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

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A few minutes earlier …

Love has transformed me.

I’ve never felt joy the way I do with Kate. Because of Kate.

Never been so fucking terrified. So heartbroken. So goddamn pissed —at myself. At us, as men.

The Hag Wytch is spelling our North and there’s nothing we can do about it because we’re fucking dead. Kate slams the door on us, and I turn to Brooks. He’s the leader. I don’t know the rules of being dead, of being ghosts. What can we do? How do we protect our wife?

We stop the spell we were casting. Clearly, it ain’t working.

“ Give me something to do,” I sign to him, taking comfort in the way he stands there with his hand on his chin in thought, the pit eyes on his hat swirling like a half-dozen black vortexes on his ghostly cap. I’m an action man. So is Brooks. The difference between us, the reason I didn’t fight back when he had me pinned in the Witchwoods way back when, is his resolution. Until Kate, I didn’t understand tunnel vision and how powerful it can be. I certainly do now. My single-minded obsession in the shape of love. “Now.”

Marlowe manages to open the cottage door on his fourth try, his lips making the shape of curses he can’t say. He throws himself at the invisible barrier across the doorway with whatever strength a spirit has in these woods. He makes some headway, shoving at the empty air and stretching it like plastic wrap, gaining a few inches here and there. It’s not enough. Too slow. Too sticky. Lo is wading through a magical quicksand.

We’re trapped inside this cottage if we can’t out-spell that goddamn owl.

“ She’s not just going to die—she’s going to be eaten!” Marlowe is in an absolute panic, signing at us like he’s yelling. He looks between me and Brooks, panting even though he doesn’t need to breathe at all. His hat is covered in bones and ash now, shadow wings tense and tight and angry.

“ We’re going to possess some bodies and get out of here,” Brooks signs out, turning to me. “Can you hear where Kate is going? Can you give us a definitive location?”

I nod, working my jaw and reaching up to flick one of the ears on my hat. I hold out my hand, making a fist and bobbing it up and down, like a head nod. “Yeah,” I sign back.

Brooks sweeps down the stairs, taking Marlowe with him.

The forest spirits are shrieking, turning the woods into a tumultuous miasma of fear and confusion. A herd of kirin go sprinting past the cottage, crushing the foliage and making the plants scream. Birds scatter. In the distance, a lone wolf howls a mournful song.

I tilt my head, close my eyes, focus in on sounds I rightfully shouldn’t be able to hear. Yeah, I don’t give my hat enough credit.

I track Kate from where I stand in the foyer, listening to her rapid footfalls in the forest. Seems like she’s heading in the direction of the Pit. In the direction of the nest. Fuck, but of course she is. That dreadful dirge is weaving the barrier on the cottage door. It’s a thief in the night, stealing our North away from us. Our coven bonds, already stretched to the limit, feel like they could snap at any second.

There. The scrape of Kate’s boots on stone. Is she climbing something?

Climbing into the nest, I’ll bet.

Oh, God. The situation is getting worse with each passing second. I’d panic, but it won’t do me any good. This is what Brooks needs me to do, so this is what I’m going to do. There has to be a way out of this. I don’t doubt it for a second. If I let myself doubt it, then I’ll have to acknowledge the sheer horror of my reality.

I’d already vowed to cherish every single moment. We had. We did. We made a cute, little family in Kate’s colorful house. It was wonderful. I gave all of that up to save her, and she’s going to be eaten anyway?

No, I’m not letting that happen. I won’t. I can’t.

Voices filter into my mind, whispers in a distant wood.

Kate and the Hag Wytch, having a conversation. Or as much of a conversation as they’re capable of. The words “yes, sir”, like a taunt. That’s Kate’s voice, but it’s not her talking. I can hear the click and snap of the Hag Wytch’s lower jaw.

And then Kate is yelling and the Hag is shrieking back.

The notes of a familiar, sleepy lullaby. The thud of Kate’s body hitting a stone floor.

I sprint down the stairs, finding Brooks desperately grabbing at the pages of a grimoire, trying to turn them in search of a possession spell. He struggles a bit with the task, shaking his hands out and mouthing silent words to himself.

“ Fuck your feelings, Brooks. Fuck your feelings.”

He lifts his not-eyes up to mine; I don’t see Marlowe anywhere.

