Page 42 of The Arcane Taste of the Witchwood Boys (The Witchwood Boys #4)

Kate

We hold hands as we walk through the woods, skirting monsters with too many eyes and flowers that drip poison from their pistils. I’m nervous, but I’m not afraid. I can’t stop squeezing their hands, can’t stop staring at Brooks as he glances repeatedly back at me. The eyes on his hat are silently crying, even if he’s not.

“I still don’t believe this is happening,” I tell Tanner, my voice shaky. I’m so afraid right now. I’m afraid because if this isn’t real, then I don’t know what I’ll do when I wake from this dream. Hope is great until it’s dashed.

I’ve been living all alone here for months. Wishing for my coven. Convincing myself that they weren’t coming. Fighting my way through the gloom of grief and desperation. Emerging triumphant. Encountering them exactly when I needed them most.

We make a wonderful team, I realize. A truly wonderful team.

“You’re in trouble for burning that tree,” Marlowe grouses, but he can’t stop looking at me and making faces. Sexy faces. Blushing, too. He can’t stop feeling me up to make sure I’m here beside him. His palm is sweaty with nerves, and I love it. “Huge trouble.”

“How’d you manage to pull that one off anyway?” Brooks asks me, voice soft and gentle but prying.

I think about the thing that touches back, and I shiver. My hat’s tongue licks Tanner, and my own taste buds turn metallic with obsession. If he could sew us together, he might. Wouldn’t surprise me.

I squeeze his hand again, and he squeezes back, my ring digging into his skin.

A symbol of a union that was never broken. Our coven bond was always there, but it was like a whisper in the wind or a piece of string. A red thread of fate on our pinkies. Fate. It was fate, sitting in a forgotten corner of a forgotten forest.

“I’ll tell you later. It’s… a weird story. Apparently, there was a giant goat demon that lived in that tree. It was fucking horrifying.”

Brooks stops walking, and we all slam into his back.

“A goat demon? Like…” Tanner stops talking as Brooks whirls around and grabs onto my shoulders with both hands. Marlowe seems to think there’s something funny about that, his laughter edged with hysteria. He wouldn’t laugh at all if he’d seen the thing for himself.

“The devil or something?” Lo asks, but Brooks only shakes his head.

“No, it was Father Earth,” he whispers, and the very air around us goes still. I think about one of our earlier incantations, the one that opened the Witch’s Tree gate in the first place. We asked for help from Father Earth.

But some things are best left in the unknown.

Some things are better when they’re a secret.

And Father Earth, he’s older than the devil.

We stop talking about that. Stop talking at all. We walk close. Wary. Watching the woods.

When we come upon a well, this lone stone structure in the middle of the unforgiving forest, I shiver. It’s the very last thing I would ever touch in a place like this.

“Hop in,” Marlowe whispers to me, taking me by the arms and gently pushing me forward. “I’ll be right behind you.”

“Tanner, go first,” Brooks instructs, and Tanner reaches down to kiss my hand, dragging me behind him. He climbs onto the curved rock wall and takes a seat, staring down at pitch-black waters made of ink and shadow. I swallow down my fear, holding onto my coven and understanding in an instant what the phrase implicit trust means.

Brooks takes his own seat on the wall beside Marlowe, and the four of us lock hands.

“Ready?” he asks, and then we’re all scooting forward, edging toward the water, and falling.

There’s a splash, and I gasp as I hit the freezing water. It’s the last breath I’m able to take, a current dragging us all under and into the depths of an endless well. Something grabs my ankle, and I scream, bubbles exploding from my mouth as the world turns, flips, spins.

I’m dizzy, nauseous, and then I’m no longer going down but bobbing up.

My head breaks the surface with another gasp, and I find myself being hauled out of the well and thrown onto the ground. Marlowe is above me, soaking wet and dressed in leather, love, and bullshit.

He kneels down, covers my mouth, and offers up CPR that I don’t need.

“Stop that.” I bat at him, but he barely moves.

We’re both panting as he draws back and Tanner squats down by my head. Brooks is right there on the other side. The three of them offer me absolutely zero space as I sit up and look around.

We’re in the park.

We’re in the fucking city park.

There’s a well in the rhododendron garden to the right of the zoo. For such a small town, it’s weird that we have a zoo at all. The garden is pretty, but it’s nothing fancy. Just a few squares full of flowers, some gravel paths, and a couple benches.

I’ve never seen anything more beautiful.

I look back at the well we’ve just crawled out of, and I have to ask.

“Was… this always here?” I wonder, and the men laugh at me again. It’s rough laughter. Desperate laughter. It’s cocky and arrogant and annoying, and I love the sound of it. I fucking love it.

“You’re kidding me, right?” Marlowe asks, cocking his head to the side as water drips down from the edge of his hat. There’s a spreading puddle underneath us. “Do you know how much effort it took to open this gate?”

