Page 39 of The Arcane Taste of the Witchwood Boys (The Witchwood Boys #4)

Kate

Nobody comes for me.

I know that the whole point of the curse is that I have to truly suffer, and I can’t do that if I’m sitting around hoping to be rescued. For months, I waited on a stump outside the front door of the cottage, lost in a sleeping forest all by myself.

It’s been hard, losing so much time to the curse. It’s only one night a month that anything in the Witchwoods is awake with me, and I’m not coherent for it. I kill everything in sight, and then I wake up next to the Pit.

That scares the shit out of me.

I’m sitting on Brooks’ bed in the downstairs bedroom of the cottage, arms wrapped around my bent knees. I’ve been rocking back and forth for hours now. Hours. It’s dark and cold here. Nothing but trees for miles.

I understand how Brooks must’ve felt when he was here alone. God. I try not to think about Brooks. About Tanner. Marlowe. My friends. My pets. My grandmother’s house. Bagels. Coffee. Sunshine. Bubble tea. The smell of paint. Georgia’s red-lipped smile.

Being the Hag Wytch is a truly miserable fate, a price hefty enough to warrant three resurrections. I’m not conscious for long periods of time, but when I am, I remind myself that I’d make all the same choices all over again just to have what I held so briefly. Love and friendship like I had doesn’t happen for everyone.

I was lucky.

Even now, I know that.

I lift my head up and dry my tears with my arm.

The facts are these: I’m going to be stuck in the Witchwoods. I will never see the men again. I can’t even feel our coven bonds. Destroying the Witch’s Tree severed something I didn’t believe could be severed. When I search for that part of me, it’s like a missing limb.

I whimper and press my mouth against my arm, biting down and trying not to freak out.

If you only have a few minutes of sentience at a time, try to enjoy them, Kate. This is it, all you have left.

I make myself climb out of bed and head upstairs, start a fire, tear all of the dirty blankets off the living room couch. I stare at the pile of crimson-soaked furs. Most of it is Brooks’ blood. Some of it was gore from the Pit, when I dove in trying to get the corpse pumpkin.

I’m not sure how or why I’m even allowed in the cottage at all. This is a safe space from the Hag Wytch, isn’t it? Intent, maybe? I’m not hunting. I’m not killing. I’m just… sad.

Sad people are allowed inside and violent monsters are not. I’m so thankful to have this space. Imagine if I had to live in the nest, spending every night in a cold stone chamber filled with the belongings of the dead.

Grief explodes inside of me, and I find myself dragging a bloody fur up and pulling it around my shoulders. I sit in front of the hearth, relieved to know that I can still cast fire magic without Brooks around. I snuggle into his blood and close my eyes, screwing them shut against my own pain, breathing in the smell of him.

This is Brooks’ iron. This is Brooks’ gore. This is part of Brooks.

I burrow into the fur blanket as the flames crackle, and my mind drifts to all the things I’ve learned about magic. This blood—and the little that remains from the mens’ deaths—is powerful. I could do a lot with this. I might not be a part of a coven any longer, but this was made when we were all together.

It should count.

I get up and scrape some of the blood from the floor into a vial, lifting it to eye-level to stare at it.

My hat flicks out its tongue to try and taste it, and my horned shadow lifts her head from the fetal position to look at me.

“Don’t you dare eat any of this,” I warn the hat, my voice echoing in the empty cottage. I clutch the vial in my hand, and then I get to work.

My spell is a success.

The vial of blood has been transferred to the cauldron, brewed with plenty of spell ingredients. Hair from the men that I found in their beds. Willow tree bark and toad blood and spider legs and spit and the tears I shed when I tried to masturbate with the smooth hilt of a knife and cut my hand on the blade. Didn’t matter. Still fucked myself with the blood as lube.

It took a ton of effort, and I wasn’t sure if… but it does. It works. I’ve thrown the vial at the wall and watched it explode in a puff of purple smoke.

When the smoke clears, I see them.

All three of my lovers standing in the center of the living room.

There’s blood everywhere, and Brooks has his arms outstretched on either side, a palm to Tanner’s chest. A palm to Marlowe’s. A fight must’ve broken out because they’re both bleeding from the nose. Both have split lips. Marlowe is nursing his left side.

“ Are you two finished?” Brooks asks as a memory plays out directly in front of me.

I’ve spent the past several weeks getting these charms right, working them so that when I activate one, I can witness a scene from the past. I sit down heavily in one of the chairs at the table, tears of relief streaming down my face.

I’ll be alone here, but I don’t have to be alone-alone. I have dozens of vials. Dozens. More than a hundred of them. I catch my own tears in a clean jar, because Brooks is a good teacher and he taught me well.

“ Tell him not to come at me,” Tanner growls, spitting blood on the floor. He looks Marlowe up and down and then curls his lip. “I’m trying with you, you know that? Stop testing me.”

“ If I can kill you one day, I will,” Marlowe vows, shaking out his hands as he throws Brooks’ arm off and storms into his bedroom. He slams the door, and I hear it lock.

The memory fades, and I desperately throw another vial. I should conserve these. I have far more time ahead of me than I have spells, but I can’t resist. I haven’t heard the voice of another person for nearly months now.

My very worst fear of being alone is now my reality.

Alone.

I am absolutely, eternally alone.

I slide off the chair and land on the floor as green smoke puffs into the air near the staircase. The memory smudges itself into view, overlaid on top of reality but stronger. Like this glimpse of the past is what’s real, and I’m just a dream.

I feel like a ghost. So much so that I refuse to look into a mirror because I’m worried I might not have any eyes. My heart is a series of stutters and palpitations as I struggle to breathe.

