Page 2 of The Arcane Taste of the Witchwood Boys (The Witchwood Boys #4)

Kate

I force my sore, stiff body over to the dead man nearest me—Tanner—and shove at his massive shoulder, rolling him onto his back. When he fell, he fell directly on the knife, embedding it even further into his chest. Blood is everywhere, slicking my hands the way it slicked his when he was sewing me back together.

His silver-blue eyes are open wide, staring up at the ceiling, but his body is still warm, still twitching. I’m sobbing behind my mask as I look up, catching sight of his ghost in front of me. It opens its mouth and a demon tongue slips out, but no words come.

Marlowe was right: ghosts have no eyes.

I’ve stopped screaming, choking on the shock of being alive.

Choking on the bitter ash of my men being dead.

I crawl over to Marlowe next. He doesn’t have a ghost yet, so he must technically still be alive. Blood pumps hot and viscous from the wound on his chest as I cradle him in my lap, reaching up to my neck and scooping some of the excess healing salve onto my bloodied hands. I press them to his wound, but it’s too late. He gasps, shudders, and goes still.

I don’t have to check Brooks to know that he’s already gone: his ghost is standing above me, lips pressed into a line of silent sympathy. He looks up and signs something, but he’s not signing to Tanner. My Eastwoods husband is on my left which means … I turn over my shoulder to see Marlowe, signing something back.

Rage surges through me, violent and petty and twisted. How dare they? How fucking dare they?!

I tear my mask off my face as Brooks lunges forward, pressing his ghostly hand over my lips. It feels like nothing. He feels like nothing.

“What did you do?!” I shout, and all three of them start to panic, signing frantically and mouthing words at me, three ghosts crowding in. Three empty throats. A triad of silent tongues.

I may as well be surrounded by air.

Tears well and then spill, draining down my face as I sit there with Marlowe’s body on my lap, surrounded by blood and fresh flowers and the tang of magic on the back of my tongue. I push his still-warm corpse off of me and stand up, quivering with a bright, hot violence in need of an outlet.

“What gave you the right?” I demand as I look at the three of them. Shadowed pits for eyes. Hands moving rapidly in sign language that I don’t understand because they never got the chance to teach me.

I let out a scream of pure rage, and then I tear through the cottage, ripping open cabinets and dragging old tomes from their depths.

I flip through the pages with bloodied fingers, leaving stains on the old paper, searching for an illustration that makes sense. Searching for something that, through the blur of my tears, the burn of my rage, and the frantic gesturing of my ghostly husbands, will fix this.

Magic did this.

Magic can fix this.

I destroy that cozy cottage in search of a spell that I know does not exist. If it took three lives to restore one then I am fucked. I am completely and utterly fucked. Alone in the Witchwoods. Trapped in the Witchwoods. No coven. No husbands. No survival skills. Very little magic.

Ghost Marlowe is shouting at me and even without words, without eyes, I see the flex of his jaw, the not-veins standing out in his spirit neck, and I know that he’s angry with me.

“Fuck you!” I yell at him, throwing a useless book through his incorporeal form. “Fuck you to hell and back!” I turn on Tanner next, baring my teeth at him, like an animal. My arm—the one that the Hag bit in half—burns, the stitches pulling as I point at him. “What did we discuss on my very first day here? Choice. You should’ve asked me before you did this. Once again, you’re making decisions without me and …” My voice breaks as Brooks steps up to me, putting his hands together in silent pleading.

My legs give out.

I don’t even register the pain of hitting the floor, my eyes wide, salt spilling from them and mixing with the tang of iron from all of that blood. So. Much. Blood. Mine and theirs, all mingled together and mixed up with bone dust on the old wood floor. My hat does its utmost to lick it all off, tongue scraping down my cheek as I stare dead-eyed at the wall.

“You condemned me to a fate worse than death,” I whisper, sitting in a tumbled pile of red-stained grimoires and shattered jars. Spell ingredients litter the ground: dead lizards and big ivory teeth, piles of luminescent beetles and dried tongues. “You condemned me, and you never thought to ask.”

