Chapter 3 Lesser Evils

3

Lesser Evils

"How are you doing?" Amrita asked again as we walked through the Emporium's aisles together, the otherworldly choral music that always played in the store drifting around us like the auditory equivalent of the incense. I still felt tweaky enough that even its ethereal strains grated on me a little, but that was good.

It reminded me that I was really here, both feet solidly planted in this realm.

"Better than Emily Duhamel," I replied with a half shrug. "She was a lot tougher than most, I'll give her that. But I'd still bet she's in for a rough few weeks, coming to terms with having let a life-sucking hell squid spoon her every night."

Once she'd composed herself, we'd sent Emily home with the bundle of purification herbs and the reassurance that we would be here if she ever needed us again. Even as shaky as she'd been, she had still made sure to leave us both a generous tip, along with another of those sturdy handshakes. If I had the energy or inclination to make new friends these days, she was the kind I'd have wanted for myself.

Under normal circumstances, the oblivion glamour that veiled the town would have prevented Emily from retaining any memories of the magic she'd seen, but it couldn't reach back in time and eradicate her recall of the infestation itself. And we'd discovered through painful trial and error that the formerly haunted, infested, or possessed needed to remember the exorcism. Otherwise they'd never shed the subconscious memory of what they'd experienced; the physical imprint would live on in their bodies, as if stamped all the way down to the matrix of their cells. We'd only be leaving them differently traumatized, haunted by their own minds. So we'd made it one of our best practices to tweak the oblivion glamour during any banishing ritual we performed, letting our clients heal from their own psychic injuries.

This loophole technically flew in the face of the prohibition against allowing normies to witness and remember any of our magic—but the Blackmoores did the same at their Castle Camelot attraction, allowing tourists to retain the magical "special effects" they saw during their cloyingly cheesy musical performances, twisting the rules purely for their own profit. And in all the years we'd been bending the rules, making such exceptions had never come back to bite us. As best we could tell, most of our clients went about their lives keeping what they'd seen to themselves—or if they didn't, no one believed what they had to say.

Amrita looped her arm through mine, cutting me an impressively keen side-eye. "Except she isn't my sister. And she sure as the hells isn't the one who just pounded liquefied devil after getting a hit of the other side. So no more deflection. How are you really ?"

I took a deep breath as we meandered between ornate wooden shelves, stacked with everything from hand-painted tarot decks and scrying mirrors in hammered copper frames to cut-glass chalices and ceremonial bowls. Above us, handmade besoms—witches' brooms used in rituals—hung from the exposed rafters of the high ceiling, strings of drying herbs swinging between them like rustic ornaments. The familiarity of what we all affectionately referred to as Ye Witchy Walmart, the megastore of occult arcana I'd grown up with, helped ground me with each step. But I still shook a little, a fine tremor that coursed through my limbs and left my fingers twitching.

It clearly hadn't escaped my hawkeyed sister. Not much did, alas.

"It's still fucking hard," I admitted, picking at loose threads dangling from my sweater hem. "It would almost be easier if I could, I don't know, build up some immunity. If just being there wasn't so damn potent every time. But it never fades. Every time feels exactly like the first."

"Do you need to come home with me?" Amrita asked softly, no censure in her tone. "Saanvi would love to stuff you full of whatever's for dinner tonight, I'm sure. And you know Kira can never get enough of you."

I smiled at the mention of my stepmother and niece; Amrita had been living with her mother since my sister's less-than-amicable split with Kira's father four years earlier. After my bleakest period a little over two years ago—the dark, lost days of my complete infatuation with the other side—part of my slow and scattershot recovery had included moving in with the three of them. I'd needed that immersive contact with the living, especially my own kin, and all the full-blooded human joys that came with it. Saanvi's spectacular food and hugs, late-night wine with Amrita, Kira's rollicking toddler giggles, the warmth of her little body on my lap when I read Grumpy Monkey and How to Catch a Unicorn to her before bed. Even after I'd felt steady enough to move back out, just over a year ago, they still kept the guest room reserved for me.

Sometimes I forgot how complicated our unconventional little family must seem to anyone on the outside. But it worked for us, so well that it had gone a good way toward saving my life.

