Page 24 of The Arcane Taste of the Witchwood Boys (The Witchwood Boys #4)

Kate

We arrive at the Ferndale Cemetery by broom. The roads, while mostly empty, are filled with cars that are as frozen in time as the planes stuck in the sky and the static boats on the ocean. Seems as if anything ‘modern’ just went still. Nothing blew up. Nobody crashed.

I don’t know why, and I don’t care. I’m just glad I didn’t kill a million people by sending their planes to the ground with a cursed lullaby.

Sharyn is already waiting for us, seated atop the gravestone that Brooks once punched in anger. She turns to look at us, more like an ethereal blotch of fog than a girl. A smile breaks on her face that’s charming, if not a little too wide to be comfortable. Pits for eyes. An adorable dress.

She lifts her hands to sign at Brooks, but he just stands there in front of the creaky, old cemetery gate and stares at her like he’s frozen in time. I don’t know precisely what moment he went back to when he stepped inside that hut, but he might’ve seen her, whole and alive. Even if he didn’t, he would’ve known what changing his decision could do.

Sharyn McDowell would’ve lived, and Brooks would’ve stayed in the fifties. He would be an old man by now, if alive at all. He might’ve married someone else, might’ve had kids. If he was still around when I was born, maybe he’d look me up just to say goodbye?

We’d never know each other. We wouldn’t be coven. We wouldn’t be husband and wife.

Brooks McDowell chose me, no matter what. No matter fucking what.

I rush up to him with Tanner and Marlowe right behind me. My arms wrap around Brook’s left, and I drag him forward, down the soggy, mossy pathway and over to the family gravesite.

Sharyn looks at me and smiles, making shapes with her hands that I can’t read.

I turn to Brooks for answers, hoping he’ll translate.

“ It was a pleasure getting to know you, Kate. My brother is in …” Brooks pauses, that stone-cold expression fixed on his sister. I squeeze his arm harder, and tears come pouring out of his hat like rain. The brim is my umbrella against a saltwater sky. “He’s in good hands,” Brooks finishes, and I realize that Sharyn’s just made a rather clever joke.

I’m not sure if she’s still deaf, as a ghost. But I’d rather Brooks signed my response to her anyway. It feels more genuine if it’s delivered like that.

“Tell her how much I appreciate her help.” I tug on the wool sleeve of Brooks’ peacoat, and he lets himself look away from Sharyn to check in with me.

“Should I tell her that I’m sorry, too?” he asks, purposely turning his head so that Sharyn can’t see his lips. If she can hear him, she doesn’t let on.

“Don’t apologize if you’d make the same decision twice.”

We stare each other down, and he exhales, turning back to the little sister that he lost so long ago. Seven decades and now we’re here. It’s not a happy ending in a traditional sense, but Sharyn is free from the Hag Wytch. Free, but dead. Free, but with a chance to say goodbye to the person who loves her most.

It’s not just the hat that’s crying now. Brooks has tears rolling down his own face as he signs back and forth with his sister. Somehow, even through the tears, she finds a way to make him laugh, and I hate myself more with each passing second because I know that this is my fault.

If I’d known that I’d still have to pay the curse’s price, then I would’ve made a different choice in the memory hut. Saving the world wasn’t enough to sway me, but the men are. How could I have allowed Brooks to give up his sister when I can’t guarantee that I’ll be here to help him through it?

Tanner wouldn’t have changed a thing, ever. Marlowe was only trying to uphold his promise to me. Brooks was broken in half over his choice. Mine was easy, but it’s not.

I’m crying now, too, and that catches both Brooks’ and Sharyn’s attention.

My Southwoods opens his coat and pulls me inside, putting his arms around me and his lips near my hair.

“Don’t pay attention to me,” I growl, trying to push him off. He locks his arms around me, but my clit ring has shut down my Hag powers, so I’m stuck here. “Visit with your—”

But then I look back and Sharyn is gone, and Brooks is squeezing me even tighter.

“My whole family is somewhere else, and she’s been alone for so long. Keeping Sharyn around was selfish, so … I let her go. I said goodbye, Kate. I said I love you, and I let her go.” He nuzzles hard against me, tucking me so close to him that we might meld together under the heat.

I don’t think I’d mind that much. Or at all. Nah, I wouldn’t mind at all.

“Hey you.” Brooks steps back from me and puts his hands on my shoulders, spirit balls floating above us, the sun sinking beneath the black silhouettes of Victorian houses filled with sleeping humans. With the ancient trees as a backdrop, they look like little toy houses stuffed with dolls. “We’re going to break the curse, not write it up a thank you card. You keep getting these … expressions on your face that I don’t like. Don’t get all introspective on me, Kate.”

