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CHAPTER NINETEEN

Sawyer nearly leapt out of his skin as I slammed the bedroom door behind me. He certainly yowled loud enough to wake the dead.

“Shhh,” I hissed, spinning to face the door and uttering the Befuddlement Spell.

“Gah!” the little tomcat yelped. “A little warning next time?”

Without replying, I raced over to the settee only to find my foraging bag on the floor, half its contents strewn across the rug. My knees thudded against the rug’s thick weave and I hastily scooped up my witchy bits and bobs to replace into the bag.

“Hey! That’s my bait!”

“Did they take anything?”

“They tried,” Sawyer said proudly. “But they were unsuccessful.”

Ducking my head, I slipped the strap over my neck and tugged my braid free. Then I surged upright and yanked open the bag for the cat.

“Don’t we need to talk about what I discovered? Why are you acting so crazy?”

“Because I think I really messed up. We need to get to the dungeon. Right now.”

The tabby cat leapt into the bag and I raced out of the room. Then I finally risked it. The weakest ping I could manage with the Scouting Spell, a feather-like brush against only the entities in the castle.

Mrs. Bilberry in the kitchen with a handful of woodchucks. More woodchucks in the passageways. The bear chained in the great hall, his signature flaring like a torch to my inner eye. The wight in the cloch, a strange flickering light.

Innumerable mousey spies in the walls, but no Stag Man. No Brothers, either.

And a dozen entities corralled in a subterranean chamber that shouldn’t exist.

“Meadow, what’s going on?” Sawyer whispered up from his hole in the foraging bag. His large black pupils were dilated, and it wasn’t entirely due to the lack of light from the twilight-darkened hall. His fur stood on end, his body tucked in tight.

“You can still read my lips, right?” I started down the east wing at a brisk trot, my soft leather boots muffling the sound.

“Yeah.”

“Then watch.”

Silently, I mouthed everything that had happened since arriving at Alder Ranch. The soundless communication allowed me to pause at intersections and listen for the sounds of pursuit without pausing in the recounting of my tale. Nothing but the muted noise from the kitchen stairwell, the groan of old stone as mortar crumbled, and the chill wind rolling through the empty halls. I’d kept the fox-fur coat, despite its eye-catching color, and snuggled the collar tighter against my throat. Keeping to the shadows as best I could, I moved swiftly through the castle and arrived at the dungeon right as my story concluded.

A strangled noise was all that emanated from the foraging bag. Undoubtedly, Sawyer had a thing or two to say to me, maybe even an entire tirade, but the young tomcat wisely knew to keep his mouth shut. For now.

The black door of the dungeon proved just as easy to open as last time; I tsked at the Stag Man’s hubris. Closing the door behind me, I let the faint blue light emanating from below guide my steps down the spiraling stair.

Brandi blinked wide brown eyes at my sudden appearance, mouth dropping open in a subdued gasp. The hedge witch was a little thinner than when I’d last seen her, still dressed in that ridiculous crop top hoodie and denim short-shorts and those high-heeled ankle boots that she still masterfully teetered on despite the uneven floor.

“You’re back.” She darted a look at the empty stairwell behind me. “A-are you . . .?”

“I’m awake, but this isn’t a rescue mission and I’ve got no time to explain.” I yanked open my bag. “Out you get, tomcat.”

Sawyer jumped onto the workbench, immediately tensing. His gaze swept from the assortment of dark glass bottles to wicker baskets full of dried flowers, feathers, and broken shells to the miniature cauldron Brandi stood over with her golden stirring spoon poised above her latest batch of Caer powder.

“Sawyer Blackfoot,” the hedge witch exclaimed.

“Why not say that a little louder and get us all caught?” the tomcat snapped. Tail lashing, he gave me a little hiss that was two parts stress and one part irritation. “Riddle me with fleas, Meadow! You basically spit in Ossian’s eye and then scurry off to his personal lair? Are you trying to get us caught?”

“This is the last place he’d ever think to look for me and so it is—at present—the safest. But it won’t stay that way for long. We have to—”

Sawyer growled as I cut myself off to the sound of scurrying feet racing overhead. Large feet .

“Hear that at least three times a day,” Brandi dismissed, returning to swirling the contents of her cauldron and giving Sawyer a surly look under lowered eyelashes. “And just because we have history doesn’t mean I’ll out you to that tyrant.”

“Must be a nearby servant passageway,” I muttered. A tense glance at the stairwell revealed no shadows or vermin with glowing blue eyes.