"Thank you, but I don't think so. I can't keep relying on you every time I cross," I replied, just as gently. "If I'm not going to stop sliding over altogether, I have to be able to safely withstand it on my own. You know that."

She nodded, only a little reluctantly, concern still etched into her features. Slipping through to the other side came as naturally to me as other forms of necromancy did to the rest of my family, and even at my worst, none of them had suggested that the answer lay in never crossing the veil again. As much as my visits there were a dangerous temptation, a slippery slope I needed to navigate on my own, I was an Avramov. The connection with death was in my blood, part of my father's legacy. Even if I did happen to have a much riskier case of it than most.

"Well," she said, "you know the invitation stands. In the meantime, are you feeling up to a quick meeting with Elena? I let her know you were coming in for an assist, and she wanted a final check-in with you on the Cavalcade preparations."

In my more mundane role, I was the Arcane Emporium's event planner, which meant that any special events or festivals fell under my purview. I'd always enjoyed my job, but more recently, the organizational aspect of it had become something of a lifeline. It demanded constant contact with living people and an endless array of spreadsheets—the kind of substantive and administrative juggle so firmly rooted in this world that it kept my mind from drifting toward the metaphysical.

A debrief with my boss—who also happened to be the Avramov family matriarch—was exactly what I needed to take my mind off the other side and banish the lingering unease of the demon's parting words.

"I'll be fine." I held up a hand for her. "See? Shakes already fading."

"I'll walk you. I need to check in with her myself anyway." She frowned, elegant nose wrinkling, light winking off its two dainty studs. "Something odd's been going on with the apothecary inventory. The numbers aren't squaring up at the end of the month."

"Are you thinking shoplifting?" It had been an occasional problem in the past, though rare; the few cases we had tended to be Thistle Grove teens on a dare to steal from the town's spookiest witch family. It was unusual enough that we'd never even bothered putting wards in place for it.

"Possibly? But who's got sticky fingers for henbane, wormwood, hound's-tongue, vervain, and mandrake, specifically?"

"You're right, that is odd." I rummaged through my mental repository of Grimoire spells that might rely on those ingredients, and came up empty with any combination that required all five. "Have you talked to Wynter about it?"

"She's the one who brought it up to me, which is frankly astonishing in itself, given her powers of observation." Amrita gave a massive roll of her kohled eyes. Sweet-tempered as my sister was, especially for one of our family, Wynter still managed to wriggle under her skin. "I know she's a superlative pusher of merch or Elena wouldn't tolerate her. But Mother and Crone, that is one aggravating bitch."

Wynter—a name I hoped to the hells and back her own mother hadn't actually saddled her with—was one of the few local normies employed by the Emporium. My personal suspicion was that she'd been hired only because she also happened to be one of our most reliable purchasers of occult paraphernalia and herbs. She was a self-styled "solitary practitioner," complete with an Etsy craft store and revoltingly devout social media following, despite the fact that she didn't belong to any of the four Thistle Grove witch families and exhibited not even the slightest inkling of real magical talent.

"Dim as a dead bulb," I agreed. "And the worst kind of wannabe. Buys one thousand percent into her own bullshit, which is either an impressive amount of delusion or total commitment to a bit. Not to mention contagious."

Amrita gave me a warning squeeze as we neared the Avramov Apothecary section of the store, where Wynter herself was delivering an ardent lecture to a customer who seemed to be hanging on her every word.

She was cute, I suppose, if you went all in for the CW Glam Witch ? aesthetic. Her waist-length hair and heavy bangs were dyed pitch-black, framing a pert face with a ski-slope nose, hazel eyes fringed with eyelash extensions below a pint of shimmery gray shadow, and a tragically overfilled pout glossed to a taupe gleam. Above the gauzy bodice of her gown—all her necklines were filmy and low-cut, to showcase the kind of balloon boobs that needed no scaffolding—tattoos sprawled over her neck and chest. An intricate jewel necklace curled around her throat and across her collarbones, spiderwebs and snakes creeping up each porcelain shoulder. At least she wasn't wearing one of her witch fascinators, sheer black veil included.

It was all the kind of much that did absolutely nothing for me. But I could see why it worked for her when it came to the hordes of horny, lonely, witch-fetishizing strangers who drooled over her online.

