Page 33 of The Hearth Witch’s Guide to Magic & Murder (The Hemlock Saga #1)

In the midst of this content and cozy setting, Avery relayed the details around Saoirse’s death to Esteri, taking particular care to explain the broken wards and Riddle’s lack of involvement.

When they’d finished, Esteri leaned forward to set down her teacup. “This is troubling…”

“Murder usually is, Es,” Avery murmured, scratching the back of her right hand.

Esteri shook her head. “A familiar is able to walk through the mortal realm purely by the magic of their caster and a bond is formed based on mutual trust and care.” She glanced at Saga’s untouched tea. “You can drink that, you know.”

“Oh.” Saga warily eyed her cup, remembering every fairy-tale warning she’d grown up with involving the fey and food. “No, that’s all right…”

“It’s safe, I promise,” said Avery. “We’re still in your realm, not ours.”

“We have laws against that now anyway,” chimed Esteri.

Saga hesitated, then took a deep drink of her tea.

“Finally,” Esteri drawled in exasperation. “We’ve been desperate for more baristas, and you look like you could survive a fifty-year contract.”

Saga choked, horrified. “You said—”

“She’s joking,” sighed Avery.

Esteri cackled and slapped her own leg. “Mortals are safe in Hygge. We are like any other café33 and promise to not attempt to trap you.” Esteri’s eyes lit up.

“To that point, however, a familiar is one of the few fey-mortal contracts that has never relied on imprisoning one or the other. A caster is host to their familiar, and they are both bound by the laws of hospitality.”

Saga perked up. “What are the laws of hospitality?”

“In your world it is simply politeness,” said Esteri. “In magic, it is a binding contract—a geas34 levied on both parties. A guest cannot willingly bring harm to their host and a host cannot injure anyone under their care—these tenets must be obeyed or risk dire consequences.”

Saga cleared her throat. “What sort of dire consequences?”

“For a familiar, it would mean instantaneous banishment back to the Twilight. For someone like you or me? It would grant the person we knowingly harmed power over us. In the before days, humans were often tricked into violating these laws in small but unforgivable ways to trap them into servitude. So you see, it would be nigh impossible for a familiar to merely refuse to help a ward in need, so unless he has mysteriously disappeared, we must then ask another question: What prevented him from protecting her?”

Saga remembered the other day with her grandmother in a new light. “Mamó did say he hadn’t been feeling well.”

“Could he have eaten something he shouldn’t have?” Avery asked, absently scratching her hand again.

“He won’t chew on nonfood items, but he’ll sometimes steal stuff off your plate if you’re not careful.” Saga shrugged.

“So if someone drugged Saoirse’s food, it is possible he could have also ingested some of it?”

Saga stared at Avery. “I suppose, but why would anyone drug her?”

“Saoirse was strong,” Esteri commented. “One of the best witches I’ve ever known. It would have taken a great deal of power to break through her wards, let alone attack her person. Weakening her physically would have given them an advantage. The real question is how anyone would drug her.”

Saga’s heart sank. She remembered the packages littering her grandmother’s living room.

“Since Eira’s death, she’s been receiving a lot of condolence packages.

Cards, flowers, baked goods… If someone knew, they could have easily taken advantage of—what happened to your hand?

” She pointed to Avery’s right hand, which now in the full light of the window looked red and irritated.

Avery raised it so it was level with her face and pushed up her jacket sleeve to see a rash snaked all the way to her elbow.

The pattern reminded Saga of a time she accidentally waded through poison ivy as a child.

It didn’t look too severe, but the scratching had definitely irritated it further.

All in all, Avery appeared thoughtful but unbothered.

“Curious… Perhaps I shook hands with our unidentified poison. That must have been what was in the bin that Riddle was attempting to draw to my attention.” She looked to Saga. “How are your hands?”

Saga gave them a close look. “They feel fine, but I didn’t touch the garbage can.”

“No, but I touched your hands, and if I didn’t wash thoroughly enough, there might have been transference.

” Avery compared her left next to her right, and saw her own left hand remained unaffected—enough time had passed that if she’d transferred it to her other hand it should have been visible.

“You should be fine.” She propped her right elbow on her knee, suspending the affected hand as if it might be contagious, and continued on, undeterred.

“Aconite and belladonna both have additional medical purposes and can cause skin irritation.”

“If someone is using the old ways to subdue a witch, they would need to be either very precise or very stupid,” Esteri protested.

