Chapter 3

Later that night,when the pixies and hobs had all gone to bed and the witching hour was upon us, I lit a candle from one of the hearth's coals before creeping to the center of the hallway and peeling back the braided rug. Removing the iron knife from its leather sheath on my thigh, I used the tip to wiggle up that first floorboard and create a hole big enough to retrieve what I'd hidden in the crawlspace all those weeks ago.

Beside me, Sawyer peered into the hole, whiskers tickling my cheek. Below us was a mountain of gray-white ashes, as untouched as the bare ground around it. Not even the whisper-light tracks of little mice feet could be seen. Sawyer had been doing a good job of keeping the area around the farmhouse clear, as had my hearth.

Even so, I sent out a tendril of green magic, not enough to awaken the parasite ring, but enough to startle anything that might be lurking below.

Nothing.

Bracing my hand opposite the hole I'd made in the floor, I lowered my head and half of my shoulders and extended my arm towards the mound of ashes. It felt a soft as flour, parting for my fingers and shifting soundlessly until a book and a claw revealed themselves. I left the claw of the Big Nasty where it was and retrieved the spell book, careful to not touch the emerald in its center, the ashes slipping from the wrinkled black cover as easily as sand across a polished surface.

When I emerged and set the spotless grimoire on the rug so I could replace the floorboards, Sawyer immediately backed up. The grimoire was almost as big as he was, almost too thick for my hand to grip its spine, clasped in iron, a large and irregularly shaped dark green emerald embedded in the black leather. Heat emanated from the gem.

"Woah," Sawyer whispered. "Bad vibes."

"Curses will do that," I replied in an equally low voice. "Don't touch it."

"Don't have to tell me twice."

Standing, I kicked the area rug back into place and retrieved both candle and book and began my barefooted creep up the stairs. While it would have been preferable to perform my magic by the hearth, there was no way I would risk someone suddenly bursting in through the back door, even if it was midnight. Over the course of the day, I'd brought enough of it into the bare attic to make a passable substitute: my ashes bucket was full of healthy coals, I'd pried a slate loose from the hearth stones, and I now had this candle flame that had been lit by the hearth fire itself.

After Sawyer followed me inside, I closed the trapdoor only most of the way—propping it open just a smidge with a spare piece of wood—and shut us (mostly) away from any prying eyes. I'd thought about covering the louvered window vents with curtains, but if by some chance something went wrong, I wanted the extra exit options fully visible.

The tabby tomcat crouched in the space between the trapdoor and the nearest window, alert, tail tucked in tight around his feet, and wanting his choice of escape routes.

In the center of the attic was the fruit of my weeks of labor. Restricted by the parasite ring, I'd been forced to layer my containment spell. Layering was a weaker witch's way of producing the same effect of a spell with a lot less power up front—you stacked a bunch of smaller spells one on top of each other, each like a little stick of dynamite, and then lit the fuse. A mountain still blew up if it was attacked by a bunch of dynamite or a single missile. The only thing was, layering a spell took forever.

Grandmother had been militant that each Hawthorne master this technique, for you never knew when something might bind your power or poison you or wound you enough that you weren't able to tap into your full potential. And for the weaker Hawthornes of our family, it was how they were able to perform the same spells as the stronger members. Sure, it required more time and preparation, but the effects were undeniable. It also forced us to be creative, to see many alternative and viable solutions to the same problem.

What looked like a forest-inspired bullseye dominated most of the attic floor, the on-loan hearth stone in the very center. The rhizomes of the blackberry lilies I'd gathered in Cedar Haven's forest a month ago had been dried and powdered down, mixed with a variety of the tinctures and compounds I'd prepared and let to cook in one of my Dutch ovens on the hearth until it resembled a viscous tan-colored mud. That'd been poured into a seamless circle right on the floorboards, the mud bubbling up as it came in contact with the cooler surface and resembling the tubular nest of a mud dauber.