"The thing is, like, if you're trying to restore the lost sanctity of your love," Wynter was saying, gesticulating broadly with her tiny hands, tipped with the kind of pointy nails that looked like they could spear a passing eyeball in an overzealous movement, "it's all about, does the cosmos will it so, too. But you can always grease the wheels a little. I recommend a wax-sealed jar of turmeric, dragon's blood, crushed violet petals, and moon water for this type of thing, ideally assembled during the dark of the moon. And I know this is going to be gross—that's how you know it works, right?!—but you're going to need some of your period blood and his fingernail clippings in there, too. They're the special sauce."

The poor, beleaguered woman bit her lip, looking torn. "I…his nail clippings? I'm really not sure how I could get those. I'd rather not, I don't know, stalk him. Or break into his house ."

"Hmm, yeah, sourcing that can be tricky for sure. But veering into TMI territory for a sec, is ex sex maybe an option?" Wynter's face turned conspiratorial, and she leaned across the counter, propping her dainty chin on her palm. "Because if it is, that's even better. You could always just save his—"

"Mother and Crone, I cannot with this," Amrita muttered under her breath, hastily steering us out of hearing range before we were subjected to the rest of Wynter's advice. "Special sauce, indeed. She's gonna spiritually advise that chick right into prison."

"But she's definitely also going to drop a small fortune on those herbs, right?" I suppressed a shudder. "Before she even… sources the rest of the ingredients."

"Yup," Amrita bit off, with an exasperated pop on the p . "And then when this deranged love spell doesn't work, fifty bucks says she'll be right back here for more of Wynter's sage counsel and another pricey batch of herbs."

"Painful to watch, but hey. At least the cycle of absurdity helps keep our lights on."

Amrita gave a doleful nod. "Believe me, I know. Elena's going to keep her around forever , which means I will never not be supervising her. She has become my eternal millstone."

"She might still poison herself with one of her own concoctions," I consoled, patting her shoulder.

"Working here is her whole personality. Ten to one she'd be back for her next shift right after getting her stomach pumped. Nothing short of the end of days is likely to deliver us from her evil most banal."

I spurted a laugh, raspy against my still-sore throat. "Damn, sis, tell me how you really feel."

"And now I have to admit to the boss that my archnemesis was actually useful, for once." She gave a dramatic groan as we reached the door to Elena's back office. "Why me."

"Think happy thoughts," I instructed, leaning back against the wall with my arms crossed and one foot propped up as she knocked on Elena's imposing mahogany door. Our matriarch had a very Avramov thing for the more intimidating woods. "Saanvi's epic leftovers sandwiches. Kira's dramatic reads of Dragons Love Farts . Evrain Blackmoore busting his smarmy face open on a sidewalk and then getting terrible veneers."

"The dipshit father of my child already has veneers for a soul," Amrita muttered, leaving me chortling outside as she let herself in. "At least they would match."

While I waited for my turn with Elena, I tried to keep those same happy thoughts—warm, mortal thoughts—front and center of myself, as afterimages of the other side slid across my mind like enticing trespassers. The faceted glitter of that strange fruit that grew on the spindly trees. That sweep of shale sky billowing with streaks of crimson clouds. Those motionless flowers, black and bizarre and uncannily perfect. And me among it all, ablaze like a bonfire, burning with so much delicious life. Like a living sun rising against the cold expanse of that unending dark.

The thought whispered delicately across my mind, like a scrap of silk being drawn over stone, the way it always did. You could go back , that hunger inside me prompted in a tantalizing hiss. Anytime you wanted. Right now, even, without moving an inch. And you wouldn't ever have to leave.

It was right; the other side was never closed off to me. Even with the grounding influence of the garnet at my throat, some crucial part of me was simply unmoored, untethered, in a way that other members of my family weren't.

Some part of me naturally belonged there, more than it did here. I aligned with it magnetically, like a compass needle straining toward true north.

But I knew what this line of thinking led to, its inevitable conclusion. I knew what it had done to me when I'd given in to it; what it had done to those who cared about me the most. And so I'd do what it took to resist, even if committing those lesser evils sometimes hurt almost as much.

