Chapter 25

“Good gracious!”Daphne exclaimed as we traipsed through the front door, launching out of her seat at the dining room table. The four of them had been playing cards—some sort of betting game as they were obviously using my cache of dried mushrooms as poker chips.

Muddy hands cradled to my chest, I greeted my friends with a brisk, “Be right back,” and headed straight into the hearth room. Behind me, Lewellyn, who was almost as disgusting as I was, followed, pausing at the table to ask, “Are those turkey tail mushrooms? Excellent.”

Flora brought up the rear, waving her wand like it was a metal detector and cleaning up all the debris we tracked in across the floor. In the hearth room, I selected the finest logs from my collection, all ash or rowan, some oak, and lobbed them onto the bright green flames. After murmuring the Hearth Protection Spell, I rocked back onto my heels and waited for any change in the flames. No danger yet, since they weren’t red, but it was flinging green counterspells like confetti at a parade.

Straightening, I peered out the nearest window over the dead wildflower fields, past the split-rail fence, and into the apple orchard beyond. It was sundown, twilight already hastily descending. Frost glittered on the bent stalks of grass, hardened on the coarse wood of the fence. The bare branches of the squat apple trees scraped at the indigo sky, streaks of mustard yellow and violet low on the horizon. I saw nothing, and the hearth did not pulse a warning.

Would it, if it sensed my family’s approach? I was a Hawthorne, after all, though the hearth was my own. Would it bow to Grandmother, or reject her? Was it strong enough if the rival coven found me first, now that my Vanishing Spell was truly gone? It hadn’t just hidden me from my family’s sight, but from all those who might be looking for me. I was no better than a lightning rod in the center of a windswept plain with a thunderstorm brewing overhead: a sure target.

My doom-and-gloomy reverie was interrupted by the punctuating sounds of glass lids lifting or unscrewing, jars jostling, dried foliage shifting as it was dumped or shaken loose. Lewellyn puttered among the shelves, adding bits of dried bark and roots, mushrooms and grasses, plus a few dried flower petals to the mortar and pestle before grinding away.

“Go take a shower,” he instructed, moving into the kitchen for the kettle. “But don’t dawdle. You got any pine resin? Or honey?”

“Pine resin is those dried cubes that look like crystallized ginger in the jar over there; honey’s in the upper right cabinet above the stove.”

Moving back into the dining room so I could access the stairs to the second floor, I announced, “I’m gonna get cleaned up and then work on that casserole.”

“Hot dish,” Shari said.

“And, if it’s not too much trouble,” Daphne said lightly, retrieving her cards, “perhaps an explanation? However brief.”

Though they calmly picked at cards and dried-mushroom poker chips, it was clear Daphne, Shari, Ame, and Sawyer were vibrating with anticipation. My tabby tomcat abandoned his seat and raced over to me as I paused on the first step.

“I’ll tell you everything,” I promised.

In the master bathroom, I forewent the clawed tub for the shower stall. As I peeled, wrestled, and otherwise unstuck my muddy clothes from my body, Sawyer balanced on the back of the toilet as he fiddled with the shower handles. Each swat of his paw upped the hot water until the bathroom filled with steam. As the tomcat averted his eyes, I threw my soiled clothes into the tub to soak and stepped into the steam.

Sawyer let me have a few minutes to enjoy the water and the comfort of the pine-scented soap before he couldn’t contain himself any longer. “So do I have to scratch out Lewellyn’s eyes? Do you know why he came to Redbud? And why were you covered in muck?”

“No, yes, and because my grandmother activated my cuffs in an effort to track me down.” I was scrubbing at those very cuffs now, dirt staining the water brown as it coursed to the drain.

“What?” Sawyer stuck his head into the shower stall, the curtain immediately sticking to his damp fur. “She can do that?” Then his shock was replaced by embarrassment as he remembered I was naked; he quickly yanked his head back.

The shower curtain turned everything beyond it into shadowy shapes, and the cat-shaped one sitting on the back of the toilet asked in a voice that could barely be heard above the water, “So how much time do we have?”

It was an effort not to sink down into a ball and let the water try to wash me away. If I focused on my problems—the demonic half-heart, my grandmother remotely activating my cuffs, the way my heart ached every time I thought of Arthur, and those were just the most recent in a very long list of things I’d yet to fully face—I would become so overwhelmed I couldn’t see a solution.

Lewellyn had told me not to dawdle, but I just wanted to sit in the shower and cry. To feel everything that I had bottled up and squashed down, for it was effervescing like shaken champagne and I felt like I was going to burst. That I would break, succumb to the helplessness of it all. To realize I’d been a na?ve and proud child, one who should have never tampered with things beyond my understanding and power, all because of love.

But the Hawthornes were my family. Strict Grandmother, laughing Otter, quiet Hare, promiscuous Lilac, dreamer Dahlia, brawling Boar, cheerful Peony. Mom, who loved to share her favorite spells from the rarest books over a hot cup of rosehip tea. Dad, who took me on long walks to show me the secret lives of animals and the trails they left behind.

Smearing the tears from my eyes, I stood for one final rinse. I would do it all again for them.

“Less time than I hoped for,” I answered him, shutting off the water. “So we best make the most of it.”

“Well aren’tyou just Little Miss Witch on the Prairie,” Lewellyn drawled as I hurried into the hearth room.

“This is technically forested hill country,” Shari called from the dining room.

He rolled his golden eyes.

“If you’re referring to my wearing a sundress in November, the hearth keeps it plenty hot in here,” I replied crisply, joining him by that very hearth. Besides, our little foray into the drainage ditch had ruined my last pair of jeans, and the laundry day wasn’t until tomorrow.

