Page 15 of The Arcane Taste of the Witchwood Boys (The Witchwood Boys #4)

Kate

I’m eating someone’s heart.

A person’s heart.

The only positive is that it’s definitely not from Tanner, Brooks, or Marlowe.

I yelp and draw back, dropping the organ onto the pavement with a wet, bloody slap. My eyes dart around as I try to remember where I am and what I’m doing here. I need to figure out what I’m … eating. Who, who I’m eating. My attention drops back to the man on the ground. His neck has been torn out. He’s gutted. He’s not the only dead person around me.

I spin in a circle, wings flying out behind me. My feathers rustle as the wind rushes down the street of the trailer park I’m now standing in. Same trailer park where we kidnapped the scummy child predator for my girls’ spell.

God, the girls.

Did we wake them up? Did I hurt them? I couldn’t bear that.

“What the fuck have I done?” I whisper, pausing as I notice Marlowe peering at me from the roof of a nearby trailer. I suspect that the guys are not only hunting me, but also herding me back and forth over the city so that I never get the chance to leave.

Not that I’d leave anyway.

I need to be near the Witch’s Tree, so the men can trap me there once they reopen it.

You know … just as soon as I can get them to understand that.

“Eaten several dozen pedos, that’s what.” Marlowe is casual, frowning at me as he sits with one leg stretched out in front of him, the other leg bent at the knee. He leans closer, elbow slung across that knee, and tilts his head at me. His dark eyes are almost brown, tender. Why can’t they be that unfeeling black that they usually are? No pupil. Pure demon. “You haven’t done anything wrong, Kate. Everybody needs to eat—even the Hag Wytch. We’re curating the people you dine on. Don’t worry too much.”

Rage surges through me—but only at myself.

I’m so happy to see him. I want to talk to him so badly. More than anything, I want to crawl into his lap and feel his lips against my temple. I want to fight with Marlowe, and snuggle Marlowe, and be fucked by Marlowe.

I just want him, period.

But … I can’t.

“What happened?” I demand again, struggling to come up with a new and convincing argument that’ll get them to leave. Part of me thinks that I should just … I should … I slap both hands over my mouth, trying to stop the flow of words that are hitting the back of my throat like a white river. Too many rapids.

“We successfully woke your friends up. They’re safe and sound. Don’t worry about them.”

I swallow as he stands up, moving closer to the edge of the roof to study me. His eyes are black again, like a shark’s.

I take a step back, folding my wings in close to my body. It’s insane how quickly I got used to them. Even weirder that my mouth is covered in blood, tongue tingling with the taste of copper, and I care more about Marlowe than the predators I just ate— raw.

I just … as the Hag Wytch … an owl …

I, Katelynn Poppy, am the person-eating forest god.

Marlowe smirks.

“It’s adorable, this savior bullshit you’re trying to pull off, but we’re not letting you sacrifice yourself for us. It’ll never happen, Kate.” He hops off the roof and still, I don’t run.

I don’t run because I want to be caught.

I’m panting now, hands fisted at my sides.

“I want you, Lo. I want you so, so bad. But I love you more than that, enough to destroy my own life and my happiness to make sure you can have yours.” I don’t mean to say that much, but it all spills out, all of those rapids smashing into rocks and drowning the boat of my impossible hope.

The hope that they will save me. That as long as I don’t eat them, we’ll be okay. The only thing I have to do is not eat them (or the girls). Everything else will be fine.

Marlowe works his jaw, shifting his dark gaze to the side. His attention drops to another corpse, one whose genitals were bitten off.

“Fitting punishment.” He turns back to me, and there’s brown in his eyes again. “There is no life without you. There is no happiness. I don’t care if it sounds manipulative: if you die, I’m killing myself. Period.”

“Marlowe—” I start, worried that he might try something insane again. Like stabbing himself. Not okay. Of course I’ll come, and they have to understand why I’m running from them. They get to see what I’m like when I fall unconscious. “Am I … do I look like an owl when I pass out?”

I look up at him, but he just stares back at me with a hat covered in voodoo lilies.

“What’s your middle name?” he asks abruptly, and I take a sudden step back, curving my wings around my shoulders like a jacket. He sees that and smiles stupidly, but his eyes are black again. “Seems insane that we’re in this space where I’d not only die for you, but risk getting my spirit eaten, and I don’t know your middle name. So what is it, Katelynn?”