“ Where?” Brooks demands, signing the word as he stands up straight, lifting his chin. He’s as freaked out as Marlowe and I are, but he hides it well.

I put my fist in front of my mouth, tapping my index finger and thumb together. Then I use both hands to make the shape of a nest.

Brooks is unfazed, shadow antlers curling out of his hat. He turns and points with a claw in the direction of the stairs.

“ Find something living to possess,” he commands with sharp, austere movements of his hands. I’m fine with the cool, merciless authority in his expression. I need it. I’m a soldier following orders. My ears remain pricked, listening in for any sign from Kate. She’s quiet for now, but at least she isn’t dead. I’d hear it, if the Hag was eating her.

FUCK!

I don’t look at our corpses, strewn across the living room floor. I head down the stairs to find Marlowe on his knees beside the water in the cave that serves as our bathroom. He’s trying to catch a snake, but it keeps slipping through his fingers. I see the long, white spinal cord of a dead serpent wrapped around the cone of his hat.

If we can possess living things, then I’ll just find a man whose body and dick Kate likes, and I’ll take it from him. Whatever I need to do. We’ll get through this.

I walk right up to Marlowe, reach down, and snag the snake by the tail. He turns and gapes up at me, a disturbing sight with black holes in place of eyes.

“ How?” he signs as I concentrate on keeping the squirming beast in my hand. It strikes the air where my body should be, spitting glittery purple venom across the wood platform that Brooks and I built together way back when.

“ No emotion,” I mouth back at him, because my hands are too full of serpent to sign. That seems to be the key: the more emotional we are, the harder it is to touch shit.

“ Emotion. Christ.” Marlowe turns back to the water, lunging forward and submerging his arms up to the elbows. There’s no splash on his end, but there is one from the creature he drags up from beneath the stream. It’s a toad with a single eye on its forehead.

It hisses at him, and he nearly drops it, tightening his translucent grip and causing the toad to thrash. If he isn’t careful, he’ll kill it.

I steal a fire salamander off the wall for Brooks, keeping one animal in each hand. Concentrating. It isn’t easy. I feel like I’m fading away even as I struggle to hold onto this world. I’m convinced that I’m seconds away from falling into a chasm that I can never climb out of.

Death.

We’re all dead, but we’re in hell, so it doesn’t matter. Where else is there to go from here? We’re already at rock-bottom.

Brooks stares at the animals we bring back and frowns.

Kate is awake now, and having another conversation with the Hag Wytch that even my hat is struggling to pick up on. I don’t care what body I have to inhabit if it means getting out of here. Getting to Kate. We don’t have to be men in order to be a coven.

Two amphibians and a reptile will do just fine.

We just need to get to her. Proximity builds power.

“ If we inhabit living bodies, I think we can pass through that barrier.” Brooks turns and sweeps his hand out, lighting all of the candles in the room at once. The fire in the hearth climbs higher. Ingredients fall off the shelves and roll in our direction. His image fades, and he closes his eyelids over his non-existent eyes.

We’re low on magic. We’re functioning as an incomplete coven. We’re dead.

We’re dead.

The three of us, we’ve arrived at our worst fucking nightmare.

Brooks came to the woods in order to save his sister. Lost her. Failed her. Stole me into the Witchwoods. Then, I had the audacity to do the same to Marlowe. In turn, he became his worst self and stole Kate. All of that because we were afraid to die in these woods, to become trapped spirits. To be eaten by the Hag.

And now that we’re in love with the woman we all helped to ruin, she is about to meet the worst possible end while we suffer in here, tucked safely away inside this cottage for the rest of eternity.

We can’t fail. Not in this.

I pass the salamander to Brooks, and it takes him several tries to grab onto it. Together, we manhandle the squirming, screaming Witchwoods animals over to our own bodies. Bathe them in our spilled blood. In Kate’s blood.

It’s ghastly. It’s heartbreaking.

If I had the emotional space to rage, bet your ass that I’d be in a fury.

We take up our proper directions in the living room, the feet of our spirit forms planted inside our own corpses. Casting without Kate is … eh. Being dead doesn’t help either. But I have a pair of demon tails while Brooks is wearing antlers. Marlowe has wings. We’re still witches.

