Page 25 of The Bane Witch

25

Delivery

“Sit!” I command Myrtle and Bart as we enter the cabin. I whirl around to be sure there is no one slinking in the darkness before I close the cabin door, making sure to lock the deadbolt. When I clomp to the living room, I see they have taken my command to heart. She is poised in the armchair like a scolded child; he rests on his haunches beside her, cowering.

“What’s the matter?” She watches me start to pace, eyes gliding left to right and back. “What’d he say to you to get you so shook up, our morally superior sheriff?”

I round on her. “Regis is not the enemy here, Myrtle. You better stop thinking that way if you want keep your little outpost in the woods for the venery.”

Her eyes widen, cheeks suddenly pale. She looks older, smaller, as if she has been shrinking day by day. My words have rattled her. “What are you talking about?”

I sigh. “The autopsy. He got Ed’s autopsy results.”

“And?” She leans forward, fingers clutching the rounded arms of the chair as if she might launch herself at me.

“And they found the amatoxins in his system. He knows, Myrtle. He’s been onto you for a long time, I suspect. He’s been watching you. After the man in the café and now this… Well, he’s put two and two together. And it adds up to you and me.” I feel suddenly dizzy and squat down, bringing my hands in front of my face as I try to breathe.

She sits back in the chair, thinking. “They can’t link the amatoxins to us. He’s got nothing.”

“They found Ed on your property! That’s something.”

“Circumstantial,” she quips. “Why would I kill Ed? Everyone in this town knows I loved that man. He’s family. I depended on him. It would be shooting myself in the foot. He wouldn’t be able to rustle up a single character witness against me.”

I fall back on my rear and drape my arms over my knees, looking up at her. “Even if he can’t prove it in court, this should scare you. He’s onto you, and he’s waiting for you to slip up. Somewhere there is a file with your name on it. Don’t you get that? It’s only a matter of time. You can’t stay here.”

“Like hell I can’t stay here!” she bellows. “I ain’t leaving. I was here before that man was born. This is my town, not his.”

I rub my hands briskly over my face. “This was a mistake. We should have let him die naturally.”

Her eyes narrow, lips puckering around her wrath. “Leave that man to suffer, to die cold and alone in a puddle of his own piss and blood all because Sheriff Busybody has a bug up his ass?”

I stare up at her, weary.

“Even if I wanted to, I couldn’t have left him out there. The cycle wouldn’t have let me.”

“Yeah, but I’m the one who killed him. So, you didn’t fulfill your cycle anyway.” All the food she prepared today comes back to me—the gooey casseroles and creamy pudding, the skillet potatoes with onions. What else did she put in those dishes? I shudder, fearful. “What have you done?”

Her eyes glance to the vacant firebox, a black hole in the room.

“Myrtle… what have you done?”

When they slowly drag to meet mine, her eyes are proud and contrary. They will not bow down or apologize. “Never you mind. It’s a little trick I learned a long time ago from my mother, a way to spread the toxin out over many doses to many people when you need to unload without a mark. The allure draws ’em in by the handful.”

I jump to my feet. “Are you kidding me? All those people in there tonight? Are they gonna die?”

“Sit down,” she demands. “No one is dying tonight. I fed on a blend, remember? To draw out the poison. Dilute that between so many servings of food and drink distributed to so many people, and the worst you can expect is a high demand on the town plumbing.”

“I don’t understand. I thought you said no bane witch has ever spared a mark?”

“They haven’t,” she confirms. “But over many centuries there have been a few near misses. Marks who died before the hunt was over, of natural causes or some unforeseeable mishap. Marks who suffered a fatal accident in the pursuit, usually because the witch bungled it, ending up in a physical fight for her life, using whatever was available to her. We’re not perfect, Piers. This is not a science. It’s magic. And sometimes magic is messy.”

My brow rumples. It sounds like the out my mother was looking for her entire life. “Why couldn’t we just do that then? Someone like my mom at least, who wanted a murder-free life?”

Myrtle chuckles, reaches into a candy dish and pops a peppermint into her mouth. “Ah, see, that’s the rub. It only works once. I mean, you can employ it more than once in your life, but not in succession. The next time I feed, were I to try it again, the consequences would be dire. We’re talking about fay magic, Piers. The Aos Sí. The n?kken. The People of the Threshold. The Hidden Ones. There isn’t a loophole, so don’t go searching for one. They’re tricksters, you understand? They think of everything before you can even blink an eye. They made us what we are. Embrace it.”

“I’m trying,” I spit out, but even I hear the whine in my voice. “It’s a little hard with Regis telling me stories about you killing men as young as twenty-one years of age. I thought we weren’t supposed to be savages. I thought killing an innocent was our highest crime. We’re supposed to operate by a code!”

She draws her hair over a shoulder, the long line of her neck like a column of marble, an exclamation point. “Yes, I remember him well.”