“I taught your friends how to use blood magic. Lucky for you they picked it up relatively quickly.” Brooks gestures at the well, but otherwise doesn’t look away or move back from me. He may never look away from me again for as long as we both shall live.

“This is what happens when you shack up with four stalkers, kitten.” Tanner leans forward to bite me on the nose, and I get goose bumps everywhere. Fucking everywhere. “We create a brand-new portal to hell, just to get at you.”

I grab onto him and I shove my tongue down his throat. Can’t get enough. Tanner tastes like blood and magic and— Ah. My hat is going to town with its own tongue, so I know precisely what he’s feeling, too. His relief tastes sharp, and his love is sweet. His desire is a spicy kick.

“That’s why I love you,” I admit, addressing all three of them with that one statement. “I love you and I… I can’t believe you did it. I just can’t fucking believe it.” I can’t stop touching them, kissing Tanner on the cheek. Kissing Lo on the mouth. Pressing my forehead against Brooks’.

“You’ll believe it when you see what we posted on the Internet, just to harness enough power to get here.” Brooks sounds off-put by that revelation, but Tanner and Marlowe are grinning at each other like they have their own secrets.

“Did you post porn videos? I swear, if you posted porn, I’m done. I’ll crawl right back into that well and live the rest of my life out in the cottage.” It’s a terrible lie, but I’m flushed, accepting a hand from Marlowe so that we can all stand up together.

Cars idle past, but nobody notices us behind the row of hedges.

“Would I do that to you?” Marlowe scowls, like my question is especially offensive to him. “I made vows, Kate. I am not the one who took my ring off, so stop acting like you have the moral high ground here.” He lifts his hand and flashes his ring at me, and I frown.

We’re dripping water everywhere, and I can hear it sloshing inside the wall. Considering its a solid, immobile structure, I do not want to know what’s making that terrible sound.

“Let me get this straight: you guys used my friends to create a new portal, and you helped gather energy by… posting half-naked photos online? Make it make sense.” I swirl a finger around by my temple, and my shadow does the same. My eyes narrow. “You say that you have few rules, and that I always break them. Guess what? Goes both ways. I explicitly requested shirts in public.”

“Tit for tat.” Tanner reaches up and uses two hands to adjust his hat, one wolf ear flattening in response to something only he can hear. “Start behaving, Kate, and so will we.”

A phone rings from somewhere nearby, and Marlowe sighs, bending down to dig it out of the bushes. He glances briefly at the screen, lips pouty, and then turns it around so that I can see.

Georgia is calling, and I have the idea that maybe I’m going to be in as much trouble with her as I am with the men. Carefully, like the phone itself is some grotesque Witchwoods spider, I reach out and snatch it up.

I close my eyes and answer the phone call at the same time.

“ Katelynn Poppy, I’m going to help those men put a leash on you next time!” Georgia is yelling, but possibly also crying. “Stop going into that goddamn fairy-tale forest, or I swear to God—”

“I love you,” I blurt before she can get too far into her rant. Hah. If the Witchwoods is a fairy-tale, it’s a Brothers Grimm Black Forest. “Tacy, Fernanda, Talia. Tell them that I love them, too.”

“ Don’t you dare,” Georgia growls, sounding an awful lot like Brooks.

I hang up the phone and, when she calls back, I respond with a text.

Sorry. We’ll probably be stuck in the house having sex for the next… three hundred years. See you at breakfast on Saturday?

I hand the phone back to Marlowe, and he pockets it, studying me with a suspicious glint in his black-casket gaze.

“What? Whatever it is that you’re going to ask, Kate, spit it out.”

My heart is pounding; my hands are shaking.

Brooks, Marlowe, and Tanner, they just stand there, wearing their wedding rings. Wearing their hats. Looking at me like they’re torn between fucking me and fucking me up. I’m going to get lectures about this for weeks. Months. Probably years.

“Can we please go to the brewery, get a nice IPA, and some sweet potato fries?” I plead, trying not to cry again. I’ve done enough crying to last a lifetime.

“Do you even know what the letters IPA mean?” Lo shoots back, wetting his lips and softening his expression a little. “You just got home and you want to go out to eat?” His soft expression gets a little cheeky there, as if he’s just thought of something. “Ah, so the Witchwoods grub isn’t as tasty as you thought it was?”

“Brooks wasn’t there to cook for me,” I protest as Tanner exchanges a look with the other men.

“What do you say, boys? Take our wife out for a beer and a burger? Sounds like a good time to me. We can take turns on her over the pinball machine or something.”

Har. This ass. Why on earth would he think any business nowadays has a pinball machine? Only… only the brewery actually does. Fuck.