“ Kill the Hag Wytch, become the Hag Wytch! She eats everything!” That’s what those stupid, cryptic spirits are yelling now. I’d wonder how and why Kate is awake, why they’re awake. But there’s no time for technicalities. I don’t give a shit.

Brooks thinks for a minute, creating a spell on the spot with what little we have to work with.

“ We call on the great tree that lives in the North,” he signs, and Marlowe and I follow, copying his hand movements in a silent chant. Since we have no North with us, we have to ask her magic to join us. Depending on what she’s doing, this could work spectacularly or fail miserably.

Kate, don’t risk anything for the three of us. I can bear a lot of things, but I can’t bear that. I can deal with my spirit being trapped in this hell, but only so long as I know you’re out there somewhere, that you’re—

I choke, using my ghostly hand to grab at my throat. Something hurts. Everything hurts. Brooks stops signing, and then he falls hard to his knees. Lo is next. I’m somehow on the floor now, too. No idea how I got there. It happens so fast that I lose my grip on the snake, the ebony ribbon of its body slithering through the blood spilled across the cottage floor.

There’s a tugging sensation in my spine, and then my chest is so beyond tight, and my lungs feel like they’re bursting with fluid. I cough up blood, suddenly on my back and staring up at the ceiling. TORTUROUS AGONY. VIOLENT AND CATASTROPHIC.

My hands dig at my chest out of pure reflex, snatching the hilt of a knife and pulling. Blood spurts out of the wound, but it closes just as quickly. The pain is goddamn fucking blinding, but then it’s just … not.

I look down at my naked chest, the bone necklace soaked with red. My skin is scarred with our coven sigil, but lacking the bloody hole that ended my life.

I’m alive.

I’m alive.

So is Marlowe, struggling to push himself up to his hands and knees with white orchids sprouting from his hat. Brooks is already standing, wide-eyed and confused. The eyes on his hat swivel to the opposite side of his cone, like he’s peering through the walls of the cottage in search of Kate.

It’s me who’s up the staircase first.

I’m running so quickly that I don’t bother to look and see if Brooks and Marlowe are with me. If they’re not, they will be, and there’s not a single second to be wasted here.

I know exactly where I need to go.

The wolf ears on my hat prick up, and I hear Kate’s agonized screams coming from the direction of the Hag’s nest. I slice through the darkness, leaping over fallen logs, skirting past monsters and ghosts and nightmares.

“ Run, run, run!” the forest spirits urge, but I don’t need them or anyone else to tell me what to do.

Kate is in pain. Kate is screaming. Kate is suffering in these woods when she should be safe in my arms. I’m way past angry and well into a psychotic break. What did you do, kitten? What the fuck did you do? Because if I’m alive, then she’s up to some shit.

Glowing orbs float through the trees above me like balloons, decorating the woods with dazzling splotches of color and light. The hell are those? But they don’t matter. I don’t care.

Horrible sounds are emanating from Kate’s location: skin tearing, blood dripping, nails scratching at stone. Soft sobs. Choking inhales. A cry of hurt and regret.

The Pit comes into view, more of those orbs rising from the gore and disappearing into the dark. I ignore them, circling around the pool of red and climbing a fresh wall of vines on the side of the cliff wall. I drag myself up and into the tunnel of the Hag’s cave, knees slipping in blood.

“My God, Kate .” I claw my way over to her like an animal, fingers searing at the contact of her hot skin on mine. She’s alive. We’re alive. How is this even possible? But if we don’t do something quick, she won’t be alive for long.

I can feel that the skin of her back is split, all the way down her spine. She’s bleeding everywhere; we’re sitting in a puddle of it. I’m not sure how she’s still alive now.

Brooks goes to his knees beside her, yanking the salve from the satchel on his belt. He cracks it open and scoops up a generous handful. Marlowe helps me roll Kate over as she cries out, clutching wildly at me. I’m not sure that she even knows we’re here.

But then her eyes lift up and catch mine.

“Tanner,” she cries, and there’s so much relief and love in her voice that it breaks me. Kate has the audacity to smile. The worst that could ever happen has happened, more than once. And now she’s bleeding to death in my arms after all that and smiling ? “Oh, Tanner.”

“Tell me what’s going on, baby, hmm?” I’m trying to stay calm here, to keep Kate as relaxed and comfortable as I can as Brooks breaks out the needle and thread. He pierces the skin of her back with that curved needle, and her eyes roll back into her head.

