Page 34 of The Bane Witch

34

Azalea

When she steps into the café, she seems to absorb all the light. My heart speeds up in my chest, and it must show on my face, because Regis slowly lowers his coffee cup and twists to look over his shoulder.

She is radiant in a Barbie-pink trench coat, low-rise cargo pants, and patent leather combat boots that lace up to her knees. A devilish smile coils across her raspberry lips as she sees me, tucking her wild blond hair behind an ear. “I came dressed for the occasion,” she says, approaching the bar I am positioned behind, a forgotten ladle of waffle batter in one unmanicured hand. “Oh,” she adds, slapping a fistful of foxgloves wrapped in brown paper on the counter. “And I brought these.” She looks down at Regis where he sits on the stool beside her and smiles coolly. “Hello.”

I am tempted to reach over and close his mouth. “Sheriff Brooks,” I say instead. “This is my cousin Azalea. You remember I told you I’d have some family coming in for the holiday?” Halloween is just days away.

His eyes slide to mine, and he suddenly regains his composure. “Ah, yes, that’s right.” He clears his throat and smooths the shirt of his uniform. “How is Myrtle doing?” he asks casually, like I taught him.

Azalea beams a killer smile at him. “Wonderfully, or so I’m told. She’s living with our aunt in Boca Raton, soaking up the sun and mai tai after mai tai on the beach.”

His expression falters—likely the uncanny image of Myrtle Corbin in a bathing suit on the beach—but he manages to get his bearings. Donning his hat, he smiles at me. “Well, I best be going. Got a vandal at the local high school I need to see about,” he says easily, but his eyes relay the fear he feels at her nearness, the proximity of her power not just to him but to me.

“See you around, Sheriff,” I reply, hoping he picks up on my coded reassurance.

He tips his hat brim to us and saunters out, but I notice he sits in his patrol car a beat too long, backing up slowly and rolling down the road below the speed limit. He won’t go far, of that I’m sure. Not that there’s anything he could do to save me. The thought sends a nip of alarm coursing down my spine. It was the same with Emil—he wanted to protect me from Henry, but in the end, I had to save myself. And send the handsome investigator back to Charleston with my blessing. “Hunt well,” I told him before watching him drive off.

I drop my ladle and gather plates from the tables, ushering Terry and Amos out the front door until lunch, much to their consternation.

When the café is finally empty, I turn to her. “Are you ready for this?”

“Are you?” she asks.

I nod briskly. “As I’ll ever be.”

The woods are shadowy as we walk, leaving the café, the crescent of kitschy cabins, and the illusion of safety behind. Despite the sun and snow, they are haunted and deep, full of secrets, but the cold feels fitting, a reminder that life is fleeting, precarious, only a breath away from being snuffed out entirely.

I’m glad they sent her, out of everyone. I liked her from the beginning, I realize. For someone who doles out death like a bartender slings cocktails, she’s so full of life, more vivid than anyone I’ve ever met. And it’s not just her clothes. It’s something nestled inside her—the magic, sparking like live wires.

“I hear you met someone from the venery in Barcelona,” she says, making unnecessary small talk.

“Emilia,” I tell her with a smile. “She was…”

“Magnificent?” Azalea asks like some kind of vigilante fangirl.

I laugh. “Yes, and terrifying. I understand now how the ancient Greeks must have felt in the presence of one of their goddesses. Too beautiful to be real, too capricious to be trusted.”

She bumps my arm. “Oh, don’t give her too much credit. She’s still just a woman.”

“None of us are just women,” I reply as Bart bounds toward us from whatever hole he was digging in the forest, lips and ears flapping. He regards Azalea with the dazzled awe for a movie star and the healthy respect for an adder, prancing around her with excitement but careful not to get too close. I watch him, curious. “Are you feeding already?”

“Of course,” she’s quick to answer. “I wanted to get an early start.”

I breathe deeply in through my nose and steady my nerves. I knew this day was coming, but somehow I still don’t feel prepared. After several long minutes in silence, I tell her, “It’s just a bit farther.”

She nods but doesn’t speak.

At last, we come to stand before a colony of zealous ferns, thicker here than I’ve seen them anywhere in these mountains. Among them, clusters of mushrooms in every variety surge from the earth, like a garden of fungal delights, the last vestiges of Myrtle’s magic. Somehow, it all seems more fitting than a churchyard cemetery or an urn on someone’s mantel. “Here we are,” I tell her.

She takes a quiet step forward and kneels, laying the foxgloves among the ferns as she bows her head. After a moment, I realize she’s crying.

“I’m so sorry,” I tell her, squatting beside her on the ground. “She was special, and she deserved a better ending than what she got. I miss her every day.”

Azalea wipes at her tears. “She was the best of us. Truly.” She gets to her feet, and I rise beside her. “She would love this, you know,” she tells me. “It’s exactly where she would want to be.”

It’s my turn to wipe away a stray tear. “I can’t say I feel good about it—not yet—but it does feel right, in a way.”

Azalea places a hand on my arm. “You did the right thing,” she says in earnest. “The hunt must always come first.”

“Thank you,” I tell her. “That helps.”

“That’s precisely why Great-Grandma Bella decided to spare you,” she says as we turn back. “Well, that and the enormous aptitude and courage you showed in dispatching two marks of such a challenging class in the same day, all while keeping that sheriff under your thumb and squashing any suspicion. It’s remarkable how far you’ve come, Piers.”