As if to echo the scurrying feet, an odd thumping sound originated in the cell behind Brandi, followed by a buzz of large wings.

Looking beyond her, Sawyer’s ears pricked. A velvety brown rabbit the size of dog once again thumped her hind leg against the stone floor of her cell to gain his attention. “Poppy,” the cat exclaimed. “Flint!”

There was no sign of Ricky.

Sawyer spun a wild look at me. “We have to—”

“Set them all free and let Ossian know we were down here, or worse, think it was Brandi?” I didn’t look up from where I was already rooting around the worktable. “No.”

The hedge witch shuddered. “And I’ll talk,” she said, unashamed. “If he hurts me, I’m sorry, but I’ll talk.”

“See?”

It was a callous decision, I knew, but there was no time to be the compassionate hearth witch I’d vowed to become after fleeing the manor, only the one trained by battle witches to do what must be done. And that meant loading up my foraging bag with anything I could use against the Stag Man.

“By all means,” Brandi snorted, “help yourself.”

No, Meadow , a little voice chastised. You must make the time.

The vial of pokeweed juice slid back into its rack unsampled, and I turned to face the hedge witch. She flinched as I raised my hands, hefting the golden stirring rod as if to fend me off. A fearful whimper slipped past her trembling lips as a soft green glow came to my palms.

Cupping her cheeks, I looked her right in those guarded, scared eyes and whispered, “I’m sorry for before. Brandi, I’m so proud of you.”

She sobbed once as my healing magic flooded into her. Sadly, not enough to do much, lest Ossian noticed, but enough to take the edge off her achy joints and blistered feet and add a little thickness to her pure white hair.

“I couldn’t have made it this far without you,” I told her, “and I need your help again. We’re almost done.”

“Wh-what do you need?”

“Everything.”

“ And something to help our friends in these cages,” Sawyer insisted. “What about that spare vial of witch’s butter sludge you saved? Would that help here?”

I could’ve kicked myself. Couldn’t see the forest for the trees. But I had a little cat who could make up for my deficiencies with his strengths. “Yes, Sawyer! That’s brilliant. Find some autumn olive tree bark. And some sweetgum balls.”

“I think I’ve got those around here somewhere,” Brandi said, an excited note lifting her weary voice.

As they dug through the mess on the table, I grabbed a hefty pinch each of rosemary and blue lavender and a small hornet’s nest from a basket absolutely full of them. After briskly rubbing all three of them together between my palms to mix and powder down, I threw it all up into the air like confetti and made sure I spun around three times while it rained down on me. Shrouding powder, a cousin of masking sand. Now I had more of an edge against Ossian finding me than just “I hope he doesn’t think to check for me here.”

“Found the spiky balls of death!” Sawyer said .

“And here’s the bark.” Brandi lifted a burlap sack from where it was stored under the workbench.

Two handfuls of autumn olive bark and three sweetgum balls went into a spare mortar and pestle to get ground down before I added the remainder of the ward-dissolving sludge. What resulted was a concoction resembling wet sand.

“Sprinkle this thinly at the base of every cell.” I set the mortar down and put the handle of one of those gold stirring spoons into Sawyer’s mouth. “But not in a continuous line. Leave spaces so it looks like lichen or mold growing.”

As the tomcat worked, the hedge witch and I began the frantic process of loading up my foraging bag. Anything and everything of value went in: the supplies I’d need to counteract the stronger effects of the toirchim tonic, the ingredients to make more masking sand, a vial of undiluted Caer powder, and anything else that struck my fancy. We took only small amounts, or whatever wouldn’t be missed right away, and risked one whole row of vials from the rack. With the general disarray of the workbench, Ossian would have to count the vials himself to determine how many were actually missing.

“I don’t suppose you have a spare cauldron, do you?”

Brandi snorted—her preferred response to any question of mine that she thought too foolish to merit a worded reply.

I sent a mental apology to Shari; it looked like I was using her metal teacup again.

At some point during the raid, Sawyer finished sprinkling and began a more thorough exploration of the dungeon starting with the door left of the stairwell. As he explored, he gave me a report of his day’s side quest with the foraging bag.

“The spies seemed tasked with removing anything of value.” Rising onto his back feet, he pawed at the coarse-cut stone of the doorway. “That is, until they found the spent tourmaline crystals from your parasite jewelry. They forgot about everything else and were obsessed with trying to steal those.”

With a little grunt, he leapt up, dug his claws into the tiny hand- and footholds he’d discovered, and climbed up to peer into the keyhole.

