Page 6 of Song of the Hell Witch

But they both knew it was for the best. The moment she’d finally killed the lie that was Marlowe and become Marigold, she’d all but decided Leora couldn’t be her home anymore.

The beliefs were too strict, the Apostles too unwavering in their condemnation of “deviants” and “sinners,” words they used for people they refused to understand.

Now, as General Hale’s extremist ideas about purifying the country gained more ground, there was no choice.

She had to leave. And he had to let her.

They passed through the ring of merchant mansions littered around the center of Silk Hill.

They were smaller than the duke’s estate but just as elegant, with green ivy spiraling up the front columns and ghost wisteria blooming along the trellises.

Finally, the cobblestones collected into Crow’s Head Plaza, an outpost for the City Watch.

During the day, a whole set of Watchmen patrolled the plaza, urging the Silks to take Merchant’s Walk, the covered bridge that offered a direct route to the port and their fancy warehouse offices. But most of the patrol was up at the manor, making sure no one snuck in and stole anything.

What a travesty that would be.

Puck banged his fist against the carriage, signaling to Marney and Arthur it was time to get out.

The four of them took the tunnel to the right of the plaza, which came out in the middle of the Sweetbreads District, a stone’s throw from the Curiosity Shop and Puck’s flat. No one brought up Pru again.

It had been strange, seeing her after so many years. The second he’d laid eyes on her, he was back at the dock, boots pounding against the wooden planks as he ran after the ship that was already bearing her out with the tide. How different she looked now, with fuller cheeks, rounder hips.

Her eyes were the same, though, sparkling obsidian, and for the first time in months, the shard that had pierced him through the night his wife died wriggled within the sinews of his heart.

He cracked his knuckles against the ache and watched the four shadows skulking along the brick walls like solid creatures, growing and shrinking in the torchlight.

“Did you know there’s a whole system of tunnels under the city?” Arthur’s gruff voice echoed through the hollow space.

Puck snorted out a chuckle. “’Course I know about the tunnels, Arthur. I’m a fucking thief. Never used them, though.”

“Well, apparently, there’s loads of Hell Witch skulls lining the walls down there, left over from the Non-Believers’ War all those centuries ago.”

“Please.” Marigold stepped up onto the metaphorical platform Arthur had placed at her feet. “As if a measly male army would stand a chance against a coven of Hell Witches.”

Hell Witches were Mari’s obsession. When she was still living as Marlowe, she’d told everyone it stemmed from her love of stories, that she was simply fascinated by their power.

But once she was more comfortable with who she really was, she’d told Puck the truth: She didn’t just find Hell Witches fascinating.

She wanted to be one herself. That was why she’d memorized Father Rubeus Frick’s The Wicked and the Damned , an encyclopedia documenting each type of Hell Witch he’d observed some four or five hundred years ago.

“Yeah, well, they certainly didn’t win the war, did they?

” Arthur pushed back as they continued on their way.

“The bodies had to go somewhere.” He kicked at a stone on the ground, and the sound echoed through the stone chamber.

“You ask me, they got a better fate than our boy. Lost forever to the Marrow Sea.”

Marney’s shoulders hitched toward her ears at the mention of Robert.

Thousands of mothers had lost their sons in Leora’s foolish war against Visage, a battle over border islands seeking to join Visage’s Republic so they could vote for their own leaders.

In the end, the Spindle Isles took their independence and Leora returned with its tail between its legs, nearly a third of its male population lost amidst the salt and the waves.

The Silks had sold a ton of River Rats on the lie that joining up could lead to more money, more prospects. Meanwhile, Puck and Mari had burned their draft cards plus half the cards in the Podge too—and landed themselves in jail for the last six months of the war.

“Better to rot in a cell and come home to you than die out there in the swell,” he’d told Jocelyn when she hounded him about it. “Besides, it’s not like I haven’t done jail time before.”

The sound of fiddles and raucous laughter greeted them as they stepped out of the tunnel, accompanied by the smell of pork fat and fresh-baked rolls.