My shoulders sag with relief. Even though I’d been told as much already, I wasn’t sure until this moment whether I could believe it. I did exactly as I promised Myrtle, calling the venery myself and telling them what happened before they saw it on the news. I confessed to Myrtle’s untimely death at the hands of the Strangler and to burying her in the woods so I could hunt him down. The only part I kept to myself was our fight, how in my rush to protect Regis and the fever of the hunt, I’d left her vulnerable. In the end, it was Myrtle’s own words that convinced me I didn’t need to share it— would you really leave that man in the world to take more innocent lives? If I told them I’d attacked her, however unhinged the hunt had made me, however unintentional her death, they’d come for me. And it would all have been for nothing—her investment in me, her loss. Countless men would continue to hurt those weaker than themselves, men she and I should have put down. In the end, I believe this is how she would have wanted it.

“I owe it all to Myrtle,” I say, our steps slower, more relaxed. But I can’t help but seize on Bella’s implied veto from their gathering. “I take it the conclave didn’t go completely in my favor.”

Azalea laughs. “It wasn’t all bad. Rose and Barbie will still need some convincing. You’ll win them over with time. But everyone else was in your favor, believe it or not. Well, except for Lattie, who withheld her vote. But in the end, it’s always Bella’s decision. And she was on your side from the beginning.”

“You voted for me?” I ask, peering at her through my lashes.

She stops walking and turns to me. “We may be witches, Piers, but we’re still human. We’re not perfect. We make mistakes. No one expects you to get everything right, they just want you to understand what it can mean when you don’t. And to try your best, for all our sakes.”

Muscles in my stomach that have wrought themselves into knots since Myrtle’s death finally begin to unwind. “Now what?”

She lights up, taking my hands in hers. “You’re a bane witch without a post.” Her eyes arch overhead and back to mine. “And this is a post without a witch.”

“You don’t mean…”

“If you’ll have it,” she tells me, grinning.

“Of course,” I manage to spit out.

“Good,” she says, dropping my hands. “This is what Myrtle was grooming you for, after all. It would make her proud. And nobody can handle that sheriff as well as you can apparently.”

I blush despite myself, despite the caution I feel discussing Regis with her, the protectiveness I have around our secret relationship.

“I wondered if that was the case,” she says quietly.

When I start to back away, she reaches for me. “Relax, Piers. I’m not here to hurt you. To be honest, no one much cares how you keep him happy so long as you do and we get to keep this place in the venery. But you have to know, your mother’s arrangement still stands.”

“My mother’s?”

“If he turns, if he decides to blame you or us for any reason, if at any time he becomes too great a risk, it’s your duty to protect the family first.” She’s not smiling anymore. This contract is binding.

I nod. “I won’t risk the venery,” I tell her, and I mean it. I love Regis, but I have a purpose now. We all do. And I won’t let anyone take that away from us. Fortunately, Regis loves me. He has no desire to stand in my way. His only focus, apart from protecting this community at my side, is protecting me.

“Excellent,” she says. “Because it looks like I’ll be staying for a while.”

My eyebrows raise dramatically as I cock my head in her direction. “Pardon?”

She shrugs, sniffs like it’s no big deal. “You could use a little more training, and I could use a place to lie low.” Before I can panic, she goes on. “Nothing to worry about. I’ll be back in Portland before the snow melts. It’s just smarter to not be there when the news breaks on my last mark. I was careful, covered my tracks. But he’s a big fish, bound to get a lot of media attention. It’s purely precautionary.”

“The news?” My eyes round as I look at her. “Who did you kill?”

“A Hollywood mogul with a habit of date rape.”

“You mean a Weinstein?” I ask, incredulous.

“Worse,” she declares as we start forward again. “If you can fathom it. This one liked to keep sex slaves in a secret basement room—the last one he tortured for weeks before she finally succumbed to her injuries.”

I can feel my face going green.

“Besides,” she says brightly, the snow beginning to fall in soft flurries around us, freckling her trench coat in ice. “I heard you might be able to use my help with your latest mark.”

My latest mark. As much as I’d accepted my fate, it was something I didn’t like to think about. It had only been a couple of months since I’d taken Henry and the Saranac Strangler. I thought I’d get more of a break before another predator began to prick at my magic like a cactus needle. But a couple of weeks ago I began to sense him, like a bad dream that hangs around after dawn. And then I caught wind of the news reports. He likes to hang his victims in their own homes, from ceiling fans, wooden beams, even towel racks, using whatever is at hand—belts, tights, bras, bedsheets—but his favorite is shoelaces. He’d been active in the New Jersey area for weeks, only recently going underground, silenced for reasons no one can understand. Except me. My allure is drawing him north. And when he gets here, I’ll have work to do.

“You mean, hunt together?” The idea had never occurred to me, but it would be a relief to not have to face this one alone.

“Unless you think I’ll cramp your style,” she’s quick to say.

I take in her glowing hair and immaculate complexion, the dark wings of her eyeliner and the uncanny shade of her coat, the boots that must have cost her twelve hundred dollars, and laugh. “You’re the last person who would cramp anyone’s style,” I tell her. “In fact, I’d like the company. Bart’s not much of a conversationalist.”

Just then, an intoxicating stench finds me like an arrow in the dark. My nostrils flare and I make an abrupt left, stooping to pull a golden-orange umbrella-shaped mushroom from its unseasonably sprouting pod. “Autumn skullcap,” I tell her as I hold it high then gobble it down. “He must be close if it’s feeding time.”

Tonight, I’ll call Regis from the cabin, tell him to keep his distance for a while.

Azalea hoots with enthusiasm. “Well, I’ll be damned. Seems I’ve arrived just in the nick of time.”

I grin like a child, a little mad with the energy flowing through me, the snow caking the ground around us, the sun high overhead, trees dancing in the wind as the forest bends to our will. Inside me, the witch is stretching, uncoiling her limbs, ready to make a new notch in her belt.

The hunt is on.