I’m sitting still, but my shadow is raging, wreaking havoc across the walls.

Brooks squats in front of me, pointing at his lips, trying to get me to read the words I can’t hear.

“ I need you to slow down. Let me think.” Pretty sure that’s what he’s trying to say.

Seriously? Slow down? Screw all of that. I didn’t want this. I didn’t ask for this. They should know better by now. Me being dead versus all of them being dead, not a great trade. This is a nightmare for me. Dying was easier.

I look to Lo’s lips next, deciphering his words.

“ How could you talk?!” Marlowe is so mad at me right now. Fine. That makes two of us.

And then I switch my gaze to Tanner’s scarred mouth.

“ Kitten, deep breath in … out … in.” Tanner is the one who almost calms me down, looking at me like he wants to hold me, touch me, comfort me.

Only, he can’t.

None of them can.

Because they’re all dead.

I turn my head toward the pile of fresh corpses in the cottage’s living room. A merry little fire crackles in the fireplace. Officer Viv’s stew sits untouched in bowls on the counter. Everything is quiet.

My pain and sorrow are overwhelming. I’m still in shock, too, not only from the deaths of my men but my own death as well. Should I kill myself? We can all be ghosts together. The thought is there and gone in an instant.

I couldn’t do that. I would never do that. After they just sacrificed themselves for me? What purpose would that serve? I … all I can do is put my head in my hands and try to breathe through copper and salt. Breathe, breathe, breathe.

And then I hear it. The faintest sound. The most delicate lullaby.

I lift my head, eyes widening.

The song cuts through the walls of the cottage, something soft and sweet and mournful, the voice of a young woman singing in a language I’ve never heard in all my life. Nothing from the world as it is now. It’s lilting and soft, like English and Gaelic and French all tumbled together in a pot, salted with a dozen other languages.

The night is over already? The Hag Wytch is singing me to sleep, isn’t she? I’m trapped here with her.

But sleep doesn’t come to my grief-fractured mind.

This is a different song. A new song. A song that feels like a fishhook.

Brooks is peering critically at me from his pit-eyes, wearing his hat even in death. The six eyes on the cone are the same bottomless dark holes as the ones on his face. He tilts his head at me, trying to get a read on what’s going on.

I’m sure he can tell that the melody is different. He just doesn’t know what it means yet.

My heart is beating so fast that my vision is dimming at the edges. I close my eyes.

Boom, boom, boom. Thundering pulses of blood in my head. Holding myself together with a bravery that’s as flimsy as armor made from gauze. Easy to see through. Easy to tear. This is a lot for me to handle all at once.

I’m in the middle of a battle for survival that just won’t end.

Casting the spell to close the gate. The girl that leapt out at me and Marlowe from behind a tree. Dying. Watching them die. And right now, being dragged to my feet by the Hag Wytch’s spell, lifted from the floor like a doll.

There’s a beckoning in my heart, a magical hand crooked in invitation. The Hag Wytch is calling me to her the way she called my friends into the Witch’s Tree. The way she lured me downstairs to speak through the sliding glass doors in my kitchen. She’s calling to me now, promising something sickly sweet that can only be a cruel trick.

And I have no coven to protect me from her magic.

I try to resist her spell, to stay put.

I open my eyes to find the men in a panic. I don’t need to be able to hear them to know that they’re telling me not to listen, to cover my ears, to hide in one of the bedrooms until the lullaby passes. Marlowe grabs for my shoulder like he did on the roof of the Pink Lady, but he can no longer touch me. He can’t kiss me. Can’t hold me. Can’t bake with me. Can’t mow our lawn.

Don’t go there, Kate. Not yet. Feelings have to come after survival in this place.

Tanner draws a line of salt around me, proving that his ghost is much stronger than mine was. I could barely touch that piece of chalk in the end, could scarcely scribble out that note on Marlowe’s blackboard: don’t leave me alone.