Brooks straightens out his wool coat and pops the collar with a flick of his thumbs.

“I’m always introspective,” I mumble, and then both Brooks and I go stone-still when we realize that Tanner is staring at something in a near panic. His quicksilver eyes are locked on Marlowe as tears roll down the face of our Westwoods.

“I have sisters,” Lo says, shoving his arm over his eyes, dressed in a hoodie, sweatpants, and that moss-covered hat with a salamander wrapped around the conical portion. It hisses a tiny cloud of fire at me and then slithers around the cone before disappearing. “I get it … I …”

Marlowe stops talking and turns away, staring at the blank wall of a mausoleum. Tanner cocks a brow and then turns back to us, like he can’t quite believe what he’s seeing. They’ll be best friends in another week or two, I can sense it. Tanner and Lo were meant to find each other, platonic soulmates or something.

“I assume we’ll be meeting these sisters at some point, huh?” Tanner asks, pushing on the brim of his hat from the back so that the front tilts down, all sexy and mysterious and whatnot. The wolf ears are a little too cute though. “How many sisters-in-law do I have exactly?”

“Three,” Marlowe admits, looking back at us with red-rimmed eyes and ruined makeup. He put on eyeliner this morning, and there are black smudges on the top parts of his cheeks. “On my end, anyway.”

Brooks has no family now. Tanner has no family. I have my friends and maybe, one day, a relationship with siblings I don’t yet know. But Marlowe? I suppose that if I came into this relationship with a house, a business, and some savings, he came in with a family.

I hope it works out with them the way he wants it to. If they snub him, I might have to go full Hag Wytch on the Waverleys.

My hat secretly eats some sleepy insect with a lot of legs, and I gag, even though I’m only getting a residual taste. Brooks has a hold of my right arm, like he thinks I’m going to run away again. I encourage my hat away from bugs and toward Brooks, licking his face and tasting all of his sadness and his salt. I turn and raise up on my tiptoes, kissing both corners of his handsome lips.

Brooks closes all of his eyes and relaxes into my touch, giving into me as easily as Tanner or Marlowe when I treat them so gently.

“When I first thought about having a coven, it was because I wanted to use it against the Hag Wytch,” Brooks begins carefully, sharing a piece of himself with us. “After I had a coven, I gave up my quest for vengeance in order to protect it. Now? Because of you, Kate? I’ll have both things. I lost nothing.” He opens his eyes, grabs my face between his big hands, and kisses me like we’re in a black-and-white movie.

Tanner pushes the wind through the cemetery, stirring pine needles and colorful leaves from nearby Witchwoods trees. The breeze ruffles the tails of Brooks’ wool coat, stirs my orange and black hair. I slide my hands around the back of his neck, my cloaking cloak (hah) whipping against my legs. Our hat brims are crushed, the very tips of the cone parts bending in the warm wind, folding and squashed. They never look right. They’re always just sort of ehh looking.

I love these goddamn hats.

Brooks pulls his lips from mine after offering only the barest swipe of tongue. He stroked the seam of my mouth, hit the tip of my tongue, and that’s it. I want more. I lean in for him, and he groans, letting me have his mouth.

There’s nobody around. We can just fuck right here if we want, but … wait. He said not in this cemetery, didn’t he?

I jerk back suddenly, and Brooks opens all his eyes on me at once. His fingers are on my arm still, keeping me from getting too far away.

“You said you’d fuck me in another graveyard, just not … this graveyard.”

Brooks blinks slowly at me, all of his eyes in unison.

“I love that you hear me, Kate. Always.” He adjusts us, taking my arm like we’re just out for a late afternoon stroll. With Tanner and Marlowe close enough to touch, we walk, all four of us winding up the hill toward the oldest graves. Crumbling stone obelisks and gargoyles with missing wings.

As the sun goes down, we lay out a blanket that Brooks packed in the wicker ball-sack basket. It’s bloodstained now, but that’s okay. It still holds a thermos with hot water. Plenty of loose-leaf tea. And lavender-basil scones with lemon zest sugar sprinkled over the top.

With the world asleep, there are no lights. It’s just us, the stars, and my old friend, the moon.

The sky stretches across the horizon, a band of black shadows and diamonds. Spirits float up in front of us, ascending. Spirits drift down, descending. Wherever they’re going, we’ve been seeing their numbers dwindle steadily over the last month.

The very last of them will probably be gone by the new moon, when this shadowed sliver in the sky disappears and our world goes completely black.

Brooks changes his mind about the sex. Marlowe, too. Tanner, of course.

We make love and it’s not for a spell this time.

It’s for us. Coven. Love. Family.

The four of us fall asleep together on a blanket in the middle of the underworld.