Page 20

Chapter

Nineteen

W hen we got to the car, the witches were secured in the back seat. The rats in human form had again shifted to rodent form and were rolling around the floorboards with five of the kittens.

For their part, the tiny cats didn’t appear to have any hunting instinct in regard to the rats. Either because their mother had died before she could teach them or because the rats were significantly larger than them.

“Thank you for putting out the tree fire,” I said to Cecil.

No response.

“I know you’re disappointed, and I’m sorry. When we have more time, we’ll come back here, make sure there are no critters beneath the house, and then you can blow it up, okay?”

Cecil, who was holding the smallest of the orphaned kittens, a Bombay female with eyes like Fennel and a missing front paw, nodded. I’d expected him to be more upset, but he seemed oddly at peace with the situation.

Margaux was unconscious but alive, and Bronwyn was pretty much comatose. Her limbs were stiff, and I couldn’t imagine how painful it was going to be when she woke up. I’d make sure to have Cecil craft a heal charm?—

No.

Not Cecil. I would craft a heal charm for her.

I started the car and turned on the radio. “The Night Chicago Died” by Paper Lace blasted through the speakers. I backed out from behind the hay bales and pulled onto the main road. The other four rats hadn’t shown up, though I’d given them a couple minutes once we were at the car. Any more than that, and we’d have been asking for a Pallás wolf attack. As it was, he was going to be gunning for me as soon as he healed, which would be fast.

He might be an alphahole, but he was a powerful one.

And I still didn’t have Ronan.

But I did have Mason’s assurance that he wasn’t dead, whatever that was worth. Surprisingly, it seemed to have more value than I would’ve thought, because I believed him.

I docked the LTD in Ida’s parking place and shut off the engine. I’d have to send her the gas money through the cash app she’d made me install after accusing me of being “too old-fashioned about money” because there was no way I was stopping anywhere with two knocked-out witches, seven cats, two rats, and Cecil.

Maya, Alpha Lydia, Kale, and Denzel—all four in human form—met us in the parking lot with Ida. Maya and Lydia carefully extracted Bronwyn from the backseat, while Ida oversaw Kale and Denzel’s extraction of Margaux. Fennel led five of the six kittens across the lot to the garden room. The tripod Fennel twin stuck close to Cecil, who, for all his grumbling, appeared to genuinely like the tiny feline.

The rats followed their alpha, and I followed them all with my bag and Cecil’s backpack of flammable tricks.

Ida mouthed the word, “Ronan?” and I shook my head. My nose twitched, and my eyes itched, but I managed to keep from breaking down.

On the outside, anyway .

We put Margaux and Bronwyn on my bed, and I set to work in the garden room crafting the charms that I prayed to the goddesses would rouse them.

Three hours and much tripping over rambunctious kittens later, I had the charms. The rats—except for Maya, who hadn’t left Bronwyn’s bedside—had long gone home. Ida, too, since leaving her bonded plant, Meredith the Mictlan mandrake, alone past midnight was not a good idea.

When I finally dragged myself into the house at five a.m., everything was quiet.

“Any changes?” I asked.

Maya stretched out her legs and yawned. She’d moved one of the wooden kitchen chairs to the bedside, which couldn’t have been comfortable. “Not from Bronwyn. Margaux woke up at one point and asked for a drink of water. The pain charm you gave them seems to have worked well. At least, on her.”

“Good to know.” I fastened the personalized heal charm necklace I’d crafted around the ex-coven mother’s neck and tucked the charm itself under her blouse so that it rested on her skin.

Her mouth curved. Eyes closed, she murmured, “Thank you, Lila.”

Maya and I looked at each other.

“It’s Betty, Margaux,” I said softly. “And you’re welcome.”

I did the same thing with Bronwyn’s charm. I’d taken particular care with hers, even referring to that disgusting cursed grimoire of Desmond’s to ensure I counteracted the curse. But when I slid it against her cold skin, she didn’t react at all. Her breathing remained slow and even, her limbs stiff, and her eyes shut.

I blew out a frustrated breath.