Marlowe is right there, squatting beside us and tearing a charm from his hat. He cracks the marble between his teeth and leans over, pulling Kate’s lower lip down with a thumb. He presses his mouth to hers, spitting the spell between her lips.

“Swallow for me, sweetheart,” he chokes out, stroking his thumb down her throat. “It’ll help with the pain.” Marlowe’s rough voice sounds as broken as my heart feels, and our eyes meet above our dying wife’s head.

Nothing will ever be the same between me and him.

From this moment forward, our slate is wiped clean. I just want to be the friend to him that Dennis never was, and I know he wants the same. All we need is our North. All we need is Kate.

She swallows the charm as she comes to, blinking her way out of a daze as Brooks continues sewing up her back with a steady hand.

“You’re alive,” Kate slurs, reaching up a shaking hand, trying to touch my face. Her fingers graze my skin, too hot. Welcome, but hot. Feverish. Kate is dying. A triple resurrection spell doesn’t come cheap.

“What’d you do, kitten?” I breathe, holding her against me and knowing for damn sure that I’m never letting her go again. She hooks her fingers behind my neck, molds her soft body to mine, her lips hitting the side of my jaw.

“Protected you, my love,” Kate murmurs, and then she’s seizing wildly in my arms, forcing Brooks to drop the needle for fear of stabbing her with it. She spasms against me as Marlowe and Brooks try to help hold her down, so that she doesn’t cause any further damage to her torn and bloodied body.

“Her tongue.” Brooks’ words are calm, measured, authoritative. I follow them without thinking twice about it. With my teeth gritted, jaw clenched, I pry Kate’s mouth open. There are plenty of loose bones scattered across the floor, so I snatch one of them up and use that to keep her from biting my fingers off.

I check her tongue to make sure she isn’t choking on it, my eyes fixed on hers. I can’t see that honey-dipped hazel anymore, just the whites, red-veined with agony.

Marlowe is dead-silent, eyes black. He’s the opposite of Kate. There is no white in his gaze, just an endless pitch, that cool indifference that he wears as a mask to cover up the messy emotions writhing underneath. He holds her legs while Brooks puts his palms on her naked back, pressing her down and murmuring under his breath.

I copy the chant and Marlowe does the same, a healing spell on the fly.

My face is spattered with gore as Brooks’ careful stitches snap.

Flesh hits the walls, drips from the ceiling. Kate’s insides all over the stone. It takes me several blinks to get the blood from my eyes so that I can see what’s happening.

Wings.

A pair of wings are unfurling from her back.

Brown and white, etched with gold and silver runes.

They almost look … like the wings of the fucking Hag Wytch.

Ah, shit.

Kate has stopped seizing, but she’s still alive, breathing softly against me. She moans, curling her fingers around my bone collar as the boys and I stare at the new appendages in horror.

They start as two feathered lumps near her shoulder blades, opening up like fern fronds in slow-motion. The tips touch the walls, partially blocking my view of Brooks and Marlowe.

“What the fuck?” Lo asks, because he’s always the first to spit that question out. He pushes one of the wings down, so that he can look at me, and Kate moans. Marlowe gentles his grip, but he doesn’t let go of that handful of feathers.

Brooks … This might be the first time I’ve ever seen that man look unsure of anything.

“I have no idea.” He smooths a hand along one of the wet, bloody wings, and Kate groans again, trying to push herself up into a sitting position. I put my hands on her shoulders, intending on stopping her, but then … she bites down hard on the bone I put into her mouth, turning it to dust.

“Katelynn—” I’m not even done with those two syllables before her back is all healed up, the skin sucking itself back together like some seriously fucked-up claymation project. Kate lifts her head and, underneath all the gore and the blood, she looks healthy and whole and perfect.

I don’t trust it.

Now, I know this is her. Not the Hag Wytch. Not some sort of weird-ass Witchwoods thing. This is my Kate, my kitten, our wife, our North. Other than that, I’m confused. Brooks, too, apparently, which is as comforting as it is frustrating.

She sits back on splayed legs, in a puddle of her own blood, and she looks around at us with tears welling in those beautiful eyes of hers. Kate reaches out, cradling my face in one of her small hands. I reach up, wrapping my fingers fully around her wrist, chaining her there like I can keep myself from losing her with a single, stubborn grip.