“Fernon,” I murmur without meaning to. This isn’t going to help, entertaining them like this. I’m glowing already, just by looking at him. Marlowe makes this hissing sound under his breath and he starts to glow, too.

“Come home for fifteen minutes. Have some of Brooks’ cookies.” His voice cracks, and I take another step back, pushing my wings around me until I’m completely cocooned in feathers. “Hell, fuck, you’re as cute a griffin as you were a witch.”

“I am not a griffin,” I huff, as outraged as my crazy hat. It’s lapping up the blood from my face and hands, and it loves it. I pretend not to notice when the hat grabs some entrails from the ground with a long curl of tongue and pops them into a mouth on the cone. “I’m a witch. Always a witch.”

“Fifteen minutes.” Marlowe leans down, hands on his hips, this cocky playboy look on his face that I have never seen before. Oh, wow. He really is hot as fuck. I’m going to make another mistake. This is the problem with men that are this handsome.

“I won’t force you,” he adds gently, foot slipping a little in some intestines that’ve slipped out of the dead body. I giggle and slap both hands over my mouth, and he gives me a wry look and a shake of his head. “Shit, that’s gross, Kate. Do you gotta make a mess every time you eat? How are we supposed to clean this all up before we fix the gate?”

“You’ll fix the gate?” I ask, wings spreading wide with my excitement. Marlowe blushes a little and then licks his lower lip, flicking his eyes up the length of me.

“I’m glad your hat-tongue grew back,” he teases, and I nod. I was worried about that, too. Guess my hat is as immortal and untouchable as I am. We are one. Girl, shadow, hat. Witch.

“Thanks.” I swallow nervously, existing in a living nightmare like it’s nothing.

Because of him. Everything else I can deal with because he’s here.

“Nice dress,” he says, and I shift in discomfort. My last pair of overalls ended up soaked in blood, so I stopped by Fernanda’s for an emergency change of clothes. This black cotton dress with the white collar, it might be like a Wednesday Addams dress or something.

“Thanks, but … you know I can’t come home. I want to, but I can’t.” I sound like I might cry, standing in a frosty graveyard filled with fog and corpses. We’re right next to the bay, so everything is dull and in desperate need of a paint job. There are barnacles on the cement post to my left. The ocean is right there behind Marlowe, just past the dock.

This is not the best part of town, but it doesn’t matter because we’re witches and the world is asleep. I like it. If I could have cookies at home, I’d love it.

Sharyn appears for me again, sitting cross-legged on the roof of the mobile home where I first saw Marlowe. She signs to me, and even though I still don’t know what she wants, I can read her lips. One hour, she tells me, and I bite my lip.

Seems like she does have some idea of when I’m going to change. That’s useful. I side-eye Marlowe. He holds up both hands, palms out and takes a step back from me this time. The sea breeze loves his hair as much as I do, tangling salty fingers in it and tousling it around his face.

“We’ll let you keep running while we work these spells behind the scenes. But we’re also going to keep an eye on you. Not sure about you, but the coven pull is making me sick. No way we’d leave you all alone to deal with that.”

“It’s …” I have no way to refute that. It’s awful. I’m so goddamn miserable without them, it’s actually a relief when I black out. I close my eyes. “Yes, but, how the fuck am I the only one out of the four of us that sees what a bad idea it is for you guys to be around me? I’m stronger than all three of you put together. I can’t die. All that can happen is that I hurt you, kill you, eat you. Work your spells, please, but let me go in the meantime.”

“Okay,” he says simply, and I open my eyes as my hat searches around for tidbits on the ground. My stomach rumbles, and I find myself licking the blood off my own lips. Marlowe watches the motion and then lifts sincere eyes to my face. This isn’t even love-spell Marlowe, this is something beyond that. His eyes are brown and tender. “Come home and have cookies for as long as you can. When you’re ready, we’ll let you leave and keep chasing after you. We have a second full coven on hand now, so it’s only a matter of time.”

“A matter of time to fix the gate?” I clarify, and Marlowe nods, calling his shadow and his broom with a snap of his fingers. He sits on the length of wood and crosses his arms. “You coming or not?” He takes off, trailing leaves and purple petals behind him.

I look around at the carnage, at the sad lonely sea, and I can’t resist. It’s cold out this morning, and the thought of my grandma’s house, my men, my friends, some homemade cookies … it’s too much.

It’s all just too fucking much.

