Page 50 of Song of the Hell Witch

“ Stop! ” Pru’s shout boomed through the empty space, echoing into the next room. “Both of you. Mari, just … tone down the cheerfulness a bit. Puck’s been stabbed, I ripped out a boy’s trachea—”

“You what ?”

“—so we’re not exactly in a place to talk about how wonderful everything is or how excited we are to be here, all right?

We want to see Bea, meet the people we need to meet, then sleep for a thousand years.

And Puck?” She rounded on him, and his eyes went wide as she pushed up into his face.

“I know you’ve missed Bea. I know you’re exhausted.

I know you’re in pain. But that doesn’t mean you get to shit all over the rest of us.

Your daughter’s safe. You’re safe. And yeah, for the first time in your life, you feel out of place, but I’m going to need you to deal with it and take a fucking breath. ”

Like her words contained some kind of magical property, Puck’s face slid out of its grimace and into an apologetic frown. He peered over Pru’s shoulder at Mari. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I’m sorry.”

Mari sighed. “And I’m sorry, for vomiting my joy all over you. I’m just happy you’re safe and here and … I don’t know, I think we can make a home here. A good home.”

“Yeah. Maybe.” Puck’s gaze found Pru again. “How is it you always know when a man needs a good dressing down?”

“Experience.” She took his hand in hers. “Ease up, that’s all. Think you can do that?”

“I can try.”

Mari cleared her throat, and Pru and Puck both leapt away from each other. She wasn’t sure why it felt like they were doing something wrong—but the blush rose in her cheeks. “Now that we’ve all had a chance to properly thrash and eye-fuck each other …”

“Mare!” Puck scolded, but his eyes lit up, the ghost of a smile on his face. “Get on with the tour, will you?”

“Gladly.”

She led them through the next room, a parlor where guests tired of dancing in the ballroom could put up their feet, powder their noses.

The Ladies had turned it into a kind of den, outfitting the entire room with ghostwood bookshelves that looked so much like human bone it would’ve been disturbing if not for the warm gas lamps flickering on the walls.

Two armchairs and a large couch, all burgundy to tie the ballroom and the den together, sat gathered in a horseshoe around yet another fireplace.

Cushions large enough to be chairs themselves were scattered across the floor.

“This is the common area, where the Ladies gather to do their reading at night, spend some time together. And then through these doors”—Mari spun around to face them, pressing her back to the double doors that led into the next room, then clasped the doorknobs and twisted—“is what they call the Mother’s Hall. ”

Pru and Puck both gasped as they stepped into the most elaborate room Pru had ever seen.

Two long tables stretched from one end of the hall to the other, more than capable of seating the entire hamlet and then some.

Floor-to-ceiling windows covered the far end of the hall.

They looked out onto a small patio that served as the entrance to what looked like a wild Leoran garden, with large hydrangea bushes, feather reeds, and what looked like a willow tree positioned at its center.

But the ceiling was what took Pru’s breath away.

The Dark Mother stood in the center of the stained glass dome, starlight burning silver in her hands.

It was the day she’d created her Daughters.

Her umber skin gleamed in the morning light, and it wasn’t lost on Pru how much she resembled Mari.

The sky around her, an array of deep blues, was bursting with depictions of different Spectabra Daughters, some with mermaid tails, others with beautiful wings or the red fur of the rare and ferocious two-hearted striga.

Pru knew the glass wasn’t moving, but the way the light played across each pane, it was easy to imagine the witches streaking across the heavens like the comets that occasionally drifted between the Spheres.

The scale and beauty of it made her tune that much louder, until her wings practically begged for release.

Not yet, she told the Vultress. Don’t want to ruin another set of clothes, do we?

“This is …” Puck started, mouth still wide open as he studied the ceiling. “Damn.”

“I know. Took them a good century to build it,” Mari said. “Got most of the materials from the vagabonds out on the road. A few of the tribes were glaziers, with traveling shops and everything. Till the Apostles and the House of Lords drove them underground, that is.”

“So they’re still around?” Pru’s pulse spiked.

The vagabonds were her mother’s people. Maybe, if they were hiding somewhere in the Wild Fangs, she’d have a chance to connect with them, catch a glimpse of the girl her mother had been, the life she and Emmaline could have had if the world were different.

“One of the million or so questions I haven’t been able to ask yet,” Mari told her. “But the longer we stay, the more we’ll learn.”

