Page 28 of The Arcane Taste of the Witchwood Boys (The Witchwood Boys #4)

Brooks

The bagel shop we visit has brick walls and a cult-like following. This place has been around since the eighties, so it’s familiar to the other three.

But not to me.

Everything I am begins here. I hiss and curl my lip, startling the woman on the other side of the counter. Seems she’d already forgotten we were here. I appreciate that our glamour is working, but ordering food is annoying. My antlers stretch up to the ceiling, and the eyes on my hat narrow to slits.

“Four large coffees,” I repeat, and the employee gives me a weird look.

“Get us slugs ,” Kate is telling me, gesticulating wildly with her hands the way she does. Pieces of bright orange hair cascade over her face, and the afternoon sunlight snags on her perfect lips. One of my hat-eyes picks up a bright blotch of heat between her legs. Arousal.

I look into her eyes, that gold and silver split with hazel stars. Wide, dark pupils. Kate swallows as she stares back at me. Ah. I like that. My body reacts to the sight.

“A slug?” My voice is cold, bored, almost dismissive. Kate flinches a little, and it takes all of my will not to grab onto her and hold tight. To never let her go. To exist in that quiet bubble behind the fog of the foreboding spell where nobody and nothing can reach us.

But we can’t do that—yet.

My North is a tricky witch, and I can’t let her distract me.

“It’s just a bagel, but instead of a ring, it’s straight. You know, the way a maple bar is different from a regular doughnut. Just a different shape. They call ‘em slugs because, well, we’re in Humboldt County.” Kate shrugs her shoulders and then bends her knee, rucking up the leg of her denim overalls to show me the yellow banana slug tattoo on her ankle. “Oh, and this place sell jars of everything seasoning that they call slug slime.”

The sight of Kate, lifting up her pants to point at an image of a slug while she talks about one, in the middle of a quirky bagel shop, is one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen. I imagine that I was crazy that I didn’t like her when I first met her. It’s just that she pushes back and riles me up, and I love it.

“Fine, slugs then.” I sigh as I look past her to Tanner, as if I’m not completely enraptured. “You good with that?”

“If you can get our order through this glamour, order me whatever you want,” he says, grinning.

“Same. I’m two seconds away from just grabbing a plate out of someone’s hand.” Marlowe watches an order land on the counter and steals a bagel when our wife isn’t looking. He turns away to eat it, and her mouth flattens into a line.

She knows.

“With butter and cream cheese?” Kate clarifies, and I shrug. She spins the screen in front of her around and taps her finger on it, seemingly putting in the order to the kitchen in the employee’s stead. Clever. “Okay then. Shall I order you an espresso, Brooks?”

“If you order me an espresso, I’ll drink it and then use the extra caffeine to fuck you in the middle of this cafe. Nobody will notice with the glamour spell, but I’m sure it’d be uncomfortable. You wouldn’t like it.”

For some reason, she feels compelled to pay even though she’s the one in control of that screen. Why swipe her credit card if she can just hit the button that reads cash? I might not know computers, but I get this.

I reach over and tap the screen, and Kate gives me a nasty look.

“Wanna bet?” Kate mumbles belatedly, shoving her wallet into her pocket. Her cheeks are pink.

“There’s no bet,” Marlowe scoffs, wandering over to a table near the window and knowing that we’ll follow. It’s not just Kate that’s on a leash. Marlowe and Tanner aren’t allowed out of my sight either. “You’d squirt for me on the edge of a table surrounded by customers, and you wouldn’t give a fuck. You love the thrill, and we all know it. No secrets there.”

“I still want the sex tape taken down,” she snaps, revealing the full truth to me without meaning to. She’s acting like she’s in the process of accepting a terminal diagnosis. Kate doesn’t believe we’ll be able to subvert the curse. She’s convinced that we’re doomed. In the meantime, she’s trying to help us get our affairs in order. “So, um, what’s the plan for Robin Madsen?”

“Bet ya that the Pink Lady is still a mess. Our only hope is that nobody’s gone over there since,” Tanner remarks, taking the spot beside Kate on the window seat. There are colorful pillows tumbled against the glass behind them and, beyond that, brick streets and historical buildings from the mid eighteen- hundreds. This neighborhood—Old Town—is as out-of-date to me as it is to the rest of my coven.

“Is there … a spell for that sort of thing?” Kate asks, tucking hair behind her ear. “Cleaning up gore, that is.”

