Page 19 of The Arcane Taste of the Witchwood Boys (The Witchwood Boys #4)

Kate

We dance until I’m dizzy, clutching Tanner’s and Marlowe’s hands and struggling to catch my breath. My eyes move around the circle to find Brooks staring back at me, and I just want to cry. Because I have it all again. Everything I ever wanted.

Fuck. I’m done with doubting them. We’ll get through this.

I don’t have to suffer alone.

For the first time since I agreed to kill the original Hag Wytch, I see a future that doesn’t end with us being separated from each other. It’s a glimpse of sunshine through some very dark clouds. We’re still in the storm, but it’ll pass. It—

“What’s this shit about?” Marlowe asks suddenly, reaching up to catch bright red drops of blood as they ooze from his nostrils. My hand feels ice-cold without him holding onto me. “Nosebleed?”

“Which we’ll deal with in a minute. Use these eye drops. Now. ” Brooks hands out a glass bottle with a dropper, waiting for me to draw up the liquid and squirt it into my right eye. I pass it over to Tanner next. The boys are all quick with it, like there’s a reason to hurry.

A reason to be afraid.

Marlowe is still bleeding, but he just shoves his hand through the red on his face like it’s nothing. He doesn’t care. He stares back at me in defiance, but I’m still worried. Nosebleeds happen every now and again, but the timing seems weird.

As I blink the eye drops in, the strange shadows and the red mist, it all fades away. That’s a relief. Whatever Brooks did to take us to that place, it was dangerous. I had the sense we were walking on eggshells the entire time we were there. We’re taking calculated risks. Everything is on the line with every single decision.

“Alright, strategize with me,” I say, and Brooks lifts a brow. But then … his nose starts to bleed. He dabs at it with the sleeve of his jacket, staring down at the color in concern. Tanner gets hit next, cursing as he chokes on it, blood on his lips and tongue.

I see their shirts begin to darken, right over their hearts—where they stabbed themselves.

The rings on our fingers don’t seem quite so happy or romantic. It’s like I’m shackled to the memory of that moment, feeling them drop lifeless in a circle around me.

“Sit with it,” Brooks commands, ignoring the blood on their faces. I reach up, expecting a nosebleed myself. We’re a coven. This could be some side effect of the spell. “The ring will give you a bad memory on the hour, every hour. To push the curse’s constant hunger back, we need continual sacrifice. The rings will provide that for us until I can plan our next step.”

I do as Brooks asks. I let all the feelings roll over me, tears dripping down my face as I stare at my South, as my hand tightens on my East. West is sitting on the ground which I don’t like. Is he having trouble standing up?

The feeling passes, and the memory washes away. We all sag in relief, even Lo who lies on his back in the dirt, one knee kicked up.

But there’s still blood on their shirts. They’re all bleeding from their noses.

Tanner stumbles, like he might collapse, but he throws himself against the side of a tree just in time to stay upright. He’s breathing low and slow, staring at the dirt and dripping red in a puddle underneath him.

“I might not be conscious for long,” he murmurs, not an ounce of playfulness left in his voice.

Brooks takes a step forward, and then he falls, too. I manage to catch him, his hands heavy on my shoulders. He lifts his head to look at me, hat-eyes rolled back until they’re nothing but white.

“Strategize with me,” he shoots back, and my mind whirs. He’s asking for my opinion. My attention moves to Marlowe, his fingers buried in the dirt and his head hanging low. His hat’s fallen off and everything on it is dead and shriveled up.

Back to Brooks, doing my best not to panic but stuttering when I try to talk. Nervous. Those heavy hands of his tighten on my shoulders, grounding me.

“Are you … is this because I agreed to give up everything to save you, and I haven’t fulfilled my end of the bargain?” My voice sounds steady, even if my heart is topsy-turvy. “Magic requires sacrifice, and so far, I’ve sacrificed nothing for this?”

I start to panic at the idea that I’m right. I’m going into shock as I realize that whatever we do, however we pin back my hunger, however we fix the worlds, I am stuck with this. The best we can do is to keep applying bandages over a wound that won’t stop bleeding.

To keep my coven alive, I have to suffer. The curse of the Hag Wytch.