Fifteen minutes later, I sat across from Elena Avramov's massive desk, in the beautiful yet perpetually wobbly antique Queen Anne chair that always made me feel like a penitent child. I had no proof, but I suspected its lopsidedness was the matriarch's subtle way of getting the upper hand in every conversation conducted in here before it had even begun. Not that she needed the help, being larger than life simply by existing. Her entire person, from those penetrating, feline-green eyes and cascade of fox-pelt hair, to the heavy scent of perfume and pipe tobacco that permeated the office, exuded authority. Even the formidable mahogany bookshelves rising behind her, stacked with leather-bound ledgers and carved with ivy, hellebore, and capering imps, couldn't dwarf the dark-star immensity of her presence.

"Amrita tells me you've exorcised a revenant demon for one of her clients," she said, her eyes alight with the thought of a successfully dispatched demon. "Ghastly creatures, aren't they? I could hear that one bellowing its uninspired obscenities from here before someone thought to cast a dampening glamour over the divination enclosures. You'd imagine, given the length of their existence and taste for stolen human memories, they could muster at least a touch of creativity."

"It did say something…odd, right before I dissolved it." I closed my eyes, quoting the demon from memory as best I could. "Does that mean anything to you?"

"?‘And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,'?" Elena said, rolling her eyes a little. "Yeats, ‘The Second Coming.' A demon cribbing from classic apocalypse poetry, how terribly cliché. I wouldn't put much stock in deathbed threats like that. Perhaps it ate a melancholic English professor somewhere down the line."

I chuckled at that, the last of my unease dissipating. "Maybe that's why it went down so harsh. Left me with a solid case of exorcist strep throat, but nothing a hot toddy or three won't fix."

"How are you feeling otherwise?" Elena asked, leaning forward in her hobnailed, crackled-leather chair, those jade eyes sharpening until I shifted in my uncomfortable seat. "I assume you traversed the veil before exorcising the wretched thing. Did you have any trouble finding your way back?"

I clenched my teeth, bristling a little at the question—even though she, of all people, had every right to ask. Both as the head of our family and the witch who'd done the lion's share of clawing me back to life when I needed it the most.

"No. I'm doing well," I said stiffly. "No…relapses to speak of. Time with family helps; so does work. Especially planning something as ambitious as the Cavalcade."

Elena nodded, elbows resting on her blotter, fingers steepled under her chin. "I imagine putting it together hasn't left you with much room for ruminating. And I'm glad to hear you've been prioritizing it on our behalf. I take it we're all set for launch next week?"

I nodded, giving the agenda a quick mental once-over. The Cavalcade was Thistle Grove's most elaborate festival, and like the Gauntlet of the Grove, it was one deliberately laid out in the Grimoire as opposed to being a more modern, tourist-trappy invention. It marked the September anniversary of Thistle Grove's founding, in the form of a historical re-creation of the four founders' staking out of territory in the town nearly four hundred years ago. Every twenty years, the families came together to give tourists the opportunity to retrace the founders' footsteps, and enjoy performances inspired by our different magics and set against the backdrop of the family demesnes. This was the only instance in which tourists, locals, and Thistle Grove vendors were allowed to both witness and participate in magical displays as part of the celebration—the Grimoire specifically called for this exception, even as it omitted any reason why—and it made for an outlandish spectacle that outshone almost everything else the town put on. (And even without the oblivion glamour, these days you could always pass off real magic as high-end special effects.)

The preparations involved were extensive, even for a town that ran on witch tourism year-round. Fall was the most beautiful and beguiling time in Thistle Grove, a season that felt charmed even to the magicless, not to mention a gateway to the chaos of Halloween month. Which meant that every two decades, the Cavalcade gave us a tourist boost that equaled two back-to-back Octobers.

"The planning committee's holding a closing meeting on Tuesday, but it's mostly a formality," I replied. "Everything's set for the Friday opening. We've already completed the scheduled dry runs for the Avramov spectacle, and they've all gone off without a hitch."

"Wonderful." Elena clicked the tips of her shining candy-apple nails against each other, making a pensive moue. "And everyone's behaving? No issues with the other families?"

"Well, I wouldn't say our collaboration has been an epic joy, but no, nothing worth noting. Gawain Blackmoore pitched only a manageable number of prima donna fits when it came to his ‘creative vision' for our closing lakeside spectacle. I think having Big Brother Gareth at the Blackmoore helm has actually been good for him."