“Of course there is.” I don’t elaborate. I just stare, and it makes Kate uncomfortable because she knows that it’s not just Tanner who’s watching her like a stalker with an unhealthy obsession. It’s him, and me, and Marlowe. She isn’t going anywhere.

Our order is called, and we all just sit there for a few seconds knowing what we’re going to do. Nobody says a word, and all four of us get up to retrieve the food and drinks before we reclaim our table.

“Can’t even walk across a small restaurant now.” Tanner tsks his tongue, and then takes a bite of his bagel, his hand massaging Kate’s knee under the table. I notice her gaze catch strangely on a woman walking through the door. Kate wets her lips, and I narrow all of my eyes.

I twist the wedding ring around on my finger, frowning. We have another half hour before the next memory, but I don’t like Kate’s expression. Is she hungry again? Is she going to black out? If Kate attacks us, I have some freshly made charms to use. I’m exhausted, close to collapse, but I won’t quit.

If you and someone you love are treading water, you take turns holding each other up for breath. We’re all slowly drowning, but we’re not dead yet. Somehow, we need to get back to shore … or else we sink together.

“Hey, don’t blame it all on trauma. Some couples are like this without magic coven bonds. It’s called love, you know?” Kate takes a bite of her ‘slug’ bagel, beaming back at me like nothing’s wrong. I continue my cold, dead stare. “I bet Marlowe chased Miriam around back in the day.”

Her deflection technique works beautifully on our Westwoods. If it were up to him alone, he’d be bamboozled by Kate at every turn. I also believe he truly would kill himself if she left him. There’s that, too. The sweet comes with the sour.

Marlowe kicks back in his seat, cocky and full of himself. He balances the ceramic plate with the slug bagel on his chest.

“Miriam was clingier than me. I guess it was because I didn’t like her enough. Never date a childhood friend. Huge fucking mistake.” Marlowe takes a bite of his bagel, half of it in one go. I sip my coffee, and eh. I can make better at home.

“I did cling to Nathan.” Kate admits it easily, ruffling up Marlowe’s metaphorical feathers. I can’t see Kate’s actual feathers because she’s wearing her pricey cloak of shadows. Never doing that spell again—ever. Expensive, indeed. “Which only made me look ridiculous since he was an immature dick. Lo’s right: never date a childhood friend. You’re better off with the three violent men you found in the middle of the woods.”

She licks cream cheese off her fingers, and then stares at me.

My mouth twitches. You little shit. You think I don’t know what you’re up to? You think I’m not perfectly aware that you’re going to run? Please. If Kate wants to surprise me, she’ll have to be cleverer than that.

“You found us? Safe to say that I found you .” Marlowe draws Kate’s attention with that one, and then they both turn red. Like teenagers. It’s fucking disgusting, but it’s generating a lot of magic. They’re both beaming, and I’m glad the cumcakes are as successful a glamour as they are. This … social media thing would get much worse if the world could see them glowing.

People know that time slipped by while they slept, but it’s too outrageous to believe. They’ll rationalize whatever they need to rationalize to pretend it wasn’t real. Fine by me. Their ignorance is my bliss. The murders and the disappearances? Harder to deal with than the literal overlapping of worlds.

“Found me, whatever. Still better off than with—” Kate stops talking, and we all turn to see what she’s looking at this time. Someone has just walked into the bagel shop, and if it wasn’t her goddamn ex-boyfriend, then I have no idea how this curse shit could get any worse.

“Put the knife away,” I tell Marlowe, before he even gets a chance to reach for it. He gapes at me, but cumcakes or not, I won’t allow him to stab the guy in public. Stabbing ex-boyfriends is something our coven does in private.

“I told you Humboldt County was a small town,” he growls, resisting the call to violence—barely.

Nathan walks right by without noticing us, thanks to the glamour.

“He can’t see me?” Kate says, catching Tanner’s attention. “What? I’m not about to call out to him or anything.”

“Don’t you dare. You talk to that man again, and we’ll extend the impotency spell. He doesn’t exist to you.” Tanner’s words piss Kate off, as intended. Teasing her is one of the few actions we can take to get her to relax for a minute.

“Nathan!” she calls out, standing up and waving her arm frantically. It takes him way too long to blink his way through the spell. He’d have been a weak witch. “Over here.”