“It’s possible that you’re right,” Brooks murmurs, pulling me into his arms. But he seems better already. As he holds me and pushes my cheek to his bloody chest, I reach my fingers up to his shirt and probe the spot. The liquid has stopped coming out. His nose isn’t bleeding onto my hair. “If you are, just accept the doom and gloom. You can cry in our arms, and we’ll make it right for you.”

I shove back from him, sniffling and running my own arm across my face to clean some of his blood off. My eyes move to Tanner first and then Marlowe. The latter looks up at me from under a brim decorated in fresh calla lilies. His dark eyes are wide, his mouth in a flat line.

“How many people do we need to kill to satisfy the curse? A hundred? A thousand? How many sacrifices will it take?”

“Brooks is right, kitten,” Tanner adds before I can figure out how to respond to any of it. “You don’t need to have a backbone. We’ve got them for you.” He’s got a swagger to him, acting like he isn’t covered in his own blood and lucky to be alive. Purposely taunting me is what he’s doing. His eyes shine.

A distraction. I’m being distracted with teasing. It works to help me calm down, which is as annoying as it is helpful.

“Fuck you guys,” I snap with zero heat. “I have a backbone. I also trust you. If you think we can break this curse, I’m willing to try.” I give all three of them very meaningful looks, twisting the ring around my finger.

Silence rushes in to fill the space, heavy silence. This is all so fucking heavy.

We’re all just standing there in the sleepy woods, like we didn’t just …

“What was that?” I ask again, pointing to the spot where the supernatural hut sat. “Hmm?”

“Memory hut,” Brooks replies, and he sounds exhausted. I’m not sure how he’s still standing up. And I understand completely why Marlowe is still sitting down. My eye hurts like a bitch. My heart hurts worse. “It’s … I don’t know. I understand how to write spells. I don’t necessarily know the origins of magic.”

“Memory hut,” I repeat, peering at him. Feels like there’s something here that I’m not getting. Brooks, did you truly contemplate letting us all go? I bet he did. I bet he stood there and considered undoing everything, unwinding the tangled strings of our twisted fate.

It wasn’t Marlowe I should’ve been worried about: it was Brooks.

The thought is chilling.

I narrow my eyes at him and he narrows his right back.

“Yes.”

More silence. Tanner looks at me like he wants to touch me, but either doesn’t trust himself or doesn’t trust me. I’m not going to run from him, but it’s safer if we have a little space between us. Even this stalker understands how dangerous I am.

But the one from the South? He’s in trouble—and it’s not just me that’s mad. I’m not going to be outvoted this time. Three against one is patently unfair.

“You want to elaborate on that, Brooks?” Marlowe forces himself to his feet with a groan, blood all over his clothes and face. He wipes the dirt loose with a casual hand, bent over but looking up at me. I turn red all over. Why did I suck his fingers clean like that? What is wrong with me? “How did you know anything at all about that hut?”

I’d love to know the answer to that question myself. I’m also glad that they didn’t talk about this when I wasn’t around. I’m not so far out of the loop yet that I’ve become a stranger. I won’t willingly leave them ever again. I can’t.

Blood drips from Brooks’ nose, and he frowns as he looks down at the droplets.

“My mentor would tell me dark fairy tales on long nights. I realized after I spoke with her ghost that they might not be fairy tales at all.” He sighs, cupping his hand to catch the liquid in his palm. “She told me stories about a coven that turned on itself. She told me stories about the memory hut.” He lifts his poison-green eyes to mine. “She also told me that the curse can’t be broken by magic.”

“Um. Excuse me?” I’m staring at Tanner now, at his fresh nosebleed. He seems frustrated by this confession, like maybe he and Brooks both know more than what they’re saying. Marlowe is as clueless as I am, sniffling blood as he moves into our circle and glances between the other men.

“Did I miss something?” he wonders, and Brooks sighs, flicking the handful of blood to the forest floor.

“My mentor warned me that the curse requires continual sacrifice in order to function. As in, it only works so long as Kate is suffering.” Brooks holds out his hand in my direction, red and dripping and he doesn’t care. He’s on a different level, this man. “Which is what gave me the idea for our wedding rings. If we suffer a bad memory every hour on the hour, we can build and store power. Just like with our hats.”