He took one of my hands in his and dabbed the paste he’d created over the dormant runes of the cuff. “The dress, the long woolen socks, your ponytail…” He sighed. “Definitely not like any of my other assignments.”

I flashed him a smile. “Lucky you.”

He snorted, taking my other hand and applying the paste. “When I’m done, let it dry with the heat of the fire. It’ll make a kind of lacquer that should hold for a few days at a time.”

My teasing mood vanished, replaced by solemn concentration. “Okay. Can we bottle up the rest or does it have to be made fresh every time?”

“It can be bottled. I wrote down the ingredients here.” He handed me my paper-birch-bound notebook.

“Were you snooping, Grumpy?”

He shrugged. “It’s what I do.”

I squinted at the page. “Scribbled, is more like it. But it’s legible.” I thumbed close the honey-locust latch and then whumped him in the chest with the notebook. He didn’t even flinch. “That’s what you get for snooping. Now get out of my hearth room and get cleaned up.”

“In the… shower?” There was a hopeful note in his voice; he hadn’t had a shower like a real man in nearly a week. Hadn’t even been allowed inside the house.

“Unless you’d prefer the outdoor hose. But you make it quick too, understand? I’m serving that casserole when it’s piping hot.”

He gave a quick nod, snatched up the bag of clothes he’d dumped down by the front door, and took the stairs at least three at a time from the way it sounded.

Though the Crafting Circle ladies and the cats waited quietly in the dining room, Flora now joining in whatever card game they were playing, a tense and impatient air filled the farmhouse. The magic hunters, the werewolf, mistaken identities… There was far too much happening in this sleepy little town, and it all centered around their newest friend, the cider witch.

And yet, against all odds, I didn’t let this oppressive atmosphere get to me. This might be the last time I got to cook for my friends, to share my love through food, so I was going to make this casserole—hot dish, side dish, whatever you wanted to call it—the best that it could be.

As minced onions and garlic got soft and fragrant on the stove with a knob of butter, I dropped bite-sized pieces of lean ground beef into the bottom of a baking dish. Salt and pepper followed, then the sauteed onions and garlic and two cans of cream of mushroom soup. Tater tots lined the top in tight rows like a battalion of soldiers, then it was placed into the oven to get hot and thick and bubbly and crispy.

While it cooked, I pulled the bottle of Riesling I’d been saving for when I discovered Grandpappy’s secret whiskey cellar from the refrigerator, retrieved a motley crew of stemware and mugs—thanks for nothing coordinating, Camping Spell—and padded into the dining room on my stocking feet.

Pouring out the wine, I slid each woman a drink and sat down at the head of the table to tell them my story. All of it. Except my surname. That was still too powerful a piece of information. While I glossed over the details of that night—for it was still so painful to relive—I did tell them of the cursed grimoire that lay buried in a mound of hearth ashes in the crawlspace beneath their feet and everything I had done since coming to Redbud to free my family of its curse. Why I’d been so reclusive. Guarded. Hesitant. Yet how I’d treasured their friendship all the same, not knowing I’d so desperately needed it to keep sane.

The oven timer dinged at the end of my story, but it was Lewellyn, fresh from his shower with a fresh henley sticking to his damp skin, who retrieved the casserole and the plates and brought them to the table. While we ate, he revealed his side of the story, including my request that he train me for my upcoming Big Nasty hunt.

“That’s why you asked for our help?” Daphne breathed, bright eyes as wide and round as twin blue moons. “To create a Hunting Spell so you could track down a demon?”

The Crafting Circle ladies and Ame all looked at me with a mixture of shock, incredulity, even outrage, though Ame looked just as furious at Sawyer as she did with me, no doubt blaming him for not persuading me otherwise. I lifted miserable eyes, enduring their condemnation for I would not be swayed from my path. “I have to free my family somehow.”

“Mist—I mean, Meadow!” Daphne admonished. “Do you have any idea how dangerous that is?”

“She doesn’t.” Shari lurched from her seat, startling us all. The quiet crafter had eaten her meal silently, never looking up from her plate until her fork had scraped up the last morsel.

Too stunned to protest, we watched her stomp over to where an extra-large black trash bag squatted in the corner of the dining room—the very one she’d stuffed into my trunk earlier that day. Heaving it into her arms, she returned blindly to the table, barely able to see over or around it. It was clear very quickly she was just going to dump it, so the rest of us quickly snatched up the empty casserole dish and all the plates and silverware and cups.

The trash bag landed with a mild thump, and Shari tore at the plastic to release what was inside.

A patchwork quilt spilled from the trash bag like refrigerated crescent rolls from a pressurized tube. If those crescent rolls had turned gray with mold. Before us lay a mass of charcoal grays, reds, blacks, some ivory white. Shari spared only the moment it took to confirm it was the right side up and oriented correctly before she plucked up her wineglass in one hand and a chair in the other. “I’m going outside to the porch.”

Tail lifted high, Ame followed after her, and the front door slammed shut.

Daphne looked torn, clearly wanting to support Shari but burning to know what the quiet crafter had been constructing all these weeks.

“I’ll keep an eye on her,” Lewellyn volunteered quietly, already heading for the door. “Besides, don’t know when Stripes last went patrolling.”

“My name is Sawyer,” the tabby tomcat said flatly.

“Well let’s not be left in suspense,” Flora urged. “Let’s take a looky-loo!”

Each granny square Shari had crocheted had been carefully stitched together until not a quilt, but a yarn mosaic dominated my dining room table. A mosaic that told the frightful story of her past as a demon’s bride-to-be.