In the memory, Marlowe opens his door and drags his mattress out of his room. He takes it down the stairs, and I scramble to follow, desperate not to miss any of this. I run up beside him, blurring the edges when I reach out and try to touch his face.

He looks so sad. So broken and lonely and sad. He finds his way to Brooks’ door and opens it, dragging his mattress inside. He leaves it on the ground near the doorway and crawls onto it, curling up and putting his hands over his ears.

I hear the sound of something being eaten outside. We’re underground and beneath a tree, but whatever is out there is huge. There’s cracking and splintering sounds. Gurgles and strangled cries. Chewing. Blood drips down through the wood planks on the ceiling, plunk-plunk-plunking into a puddle on the floor.

The image fades, leaving me alone in Brooks’ room again.

Mercifully enough, I black out.

It’s too depressing to record how much time is passing, so I stop. I have eternal life, don’t I? I’ve accepted my fate, spending whatever time I have awake in bed. Crying. Watching the men.

I scoot closer to Tanner’s hologram, curled up on his bed beside him as he bites his lower lip and throws his head back into the pillows.

“ Mmm,” he growls, cock slippery with lube as he thrusts up and into his own fist. His eyes are squeezed shut, a naughty little smile on his face. I press my tongue against the inside of my own cheek, watching him.

“What the fuck are you imagining?” I grouse, plunging my fingers deeper into my tight pussy. “If you don’t tell me, I’ll be jealous. It better not be a real girl.”

Tanner fades from sight, and I let out a gasp, using my dirty wet fingers to snag one of the rapidly disappearing vials from the nightstand. I throw it against the wall beside the bed and wait for Tanner to reappear.

He’s sleeping this time, facing toward me with his lips parted and his black and gold hair tumbling over his forehead. In his hand, he sleeps with a big ol’ hunting knife. One eye cracks open and startles me a little, but I don’t stop touching myself.

Tanner opens his other eye and then sits up, his ghostly knee disappearing into my side. I shiver and pump my fingers harder, fucking myself shamelessly because orgasms at least help chase back the bottomless despair I feel. The endless loneliness.

He drinks from a bottle, leaning back against the wall, and he stares at the blankets. In his eyes, I see it. The very same emotion that I’m feeling now. He reaches up and scratches at the stubble on his chin with his fingers. The rough sound makes me come hard, and I arch my hips up, squeezing around my own fingers but refusing to close my eyes.

I collapse into the bed as the image fades again.

I lie there alone in the light of the glowing stone that makes up the bedside lamp. I found the spell for these in one of the many grimoires left in the cottage, and I’ve made plenty for myself. This house is full of supplies so I never go hungry—not that I have to eat regular food as the Hag Wytch, but damn it hurts if I don’t—and rarely do I have to search for spell ingredients.

The men left me a fully-stocked cottage to grieve in.

And I do.

I grieve worse than I’ve ever grieved before, to the point that I look forward to the blackouts.

Tonight, I don’t get one.

I fall asleep and wake with my wings wrapped around me in a feathery cocoon.

Then I start the process all over again, binge-watching the memories of my coven in this cottage. Learning things about the men that I never knew. I see Marlowe crying in his mess of a room, surrounded by the relics of his past as he transforms from a sweet young man to a monster.

Tanner starts off with a playboy swagger, breaks into a violent woodsman, and then evens out as time goes by. He never fights much with Brooks, not even in the oldest of memories where there’s just the two of them.

There are even memories of me in this place. My first night here, fighting with Marlowe in the foyer. Watching Tanner shove the kitchen table across the floor to leave a groove before he fucks me. Brooks, studying stacks of books and writing piles of new magical text.

I learn how to break down animal carcasses. How to cook with the unique spices of the Witchwoods. What my coven’s conversations were like before they found me. I talk to them, too, even if they can’t answer.

I fill my time by mixing different kinds of paint. I have plenty of experience making my own art supplies. I combine those skills with a little bit of magic, and I end up with a wonderful palette of colors.

For weeks, I sit and paint the cats on the newel post and banister that leads to the lowest level of the house, and I watch memories until the spells run dry.

I dig in my pocket looking for another and come up empty. I check the cabinet in the kitchen. I check the bedrooms. I come to the conclusion that they’re all gone. Every last one of them.

Ah.

So I hadn’t hit rock bottom yet.

Good to know that I have deeper to fall.

I sprint outside and into the dark, empty woods. All alone but for the glowing flowers and the wind in the trees. No animals. No monsters. No men. Nothing.

I collapse at the ground where the Witch’s Tree used to stand and find myself staring at a blank gravestone. I dig in the dirt like a crazy person. I dig and dig and dig, using my earth magic to make a tunnel.

It goes down a long fucking way.

When I jump in, I fall for a long time, hit the stone at the bottom, and pass out.

My body dies, but I’m immortal, so I feel it all and then I come back to life.

It’s the worst experience ever, waking up with my cheek pressed to the cold ground, lying in a puddle of my own blood.

Tears flow silently from my face as I lay there wondering why they’re still not here.

Why my coven still hasn’t come.

All three of them promised me separately that no matter what, they’d find me. They said if I were alone, I should hum. So I do. I lie there by myself and I hum and I cry. A North without a coven. A woman without friends, lovers, or a living world.

In a nightmare of sleep and time, I break in half.

And the curse snaps with me.

Bargain fulfilled. Price paid. Mission complete.

If there was anyone else around, I could pass the curse on. I feel that sensation sweep over me like a sneeze. If I coughed or spit, I’d spread those germs to someone else. Instinctually, I know how to curse a new person in my stead.

The existence of the Witchwoods makes perfect sense.

I am here to suffer.

I am in hell.