“So, you admit it?” I fume. “You did kill him. How could you? He’s practically a child.”

Her ire is immediate. It stings my eyes like a flash burn. “That boy you speak of had been raping his two younger sisters since the age of fifteen. The eldest girl was nine when he started, but the youngest was only three. He wasn’t sorry or even ashamed. He liked it. He liked it so much that he began raping the girl down the street, a seven-year-old whose mother dropped her off from time to time for babysitting. By the time he made it up here, he’d already abducted and raped two other young girls, one of whom died from a fatal infection of injuries sustained in his assault.”

I swallow my blame. I should have known better. Regis didn’t know the full story. How could he?

“They come in all shapes and sizes, Piers—the monsters we fight, the demons. All ages. All ethnicities. From all walks of life. But if you think for one second that I enjoyed stealing the many years he had left, then you don’t know me, and you may as well walk out that door right now. I fed for two weeks before I found the courage to do it. Two weeks wrestling with my own conscience, knowing that if I didn’t, more little girls would lose their innocence, their security, even their lives. So, you tell me, who should I have chosen, him or them?”

I lower my gaze. “So, what do we do now?”

Her lips purse as she draws a deep breath. “We wait.”

When I glance at her, she elaborates.

“We let him sweat it out, the sheriff. Let him think what he wants but stay out of his way. Whatever was between you two—don’t bother denying it, I have eyes, you know—it ends now. We’ll tell the venery Ed was my doing. That way, if Brooks does come for us, they’ll blame me. You can’t afford any more heat. With any luck, my cycle won’t begin again for some months, maybe even a year or more. Gives me time to sort my next move. But you have your mark, the Strangler. We’ll focus on sourcing new material for your feed. No more mushrooms.”

My mind flickers to her shelves in the bunker, lined with jar after jar of toxic herb, flower, berry, and root. “There should be something suitable in your hideout, right? You said I had a gift for concentration. Surely anything you have on hand would work. They can’t all be mushrooms, can they?”

She looks worried, and that worries me. “No, they aren’t all mushrooms. But we’re suspects now. I loathe the thought of using anything that grows naturally within a thousand square miles with your boyfriend so hot and bothered to put one or both of us behind bars.”

“He’s just doing his job,” I defend. “You have to consider what this looks like from the outside. He’s sworn to protect his community.”

“So am I!” she insists bitterly.

“I know that, but he doesn’t. How could he? You can’t expect him to just take your word for it.”

She rolls her eyes, lips tight. “Well, in any case, maybe I can get something carried in.”

“Carried in?” A shipping trail of toxic plant material sounds like a bad idea.

“Poisonous vegetation from a different region, hand delivered by another bane witch. It’s something we do from time to time for one another, inside and outside of the venery.”

“Outside of the venery? You mean—”

“A separate venery, another family of bane witches. I told you before, we aren’t the only ones of our kind.”

My mind spins as it takes this in, dissects it, tucks it away in aptly labeled boxes. “You said the only other venery in North America died out years ago.”

“And so they did,” she tells me. “But there are two in France, one in Italy, and another in Barcelona. Maybe as many as three in South America—Venezuela, Brazil, and Ecuador—but we lost communication with the Quito clan over fifteen years ago, so who can say anymore? And at least one more, vast as I understand it, in Eastern Europe, spread over several countries—Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, and who knows where else by now.”

My skin erupts in chills, dotting with goose bumps as the numbers increase. How many lives have we taken? How many more have we saved? “That many?”

Myrtle smiles, lips curving like a sickle. “Did you think there was only one angry, vengeful woman in history? Only one fée in the world, disguising herself as a hag, a woman of no consequence? Haven’t you learned anything since you came here, dear? Look around. The world is not what you think it is. It never was. There are more things hidden among the spheres than you or I could ever name. Start getting used to it.”

I HEAR HE R on the phone with Donna, Bella’s daughter, the next morning. “Do you think I wanted to do it? I didn’t know it was him until the final moments. I did what I had to—what my magic was calling me to do.”

She is silent for a moment, listening. Her face scrunches up, prickly with irritation. “Oh, don’t give me that, Donna. We’ve been over this. I know mercy killings aren’t everyone’s cup of tea, but I don’t make the magic. I didn’t create the cycle. We don’t set the rules, we just follow them. Remember? Take it up with our creatrix if you’re so sore about it.”

After a pause, her mouth drops. “Of course I realize it was a risk! You think I’m stupid? What choice did I have? I’d been feeding for days. And heaven knows he’s the last man alive I’d want to take. He meant something to me. But the magic already knew. It determined who my mark was, whether you or I or anyone else likes it.”

She nods as she listens, her face falling a little. “I couldn’t add to his suffering. I made a snap decision. Maybe it was the wrong one, but it’s done now. And it won’t happen again. You can be assured of that.”