“Maybe it takes time?” Maya looked hopeful.

“Maybe,” I said.

I didn’t believe it. We should’ve seen something—a flutter of her eyes, movement of her lips, even a soft gasp— but we’d gotten nothing.

“I’m going to keep working.” I walked to the doorway and paused. “Thanks for staying with them.”

“Betty?”

I turned, looked at her. “Yes?”

“You have no idea what you’ve done for me. You pulled me out of my own personal hell. I will never forget that.”

“Bronwyn is who you should be thanking. She’s the one who hired me to find you.”

“I knew it,” Margaux muttered.

I couldn’t help but grin. “Go back to sleep, Coven Mother.”

The grin faded as I headed back to the garden room. Maya hadn’t said much after I told her about Desmond. Whether it annoyed her that she’d have to play the grieving widow, she hadn’t said. She’d mostly looked relieved and hopeful. But then, Bronwyn was with us now. She assumed that meant her friend was safe.

I knew better.

The garden room was largely empty. Cecil was off somewhere, and Fennel had taken the kittens out to play. Kale and Denzel were around somewhere. My guess was they were with Fennel and the cats. They’d seemed very excited about playing with the kittens.

Alpha Lydia and the others had long gone home, but she’d left the two men with us in case we needed help. I wasn’t sure what help Kale and Denzel would be, but I didn’t have the energy to argue. Plus, I preferred not to piss her off. I needed all the help I could get to find Ronan.

I was sick with worry about him now that I understood how badly Floyd wanted him dead. Before, it was a sentiment suspected but unvoiced. Tonight, he’d felt comfortable letting his pack hear him say it.

This made perfect sense to anyone who knew the truth about the narcissist leader. The second he felt his power slipping, he was going to want to puff up and look tough. Vow retribution. It was textbook bully behavior .

Ronan was a strong alpha, but anyone could be ambushed, especially when magic was involved.

For now, I had to set aside my anxiety and trust that he was okay. I had to bring Bronwyn back to the conscious world, and I had to prepare for war with Alpha Floyd and the wolf pack without Ronan.

Stakes could not be higher.

“I swear, if this is the kind of shit Ronan’s going to pull now that we’re in a relationship, he’s going to be in for a significant number of ass-kickings,” I grumbled.

The dark humor made me feel a little better. Mostly because I knew Ronan would’ve laughed.

If he were here.

I drew the cursed book out of the null bag once again, revulsion washing over me at the filthy feel of the cover. If it wasn’t human skin, it was something close, and touching it made me feel like I needed a shower.

“Still looking in the wrong places,” a weak voice whispered.

“Margaux?”

She stumbled into the room, and I helped her to the chaise lounge by the lavender. “Didn’t you learn anything from tonight, Betty?”

“Yeah. Why do you think I crafted the charms instead of giving the job to Cecil?”

“The point is you’re still using charms.” She coughed, a pained expression twisting her mouth.

“Margaux, go to bed and finish healing. I’ve got this.” I turned to my workstation, where I’d set the book. I was going to have to cleanse the surface—possibly even the entire garden room and my house, too, when this was all said and done.

“The Weret-hekau Maleficium is a powerful book,” she whispered.

“It’s also really gross—and not even very good. There are probably a grand total of five spells-slash-curses that use ingredients that still exist, and out of those, maybe one or two are effective. They’re temporary at best. I hate to say it, but Floyd pulled a fast one on Desmond Mace.” I let out a tired laugh. “Actually, I didn’t hate saying that at all. The witch got what he deserved. Make a deal with the devil and go to Hell, or however that saying goes. Not sure it is a saying, if I’m being honest. I probably made it up.”

“For the love of the goddesses, please stop babbling.” She put the back of her hand over her eyes. “Even after everything you did back there at that house, you’re still doing it.”

“Doing what?”

“Playing by everyone else’s rules.”

“I’m playing by the rules of magic. To counteract a spell, you have to study the original and work backward.” I didn’t add in a “duh,” but it was implied by the eyeroll I gave her.

Margaux dropped her hand to her chest. “Who told you that?”

