Page 40 of The Arcane Taste of the Witchwood Boys (The Witchwood Boys #4)

Kate

If the gate were still open, I’d have the future hope of finding a person as desperate as I was when the men died. I could pray for death. I could imagine seeing Brooks and Tanner and Marlowe, Georgia and Fernanda and Tacy, Stix and Ebon and Flick, in the afterlife. In the next life. I could at least hope for oblivion.

Instead, I have blackouts.

I’ll be sitting in front of the fire with a cup of hot tea, and then I’ll lose time. I’ll come back to a cold mug, wearing the blood of my victims and leaving a trail of carnage in my wake. Sit on the couch with the bloody fur. Stare into the flames.

Eventually, I get over myself and I wake up one day with this thought: I could be happy here.

I was happy alone before. I was. I had my painting business, and my house, and I had a routine I could count on. What is it that I always tell the guys? Not to be sorry if they’d make the same decision twice?

Well, I’d make the same decision an infinite number of times.

The men I love are free of this awful place, free of all the horrible memories they left behind. All of the souls inside the Hag Wytch were able to escape and move on, including Brooks’ sister. I’ve single-handedly solved violent and sex crimes in the county of Humboldt.

My friends are witches. The gate is gone so the world is safe. Influencers and YouTubers and people like John Gilley or Viv or Hoax.

And the Hag Wytch… I think about her as I push open the front door to diffused sunlight. It peeks through the heavy canopy as I step out for the first time on my own. The Witchwoods, this terrifying and foreign place, doesn’t seem so scary now.

I’m the villain here.

I’m the one with the power.

So I start to walk. I walk and I walk and I walk until I find myself standing in an orchard filled with glowing peaches. They all have mouths with teeth, but they’re also all asleep. I pluck one and stare down at it, taking a bite and feeling golden sweetness explode across my tongue.

I raise my brows.

It’s delicious. Fucking delicious. I start pulling peaches down from the branches, walking barefoot through knee-high wildflowers that shimmer with brilliant, white light. Pollen collects on the purple suede pants I found in Brooks’ mentor’s wardrobe.

I stuff all of the fruit in a sack, climb a tree with the Hag’s strength, and find myself above everything. The bright blue of a morning sky fills the world above me. White fluffy clouds. Gold light.

And as far as the eye can see, woods.

Hills and mountains and valleys—trees.

Everywhere, trees, trees, trees.

I take a breath, swing my wings downward and take off into the sky.

There are blue pools and fields of rainbow flowers. I explore caves with crystals in the ceiling and butterflies clinging to the walls. There are pits of bones with huge snakes curled around them. There are bats bigger than I am living in the narrow spaces between large rocks, hooked feet caught on the huge, twisted branches of wych elms.

The Witchwoods are beautiful, even if they’re asleep.

They’re also dangerous.

I find myself dying horrible deaths every now and then. Drowning in those blue pools. Slipping off those large rocks and breaking my bones. Crawling into that hollow log that Brooks once warned me about and ending up poisoned by the mushrooms that grow inside of it. Guess he was right about that one, huh? I even got my wings sucked into the wooden grates in our bathroom cave and drowned twice before I could pull myself out of there.

Twice. I drowned twice.

I shiver.

Every day, I work my hardest to be happy. I fight through every moment with a smile on my face, even when I’m crying. I take advantage of an experience that no other human has ever had—except for her. That poor girl I struck down in a nest of human hair and stolen trinkets.

Saving the Hag Wytch from a fate worse than death is the nicest thing I’ve ever done.

I feel the weight of that deed with every step, and I try to be proud. It’s hard to give yourself love, but there’s nobody else around to do it. It has to be me. If I don’t take care of my heart, who will?

So I let it happen.

I let myself feel proud. I give myself permission to be happy. It isn’t easy. Every day, it’s a chore. Every day, it’s the hardest thing I’ve ever done. But somehow, I get through it by putting one foot in front of the other. Normal people don’t get the chance to resurrect their family, and I did. I got extra time, and it was more than worth it.

I learn to hunt. To break down the meat. To cook for myself. I read all of the books in the cottage. I start writing my own.

