Chapter 17

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Two Days Until Halloween

I don’t dream that night, only drift in some sort of endless fog. A clap of thunder finally wakes me. It’s morning but the sky outside my front room windows is still heavy with storm clouds. I’m lying on the couch that’s pushed up against my living room wall, a quilted blanket draped over me.

Matthew is across the room. He’s asleep, reclining in the chair next to the fireplace. His breath is steady, but he doesn’t look peaceful in his rest. His face, as handsome as ever, even with an unshaved five o’clock shadow, is drained of energy. He looks burdened under an invisible weight. The shimmering bronze of the scar on his arm has dulled appropriately overnight, but it still peeks through the ragged edges of the bandages underneath his shirt.

Physically, I feel leagues better than I had yesterday. My feet no longer sting, my throat is back to normal, and my joints don’t ache. But my head hurts, and my face is puffy and raw from crying. My soul feels as if it has a wound as deep and savage as the one on Matthew’s arm. I want to close my eyes, burrow under my quilt, and stay hidden away. But both my sisters arrive tonight and expect a full dumb supper to be waiting for them.

The thought almost makes me laugh. How can I keep these two competing realities together in my head without letting them drive me mad? How can I stress about pumpkin carving in one thought and contemplate my mother’s evil deeds in the next? Not to mention that the King Below has sent hellhounds after me, wanting to claim me and drag me down into his realm.

The worst of it all is my mother’s betrayal. I have the overt suspicion that she wasn’t the only person in my life who kept secrets from me. Winifred clearly knew more than she let on. Why else would she have reacted so violently when I mentioned involving Ginny? Matthew, in all his goodness, isn’t free of my paranoia either. He knows things, things he refuses to say. He leaves my questions half acknowledged or gives answers so vague they are rendered unusable. Who else is lying to me? Miranda? Celeste even? Hell, what if Merlin is the mysterious King Below in disguise?

“Stop it, Kate,” I whisper, covering my eyes with one hand. “If you suspect the cat, that officially makes you a crazy person.”

Slowly, I pull myself off the couch and tiptoe quietly into the kitchen. A chilly October morning plagued by thunderstorms and bad thoughts has only one cure. I walk around all the carved jack-o’-lanterns that are placed on every surface of this room and grab my mother’s Recipe Book from its corner. My hand shakes as I flip through its pages until I find the recipe I’m looking for. My mother’s recipe for So Cozy Salted Caramel Hot Chocolate.

Coughing quietly to fight the lump in my throat, I get to work, following the recipe exactly as written. Milk, cream, caramel, cocoa powder, and spices, all go into a large stockpot. I stir and stir until the ingredients are blended together. Merlin wakes up and jumps onto the counter next to me, watching with twitching eyes as my wooden spoon makes endless circles in the melting drink. I add the last of my gold flake reserves and several shots of whisky, all while imagining the warmth from my fireplace filling the cottage and keeping the storm from seeping its dampness and misery into the walls.

The drink is done when the air around me grows thick and warm and smells like whipped cream.

Matthew is still asleep in the chair as I place a pumpkin-shaped mug down softly on the side table for him. I grab the quilt I’d left on the couch and drape it over his legs, moving gently so as not to wake him by accident. Taking a sip from my own cup, I relish the warmth that radiates out from my chest as my mouth coats in thick chocolate and caramel. It’s an effort not to inhale the rest of the drink, because I want so badly to banish the ice still lingering in my heart. But I know not to consume this heavenly mixture too fast. Otherwise, I’ll be in for one hell of a stomachache.

I set my mug down on the coffee table to cool and move to stoke the fire. But I abandon the chore quickly. Lying next to the empty fireplace is the Grimoire. Right where I left it the night before.

My stomach flips at the memory of Matthew’s arms around me as he pulled me away from the nightmare of those pages. I’d buried my face in the crook of his neck, soaking his already ruined shirt with my tears. I wince, wondering if I’d caused him pain as I clung to him, shaking. But he’d never complained. Just sat with me, stroking my hair and murmuring soothing words I hadn’t listened to.

I scowl at the book, contemplating how best to burn it. How could one stupid object make me spiral so out of control? And why should I let it have any more impact on me?

Grabbing my long matches, I strike one and watch the tip burst into flame. I hold the Grimoire in my other hand and stare at it until the match burns out. Letting out an annoyed breath, I strike another match, determined to light the tome on fire and be done with it. But once again, I hesitate.

I blow out the match and open the book to the same page that overwhelmed me last night, and my eyes immediately find the drawing of my father. Against Matthew’s warning, I trace the edges of the sketched face.

A memory comes to me. A conversation I’d overheard as a very little girl, out of my room long past bedtime. My mom had been sitting in the Manor’s kitchen with Grandmother Goodwin. I’d been hunting for snacks but stopped outside the kitchen door as I heard their tense conversation.

“You must stop this, Sybil. A witch who lies to herself can never succeed. Magic without truth is meaningless.” My grandmother’s prim voice shook as she spoke.

My mother, who was beginning to show with Celeste, replied softly.

“That’s the great thing about being a witch, Mom. We get to decide what is true.”

I’d never heard the rest of their conversation. My father had found me outside the kitchen. He’d swept me up into a fit of giggles and took me to his study, where we’d split a cup of my mother’s hot chocolate. It was one of the few memories I have of him.

My heart aches at the memory of his laughter. Had it all been a facade? All those years of love and devotion. Had my father been a victim of Compulsion? Forced to sire children for my mother and donate his family fortune to the Goodwin estate?