“What would he want with bleached-out tourmaline?” Brandi wondered.

I’d been wondering the same thing, hoping either Sawyer or Brandi had the answer. I shrugged my shoulders to answer her, and Sawyer didn’t reply.

“What did you do with the spies?” I asked.

“Chucked them out the window into the yew bush. Hey! There’s a tunnel down there.”

“It’s what those men use to bring more creatures in here,” the hedge witch supplied. She fitted the lid over a tin of hornet’s nests and dropped it into my bag as I raided the jar of dried mountain laurel.

“It stinks, too.” Sawyer gagged and dropped down away from the door.

“It’s also the tunnel they use to export our waste,” the hedge witch replied smugly. “No toilets around here, as you might’ve noticed, just buckets.” She flipped her white hair over her shoulder. “I might be shackled to this table to make potions all day, but at least I’m not schlepping crap.”

I paused in filling up a vial with the black feathers of a chickadee’s cap to smile at her. Even after all the terrible things that had happened to her, some of them of her own making, she’d never lost her pluck.

“Gross.” Then he caught me looking at him. “Nuh-uh! Don’t you even think about it.”

“I’m not thinking anything.”

“Yes, you are! I know that look, Meadow. You bite down on the right corner of your bottom lip and your eyes get all squinty.”

Surely enough, I found my teeth and eyes doing just that. “I do not!”

The cat batted at my ankles, his claws not quite sheathed. “You were going to give me another side quest! Go sneak down that tunnel and see if it leads to where they’re holding Ricky and all the others they’ve snatched.”

“Your words, not mine. And what a marvelous idea.” I bent down to give him a scratch behind the ears. A quick one, for he swatted at my hand. “I’m so thrilled you volunteered. And you like Ricky, don’t forget.”

His ears flattened. “Of course I like Ricky, but you didn’t see that tunnel. There’s hardly a twist or turn and it’s lit by the same blue light here. There’s nowhere for me to hide!”

From his vehement protest, I realized maybe I was asking too much of him of late. He was brave and resourceful, but he wasn’t an experienced familiar like Ame; he was a junior cat barely out of kittenhood. By rights he shouldn’t have had his first solo mission until he was at least three years old and graduated from Grimalkin University.

“Sawyer, I’m so sorry—”

“You could just use the Lugus Spell,” Brandi suggested.

Sawyer went silent as we both turned to her.

“ Flectere lucem ? It’ll bend the light and make your stripes go all wavy like and obscure you from sight. So long as you don’t move.” Brandi gave us an indignant snort and perched her hand on her out-thrust hip. “I’m talentless, not a moron. They teach it to all third-years at Grimalkin.”

The tomcat looked away. “I didn’t graduate.” Then he gave her a baleful look. “I’m not even two yet, something you’d know if you’d actually looked past my potential score before you cheated me out into a field test! ”

The golden stirring spoon slipped from the hedge witch’s fingers as her face contorted. Hot tears threatened to spill over onto her cheeks and smear more of her mascara. “I was desperate!”

Tendrils of glittering green magic caught both Sawyer and Brandi around the middle and yanked them apart before they could lunge at each other.

“Aaand we’re not doing this,” I said. The vines deposited the tomcat by the stairwell and shoved the spoon back into Brandi’s hand. “I swear, if it’s you two’s bickering that gets us caught, I’ll make you both regret it. One way or another.”

Silence reigned for a beat as we all craned our ears to the stairwell. Nothing. Then the pitter-patter of woodchuck feet scurrying overhead got us hurrying our own selves along. With a huff, Sawyer left his post to investigate the door embedded in the wall beyond the silversmith forge.

“Nearly done here,” I told him, situating jars and vials so they wouldn’t clink together when the bag inevitably bounced along in time to my stride. The foraging bag was so full I was worried there wouldn’t be any room for the cat. Already my spine was bowing to the side to offset the weight.

“Uh-huh.” A scrambling of his paws later, Sawyer had hoisted himself to peer into yet another keyhole. No sooner had he stolen a look than he launched himself halfway across the dungeon, his fur bristling.

Both Brandi and I yelped, the hedge witch going so far as to lob a handful of papaver seeds at him. I flicked her in the arm. “Don’t throw stuff at my cat. Thistle thorns, Sawyer, what—”

“It’s your grandmother,” he sputtered. “Iris Hawthorne’s in there snacking on tea and biscuits and reading The Hobbit ! We’re out here risking life and limb and practically starving and she’s noshing away at book club!”