“People are sloppy, Es,” said Avery.

“When there are more modern methods to sedate someone—safer ways?”

Saga had been mulling over the phrase “the old ways” and at last spoke up. “Aconite is another name for wolfsbane, right? Wasn’t wolfsbane used against witches, werewolves, and vampires back in the day?”

“Not just to sedate, but magically charged to bind or subdue.” Esteri pointed to Saga. “Which is an excellent reason to use aconite over something safer.”

“We don’t know for certain it was aconite, just that I have a rash,” grumbled Avery.

The two shorter women sat back in their seats, conceding this unfortunate sticking point in their breakthrough theory.

Avery flexed the affected hand, resisting the urge to scratch it.

“Something that continues to elude me is not merely the means, but the motive. If you wanted to steal organs for a ritual, there must be easier ways. And wouldn’t something like aconite poisoning render the heart and other organs useless? ”

“Well, to be fair, it would really depend on the spell,” begrudged Esteri. “Very few require a clean, unblemished organ—otherwise you’d have people being cut open for their livers in the streets…” She trailed off, looking at Saga. “I’m so sorry, how horrible of me to speak so when you just…”

“No, it’s okay,” Saga shivered, understanding how wrong she had been earlier about what little one could do with a human brain. “It just feels too impersonal.”

“I was being too clinical—”

“No, I mean what Avery said. Organ theft? It feels far too impersonal to be the real motive. Why go to all this trouble if you just wanted organs because they were organs? I know Mamó and Valentina didn’t really know each other well, but they were connected, that has to mean something, right?”

Avery’s eyes narrowed. “You said Eira Goff also passed from heart failure?”

“Just a few days prior to Valentina’s death.”

“We need to see that body,” said Avery.

“Funeral is in two days.”

“Would it be possible to arrange for me to accompany you?”

“Ooh, very romantic,” Esteri chimed in at last, which gained her one befuddled look from Saga and a glare from Avery. “I joke,” she explained, but no one laughed. She stood with a forced smile. “I’m going to go get some balm for your hand.”

They both watched her leave before Saga continued. “Two days is too long to wait.”

“We won’t be merely waiting. Valentina’s personal items should be delivered today—I need to look through them. You may be able to ask your aunt about Eira’s family, and then there is another lead we unfortunately need to chase down.”

“What lead?”

Avery leaned back into the couch, took a deep drink of her tea, and sighed. “The Addler.”

Saga raised a quizzical pink eyebrow. “Like a snake?”

“No,” Avery dismissed grimly. “An adder would be less dangerous. This creature…” She took another deep, measured breath. “She gets inside your head, makes you dizzy, and confused; muddles everything until you can’t make sense of any of it. She addles.”

Saga watched Avery, taking in her posture: her averted gaze, her stiff muscles, the way her grip on her teacup tightened. Realization dawned. “Oh.”

Avery’s head snapped back immediately, denial coming far too hastily. “Don’t ‘oh.’ There is no ‘oh.’” She spat her words, and her body twisted away from Saga now.

“Denial, mood swing, a light flush of the cheeks.” Saga inhaled through her teeth and leaned toward the other woman. “I mean, it really feels like there’s an ‘oh.’”

“Well, there isn’t,” said Avery with too much clipped finality.

“Isn’t what?” Esteri asked, returning with a small jar that she held out to Avery before nestling back down in her chair.

“Avery is pretending she doesn’t have a crush,” Saga explained.

Something shifted in Esteri’s eyes, but it wasn’t mischievous. She took a deep breath and relaxed her face, wiping it of emotion. “Is this about Iona?” The tulikettu clearly had strong opinions on this Iona, but neither her expression nor tone were entirely forthcoming on revealing what those were.

“No.” Again, Avery was too quick to answer to look anything but guilty.

“She’s incorporated now, you know.”

The curiosity in Avery’s eyes was undeniable. “Incorporated…what?”

“Revenge. She’s got a whole business. Great big fancy office in Knightsbridge.”

A look passed between Saga and Avery, the office’s location not lost on either of them, though Saga noted the wariness in Avery’s eyes. Did this mean this woman Avery clearly had some sort of complicated feelings toward was not just a lead—but a suspect? “Valentina’s tattoo.”

Avery gave a curt nod, cleared her throat again, and busied herself with applying the balm to her hand. “Have cults gone out of fashion, then?”