The men remain a part of my life. I go through their things and get to know them the way I would’ve liked to if we’d had a life together. I smile as I find a journal in Marlowe’s room, flipping through it and studying his violent, angry handwriting. He was never meant to be in a place like this. He’s home with his family now though, isn’t he?

One day, I don’t know when, I’m out looking for mushrooms when I break my foot by slipping between two rocks. The pain is immense, but I’m used to hurting myself. I sit with my back against a tree and wait to heal, but nothing happens.

It’s an effort to drag myself back to the cabin, to find a jar of salve and apply it. Takes a few minutes, but I end up healing. Not because of my Hag powers, but because the men left a wonderful supply of medicine behind.

“What the fuck was that?” I ask my hat as the tongue laps some excess salve from my fingers, filling my mouth with the taste of mint. My shadow claps her hands and cocks her horned head to one side, pointing at me.

I’m not proud to say that it takes me an entire day to realize that my wings are gone.

And, on that same night, the night of the new moon, I don’t sing the world to sleep at dawn.

The Witchwoods stay awake. I don’t black out. I don’t change shape. I don’t kill anything. Don’t eat any raw flesh.

Sitting there on a stool in my cottage in the middle of the forest, I realize that I’m human again.

The curse … I thought I’d broken the curse when I burned down the Witch’s Tree. But I didn’t. I only just now broke the fucking curse.

I’m alone, but I’m happy here.

I didn’t have to pass the curse on; I had to beat it at its own game.

“Holy shit,” I whisper, gripping the stool and curling over myself with a sudden burst of laughter. My hat is licking my face and my shadow is dancing for joy in circles around me, sharp and wild and free.

I run up the stairs and fling open the front door to the sound of birds, the scampering of rodents with double tails. A scintillating world with a dash of sunshine. It’s still dangerous, Kate. And it is, I know that, but I don’t give a fuck.

If there are demi-cats peering at me from the brush, a ghost crouching in the foliage nearby, and a chorus of forest spirits, then I’m not alone.

“ Happy birthday, witch!” they sing at me, twig limbs clacking as they spin in circles, dancing for joy. “Happy birthday, human!”

Pine needles rain down from the sky like evergreen rain.

I’m twenty-three years old today.

It’s been six months since I made a deal with the devil and burned down that tree.

“Thank you,” I say primly, reaching up to adjust my witch hat with a sniff. “And since it’s my birthday, and since I’m no longer immortal, I say there’s no better time to start a garden.”

“ Ooo, mugwort. The witch will grow mugwort.” They point at me from the trees as I turn to head back into the house for an axe. I’ll cut down a tree and build a planter box—

Pain slams into me and I fall to my knees, clutching at my throat as I start to cough, choking and suffocating on blood as it comes up from my lungs in a hot rush. I spatter the ground in red as the forest spirits cheer.

I’m panting hard, digging my fingers into the moist earth. Something hard and metallic hits me in the tongue and I gag, spitting up three pieces of metal that hit the dirt in front of me.

One of them spins before coming to a stop and revealing a turquoise gem with a black triangle in the center. Marlowe’s wedding ring. I look up and there’s Tanner’s. Brooks’. I can’t breathe, reaching out to snatch them up.

Nausea and dizziness hit me again, and the coughing starts back up. Black blood oozes from my lips, spilling spirits out of me like I’m expelling tar. I spit up the ghosts of everyone I’ve ever eaten. I even hack up the mens’ shadows.

An antlered nightmare stretches twenty feet in the air opposite me. One with wings unfurls like a snake and stretches the wings of a bat like a black cloud against the red-brown tree trunks. The last wraps his pair of double tails around the neck of my horned one, and I let out a sob. My hands slap over my mouth as I feel all three of those shadows attach themselves to me.

I stumble to my feet and into a small patch of sunlight, looking behind me to see that I’ve now got four shadows stuck to my heels and cutting through the yellow light of the small clearing.

“ Congratulations! You broke the curse!” The forest spirits are bouncing up and down and laughing. They’re laughing at me. I laugh back. I laugh until I’m crying and then until I’m just crying.