I creep in through the front door with Marlowe waiting on the grass behind me like he promised.

“Hello?” I call tentatively, heart racing, sweat pouring down my face. I might be a cannibalistic owl creature, but I’m super nervous right now. Mostly because of Georgia.

“Katelynn Poppy.” She appears in the doorway to the kitchen looking as stern and bossy as Brooks, but her face softens when she sees the look on mine. “Honey, come here.” She walks into the foyer with her arms opened for a rare hug, but I don’t dare.

“I don’t want to get my mouth anywhere near your neck,” I tell her. I mean for it to come out as a joke, but it makes the atmosphere even sadder and darker than it already was. I move into the room so that Marlowe can join us and shut the front door. It’s nice and warm in here. A fire crackles in the living room fireplace, and the whole house smells like butter and sugar.

“Kitten.” There’s Tanner, leaned up against the wall next to the kitchen. The wolf ears on his hat are at attention, and his pupils are dilated. He stays very still, taking note of my stiff body and my taut muscles. I’m poised to fight, to escape, if need be. He knows that.

“Marlowe promised he wouldn’t touch me,” I say, looking past Georgia to make certain that Tanner’s going to behave himself. “Not you either. Or Brooks.”

Tanner gives me a look, sucking his lower lip under his teeth and scraaaping them over the plump pink flesh. He wets his lips, and I want to cry.

“Yeah, no. I won’t touch you, kitten. You’re safe.” He stays where he is, wearing leather pants and a loose t-shirt that droops over one shoulder. It’s a super old tee, from my only year playing soccer. Has the team name printed on the front and all the donor businesses on the back. I’ve had it for years, and it’s holey and plain, but Tanner makes it look like a sex toy. “Same rule as we had in the beginning: I won’t touch you if you don’t touch me.”

“It’s a deal we’re all willing to make,” Marlowe murmurs, standing way too close to me all of a sudden. I trip on the rug in an effort to get away from him and fall into Georgia’s arms on accident. Her neck looks delicious , and—

I jerk back and fall over a basket of umbrellas, more wings and anxiety than witch or woman. Georgia sighs and holds out a hand to help me up. She lifts the hag stone that Marlowe gave her—a stone with a hole in the center—and peers at me through it.

I choke a little, dizziness sweeping over me.

“Stop that, Kate.” Georgia lowers the hag stone and offers me her hand. “You’re not going to eat me. Relax.”

“I’m only staying as long as I feel comfortable,” I tell her, getting up on my own and hoping so fervently that this isn’t a dream that I could cry. I could scream. I could gut two-dozen pedophiles and feast—Ugh. Stop, Kate. Just stop. Stay calm.

“We won’t ask for more than that.” Brooks appears in an apron of all things, holding up a sugar cookie shaped like a pumpkin. It’s iced beautifully, green stem and leaves and a little twirly vine. Orange glaze for the body. Little black triangles for its jack-o’-lantern face. He wiggles it at me like the tease he is. “We’re coming into fall now. It’s time for Halloween treats.”

My mouth waters.

I want that cookie so badly.

But then, can my taste buds be trusted? They’re not exactly discerning. I already gorged on a dozen scumbags today. Thought those were tasty while I was chowing down.

I move forward cautiously and take the cookie, biting into it as Brooks’ hat stares down at me and he moves aside so that I can enter the kitchen.

“Welcome back,” Talia says with a grin and a nod, her long blue hair hanging on either side of her face. I can finally see her coven tattoos since she’s wearing a crop top. There’s a flower curling up from beneath her shorts, over her hip and rib cage, and then disappearing under the top. Looks like a foxglove which makes sense. It’s Georgia’s favorite.

“Oh, Kate.” Fernanda stands up from her chair with pink pixie hair and black pixie wings, a spellbook clutched to her chest. There’s a plate of owl cookies on the table in front of her. Har. Owl cookies? For real, guys?

I’m suspicious.

I nibble on the cookie as I edge around the table with my back to the counter, keeping all seven of them in sight. Tacy raises a brow, but she doesn’t comment on my strange behavior.

“We’ve all been so worried about you,” she says, but I shake my head, finishing my cookie off and trying to resist the urge to lick my fingers. Can’t help it. The men are all staring at me, and Talia gags.

“You know those cookies have cum in them, don’t you?” she tells me, with that teenage disgust thickening her voice. “We can’t eat any because, you know, fucking gross as fuck. I’m glad my Southwoods doesn’t write spells like that.”