I thought it over. “Well, no one told me that. It’s the basis for most of magic. That’s just common sense.”

“Common sense? I bet you learned it from one of those books in Beau’s headshop.”

“You’d lose that bet.” I’d learned it in similar ones I’d picked up all over the country. Most of which had burned in the trailer fire. “Also, it disturbs me to hear you call it a ‘headshop.’”

“Is that the wrong nomenclature?”

“No, it’s just weird coming from you. You make the word sound dirtier, somehow.”

“Then heed this coming from me . Stop using magic books. Though you’ve been educated by powerful magicals, you are not a taught witch, Lilibet Lennox. You are an elemental. An earth witch. Act like it.”

This woman truly irked the hell out of me. “Back off, Margaux. I’m trying to bring back Bronwyn the only way I know how.”

“If you didn’t like hearing the word headshop coming from me, you’re really going to hate this one. Bullshit .” She coughed again, and sagged against the chaise, her eyelids sinking.

I went to her, ensured the heal charm I’d given her was against her skin. “Rest. You can chew me out later. ”

“This isn’t the only thing you know how to do. You’re fighting your own magic. Remember what I told you—what your mother said.”

I remembered. It’d been eating at the back of my mind since she’d said it.

“When you’re at full strength, you have to expel and destroy the hex bags then anchor the roots of the largest saguaro to yourself. I don’t know how long it’ll take, but you have to do it to connect with the soil.”

The hex bags were long gone.

Earlier, I’d fed some power into Red’s roots, but I hadn’t anchored myself to them. I wasn’t even sure I knew how.

I was exhausted beyond anything I’d ever felt in my life and somehow still on my feet. I was heartbroken, scared, and mourning a missing man so important to me that I felt sick at the thought of existing a single day without him.

Yet I’d bonded with soil that didn’t belong to me to battle a rival earth witch and nearly taken down a powerful wolf alpha in the process. If I’d chosen to kill Floyd, no one could’ve stopped me. Not Desmond, not the witches, and not Mason Hartman.

I put the Weret-hekau Maleficium back in the null bag and walked out without looking back. It was time to fully connect with my soil.

Though tempted, I didn’t call Fennel or Cecil or alert Ida.

This was something I had to do alone.

“I’m a travel witch at heart, Red—we Lennoxes are. Mom was a travel witch, as was her mother before her, and hers before her, and so on, ad infinitum. It’s the way things have always been done. When she changed that … it scared me.”

“I’m scared, Mom.”

“That is as it should be. To form a deep connection with anything, soil or person, you must show that you’re willing to be vulnerable to them.”

“I believed she’d betrayed the essence of who we are.” I pulled my top over my head and dropped it on the ground beside the stones surrounding Red’s grave. “If Mom wasn’t a travel witch, maybe I wasn’t either. And if I wasn’t, who was I?”

“It means that it’s okay to be scared.”

I unhooked my bra and dropped it onto my top then unzipped my jeans. I was already barefoot, so that would save time.

Not that I was in a rush. No, this part was important. The talking, the naked communication. It was something I’d neglected to do except in anger or while bargaining, cajoling, or coddling.

“I know the truth now. She’d found, as my friend Joon said, ‘a stopping place.’” I shimmied out of my jeans and panties and dropped them on the pile.

“Will I still travel after this?” I stepped over the stones. “Yes. But not as often as before. And I will always, for as long as it’s within my power to do so, come home to you.”

Abuela Lulu took my hand, and we walked barefoot to a damp, spongy spot between two tall rows. “But you must show the soil that you’re willing to trust it—that your trust is stronger than your fear.”

I planted my feet, grounding myself as I had in the cotton field.

“I stand here as my ancestors before me once stood. Not on this small parcel of land, but above the soil everywhere, on every continent on this planet, from the time when we were one joined land, to our breaking apart into many lands, to now.”

She closed her eyes and bowed her head. “Gracias, Madre Tierra.”

“From this point on, I take on the responsibility of this land and accept the gift of its power. I will not forsake you and ask you not to forsake me. We commit to each other in this moment. Fully.”