“I want a Famous Hot Brown sandwich, and my hat will have the cheeseburger,” I declare, but my voice isn’t nearly as demanding as I want it to be. “We’re all done, right?” I ask, when none of them rush to answer me. “Like… it’s over? We’re safe? We’re good?”

“We’re good,” Brooks assures me, reaching out a hand to caress my cheek. He pauses, boots shifting on the gravel, all six of the eyes on his hat upturned at the corners as he smiles with his beautiful but stern mouth. Domineering. Filthy. I love him. “ Now we have time for all those other spells you wanted. Anything, Kate. I’ll give you anything. Everything.”

“Including removing your shirtless videos and pictures from the internet?” I wonder, and Tanner snorts, slapping my ass and making me gasp in faux outrage.

“No.” Tanner grins and flicks up the brim of his hat with a finger, shyly folding his wolf ears back for me and looking sheepish. Liar. He’s so smooth, knows exactly what persona to put on to get me hot. I love that, too. I love it all. “It’s an insane amount of power to harvest in a ridiculously easy way. We’re going to keep doing it.”

I moan, but how can I complain on a night like tonight?

I was willing to pay the price, but they came for me so I didn’t have to.

They came for me.

“Besides, we told you: Tanner and I like it.” Marlowe shrugs his shoulders, and Tanner chuckles like they’re best friends. “You know that us getting along only makes things worse for you, right?”

“Excuse me?” I repeat, grinning when Marlowe spins his finger in the air and dries our entire coven in an instant.

“Why don’t we compromise by grabbing takeout on the way home?” Brooks nods to Tanner, and I’m picked up and tossed over his shoulder in the middle of a half-baked protest. “Think of tonight like a belated birthday celebration, the only night we’re going to be nice to you for quite some time.”

“I can walk, you know,” I mutter, but he does. He knows it well and finds it hilarious.

“No sex for a year,” Marlowe declares, but that’s a bullshit lie.

These three idiots, they can’t keep their fucking hands off of me.

“I hate you guys,” I lie, biting Tanner in the shoulder as he walks us down the gravel path and over to where our truck is parked illegally against the curb. I can hear some peacocks, calling out to each other. One of them flutters up to land on the wall that surrounds the zoo, and I grin.

Humboldt County, baby. Banana slugs and good weed and hippies and tie-dye and redwood trees and Victorian houses, sand and salt and sea. The Witchwoods legend. Magic.

“ I go home now.” A forest spirit leaps from the roof of the well and into the water. But something slithering and feral crawls right out. The gate is still open, but at least it requires a leap of faith down a dark, watery tunnel to get through.

Take that, social media.

My husbands might be trending still, but at least their nipples won’t kill any more influencers.

“Hey Kate,” Tanner whispers to me, hands hot and big and possessive on my hips as he lifts me into the back seat of my own truck. “We’re going to be greedy with you for a while. You hear me?”

I hiss out a breath, but I have no idea what to say.

Yes. Yes, please. Oh my God, yes.

The guys and I eat our dinner on the back deck, listening to the wind in the trees and savoring the spill of light from the full moon. My dog lays patiently and faithfully by my side. My grandmother’s house sits creaky and quiet in the dark behind me.

I fold my arms on the deck railing and look out at the forest, closing my eyes and breathing in the salty fog. Tanner wraps me up from behind, resting his chin on my shoulder. Marlowe hops up to sit on the railing beside me, his hat a festive display of four-leafed clovers.

Brooks stands beside me, folding his arms the same way, poking me with his elbow.

“Did you doubt us, Kate?” he asks as he looks over at me and Tanner, watching me melt in the arms of another man and looking for all the world like he’s the one who came out on top.

I think about that for a long time, really giving myself the space to mull over that question.

Did I? Yeah, I did. Because I had to. Because that’s what the curse of the Hag Wytch was all about: making you doubt everyone around you, including yourself. I turn in Tanner’s arms, burying my face in the warm crook of his neck, inhaling his scent. Savoring it. His shadow tails curl around my leg like a hug.

“Let’s just say that I’m pleasantly surprised,” I grumble, words slurred against hot male witch skin. “Promise you won’t ever let me go.”

“Oh, so that’s how it is now?” Tanner teases, holding me with a frightening possession that I crave as badly as he does. These guys might come with red flags, but so do I. I’m as off-kilter and fucked-up as they are. “I thought you wanted a man who’d let you walk out the door?”

“You think we’d let you go ?” Marlowe asks with a wild laugh. “My parents are pissed that we’ve been skipping family dinners for the last few months. You need to make nice with your in-laws.”

“Oh, and I also need a contraceptive spell,” I add, blushing as I try not to think about the sheer terror of trying to get the Waverleys to forgive their new daughter-in-law for stealing their son away from them again.

I’ll have to come up with a really nice local wine to take over there.