“That has nothing to do with your nosebleeds,” I whisper, feeling ice needles take over my blood. Everything hurts. Not physically, but emotionally. “What do you know about that?”

“Nothing, really.” Brooks reaches up to adjust his hat as Marlowe glares daggers at him and Tanner pretends to be innocent, so I won’t notice how terribly fixated on me he is. If I wanted to run again, it’d be hard to get away. “Just theories. My running theory is that to keep us alive, you need to suffer continuously.” He lifts that bloody hand to flash his ring with its bright red jewel, an eerie and vaguely threatening design of triangles at its center. “We need to achieve what these do on a much bigger level.”

Brooks is staring right at me, and I realize we’re connected in a very special way. That special intellectual connection that Nathan said I wasn’t capable of. That’s me and Brooks, our horns and antlers tangled in a continuous brawl. He loves my pushback. Loves it.

He doesn’t know the answer to ending this curse, and neither do I. One or both of us could figure it out. Any of us. It’s not just my problem. It’s ours.

“You sure giving Kate a baby won’t work then? Eighteen years of suffering, at least.” Marlowe flexes his hands, his hat coated in spiderwebs. Coated. A single barren stick-like plant protrudes from the white fluff. No spiders that I can see just yet. He must be unsettled, to grow an ugly hat like that. “Or is that just my wishful thinking?”

Marlowe stalks off a bit, spitting blood onto the forest floor and then casting this cocky ya like that, baby? look over his shoulder.

“You never cheated on Miriam?” I ask randomly, and his eyes go wide. “Not once? Never?”

“Huh?” He turns around, teeth bared in moral outrage. “You’re asking if I’m a cheater when we’re in the middle of talking about the curse?” A pause and then this frustratingly cocky laugh where he takes off his hat and musses up his hair—on purpose. Dick. “Asking if I’m a cheater at all? I don’t mess around, Kate. Of course not.”

“I was only asking because you’re so pretty. That’s it.” I hold up my hands, but he’s not convinced. I’ve pissed him off. I want to smile so bad, but I won’t let myself. No more nosebleeds.

“Wishful thinking. There’s not enough time to conceive and give birth, not if we’re attempting to beat the new moon.” Brooks turns his hand, studying his own ring.

Tanner reaches into a bag at his hip and offers me a cockie. It’s held out in two fingers, one of which has his purple wedding ring. I look from that jewelry to his lips, and then finally, his eyes. Like a reflection of the moon, smooth and silver. These are his predator’s eyes. He doesn’t trust me not to run again.

I huff a small laugh and accept the treat. It’s a black cat this time. Super cute.

“There’s something else I need to tell you guys.” I finish the first cockie quickly, holding my hand out for another. Tanner gives me one of the stupid owl ones this time. Hah. The edge of his mouth is sharp, proving how much he enjoys teasing me.

“Well?” He takes me by the chin, his other foot pressed firmly onto my wing, pinning it to the dirt. His face goes cold. “What is it, kitten? You can’t drop an ominous line like that and then take your sweet time answering.”

“I can feel it,” I admit, shifting shamelessly on my feet. The rough hold of his fingers on my chin is turning me on. I should push his hand off, but I don’t want to. I crave his touch so bad that I reach up and put my hand on his wrist instead.

We’re standing in a spot where the moon can reach, the drifting silver dust of that light settling onto my shoulders. I wave my hand, using my earth magic to part the branches above us, bringing the full force of that metallic sheen down to the darkness where we stand.

Our shadows dart out of the light, doing their best to avoid it.

“Feel what?” Tanner asks, tilting my chin up so we can see the sky together. There it is, the waning crescent. “The moon?”

Sharyn appears in the branches, pointing at me with two hands, signing a word I don’t understand. I get the gist of it though: pretty sure she’s telling me to run.

I’m out of time.

“Uh-uh,” I tell him, stealing another cockie from his belt and jamming it into my mouth. “Like the opposite of a—”

I was going to say werewolf.

I’m chewing on something when I come to, but it isn’t a person. Not an animal either.

It’s a ghost.

I’m tearing into a spirit like fresh meat, and its memories are flooding my brain. I’m seeing flickers of somebody else’s life. Grinding their soul up with my lonely mouth. Filling my lonely belly. Warming my lonely heart.