It was still impossible for Pru to wrap her mind around the fact that this might be their new home, a place where they could settle, build a life.

A life among women like her, who could teach her more about who and what she was and all that she was capable of.

A life she and Puck Reed might spend together, a dream she’d thought long dead.

The emotion of it was almost too much. She swallowed it all down as Puck wandered over to the windows and squinted out into the garden.

“What is it?” She’d never seen him look so impressed.

“You think you’ve seen everything, and then …” He shook his head. “Can you do that?”

“Do wha—”

But she couldn’t finish the question. She was too taken aback.

It took her mind a moment to understand what she was seeing.

There was a woman outside on the lawn. She was maybe all of nineteen or twenty, wearing a knee-length black skirt with a slit up the thigh and a tight leather vest. At first, Pru thought she was practicing basic combat moves, spins, lunges, blocks, nothing too impressive.

But as she inched closer to the glass, she realized the girl was transforming , switching between her transformation phases in the space of a blink.

One spin, and scales green as Vivichan limes erupted up her arms, down her legs, along the sides of her neck.

She took another step, and the scales receded back into her rose-tinted skin as if they’d never existed in the first place.

It was the last move that truly surprised her.

One moment, the woman was dipping into a lunge; the next, her legs were fusing together beneath the skirt, morphing into a snake’s tail that spanned the width of both thighs.

It unfurled behind her, easily the length of two grown men stretched out head to toe.

Meanwhile, her chestnut hair gave way to the hood of a Spindle Isle sea cobra.

Beside her, Puck went rigid. His tongue crept out of his mouth in a gag. “I fucking hate —”

Like she could hear him through the glass, the woman turned to face him. Pru tried to hold it back, but the shudder came anyway, the sight of those golden snake eyes all too terrifying.

“I’m …” Puck started to apologize, but the lamia was already slithering away from him. Pru wasn’t sure where she was going—until she heard one of the glass panes open and watched her strut into the hall, perfectly human and mad as hell.

“Cress!” Mari said, obviously trying to diffuse what promised to be an extraordinarily terrible first impression. “Meet my friends. These are—”

“The duchess and the father,” Cressida finished for her, swiping the sweat from her brow. She was breathing as if she’d run up a steep hill, which made sense. Changing so often so quickly had to take a toll on the body. “You said they were nice .”

“We are!” Puck said, a little too loudly. He winced as the words echoed through the hall. “I just wasn’t thinking. We’re tired, and we’re dirty, and I’m a bit afraid of sna—”

“Save it, Father Banshee, I don’t have the patience for explanations, especially from some blubbering man.” Her accent was harsh and Northern, but she spoke with the formality of a Silk. She jerked her head toward Pru. “And you? You’re the woman who murdered Frederick Talonsbury?”

Pru lifted her chin, pretending like she wasn’t embarrassed or afraid. “I am.”

Cressida nodded. “My father hosted him and his family a few times in Avondale when I was a girl. Good-looking guy. He was eighteen, maybe nineteen, when I met him. Bit too eager to touch a ten-year-old girl, though, once he found out what I was.”

Pru’s stomach soured. She stumbled as the blood pooled in her feet, and Puck caught her before she fell. “He … I’m sorry?”

“Oh, don’t worry. A single flash of my fangs and he backed right off.

” Cressida tilted her head to the side and stared down at her bare feet, her toes red with cold.

“Of course, he told my parents I attacked him, which landed me in an asylum for eleven years, but hey, better than letting some noble prick steal my virginity.” Her eyes snapped up and she cocked a brow. “Was he good, at least?”

“I … I …” There was nothing to say, nothing to do. Prudence stood there, sick with shame, seconds from vomiting at the girl’s feet. “I didn’t …”

Cressida turned back to Puck. “Naomi says your little one’s got a lot of promise.”

Puck swallowed. “Yeah? And what do you think?”

The lamia shrugged. “I wouldn’t really know.

I’m a little too angry for everyone’s tastes, so I mostly keep to myself.

Unless Shea’s around. She’s the resident mermaid.

Very beautiful. Incredible in bed. But she had to go keep the girls from drowning on their way to temple, so …

” She strode past them, heading down the aisle between the two tables, as if satisfied with the damage she’d done.

“I’ll go let Naomi know you’re here. I’m sure your daughter’s eager to see you. ”