Elena gave a small smile, presumably enjoying a fond memory of Yule past. During the Yule celebrations, our current Victor of the Wreath, Emmeline Harlow, had summarily dethroned the former Blackmoore elder, Lyonesse, on account of some egregious misconduct and treachery. Little love had been lost between Elena and the older Blackmoore generation, and so far, Lyonesse's scion, Gareth—previously best known for being an infamous fuckboy-about-town and overall degenerate—seemed to be doing a surprisingly fair job running things at Castle Camelot and the Blackmoores' Tintagel demesne.

"And to her credit," I continued, "Genevieve Harlow is sensible enough to have kept him well in hand."

Our Harlow planning committee chairperson was so relentlessly minutiae oriented that her detailing of bullet points occasionally made me want to slide into catatonia. It was possible that the timbre of her voice managed to lull even Gawain's hyperactive nervous system into rest and digest.

"And the Thorns? I know we've had an easier time with them overall, what with Issa and Rowan's ongoing dalliance." Another inscrutable smile flickered over the elder's lips at the thought of her younger daughter's partnership with the scion of the Thorn line. What Elena actually thought of the pairing, given our complicated history with the Thorn family, was impossible to decipher, at least to someone like me. I was a relatively distant cousin to the Avramov main line, and beyond my work at the Emporium—and Elena's involvement with my checkered necromantic past—I'd never had a close relationship with our matriarch. "But we haven't been collaborating directly with the official Honeycake event coordinator, have we?"

I swallowed, my stomach bucking with a reflexive lurch of sadness at the mention of my Thorn counterpart. Otherwise known as my ex-girlfriend—and quite possibly the love of my life, before I'd fucked that up on every level humanly possible.

When it came to leaving relationships in smoldering, apocalyptic ruins, no one could accuse me of any lack of natural talent.

"That's correct. Ivy Thorn's assistant, Indigo, has been working with us instead of Ivy herself, due to…scheduling conflicts on Ivy's end, I believe," I added, running my tongue over my teeth. Not a wholesale lie; Ivy Thorn's unwillingness to tolerate the sight of my face could be perceived as a scheduling conflict. In a certain light. "But it's been relatively seamless. Indigo's a consummate professional, and doesn't seem to have bad blood with any of the families."

"A gift from the Mother and Crone herself," Elena commented, arching a feathery copper eyebrow. "Let's hope her blessing will carry over to the ceremonies. Involving mundanes in our festivities is a tricky enough business to begin with, and the last time around, we didn't have a storm-riddled Lady's Lake to contend with."

I sat back in my chair, a shiver skittering down my spine. The mountaintop lake that served as the town's overflowing font of magic—and the sacred, underwater sanctuary of the goddess Belisama's stone avatar—had grown increasingly tumultuous over the past few months. Boiling storms now raged just above the lake at least once a week, bolts of sapphire lightning forking like serpent tongues down to the water's churning surface. The turbulent weather never seemed to extend past the Hallows Hill summit, and somehow Thistle Grove's magicless inhabitants seemed to have readily accepted "climate change" as a viable explanation.

The families were much less nonchalant about it, though as far as I knew, we were equally in the dark as to what was causing the disturbance.

"It's come up in our meetings," I told Elena. "Since the Hallows Hill ceremony is families only, we don't have to worry about normie spectator safety. And if we wind up with a stormy night, the Blackmoores seem confident they can calm the weather enough to allow for the rite." As elementalists, the Blackmoore family had the strongest aptitude for storm-wrangling atmospheric magic. "But I'll bring it up again on Tuesday just to make sure."

Elena nodded vaguely, an abstracted expression stealing over her face—as though the conversation had reminded her of some subterranean concern that she'd been grappling with before I'd even walked in. Something that was clearly on a need-to-know basis that didn't extend to the likes of me.

"Let us hope that's indeed the case," she finally said, gaze shifting back to me, something murky and unreadable still swimming in its jade depths. Unease stirred inside me like the slow shift of tectonic plates; the ominous sense that what I'd managed to glimpse of her disquiet was only the tip of a very large, very daunting iceberg. "Thank you, Daria, that will be all. And enjoy your hot toddies tonight—along with something stronger, if you're so inclined. You've earned it."