The shadows surround me, smothering me in magic that smells as familiar as those beds I refuse to wash. I will never wash them. Never. Fucking never. With a sniffle, I swipe my arm under my nose and get my shit together.

There’s nobody else out here but me, and I didn’t go through all that just to starve.

“Huh.” I encourage all four of the shadows to coax living wood from the earth in front of my house, creating an intricate wooden planter box out of nothing. I exhale sharply.

All I need is my magic. Brooks told me that his mentor built that cottage all by herself, without a coven. Whether she built it before or after she was in a coven with the previous Hag Wytch, I don’t know. Doesn’t matter.

I’ll fill it with dirt, plump it with vegetables, and I’ll do it with my shadows, my hat, and my hands.

I’m alone, but I’m now a garden witch in a fantasy forest.

There are worse fates.

No there’s not.

I miss you guys so much. I love you so much. I will never not think about you. That’s what’ll get me through this to the end and, hopefully, to the other side so we can meet again.

With a deep breath, I roll up my sleeves and get to work.

Happy birthday, Kate. Happy fucking birthday.

I’m outside working in my garden when a cold chill pricks the back of my neck. I sit up, fingers resting on the waxy leaves of a Witchwoods strawberry. What was that? I search the clearing in front of the cottage, but I don’t see anything.

Doesn’t mean there’s not something there.

I have to be careful not to get caught up in how beautiful everything here is, how exciting it is to exist alongside monsters and spirits and ghosts. I’m so lonely that any company feels like good company, and that’s not a healthy attitude to have in a place like this.

For the last few weeks, everything’s been fine. Great. I’ve been eating well and sleeping peacefully. Taking turns in Marlowe’s bed, Tanner’s bed, Brooks’ bed. Trying to figure out how to recreate the memory spell without their blood. It’s been as good as it could be without—

Something nails me right in the neck. I don’t see what it is. Don’t want to know what it is. But it got me. Goddamn, it got me good.

I’m bleeding as I stumble into the cottage, turning and desperately trying to drag the door shut against an attack. Stay calm, Kate. Think like the boys. Act like the boys. Nothing fazes them. They don’t let anything faze them. I don’t know what’s trying to eat me today, but that’s life in the Witchwoods for you. Something is always trying to eat you here.

I just need to get safe.

Need to close the door.

I can’t get it fully closed. I’m too weak. I’m on the ground with one leg outside the cottage, my bloody hands slipping on the floor as I try to drag myself to safety.

I’m bleeding to death, holy fuck.

The door is forced open by whatever it is, and I let out a horrible scream as it shows its face.

It’s one of the ghosts I spat out. It’s a man with no eyes, leering at me. It’s my actual worst fucking nightmare—a pedophile/rapist/murderer ghost.

Shit.

The ghost gnashes his teeth at me, dragging me out of the house and down the front path that I’ve been building. Cute little wood slices as stepping stones. I summoned them, so they’ll never decay or get weather-worn. Adorable and very practical for a forest witch.

There’s a full moon tonight, silver light cracking through the evergreen boughs.

The thing about the Witchwoods is this: spirits can choose to stick around here if they so please. They aren’t forced to move on the way they are back home. I’ve been living in this forest with all of the horrible human monsters that I ate, and now… seems like they’ve decided to haunt me.

To pay me back for what I did to them.

I’m screaming as my attacker drags me into a clearing filled with dozens of other ghosts.

Is there a spell to get me out of this? To heal my wound? Can I fuck this spirit up? I don’t know if I have answers to any of those questions, but I can’t let it end like this, can I?

Not sure if I have a choice in the matter.

A silver arrow pierces the skull of one of the ghosts, knocking it into the trunk of a tree and pinning it there with the clack of bone charms tied to its shaft. It squirms, shudders, and then falls still before fading away to dust. Another arrow hits the one that’s holding me in the center of his face.

A volley of arrows, like a team of archers is on the other side of this foliage.

I’m dying, but I’m not immortal this time.

With my cheek pressed to the cold earth again, I hum a final time.

Tonight, under the brilliant white light of the full moon, somebody hums back.