Her eyes roll and her hand flops. “No, Piers had nothing to do with it. She wasn’t even here. Her hunt has begun. She was chasing her own mark.”

She nods impatiently. “Yes, yes. The one I told you about. It’s as we thought. Fitting, I suppose. But it will be tricky, even with her power. He’s no small fish—he’s dangerous—and she has so little proper experience yet.”

A pause followed by an audible inhale. “Well, of course they’re all dangerous. Don’t you think I know what we do? I just meant that he’s unique. Her class will be challenging. She’ll need support. That’s why I was calling you, in fact.”

She waits, pulls the phone away from her ear a minute. “We’ll need a hand delivery. We can’t rely on mushrooms with that sheriff breathing down our necks. It’s about as obvious as a fingerprint at this point. I don’t even want to get into our stores. If it grows on this continent, that sheriff will trace it back to us somehow. We need something from farther afield. Something they wouldn’t even know to look for.”

Deep breath in, slow breath out. “I don’t know what I’m going to do later. Let’s just focus on what’s right in front of us. The deadline wasn’t my idea, so don’t get testy with me. She couldn’t possibly meet it like this without one.”

Finally, the sag of relief washes over her. “No, I think Barcelona. It’s as good a place to start as any. Paris is so rigid. And those arum leaves Bryony brought us from Venice a few years back were old. Misty had to eat gobs of them. Of course, some manchineel would do nicely. But do you still have a contact for Venezuela?”

She nods emphatically. “Uh-huh, uh-huh. Okay, keep me posted. I’d send her on a scouting holiday, but I think he’d notice and then where would we be?”

She takes a deep cleansing breath. “Thank you, Donna. Hunt well.”

She hangs up the phone and stares into space, lost in a mesh of thoughts, eyes watering as the seconds tick by without a blink. Finally, she says, “Piers, stop hiding. If you have a question, come ask it.”

I step gingerly into the room. “I couldn’t help but overhear.”

“It’s okay,” she tells me. “There are no secrets in the venery. You can eavesdrop all you want.” Her eyes meet mine. “You’re beautiful; do you know that? So like your mother. She positively glowed when she was younger, all that soft yellow hair and flawless skin. Her eyes were big and round as headlights. Once she locked Patrick in them, he didn’t stand a chance, poor man. I know you’re well over thirty, but you look like a child standing there. At least to me.”

I don’t feel like a child, I feel like a crone in a fawn’s body. But it’s nice to be regarded as one, to be the recipient of maternal affection. Myrtle would have made an incredible mother. What a shame that she couldn’t raise her own son.

“It’ll all be fine,” she declares. “Donna is reaching out to our international contacts now to get something potent carried in for you. She understands what’s at stake.”

“Okay.”

It’s bright out this morning. Frost laces the windowpanes, and the chill air seeps into the room, drying out the cabin. Regis said the fall colors will be upon us in a week or two, autumn leaves littering the forest floor like confetti. I hope I have the Strangler by then. Once the snow and ice set in, my chances will wane to nothing. If I didn’t have the venery riding me, I could wait out the freeze, get him in the thaw. But they won’t wait that long. And neither will he. He will be gone by the first true snowfall, if his survival instincts override my allure. Off to find a place where he can stalk and kill without the natural elements getting in his way. Everything is riding on the next few weeks.

We walk over to the café together to open it up. Myrtle plugs in the waffle iron and pours our coffee, while I straighten the tables. We’ve barely had a chance to set the cereal boxes out when Terry bursts through the front door.

“Did you hear?” he asks, his gaze bouncing between us.

“Hear?” Myrtle lowers the dish towel she’s holding to the counter. “Hear what?”

“It’s the Saranac Strangler,” he says, breathless as if he ran the whole way. “He’s killed again.”

Myrtle turns to me, a look of betrayal in her eyes. Can’t believe I didn’t see it coming. Neither can I. Killing Ed must have interrupted my connection to the Strangler, crossed marks so to speak, because I never felt or saw this looming. I thought I had more time. That, or else he’s just that good. Either way, this is bad.

“Who?” she asks Terry.

He gulps air and sidles up to the bar. “Kathy Miller—Bill’s daughter.”

“Yeah, I know her,” Myrtle confirms. Her eyes slide over me, a nervous calculation in them.

“Daughter?” I ask, eyes narrowing on Terry. “How old was she?”

He peers at me as if he’s taking his first real good look. “Not so young. About your age in fact. Your height, too. Same hair color. Same build. Same fair skin. Could almost pass for you come to think of it. Heck, you probably even wear the same shoe size!”

My stomach rolls, threatening to eject my morning coffee.

“We get it, Terry,” Myrtle snaps. “When did it happen?”

“Last night,” he tells us. “In the parking lot of the Drunken Moose.”