He walks over warily, eyeing the four of us with a healthy sense of fear. I nod, and he shivers. If only he could see the way my shadow is standing over him, neck too long, head bent at a freak angle as it peers at him with unease. I take a bite of the slug bagel, and it’s good. Better than the coffee.

“What do you want?” Nathan whispers, eyes on Tanner. Smart move. Marlowe is too impulsive. I’m too cautious. Tanner will get him when his back is turned if that’s what needs to happen. For now, I’m okay if he’s alive as long as his dick doesn’t work.

“Just wanted to say hi.” Kate shrugs, adjusting the cowl of her cloak. Shadows lick around her, specters that Nathan can’t see. The hood is down, leaving her hat free. It has its own bagel and coffee, and it eats the china along with the food, causing Kate to cringe.

“Don’t do that. Your hat is collecting and storing ambient magic. It’s a very powerful hat and we’re lucky to have it.” I say all of that with a grotesque smile, turning to Nathan and catching his eyes. He hates me, which is also fine. “What?”

“Everyone thinks you guys are part of some weird cult or something.” Nathan crosses his arms and puts a healthy gap between himself and the table. There’s a brightly colored canvas on the wall behind him, a cat painted in psychedelic colors. A single Witchwoods flower sprouts from the corner of it. “I wouldn’t talk about magic hats in public if I were you.”

“And if I were you, I wouldn’t have come over here no matter how many times Kate screamed my name. I’d act like she was invisible, and I’d walk on by.” Tanner spins his coffee cup on the table in front of him, and then smiles nicely at Nathan.

Poor Nate looks like he could puke.

“Fine. Be guilty in the court of public opinion. I was only trying to help.” He storms out of the bagel shop, leaving clanging bells behind him. I wave a hand and silence the annoying door jingle. This place is too busy for bells.

“Seriously? A knife and thinly veiled threats? My God, you guys.” Kate steals the remaining bagel off my plate, and I smile. It’s a genuine smile. I love her, even if I’m eager to kick her ass at the game we’re playing.

Solve the curse. Make everything okay again. Keep us together. We have to be together for me to win.

Blood drips from my nose, and Kate’s smile waffles, cracks, fades. She turns to her coffee and tries to hide the sadness on her lips with a long sip.

I use my shadow to steal another bagel from behind the counter, one that’s already toasted and buttered for another customer, and I toss it onto her plate. I add cream cheese from a tub that I take directly from an employee’s hand, and only my coven sees me break the rules of reality.

Magic hiding in plain sight.

“Thanks,” she whispers, picking up the food without looking at me.

My heart thumps, and I wonder if Kate can hear it over the clink of cutlery and the shushed whisper of human voices.

“I didn’t actually take the knife out,” Marlowe protests, still lounged and sprawled like a lazy witch with no worries. His shadow wings are open and spread across the floor at strange angles behind him.

My eyes narrow in on Kate as Tanner turns to look at me. He goes still, observing my reaction.

Inside the memory hut, I really thought about it. I considered every single person I knew and loved, just like Kate said. Logically, I broke it all down, and I came to this conclusion.

If Sharyn hadn’t gone into the Witch’s Tree, if I’d caught up to her before she did, I would’ve dragged her home. Probably yelled at her for making me worry. Mom would’ve cried. My father would’ve yelled even more. Sharyn would never go back there, and neither would I.

And if I didn’t go back to the Witchwoods, there is no Kate. No coven. No Tanner or Marlowe or magic. None of this.

So I took a calculated risk without getting anyone else’s input. Kate is likely to do the same. No, Kate will do the same. We’re in a race to see who can figure out how to end the curse first.

And along the way, I’m sure one or both of us will screw up and the other person will be there, helping them to tread water.

Helping them to breathe.

The ghost of Robin Madsen is waiting for us when we pull up to the Pink Lady, that pink and white Victorian that looks more like a cupcake than a house. It was ridiculous beneath the thousand-foot-tall Witchwood trees, like one of my sister’s dollhouses.

It just looks haunted now, with blue waves and gray sky. All of the boats that were frozen in the harbor move freely, sailboats headed out for a nice day, fishing ships coming in with their catch.

Mrs. Madsen is sitting in the living room when we open the door, broken glass and debris on every available surface. The stink of blood and rot from the parlor. The uncanny creeping of death. The ghost turns to us and mouths words that we can’t hear.

“ Why did this happen to me?” is what she’s asking.

Mm.