I'd followed its application with all those "spiky balls of death" as Sawyer called them—the sweetgum balls. Another potion was made on my hearth, this one white and runny like donut glaze. My parasite ring hadn't protested this one either, not until I started layering the dipped sweetgum balls into the shape of a croquembouche. I had to keep muttering the spell:

"Ring of barbs, of Nature's wrath,

trap what's inside and keep it back"

with each consecutive layer, and perhaps I was being overly cautious, but I was determined to get no less than six layers. (We witches have a thing for multiples of three.) The wild blackberry canes came next, dusted in a third concoction cooked up by the hearth and giving the barrier the look of a dead hedge. This containment spell had enough juice for two uses, but I wasn't going to rely on just one spell to protect myself. There was another simpler spell, one that had been used for centuries both by witches and by those who would work against them.

Carefully stepping over the barrier I'd constructed, I set the grimoire down on the hearth stone, gem facing upwards. Retrieving the carton of salt I'd left inside the barrier earlier that day, I thumbed open the little spout. As I dripped wax from the lit candle into a rough circle around the hearth stone, I sprinkled it with salt in the same manner of gleeful abandon as a toddler would with glitter.

This was what amateur witches got wrong most of the time. A circle of salt was only good if nothing disturbed it. And while nothing inside the circle could act against it, in theory, an outside errant breeze certainly could. Or a sneeze. Or some mindless individual tripping and scuffing it with their shoe. Salt fused into the wax melted from a hearth witch's fire? Well, no breeze or sneeze was disturbing that line of containment.

With that last stick of dynamite in place, it was time to light the fuse.

With my parasite ring clearly nearing capacity, I'd decided to switch tactics last minute tonight. While my first plan had been to proverbially kick the hornets' nest that was the curse to discover exactly what it was and just how badly it was engrained in the spell book, I'd chosen now to go with a more subtle route. Poke the hornets' nest. Determine the nature of the hornet species via a milder response, as it were, instead of taking on an enraged nest all at once. Besides, once I knew exactly what it was I was dealing with, then I'd know how best to contain it.

Evicting or ejecting the curse out of the grimoire had never been my problem—I'd just use a variant of the expulsion curse I'd planned on using on the pixies, but dialed up to a hundred. The problem was the aftereffects. Would the curse simply dissipate? Or like a true parasite, fight and try to find another host?

If the former, well that was all daisies and roses, but it was most likely the latter. That meant I'd need safeguards and secondary containment spells if I wanted to study it, to use it to divine who had cursed my family. Every coven had its own magical signature, its own flair, and it permeated their spells, much like Brandi's overconsumption of anise had "flavored" her cider hex. I would find out who cursed us before I destroyed it.

If I was strong enough to even do that. The shadowy thing had already proven itself resilient to starvation—it hadn't fed off a magical core once since I'd come to Redbud, so it must be tough in many ways. I'd have to devise a carefully crafted spell to bind and subdue it, which meant it had to be tailored, like a suit designed to be worn by no other than its master. That's what was going to be the hard part. But it wasn't insurmountable. Afterwards, Grandmother could destroy it if I couldn't.

I left the containment barrier as carefully as I'd entered, not letting even the wind of my passage disturb what I'd so painstakingly crafted. Then I crouched by the bucket of coals, rocking the bucket this way and that until I found one to my liking. Dipping my hand into the bucket, I extracted one the size of a chicken egg. It was only warm to my hearth witch skin, though it glowed a dull red. Sleeping.

It was time to rouse it.

With it cupped in my palm, I lifted the hearth coal to eye level and took a deep breath as I watched the mesmerizing smolder. I'd been practicing my focusing techniques ever since the First of Fall Festival, from grounding to breathing to watching a candle flame to even trying cold plunges—ten out of ten would not recommend. It seemed my method was to inhale and feel the ground beneath my feet, sense its power racing upwards and into my core, my magic core sprouting like a seed given life, that magic then swirling into my lungs to be released with my exhale, my eyes fixed on my target.

What had taken me hours and weeks to perfect came easier now, after only a few breaths, like a bellows recharging a forge, and then green flames sprang to life on the dormant coal.