We’re all panting, sitting way too close together.

In awe.

In love.

Reveling.

When we gave up our lives to save Kate’s, I wondered if Brooks might have a trick or two up his sleeve. But I also knew that when I said goodbye to Kate, it could easily be the last time. No, it was likely to be the last time.

These few seconds we’re having together now feel like a miracle. It’s seconds more than I thought I was going to get.

I drag her against me and press my mouth to hers, tasting blood and Kate and heat. She kisses me back, holding onto my neck in a way that might be uncomfortable if I wasn’t so far past the point of caring. I don’t care if she hits me, bites me, stabs me—I’m not letting go.

“The things you do, they don’t make my stalking tendencies any easier to resist.” I’m trying to make a joke, my lips brushing hers, but my dark humour doesn’t land. My voice cracks as I hold her against me, looking over Kate’s shoulder at Marlowe.

He wraps her waist from behind, occupying the space between her wings. He clings to her, his cheek pressed to her hair. His arms are flush against my stomach, trapping Kate between us. He squeezes his eyes shut, his breath shuddering and uneven. Lover boy was a great nickname for him. He lives up to it.

“Kate, what spell did you cast?” Brooks demands, but his angry words are laced with a primal terror that tells me that maybe, just maybe, he’s figured something out that Lo and I aren’t getting. Brooks crawls forward on his knees, taking her face in his hands. He kisses the blood from her lips before drawing back and searching her pissed-off expression with one of his own. “You do not sacrifice yourself for us—ever. Tell me what you did, so we can undo it.”

“No.” Kate is firm, fierce. She stares him down with that inner strength that I don’t think even she knows she has. “You undermined my sacrifice. Don’t you think that I would’ve just let you die and lived with Tanner and Marlowe if I could’ve handled that? Your answer is to condemn me to loneliness by losing all three of you? Fuck that.” She pauses, bringing her emotions under control. “But none of that matters. I love you guys. You changed my life for the better.” Kate looks frantically back in my direction, putting her hands on either side of my face. “Go back to the cottage and find a way to get out of here, to leave the Witchwoods permanently.”

“I want to know what you did,” Brooks demands, his eyes (face and hat) hardening, mouth pursing. Kate stares him down, shifting a little and causing her wings to droop. They hit the stone floor behind her, and she makes a strange sound.

Orbs drift around us, filling the dark tunnel with light. Luminescent threads pierce the walls, and toys hang from the ceiling. It’s an unsettling place, something caught in time and forgotten. A place for lost socks and lost hearts and a Hag Wytch that persists in perpetuity.

A Hag Wytch whose wings Kate is wearing.

I recall the words of the forest spirits: “Kill the Hag Wytch, become the Hag Wytch!”

Oh, man. This is going to be bad, isn’t it?

“I did what I had to.” Kate is staring at me again, fixed on me and me alone. She’s good at that, making me feel like I’m not just one of three. To her, we’re a family where each member is equally important. Each member is loved. Cherished. Treasured. She is a treasure, and she doesn’t know that either. She doesn’t understand that the world would be so much poorer for having lost a spirit like hers.

Brooks’ hat squints as he licks some blood from the corner of his lip and eyes her with no small amount of suspicion. Hell, I love the girl, too, but I don’t trust her right now either.

I lock all of my attention on Kate as Marlowe grips her aggressively, his shadow wings and her feathered ones twisted up together on either side of him.

“Start talking, princess. Or you go nowhere. I will sew myself to you.” Lo bites down on the side of her neck in a possessive way that leaves Kate shivering. Ah, shit, I should’ve thought to do that first. I take her lower lip between my teeth, making her whimper, and then I flick my tongue against it before I release her.

“What you had to, huh?” I repeat, and I shift forward, studying her. It feels like we’re sitting on the edge of a very thin knife. Either we’ll all fall together, or something is going to be severed. Don’t much like my odds either way. “Kate, where’s the Hag Wytch?”

Marlowe goes stiff, looking up and over Kate’s shoulder at me.

She shakes her head and gently pushes at us both. Not that it works. We keep hold of her in one way or another as she turns to look at Brooks. The pair of them face each other with me and Lo on either side of Kate.

“I need you not to be stubborn about this. Don’t fight me today, South.” She glances over at Marlowe, pretending to be annoyed with him, too. “West.”

