’s curse.

There was a roaring in my ears, the pounding of my heart driving out every other sound. Everything in my head was throwing out alarms, plans, strategies. But it was very, terrifyingly clear, that the Tsuchigumo had marked Poppy as its next meal.

My first instinct was to rush over to her and start ripping the nasty strands of foul magic away from my best friend, to get them off her any way I had to. But they were sunk deep, worming under her skin. They must have been setting root for days, far worse than the woman lying in the road. Even worse than the two men who’d done their best to beat each other to death at the Half-Moon.

That certainly explained the glassy, far away look in Poppy’s eyes. It was like she wasn’t even seeing what was in front of her. No, it was like she was stuck in some other world all alone.

I hated it.

“Why didn’t you call me earlier?” I demanded of Andre as he walked in.

He shrugged. “She seemed… alright just yesterday—as though she had a bad cold. It wasn’t until today that she took a severe turn for the worse.”

My magic bucked and roiled beneath my skin, begging to be let loose. There was a storm brewing behind my sternum, destruction waiting to be set free, and it was only through decades of work and discipline that I managed to hold it back. Poppy lived right beside a cemetery; the last thing I needed was my magic to seep into the graves and raise everyone from the dead just because I was so furious with this blasted demon that I tasted metal from where I’d bitten my tongue.

I walked on stiff legs over to the couch and perched beside Poppy, careful not to jostle her too much.

“Poppy?” My voice was barely more than a breath, like I couldn’t squeeze it out from around the knot of fury and fear clogged in my throat. “Poppy, can you hear me?”

There was a flicker of her eyelashes, just a tremble of her lower lip, but she didn’t turn. She didn’t look at me.

I licked my lips, trying to work some moisture back into them. “Poppy, it’s going to be okay. I’m going to help you, alright?”

A single tear rolled down her cheek to drip onto her blanket, and I felt like burning the world to ashes. It was a struggle to think, to plan, and rationalize. Ripping the curse strands off Poppy might hurt her, for one thing. For another, as much as I hated to think it, this might have been my best opportunity to catch the demon. I knew Poppy would volunteer if she could. She wouldn’t want anyone else to get hurt or die, not when we could end it here and now.

But I hesitated. Not Poppy. Not my closest friend, who was more of a sister to me than any of my real sisters could ever be. There would be another victim, for sure and I could catch the thing then—using someone else as the lure. Not Poppy.

But how many potential deaths more before the Tsuchigumo regained all its power? How many more victims would it take before we caught this thing? How many more deaths?

I still didn’t want to do it.

Emotions ruined everything.

“Wanda, can you help her?” Finn asked.

I turned just far enough to see Andre standing next to him, and Finn was coming out of the kitchen. He was carrying a mug of what looked like tea, moving slowly so he didn’t spill a single drop. I hadn’t even realized Andre had left the room, but with the fact that he was now carrying a plate of carefully cut up fruit balanced in his hand, that was now pretty obvious. Andre was going to a lot of effort to seem upbeat and unruffled in front of Finn, but I could see the tension in his jaw, and the tightness around his eyes.

This was a man watching the woman he loved dying by inches, and he clearly didn’t know what to do. Actually the more I looked at him, the more I realized he was fighting to keep it together. It made me like him more. And more again that he’d called me to come and use my fantastic, powerful witch magic to save Poppy.

“Yes, I can,” I said to answer Finn’s question.

Finn came around to set the tea mug on the end table beside Poppy. He twitched the blankets around her, tucking her in more tightly. He was trying to be brave, I could tell. But there was a redness around his eyes, and the glossy sheen of tears wasn’t far away.

He wasn’t even sixteen yet. He shouldn’t have had to see her like this.

“She hasn’t said anything since she woke up,” Finn said in a strangled voice. “Did she talk to you?”

“No.”

Finn’s breath hitched, and he gave a jerky nod. “I don’t know what’s wrong with her. I don’t know what to do.”

Andre came around the couch. He set the plate of fruit down beside the tea, and he put his arm around Finn’s shoulders, pulling him into a kind of sideways hug.

“It’s going to be okay, Finn. We’re going to figure out how to help your mum.” Andre’s voice was confident, but there was a desperate question in his eyes when he looked at me.

Oh, I was going to save her alright. And I was going to kick some serious demon ass along the way. I made sure all of that showed in my face for a split second, just a peek of all the very dangerous things I was feeling.

Andre’s shoulders relaxed just a smidge.

What an odd man. Most people who saw a witch’s fury didn’t find it exactly comforting.

There were things I needed to do, but Poppy’s farmhouse at the edge of town, beside the woods and the graveyard, wasn’t exactly the best place to do it. I needed the coven, for one thing. And I needed somewhere defensible, somewhere I could control how and when things came at us. I wasn’t going to take unnecessary risks with Poppy’s safety.

If there was one thing growing up in the coven had taught me, other than politicking and how to ward against the hexes of teenage girls, it was the art of slapping an uncaring mask over whatever it was my emotions were doing. A blank face was a shield. Never let anyone see behind it.

At least, that had worked up until I came to Haven Hollow and all these ridiculous people kept worming their way through my defenses.

Still, Poppy wouldn’t want people worrying about her, even if they had a truly excellent reason to do so. So, I slapped a mask of callous boredom over my face, and sighed, coming just short of rolling my eyes.

“Yes, yes, I’ll fix her up. Really, there’s no need to be so dramatic, Andre. I’ll need to take her back to the coven house though, because there are some things I need there.”

Finn blinked at me, his mouth trembling just a little.

I forced myself to breathe slow and easy, to not tense up. This was the hardest part. Magic tended to favor women, that was a fact. For every two or three dozen witches born, there was only one warlock like Maverick. Even in families with magical bloodlines, like Poppy, the females tended to end up with the lion’s share of the gifts. But every once in a while, something liked to pop up in men, some knack or talent. Finn was unusual in that Andre was training him to be a fully fledged Magician. But his other gift, and way more dangerous one to me at the moment, was that Finn had a little quirk from his Gypsy Traveller heritage.

He could always tell when someone was lying.

It was a very careful dance. I hadn’t said anything that was untrue, after all. But lies could be tricky things. People lied with words, with their bodies, with their eyes. So far, at least as far as I knew, it was only the lies spoken out loud that tripped Finn’s particular gift. As he watched me now, I watched him right back, arching my brows in the best expression of impatience that I could muster.

Finn nodded slowly, biting his lower lip. “Okay.”

I took a deep breath, deliberately not looking at the knotted mess of the curse, at how it was slowly smothering the spark out of the greatest friend I’d ever had. I would save her. Dammit, I would save her. There was no way Poppy was going to die.

I simply wouldn’t allow it.