If only they’d looked at it before sacrificing their lives to resurrect me.

Tanner finishes the salt pentacle, closing the circle and granting me a brief reprieve from the Hag Wytch’s power. My relief only lasts a matter of seconds. The front door slams open, and the salt scatters in a strong breeze. Magic crashes into me, looping a leash around my neck. Tears of violent frustration prick at the edges of my eyes.

I’m going to burn that Wytch. No sooner does that thought cross my mind than I hear her reply through the music.

“ If you come to me, I will help you.” There’s a pause, like a break in the lyrics of the song. They’re not in English, but somehow, I understand them anyway. More magic. “If you kill me, I will give you anything you want.”

The song continues, weaving a tapestry in my brain that reminds me of a night sky reflected by the sea. Soft, undulations of waves speckled with diamonds. A gentle breeze. The wavy reflection of a silver moon. It’s a song of love and loss, something so incredibly human that the angry tears fall down my face in grief. My hat licks them off.

I start walking, a move that’s entirely against my will. I crouch to steal the machete off Marlowe’s body as I pass. Not my choice either.

The Hag is a much more powerful witch than I am.

The men are all around me, but I can’t physically make myself look at them. The song is too much. I’m hooked, biting onto a lure and being dragged through the water on a line. The magical equivalent of fishing. Resist her, Kate! I yell at myself, trying to break the Hag’s sudden hold over my actions. Push her back!

I roll my lips over my teeth and head up the stairs, moving as slowly as I can into the foyer and toward the open front door. Fighting and sweating and trying not to scare my coven as they manifest as angry nightmares all around me.

Haunted by the men I love.

What a dark and horrible nightmare.

The dulcet decay of the song drifts around me, pulling me forward, urging me on. Boots loud. Footsteps strange. Unsure. My attempts at slowing this thing down so I can think up a solution.

I step outside, turning with great effort to the three ghosts that are trapped in the cottage. They don’t have eyes, and they don’t have voices, but I love them anyway. In spite of what they’ve done. Because of what they’ve done.

Brooks puts his pale, white hands up against the invisible barrier that covers the doorway and presses into it, tendons he doesn’t have flexing in his ghostly forearms. Oh, he’s a much better ghost than I was, too.

Tanner is hanging charms from a hook above the door, lips in a thin line, translucent wolf ears pressed flat to the brim of his hat. His obsessive gaze isn’t altered by death in the slightest. If anything, it’s worse.

Then Marlowe. He’s leaning down, getting in my face, pointing at his lips. His hat is covered in white branches that look like bone, wild pansies blooming at their thorny tips.

“ Repeat after us,” he commands, baring his ghost teeth at me. “We summon a tidal wave from the West—”

But I can’t. My head is already turning from them, even if I try my hardest to stop it. I’m having an internal, magical battle against the Hag Wytch.

And I am losing.

Terribly.

I smile softly, catching that last sweep of my boys.

I imprint them on my heart, my soul, so that I never forget this moment.

Three handsome ghosts in the doorway of a fairy-tale cottage tucked beneath a prehistoric tree. Tall, pointy hats and big, see-through bodies. They’re all chanting silently, working these complicated hand motions that blur into white and silver as they sign out a spell I can’t participate in.

These men were willing to do anything to get out of hell, and then they damned themselves forever in order to save my life. When they told me to leave and be happy, I believe they were more than prepared to pay the ultimate price.

But they’ll never stop fighting and neither will I.

“I love you,” I tell Tanner. Brooks. Marlowe. I taste my own tears. I taste my anger. I wish I could say more, but I can’t. The Hag Wytch is summoning me, and I can’t break free from her metaphysical net. This is her spell, and she’s worked it perfectly on us. “I love you so fucking much. And I’m sorry.”

I use my shadow to shut the door on their gossamer faces, and I venture into the woods.

I begin to run.