His hat blooms with pink roses at the same time as his cheeks, and his face shatters. Teeth gritted. Expression desperate. Kate folds at the sight of him, forcing a smile in that way of people who know their time is up. A bittersweet farewell. I don’t think she realizes how hard I’m staring at her until her gaze shifts to mine, and she lets out a small sound.

“East.” Kate scolds me with hesitation, like something about me is making her nervous. “I need the three of you to listen to me.” Her wings are lying on the ground behind her, like they’re too heavy to hold up, blood droplets clinging to the waxy feathers. “I … I wasn’t sure that I’d actually get to see you before—Oh, God.”

Tears flow freely down her face as she peers up at me, reaching up to rub one of my wolf ears. That nearly breaks me, the soft brush of her thumb over the fur. I wrap my fingers around Kate’s wrist, my entire body taut with adrenaline. Whatever comes next, I’ll need to be at my best.

To get out of this intact, we’ll need a miracle. Either that, or an exercise in power, skill, and logic. I look at Brooks, and he stares back at me. Neither of us trusts that this is as happy a reunion as it seems.

“I freed the spirits from the Hag Wytch,” Kate declares in total confidence, turning back to Brooks. That sad smile of hers gets a little more real. Her hat grins, tongue flicking out to taste the blood on my cheek. To taste my emotions. I hope she can feel how determined I am.

No matter what she’s done, I won’t leave her to suffer. I will never stop fighting.

“Yeah, I gathered that,” Brooks whispers, but he’s as uncomfortable with this situation as I am. The eyes on his hat blink in random order and the biggest one in the center narrows to a thin, red slit. Our shadows play across the wall, darker splotches against an already dark tunnel.

Three of them hold up the fourth, buoying the horned woman above the rest.

I push my own hat brim up and out of my eyes, frowning down at Kate when all I want to do is laugh. Kiss her. Hold her. Fuck her. Convince myself that everything is going to be okay.

My gaze is fixed on hers as she blinks silver-and-gold eyes innocently back at me. Something ain’t fuckin’ right here. Something is off. I feel uneasy. I feel unsettled.

I warned her: there’s only one thing she can’t do, and that’s run away. I’ll be a golden retriever for her for the rest of our unnatural lives. I’ll do whatever she wants, whenever she wants. I’ll play nice with Brooks and Marlowe. But she cannot leave. Not in death. Not in capacity.

Kate’s eyes look like frozen tears, like she’s saying goodbye to everything and everyone in one fell swoop. My own pupils widen to take in the sight of her. My nostrils flare to catch her scent. The ears on my hat pick up the frantic beat of her heart and that small, nervous swallow in her pale throat.

Marlowe squeezes Kate’s upper arm too hard, and she curses, turning a dirty look on him. He stares back at her in frenzy and desperation. He isn’t thinking clearly. He’s too relieved to have her back. To be alive. It’s all too much, too fast.

I’m strung taut and anxious, waiting for the big drop.

“You’re always grabbing me,” Kate grumbles at him, and I can’t believe that Marlowe doesn’t get it. That look on her face … You had no issue with him grabbing you before, kitten. Why is it a problem now?

She’s going to run.

Our North is going to run from us.

I work my jaw, feel my blood getting hot. My free hand flexes by my side. I forcibly relax it. I’m casual. Everything is normal. I don’t suspect a thing.

Kate narrows her eyes on Marlowe, the pair of them staring one another down. They’re completely lost in each other, giving me time to work out a plan.

“Damn straight I am. I’m not letting you move out of touching distance for the rest of eternity.” His eyes blaze with anger and passion, a storm caught inside two dark-glass irises.

“Marlowe—” Kate starts, but he shakes his head, dragging her even closer.

“No.” His voice cracks, but he doesn’t let it show on his face. He holds onto this thunder in his words that has Kate shifting uncomfortably at the sound. “What you did, what we did. Those were both mistakes. I’m never allowing you to sacrifice yourself again. Either we do this thing, live this life together, or that’s it. So don’t you dare. If something happens to you, I’ll end it on my side, too.”

“Marlowe!” Kate shouts, jerking her arm away from him.

He doesn’t let go.