Marlowe scowls at the spirit, tugging a necklace out from inside his hoodie. It’s made of human finger bones and spelled for exorcisms. We made a lot of these, just in case. There were ghosts everywhere, and you never know when one might be hostile. The guys and I worked our asses off last month to ensure we’d have plenty of supplies once Kate came back.

“Oh, Mrs. Madsen. I’m so sorry.” Kate runs over to her and gets on her knees on the carpet in front of the ghost, squinting at her as she tries to read our ex-employer’s lips.

“ The house. I have to protect the house,” she mouths, over and over again. Her lips move too fast. The pits of her eyes have widened to slashes of endless shadow. “My daughter will inherit the house now. She’ll bulldoze it.” And then plenty of whispering and growling, making Marlowe edge closer with the exorcism in-hand.

Kate pauses, scooting forward and reaching out to touch the dead woman’s knee. Her hand goes right through.

“She can’t bulldoze it, Mrs. Madsen. The entire town would riot. The historical society would arm itself and march down here.”

Kate tries to make it a joke which is cute, but the situation is sober, and the house stinks. We need to deal with this so we don’t end up fighting off a homicide investigation on top of everything else. I was right about the other bodies though, all of those missing people that’ll never be found. Into the woods they went.

Robin Madsen continues talking, and Kate watches her lips intently, translating a boring life history that none of us cares about.

Well, except for Kate.

“We’re so goddamn lucky,” Tanner says, his voice rough as he stands on my right. Marlowe is on his other side, watching Kate as carefully as I am.

My antlered shadow patrols the room, and I swear that I can still smell the Hag Wytch in here. A few feathers lie on the floor, and it looks like maybe she started to roost here after we left. There’s a nest made of human hair on the dining table, and it’s filled with meat.

What a pleasant scene to clean up. Too bad I can’t send Kate out while we get it done for her. A full coven is required.

“I have her last words,” Kate says finally, standing up. Robin Madsen wanders off the way ghosts do, staring at nothing and smiling too wide. Having too many teeth. Looking off and very, very dead just like they do in the Witchwoods. And then she’s just … gone. Disappeared to wherever it is that Sharyn went, that my mentor went. “Also, she wanted to say sorry for hitting on you inappropriately but also that she was once in love with Tanner in high school.”

“I bet you she didn’t say anything like that first bit, and I hate to tell you this, kitten, but everybody was in love with me in high school.” Tanner puts his arm around Kate’s shoulders, and she pretends to be annoyed with him when she loves it. “But I didn’t have sex with her.”

“I know that. She said she didn’t understand why every single other girl in school was fair game, but not her.” Kate works her jaw like she’s annoyed as we walk down that long hallway to the eviscerated, rotten corpse in the parlor. Kate lifts her metal mask in place as she gags.

“I was very selective, I assure you. I only fucked hot girls.” Tanner knocks a kidney out of his way with a boot and sighs as he lifts up the brim of his hat to take in the room at the end of the hall. Blood everywhere. Brain matter. Bones and meat and maggots and liquefaction.

It’s not pleasant.

“And now you only fuck me,” Kate croaks out from behind her mask, and then we’re all slipping them into place and getting to work. Setting red candles at the four corners. Begging the cardinal directions and the elements for help. Dancing shirtless in blood and spattering ourselves with it. As we move, we crush big, fat Witchwoods maggots underfoot and the carnage rewinds.

It solidifies. It rots backward until it isn’t rotten at all. Pieces of meat and puddles of blood sliding across the floor. We coalesce what’s left of Mrs. Madsen’s body, until there’s a headless, armless corpse on the floor in the center of the room. Whatever parts the original Hag Wytch ate are gone, but now we can more easily dispose of what’s here.

No surprise at all that there are other bodies in this room. She was storing prey here, that bitch. My mentor’s South. The Hag Wytch. I can’t imagine what the horror story of their coven might be, but I won’t let mine end up that way.

We blow out our candles, let the smoke settle as darkness creeps into the room. We wait for the previous spell to dissipate so we can start over again, and there’s a strange sound in the dark. Like chewing. With a frown, I use my magic to relight all four candles at once.

I’m holding mine. Marlowe is holding his. Tanner’s good.

But Kate’s candle is on the floor and there she is in the shadows, bent over and feasting. She turns to look back at us, and there’s a length of intestine dangling from her mouth.

God-fucking-damn it.