“A contraceptive spell?” Marlowe echoes, like I’m crazy. “Kate, you don’t get one of those. You ran away from us again. Broke the golden rule too many times. Sorry if I just say… fuck no.”

And then Tanner starts to laugh. And Brooks laughs, taking off his hat to ruffle up his hair. Marlowe howls. They’re all laughing at me and it’s not very nice. Unhinged. Disturbed. Mental.

Not worried though. They’re off the cuff. A little broken. A bit tainted. But love and respect will keep me safe, and I trust them. Always.

“I hate you guys,” I grumble again, but it’s a lie, and I don’t even like that I said it twice tonight. “I love you guys.”

“We love you, too, North,” Brooks replies primly. “But you’re still not getting that spell.”

I’m so pissed, but they don’t stop teasing me.

“I want two babies, remember?” Tanner reminds me, and I slap him. He takes my finger between his teeth and gently bites down on it, eyes locked on mine. All four of our shadows hold hands and dance in an eerie, twitchy circle around us, like a carousel of horrors. Horns and antlers and tails and wings.

“Two for me as well,” Brooks instructs haughtily, and Marlowe grins.

“Don’t tell me breeding with my hot ass would be anything but a privilege for you,” he says with a cute little scowl.

“We’ll see,” I say with plenty of snark and sarcasm. “In about… ten years.”

“Not your decision to make.” Brooks, peering at me with too many eyes.

“Fresh out of sympathies.” Tanner, lifting his hands in mock surrender.

“Home,” Marlowe blurts, like something has just occurred to him. He’s looking up at the treetops and the hint of a moon beyond them. He laughs again, and it’s not bitter at all. It’s adorable and happy and sweet and full of love. “Yeah. Home. We are all home now. Finally. Fucking finally.”

We move as a unit toward the back door, the atmosphere sticky and hot.

I’ve dallied long enough. It’s time to face it all, tangled together in bed and completely vulnerable. I can’t wait.

Something catches my attention on our way inside.

It’s a toad with a single red eye, perched on the railing beside the door and staring back at us.

“ Well done,” it growls, voice reverberating through the planks beneath our feet and stirring fingers of cold wind in the trees.

It reminds me of the demon that came out of the Witch’s Tree. Haven’t we been seeing this toad for a while now?

Brooks narrows all eight of his eyes, steps forward, and snatches the toad up in his hand. He looks at it for a few seconds as Marlowe and Tanner get a little edgy, and I realize how little we truly understand about the Witchwoods.

Nothing.

We understand nothing.

Our Southwoods reaches up to remove his hat, drops the toad on his head, and then replaces it.

“See? Familiars are a thing,” I tease as he snags my hand in his, and Marlowe’s hat blooms with wildflowers that perfume the silver air of our full moon night.

“Rather have a dog than a toad,” Tanner admits, tugging the brim of his hat down to hide a sly smile. Flick barks his agreement, having no idea at all as to what’s going on here. Cute, but oblivious. “You got the short end of the stick there, Brooks.”

“Get your asses upstairs,” Brooks commands, putting his hand on the back of my neck and steering me in the right direction. “I want my wife, naked and willing in our bed. That’s it. No more time for games.”

“I thought I was banned from sex for a year?” I tease, and Marlowe smirks at me, flicking his tongue against a pointed canine.

“Breeding you is more fun. I like that punishment better.”

I pluck a flower from his hat and breathe in the scent, trying to ignore the goose bumps that spring up on my skin at the sound of those nasty words leaving his mouth. I’m not going to give them any babies for a while, but I’m down to play the breeding kink game.

“Cute that you guys think I deserve to be punished. Technically, we were all screwed without my heroic intervention. I had my birthday alone in the woods this year. Last year, I was violated by Marlowe. Don’t I deserve something nice?”

“Nobody likes an enabler, Kate.” Brooks opens the back door and Marlowe drags me inside by the hand. “If I let you get away with it this time, you might just do it again.”

“No matter where you go, I’ll find you,” Tanner assures me, grinning as he leans in close and obliterates my capacity for rational thought. “So go ahead. Fuck around and find out.”

“Goddamn, I’m an asshole,” Marlowe murmurs apologetically, but he’s not really. Not anymore. “Fine. I won’t breed you yet, and I won’t starve you for sex, but I’m definitely keeping you locked in the house for the next month. Maybe two.”

“Maybe six,” Brooks observes, using his foot to slide the back door shut.

“Forever works just fine for me,” Tanner agrees, leading the way up the staircase.

We barricade ourselves inside that old Victorian, surrounded by a neighborhood that’s foggy and foreboding. Together. Just the four of us.

North. South. East. And West.

A perfect circle. An endless loop. A coven.

And that’s how the disturbed, sex-obsessed witches lived happily ever after.

THE END