I love the feel of it, all those happy memories going down. I sigh as I chew, seconds away from swallowing another spirit. It won’t be enough. I’m already feeling empty again. I’ll take as many spirits and as much flesh as I can—

Wait. My hands are on a ghost, on a literal fucking ghost. His transparent arm has a bite mark. My bite mark. I’m … eating somebody’s soul.

I force myself to remember who I am, where I am, and why I’m fighting.

Katelynn Fernon Poppy. Old house enthusiast. Small business owner. Painter. Friend. Wife. Current magical status: cursed. Current location: the city park.

I spit the ghost out and it screams, zipping away from me like a ball of light instead of a person. Dozens more float in from the nearby trees, drifting around my head. They don’t flee when I stand up, so I take that as a positive sign. I’m a witch again instead of a … giant ghost-eating owl.

I’m standing inside of an abandoned stone house, though there’s so little of it left that I’m not sure it qualifies as a structure at all. Just ruins now. There’s a cement foundation, one-and-a-half stone walls, and a crumbling fireplace. My friends and I used to call this spot the witch’s cottage. Ah. Wow. That … that didn’t age well.

There’s an informational plaque about the old house, but no matter how many times I read it, I forget where it came from and why it’s of historical significance. Calling it the witch’s cottage was always a more intriguing premise.

The cottage is located in the center of my favorite local park, just a short walk away from a large duck pond and a playground. There are trails all throughout, snaking through the almost fifty acres of behemoth redwood trees. Our town has a population of thirty-K people on a good day, but we’ve got our own small zoo next door to the park. Boasts a skywalk—basically a maze of bridges suspended in the treetops—and a rose garden with an old well.

Oh, and peacocks who wander randomly out of the zoo and into the park. There’s a pair of them lying on the trail beside me, but one has red feathers and I’m sure it came from the Witchwoods.

Their heads have been eaten off—by me, probably.

I use all of these banal facts to ground myself, to push back the hunger.

Where are the guys? What happened?

I look down and there’s a dead man near the edge of the trail, intestines sprawled across the dirt. Head, also not able to be located. Somehow, I remember taking the cockies, but I don’t remember falling asleep. So did I sleep and then wake up as the Hag Wytch? Did the cockies not work for some reason?

Tanner tackles me out of nowhere.

We go to the dirt together as he throws some sort of leather hood around my face. He’s wrestling with me, but there’s no point. I’m so much stronger than him now.

I knock him off and tear the hood over my head, gasping in shock when white-hot pain shoots up my leg into my brain. I turn to see Marlowe standing there with a bow and arrow in his hand, approaching me through a cluster of dewy green ferns in the early hours of dawn.

“You shot me with an arrow?!” I choke out, surprised that he’d really go that far to try and detain me. “What the fuck?” But my body has already rejected the arrow, pushed it out, and healed. That fast.

“You’re awake?” Marlowe asks, eyes widening.

Tanner doesn’t relax at all, picking up the hood from the ground. It’s huge, big enough to cover my entire body.

“C’mere, kitten.” He shakes the leather out and shows it to me. “Climb into the bag for us.”

“You sound like a serial killer,” I retort, edging back a few steps. I don’t know why. I’m going to let them catch me. I’m just a little startled is all. “What happened? Did the cockies wear off? Maybe your guys’ semen isn’t the all-powerful elixir you imagine it to be?”

“You’re tough as hell, Kate, I’ll give you that,” Brooks grinds out, working his jaw. He’s pissed off, so they must’ve been pursuing me for a while. “It’s been a week since you fell asleep. A whole goddamn week of us chasing you. While you’re sentient, you have got to comply. No playing around.”

“A week?” I repeat, looking up and using my magic to move the tree branches out of my way again.

The moon is barely visible. How close are we to a moonless night then? Time is hard to keep track of in this state.

The closer I am to the next new moon, the worse the hunger gets. Like a werewolf in reverse. When the moon was bigger, I was calmer. More in control. Now that we’re here, with the dark carving its way through the moon again, I’m going feral.

That’s my theory anyway.

“Shoot her in the neck,” Brooks says coldly, and Tanner lifts up a crossbow.

Fortunately, I’m not awake when the arrow with the rope attached hits me in the thigh.