“Dare you to get something done quicker than we can,” Marlowe shoots back, walking past the table and over to the tray of cookies on the counter. He picks one up and shows it to me, like there’s no tension in this room. Like it doesn’t feel weird and crazy that we’re in the same space and yet we can’t touch. We can’t truly be happy.

While I’m grateful for every nanosecond we have together, it’s also a reminder of everything I’ve lost. I could’ve had this. I almost had this.

“Have another. You need to eat at least three for this spell to work. Go on.” Marlowe offers the cookie out to me, and I see that it’s a little ghost with boo written across its middle and black pits for eyes. How appropriate. I take it with a sigh and bite its head off.

“Do you want to sit?” Georgia asks, giving Talia a look, like she wants her to move out of my north chair.

“No, I’m good here,” I tell her, keeping the sliding glass doors at my back. If I need to make an escape, this is the best way to do it. In fact … I step back and open the glass, just to test the men, to see if they’ll stop me.

They don’t. Good sign. I approve.

I turn back and lean against the wall, using my wings as a cushion. I finish my cookie and absently select another, lifting it to my mouth before I realize that it’s a dick. It’s a glazed dick cookie. It’s … a cockie?

“Fucking cumcakes and cockies?” I say, exasperated, and Tanner snorts.

“New slang terms. I’m going to say that whenever I’m pissed off from now on. Which is now, really, if you ask me. I don’t like this plan, Kate. I told Marlowe and Brooks from the very first second that I was against it.”

“Against not chasing me?” I say, knowing that I’m going to stick that delicious glazed sugar cock in my mouth and love it. It’s yummy. And if we need it for a spell then … uh … two birds, one stone? I look at Marlowe and he cocks his head.

“He wanted us to take you by force,” Lo admits, and I roll my eyes.

“We’re working on fixing the gate,” Georgia promises. I’m sure she’s heard from my coven how important that is to me. If the world wakes up at the next new moon, it’ll be hell on earth. Humans don’t handle strange events well. And this is … well, there are skyscraper-sized trees everywhere. Sticking out of the waters of the bay. On the beach. Speared through roads and parking lots.

It’s a huge mess. We won’t be able to fix everything. Or even most of it.

But we can close the gate.

“This is harder than it looks,” Fernanda tells me, sitting back down and opening the book in her hands. “Find a place of grief and lament the loss of something you hold dear. Collect six items of sentimental value.” She looks up and bites her lip, her shadow pouting on the cabinets behind her. “Choose something that represents rebirth or regrowth, and then kill it.”

I snort. Sounds like a list that Brooks wrote. I glance over at him, leaned up against the stove and staring at me. If these cookies were made with cum, and they’re part of the spell the guys are casting, then what’s my contribution?

“I don’t need to kiss these to activate them?” I joke, pointing at the pile of cookies while still staring at Brooks. Tanner shakes his head and looks away, but both wolf ears are swiveled back and pointing at me. He stares into the living room and out the window, like he sees something of interest outside.

That freaks me out. What could there be in this sleepy world that’s worse than I am?

“Your portion of this particular spell was to eat. You’ve done that already. Consented to the magic. Nice work, North. The cookies will put you to sleep temporarily.” Brooks smiles grimly, arms folded, hat eyes narrowing. His shadow is standing halfway in the ceiling, with just its feet exposed. All it does is float there.

So. Creepy.

“Wait. Put me to—” I start, terror lancing through me as I look over at Marlowe. He catches his lip under his teeth and raises his dark brows.

“Tanner didn’t like the plan because he didn’t think we should lie to you, Kate.” Lo seems to find this really funny. “Too late. And the end always justifies the means, right?”

“So you’re saying that I’m equally justified in my actions? Good to know,” I shoot back at him, turning to run … feeling sleepy … hitting my knees on the moist, mossy wood of the back deck. Brooks squats down beside me, reaching out to touch my face.

“You know how everyone borrows my fire magic for fun? Well, we borrowed the Hag Wytch’s sleep magic. You’re still part of our coven, Kate. What’s yours is ours, and what’s ours is mine.”

“That’s not—”

I fall into a beautiful dream.

My friends and my husbands in the kitchen together. Tea and coffee and cookies. Mums in pots on the deck for autumn. Magic and adrenaline and a challenge.

These men are a challenge, and I love it.