No, that couldn’t be. Thralls of Compulsion are dead-eyed and humorless. My father had been so full of life and love before he got sick. So Affectation then? My closest encounter with that sort of magic had been when Miranda accidentally sang her Siren song to her prom date. He’d followed her around in a lovesick haze but only for a single night. Affectation of the blood, on the other hand, is more permanent. It inspires long-term obsession, lust to the point of insanity.

That doesn’t make sense either. My father hadn’t been crazed or erratic. But here he was, included in the drawings of what I could only assume were my mother’s victims. My mind turns back to the darkest of possibilities. Perhaps my father’s blood-borne illness had not been natural.

I turn the page, then the next and the next. More ritual instructions, more spells, over a dozen ways to kill someone by turning their blood against them, each entry more violent than the last. I’m queasy. How many different people’s blood stain this book? I turn to another page near the back. It’s not like the others. A diary entry is written in a wispy black ink, still my mother’s hand, but quite distinct from the red pigment that fills the rest of the Grimoire. The date at the top of the page makes my heart race. February from the year I was born. It’s one of the missing days from her diary in the Recipe Book.

“Of course,” I breathe. Merlin puts a gentle paw on my leg. I look at him. “She would journal in here when writing about forbidden magic. She couldn’t risk anyone reading her Recipe Book and knowing what she was getting up to.”

Merlin nudges his nose against my arm. I scratch him between the ears and begin to read.

February 25th—

William grows sicker and is refusing treatment. I have gone to doctors, begging them to keep helping him. Our pastor won’t stop trying to get him to accept this fate, no matter how often I tell him not to. And nothing I cook makes any difference. He gets worse and worse. I don’t have the power. It is only because of Winifred that I have this new chance. I promised her I would not waste this opportunity. And I won’t. For the sake of William. For the sake of the little girl growing inside me. For the sake of our family.

I read the entry twice, my eyes flitting over the sentences, the words coming to me in bursts.

“Winifred.” I seethe quietly, unsurprised by the confirmation of her involvement but furious all the same. Another diary entry waits on the next page, dated four years from the last.

May 31st—

William is gone. It’s my punishment. A few days after I told Him that I would not honor our bargain, that I could not do that to my daughter, William caught a fever. No matter what I cooked, no matter how I tried to use Gwaed, His wrath overcame it all. And I must live with the consequences. Miranda puts on a brave face for me; I know she’s trying so hard to be strong. But Rebecca says she cries when I am not around. Hecate is angry, as always. And I weep for innocent little Celeste, who will never know her father. I’m at a loss. I can make no move to protect Hecate without fear of further retribution. I am locked and bound with threads I can’t untangle. At least here, in these pages, my thoughts are now safe. I take the lessons he taught me and turn them on him. The King Below shall never again know my secrets.

The next page has yet another entry, this one only a year after the previous.

June 13th—

He’s growing weaker. I’m certain of it. My dreams are more erratic, less specific. And since Beltane, I’m rid of them entirely. I might not have to face him again until the week before Samhain. To think! Freedom may be closer than I realize.

Another page, another entry. Dated from the year I turned thirteen.

May 2nd—

I can’t express how thrilled I am with Hecate’s progress. She’s a natural talent and shows true passion for her craft. It seems to be enough for her. I’ve worried for years she would feel the emptiness, the half of herself missing when we started her training. But I have kept her far from death, far from His influence. We are so close. I will fulfill my end of the bargain this Samhain. After thirteen tumultuous years, Kate will be named a hedge witch. And as long as I do as I technically promised, the rest of my family will be spared from his wrath.

We just have to outlast him. He can’t have many more years left. And even if he does, once Kate goes through her Containment, once she loses access to the death magic she never learned, he will no longer be able to use her. This plan will work. It must.

I will always be vigilant, though. I am no fool. There are certain to be those out there who realize what I have done. And I have no doubt they would rather she fulfill her role.

“Kate?” Matthew’s voice breaks me out of the hypnosis of my mother’s Grimoire. I snap my eyes up to him. “Are you all right?”

“Yes,” I say quickly, shutting the book. “I made you a drink to warm up. It’s nasty outside today.” I point to the mug of hot chocolate on the side table next to him.

“Kate.” Matthew’s voice is soft as he ignores his drink and stares at me. I burn underneath his gaze, and yet I can’t bring myself to look away from him. “What else did you find?”

“You were right,” I say quietly.

“I often am,” he replies with a smile. “But about what this particular time?”

I don’t have it in me to smile back.

“She didn’t kill my father. She was trying to save him.” I look down at the book again, my eyes sweeping over the subtle red pattern that swirls around the brown leather.

“That’s a good thing, isn’t it?” Matthew asks. I nod hesitantly.

“But it all feels so pointless. My father didn’t live. I know now why she named me a hedge witch, but it doesn’t change anything.”

The fire crackles between us.

“She also wrote that the King Below was weakening,” I say after a minute.

Matthew nods. “Ginny mentioned the same.”

“Yes.” There was so much to consider, a thousand moving pieces that all feel just out of reach. And barely any time to make a plan. I pinch the bridge of my nose, my head suddenly throbbing.

“What do you need? What can I do?” Matthew asks. He gets out of his chair and sits down next to me on the floor, taking my hands into his. I lift my eyes up to him.

“I need …” I pause. The clock on the mantle strikes ten in the morning, reminding me of all that must be done for the day.

“I need to go to the grocery store,” I admit with an amused huff, standing up and setting the Grimoire on the fireplace mantle. The situation may seem absurd, but now more than ever, the time has come to call on the protection of my ancestors.

“We have a dumb supper to prepare for.”