“No, Kate.” Marlowe doesn’t just sound mean: he sounds like he’s afraid. “I am Romeo and you are Juliet. I won’t allow our story to end that way.”

Yeah, shit, all three of us know that Kate is up to something terrible.

Because of us.

For us.

And that’s just not acceptable.

“I know what you’re worried about,” Kate whispers, relaxing her expression suddenly. She looks pleadingly into Marlowe’s eyes, and he draws back a bit. Doesn’t relax, but leans away like he didn’t expect this sudden switch in her.

She goes coquettish, leans in, presses her breasts to him. Those strange, bloodied wings drag across the stone behind her. I dig my fingers into the feathers of one, locking on.

“What am I worried about then, Kate?” Marlowe asks, flinching slightly when she puts her hand on the side of his face. He grits his teeth and then snatches her wrist in a tight grip. Kate looks over her shoulder at me, and I’m not sure if she’s aware of Brooks moving up on her left side.

His lips are in a flat, angry line. He shifts his gaze to me briefly, and we stare each other down.

She’s about to run, I sign quietly, and he gives an imperceptible nod.

“You don’t believe that this is a happily ever after …” Kate trails off with a gentle sigh, eyes shifting to the ground. She gives another little laugh, and it’s so melancholy and sad that it breaks my heart.

Don’t get soft on her, Tanner. This kitten has claws, remember? We’ve established that, and she will surprise the shit out of you.

We like to play games with Kate, but if she wasn’t on our level, this coven would’ve ended in bloodshed instead of romance.

“I might not’ve made the deal if I’d known I would’ve had to face up to you guys directly.” She purses her lips, like she’s trying to lighten the mood. It’s working on Marlowe, but Brooks and me? Fuck no. “You are going to be pissed. ”

“Pissed?” Marlowe blinks down at her. “Goddamn it, Kate, if you don’t—”

Kate laughs, and the sound stops Lo right in his tracks.

The spirits begin to drift toward the cave opening, drawn in that direction like they’ve been summoned.

My spine prickles with chills.

“I made a deal with the Hag Wytch.” Kate’s face whips up, eyes narrowing in on Marlowe. She looks over at Brooks, like she’s known he was gunning to grab her the entire time. “Basically, I’m taking over her job. That’s it. I’m the new Hag Wytch now.”

Everything goes silent.

I mean, fucking deathly silent.

“Excuse me?” Brooks’ green eyes were never that wide. His face has never been that white. “Oh, you better be prepared to explain yourself, wife.” He grips her arm, but her own anger flares up, surrounded by love and sorrow.

“How about the three of you explain yourselves? You didn’t give me a choice. This is what I want. It’s my turn to choose, to give the orders. You guys go back to the cottage and—”

Spirits rush out of the Pit all at once, a horde of ghosts that twirl together in a diaphanous mass. The orbs gathered in the tunnel shoot past us like a phantom bullet train, joining up with the rest. With Kate held between us, we stumble to the edge of the cave, watching as the undead parade streams through the forest in the direction of the Witch’s Tree.

Huh.

Brooks lifts the corner of his lip in frustration.

“All four of us will go back to the cottage— now .” Brooks drags Kate toward the exit, and the three of us work together to get her down without ever letting go of her. She falls into me, wings folded behind her, our noses brushing as she slides down the front of my body, her boots hitting mine instead of the ground. She stands on my much bigger feet, clutched in my arms.

We look at each other, and I know how mean I look.

Like I’m carved of ice.

Kate is afraid, and she should be.

Because she’s not fucking going anywhere.

“Did you think I was messing around?” I warn her as she wraps her arms around my neck and frowns back at me. “I will chase you to the ends of the universe, Katelynn Poppy.”

“Remember what we talked about before?” she breathes, so quietly that if I didn’t have my hat’s ears, I wouldn’t have been able to hear her. “If I asked you to let me go, would you?”

That’s an easy one for me to answer.

“No.”

Kate lets out a whine of frustration, but that’s too bad. We’re not back in the real world where I have to pretend to be civilized. We’re in the Witchwoods, and I will be as depraved here as I want to be.

“Quickly,” Brooks mumbles, looking up at the train of spirits above our heads like he doesn’t trust them. I take one of Kate’s arms while Brooks confiscates the other. Marlowe borrows my bow from my back.

Together, as one coven, we make our way into the darkness of the forest.