Below me, the ground began to heat.

I closed my eyes and bowed my head. “Gracias, Madre Tierra. I give myself to you.”

Then I was beneath the earth. Warm soil cradled me, and though it was tempting to let myself be carried away in a comforting dream as I had many times before, I had a job to do.

Show me . My intention infused the roots of every living thing. Plump and short, thin and sprawling, they sang to me in a rejoicing choir of vibrant life.

I drank in their magic and reached for the delicate, dry saguaro roots spiderwebbing beneath the surface. Red . Sorrow hit me like a freight train, the intensity matching the day I lost him.

If I was going to bring this land back, bring myself back to the land, I needed him.

As Mom had told Margaux, I had to anchor myself to Red and he to me. He would act as the touchstone, the barometer by which I’d measure the state of the soil and, in turn, my magic.

Red’s roots stirred, lengthened. Brittle, feathery ends slid over my face and into my hair, gliding over my back and shoulders and down my arms and legs, encasing me in a lacy, fragile gown of living magic.

White-hot heat bloomed wherever Red’s roots touched me, similar to what I felt when the soil made contact with my bare skin. They filled my mouth and extended into my lungs, spreading inside and outside my body.

The heat intensified, and silver light spilled like goddess fire from every pore. When the lacy roots were strengthened with power and moisture and life, they peeled away from my body and speared deep into the earth.

I floated up to the surface, a cool spring breeze chilling my exposed, sensitive skin as I broke through the soil.

My soil.

I returned to myself in increments, climbing to my knees and tilting my face toward the sun like a flower. I was covered in a thin layer of rich, brown dirt. The silty grains crawled on my skin, moving as if alive. They weren’t burning, hadn’t vaporized, hadn’t absorbed into me.

They’re waiting for permission.

Music came from somewhere.

Someone had turned on the porch radio—probably Ida. The outlandishly appropriate “Magic” by Pilot was playing. Everything was perfect. My world had been set to rights.

I’d fully connected with the soil beneath the Siete Saguaros.

“Betty.” Ida sounded tentative, worried, not at all like her usual assertive self.

I opened my eyes.

Ida, Fennel and Cecil, Margaux, Maya, Gladys, and Trini Orozco were gathered in a half circle around me. Their faces displayed a range of emotions—grief, fear, relief, exhaustion, and lastly, hope.

I drew to my feet and looked questioningly at my partners. “Bronwyn?”

Fennel shook his head. Cecil made a sad sound.

“She’s fading,” Ida said.

Without another word, I went to her.

She lay in the guest room bed. Someone had changed her into a pink nightgown and braided her hair—presumably Maya. There was a wireless speaker on the bedside beside the lamp. It was playing “Love on the Brain” by Rihanna.

I stood beside her and hovered my hands over her slack face. “Despierta.”

There was no need to imbue the call to awaken with magic. The word itself was magic.

She was magic.

I was magic.

The soil rolled from my body to hers. Slowly, like a beaded shawl covering her from her feet to the top of her head. Translucent minerals sparkled and bits of calcium glowed whitely against her pale brown skin. The vitamin-rich soil rose in a cloud of condensation before steaming into her skin.

Bronwyn’s chest rose as she took a deep, hearty breath. Her eyelids popped open. Her mouth opened and closed. After a few seconds of this, she gathered herself.

“Hello, Betty.” Her voice was hoarse from disuse .

“ Bronwyn .” Maya burst into tears. I’d been so focused, I hadn’t seen her sidle up to the other side of the bed.

Bronwyn squinted up at me. “You’re naked.”

“Don’t worry, I’m not asking you out on a date. It was something I had to do to connect with my soil,” I said, aiming a soft smile at her. “To save us both.”

“That’s right.” Ida rushed over with the fuzzy red robe I kept on a hook on the bathroom door. “Be grateful she stripped down to her birthday suit. Her naked butt saved your life.”

I put on the robe. “You have a way with words, my friend.”

“It’s a gift.”

“Yeah.” I wrapped my arm around her thin shoulders. “It is.”