Even at midnight, the Sweetbreads District was bustling, the tavern doors flung open to invite in nighttime stragglers.

Happy drunks sat on barstools and in booths, shouting songs to absolutely no one at all.

Puck thanked Arthur and Marney for helping him show Frederick some muscle. They invited him and Mari for a drink at the Twisted Turtle, but Puck refused them flat out.

“Got the little one to get back to.”

“Bring her down with you!” Marney said. “Tom would love to see her. It’s been a long time since he and Bumblebee spent any time together.”

He winced. It had been a long time. Because the last time Beatrice had left the flat, she could talk and sing and tell stories and jokes that made most adults feel like complete dunderheads. But she was struggling with more than just fever and fits.

In the past six months, his daughter hadn’t said a single word.

“Next time.” Puck faked a grin. “I’m knackered.”

“As Puck goes, so go I.” Mari tipped her hat to them. “Have a good night.”

She slung her arm around him as they slouched toward the shop. “Can I say something that might upset you?”

“If it’s about—”

“It’s not about Pru.” She shrieked when a raindrop hit her cheek, then bowed her head, going all grave and serious. “It’s Bea, actually.”

The exhaustion suddenly left his body. He jolted up, ready for either an answer or an argument. “You think you know what’s wrong?”

“Not exactly, no, but …” She sighed. “The fits she’s having. Are they like the ones she had after Jocelyn died? After she saw you—”

“Yeah.” He cut her off before she could echo the horrible truth he’d locked deep inside his own heart. As he tried to divert his mind elsewhere, he realized where she was going with this. “No.”

“You know what Frick says! It only takes a single terrible moment to turn a girl into a monster. Calls it an ember in the blood or some hogwash like that, right? Never mind it’s a song they hear before transforming or that the rhythm braids into their blood, which would, you know, indicate it’s a sort of blessing, a natural thing—no, the man’s gotta paint it as fire and brimstone and all that—”

“Mari.”

“But what if that is what’s wrong with her?”

“It’s been a year since Jocelyn died. A year . Pru …” Her dark eyes flashed before him again, cleaving him in two. “Pru said her change happened fast. Within minutes of her sister dying.”

“Yes, but that’s not always how it works! Sometimes it takes a bit for it all to sink in. Sometimes, there’s … um …” She choked on whatever she was about to say.

“Sometimes what?” His heartbeat spiked. Why did she look so scared all of a sudden? “Mari, what—”

The shouting cut him off, and before he could figure out exactly where it was coming from, Arabella Thorne tore out of the bakery on the right side of the bridge, stumbling over her skirts and falling, face-first, onto the wet cobbles.

“ Hey! ” Mari sprinted toward Bella, her gown catching on the wind. Meanwhile, Puck darted for the bakery door, sliding into a fighter’s stance when he got there. He knew what came next.

Everyone along this stretch of street knew what came next.

Thatcher Thorne, with a head like a potato and a chest as wide as a barrel, stormed out of the bakery, his knuckles bruised from the beating he’d just given his wife.

Fury gleamed in his eyes, his bottom jaw jutting forward in a rage Puck could all but taste, and he knew.

He and Mari and the eyes keeping watch in tenement windows were the only things keeping the man from killing her.

“Thatcher!” Puck shouted over the strengthening downpour. “Thatcher, listen to me!”

“Bitch!” Thatcher bellowed at Bella, his breath reeking of ale. “You killed our son! Our only son! Don’t you fucking tell me I can’t drink when you’re a bloody murderer!”

The bundle. A few days ago, Puck had seen Bella hobbling down to the river, a blood-soaked bundle in her arms. He’d thought it was rags from her cycle, the kind Jocelyn had used, the kind she’d showed him how to prepare for when Beatrice’s time came.

But he should’ve known better. There’d been so much blood.

A miscarriage. Thatcher was beating her for a miscarriage, which many of the zealot groups within the country had begun to label as a consequence of a defiant womb, the result of a woman’s spiritual failings.

Fucking monster.

More neighbors peeked out of their doorways.

