Page 81 of The Wolfing Hour

“The only way out is through,” she said. “You took this on for Ronan, to help him find his sister—now,findher. Pour everything you’ve got into it.”

Ronan. No matter how hard it was, no matter how much it hurt—for him, I could do this.

I called for my element, and it answered. Dirt shivered in the pots and planters surrounding us. The soil acting like a flamethrower on my insides writhed within me. It all felt charged with power, and I wanted to absorb every molecule of the sand, silt, clay, roots, humus, rock, air, and water contained within it.

Find Rory.

Visions I’d had of the garden room returned—the yellow light, the stars like bolts holding the universe together, the fairy lights sparkling. And then it was gone, and I was transported away from the garden room and into another.

A locked cell, its walls dripping with liquid silver. Outside the cell, a yellow light glowed weakly. It was the sort of light a desk lamp gave off, which made sense when an old wooden desk bled into view. A wolf the size of a tiger prowled around the desk, periodically snapping at something in the air—like a dog after a moth.

In the distance, someone screamed. Male? Female? I couldn’t tell. It all just sounded like pain.

“Betty, come back.”

I did as the voice commanded, though parts of me remained in that room, screams playing like demented music in the background. Everything that was good and just in me wanted to do something to make them stop.

“Come back now, before you get lost.” Compared to the screams, Margaux’s voice sounded like the delicate song of a sparrow.

I tried to speak, and a gulping, “Guh,” was all I could manage before everything went black.

My exit from the darkness was gradual and in direct response to my body being pulled, turned, embraced.

“Mmm mmm mmm. Mmm mmm mmm.”

Someone was humming the opening to Redbone’s “Come and Get Your Love.” The song haunted me in the best possible way.

I tried to hum along. Who could resist “Come and Get Your Love?” A monster, that was who. And I was no monster.

“That’s right, sing it with me,” Margaux whispered into my ear. When she pulled back, there was moisture on my cheek. She was crying? Why?

“Mmm mmm mmm mmm,” she continued.

“Meow yow yow,” Fennel sang, mimicking Margaux.

Cecil let loose with a series of chitters that sounded a lot like Lolly Vegas’s guitar style.

Joy bubbled up in me like a geyser. Memories of Mom singing the song to me as a little girl, a preteen witch, a teenager dancing in the middle of a wheat field somewhere in the Midwest flowed into me. The two of us kicking up soil while sending love and magic and joy into the element that powered us.

We sang the chorus as my lungs inflated, as my trachea repaired. We sang until my voice smoothed out enough to take on the high “hoooo” at the end.

I opened my eyes and found myself collapsed against Margaux. She’d pulled me onto her lap and was holding my upper body infant-like in her arms. Her tear-streaked face smiled down at me. Cecil perched on her shoulder, his hat peaked. Fennel stood on my chest, his tail thumping my belly.

“I feel like the spell failed.”

“It wasn’t as successful as I’d have liked,” Margaux’s voice was soft, a little tired, “but it didn’t fail.”

“You keep bringing me back to myself,” I said. “Thank you.”

“I’m so glad you’re all right,” she said, and hugged me.

And in that garden room, with its cobbled-together cast-off windowpanes and floor made of clay, with the early morning light streaming in through the clear corrugated roof, and the scent of lush, healthy herbs all around us, a miracle happened.

I stared up at the woman I’d blamed for my mother’s death for over three years and hugged her back.

Chapter

Fifteen