Across the street, Fae Braswell, one of Bella’s oldest friends, caught Puck’s eye.

He nodded at her, and Fae took off, reading his order loud and clear: Go get Teddy Dickens.

Teddy was one of Standish’s River Rat street thieves turned City Watchman, the only one who might help them.

“Thatcher.” Puck tried seizing the man by the shoulders—and the punch smashed into his cheekbone. Stars burst at him in the black and he stumbled back, the pain stealing his breath. It took him a while to come back into his body.

“Get out of here, Reed,” Thatcher growled, a rabid wolf looking to sink his maw into something. “She’s my wife. I’ll do with her what I like.”

“You’re not gonna hit her again.” Puck’s right eye twitched above the blooming bruise. “You see all these people out here? You wanna come for her, you gotta go through us.”

“Leave her be, Thatcher!” a woman shouted behind him, either Sarah Fife or Lydia Andrews, who lived together and were absolutely more than roommates. “Plenty of us have pistols.”

“Or clubs!” someone else shouted from above his head.

“Oi, clear the square!” Teddy’s voice was far more powerful than it used to be. Puck ignored the impulse to turn around—and the impulse to bolt as Teddy’s boots clopped toward him. “Thatcher Thorne, I’m arresting you for public drunkenness and indecency. You’ll spend the next three days in—”

That was when Thatcher took a swing at Teddy and Puck.

Both of them ducked, and because they had been trained to fight by the same man, they threw the same counterattack, their uppercuts sinking into Thatcher’s stomach at the same time.

The big man grumbled as he toppled back, cracking his skull on the stones. He moaned but didn’t get up again.

Puck and Teddy exchanged quick glances, and then Puck ran over to Bella, who held on to Mari like she was the only thing keeping her on her feet.

“He just … he was so …” Her eyes were dry, as if she didn’t have any tears left. “It wasn’t my fault. I couldn’t … I would’ve stopped it if I could. I wanted that little boy, I did.”

“We know, Bells.” Mari kissed the top of her head, stroked her hair—and once again, Puck realized how much he was going to miss her when she left. “We know.”

“Please.” Puck had asked Bella a thousand times, but maybe this time she would listen. “I’ll smuggle you and your daughter out of the city, you know I will. You can make for Avondale, where your sister is. You have to get away from him.”

He expected the same fight she always gave him: Then what? It was a fair question. Because as a woman in Leora, it was difficult to start over.

As a woman in Leora, it was difficult to start at all.

But this time, she didn’t look at her feet and mumble the same old thing. This time, she met his eye.

“I’ve handled him, Puck,” she said. “His being in prison might … delay things a bit. But I’ve got a plan.”

Mari and Puck tilted their heads. Both knew damn well Arabella didn’t have the strength to kill Thatcher herself, and she had too much of a conscience for poisoning.

“Rain’s really coming down,” she said, as if she’d only just noticed it. “You two should get home.” She gave Mari’s arm a squeeze, and though it was clear she didn’t want to, Mari let her go. “I’m fine. Really. More than fine.”

Patting them on the shoulders, she headed back into the bakery and her apartment above the shop as though nothing had happened at all. Her neighbors, so accustomed to Thatcher’s tirades they often didn’t hear them anymore, returned to their nightcaps and their sagging straw mattresses.

Mari trudged over to Puck, her dress soaked, the satin probably ruined. “What plan you think she’s got?”

His head rang from Thatcher’s punch, and his waterlogged clothes made his body that much heavier.

As the adrenaline rush tapered off, his thoughts became a pulse of the three same words, beating in time with the blood in his head: Shop.

Beatrice. Bed. “Dunno. But whatever it is, let’s hope it scares the shit out of him. ”

“That sounded like more than scaring him; that sounded … vengeful.”

“Arabella Thorne? Vengeful?” Puck shook his pounding head and shuffled toward home, wool socks squelching in his shoes. “I don’t know how a sweet woman like that gets vengeance.”

“I do.”

“Oh yeah? How’s that?”

His best friend cocked a brow as she dropped him at his front door. “How do you think?”