Sawyer lowered himself even closer to the floor as I bent down by the barrier. With another exhale, I blew the green flames onto the circle and activated my spell.

A low growl emanated from the grimoire a second before a jagged shadow shot out of the gem.

Salt sprayed into a white dust cloud as the wax circle was destroyed, and then my containment barrier snapped into place.

Between one blink and the next, the circle expanded into a toothsome maw full of spikes and thorns and swallowed shut over its prey. There was a muted crack and a rush of wind as the resulting dome fused itself into an impenetrable barrier, and the thing inside howled.

In the resulting darkness, for the wind had snuffed out my candle and the hearth coals, I stood very still, unable to think let alone breathe.

"Misty?" Sawyer's whisper finally came.

Not for the first time, I was thankful I'd given Redbud and everyone I encountered outside of Hawthorne Manor an alias. I didn't want that thing inside the grimoire, whatever it was, to know anything about me.

On weak legs, I sank down to the bucket of coals and rooted around for any that still had life. A marble-sized one in the very center of the pile, insulated from the blast, had survived. I coaxed its heat to rouse enough to relight the candle.

In its meager light, Sawyer's eyes were enormous, pupils so dilated they almost snuffed out the amber of his irises. He was fluffier than I'd ever seen him, each hair straight on end and whiskers quivering.

"Misty?" he whispered again. "Did it… Did it get out?"

Just to double-check, I cast a glance at the arch in the attic ceiling, but there was no shadow creature pooling there. Phew. "No."

Though it had blasted through my salt barrier, my containment barrier had held. Quite admirably, actually, and thank the Green Mother for that.

"What is that?"

"Not here."

The dome of spiky sweetgum balls and thorny brambles would not retract until that thing went back into the gem. And I wasn't going to discuss anything until it did.

We both jumped as the dome cracked again, this time unsealing itself. The maw retracted as the spell deactivated, once again resembling a dead-hedge collection of scavenged forest debris. Wetting my lips, I retrieved a dead coal from the bucket and lobbed it at the grimoire. It struck the gem dead-on, but no shadow emerged.

I repeated the process a few times, striking different parts, but the spell book, and the parasite inside, was dormant once more. I wasted no time hustling it out of the attic and down the stairs and into that pile of hearth ashes in the crawlspace, practically burying it in rosemary sprigs before heaping more fresh ashes on top of it. Then when the floorboards were back in place and the area rug hiding it all, I scrubbed my hands first with salt and then hot soapy water, then fled to my bed. Sawyer wiggled himself under the comforter I'd heaved over my head, crawling into my lap.

He was trembling, and so was I.

Running my hand over and over his fur seemed to calm us both, but it was many minutes before the tabby tomcat chose to speak again.

"What was that?" he asked.

I was still wracking my own brain for an answer. Its aura was most certainly other, meaning it was of the fae, but what kind? High fae, lesser fae, fairy, or Big Nasty. The first two were most definitely out, the third one barely a possibility, and the fourth… I'd only encountered a Big Nasty once—that one glamoured to look like a dog who guarded the grimoire at the manor, and this thing in the grimoire didn't feel like that.

Then again, my experiences with the Redbud pixies versus the manor pixies had taught me there were some serious gaps in my education, maybe even omissions. Things I didn't know I didn't know, so it was best to use my incomplete knowledge as a framework only, and concentrate on what I observed to be true.

This parasite's aura was hunger. It was malice.

It was a ticking time bomb, through and through.

Whatever that parasite was, it was starving. It hadn't fed in weeks, and it was only by some miracle of spell phrasing that it wasn't able to feed off me or Sawyer. But I wasn't sure how a spell, even one cast by a powerful witch, could keep that insatiable greed at bay for much longer.

"I-I don't know," I finally answered.

Sawyer started to shake again.

I had to be strong, for both of us, so I took in a slow, deep breath, grounding myself as if preparing for a spell, but it was to sieve an answer from the logic granted from all my years of training.

"My protection barrier worked, and it was strong enough to seal it completely away," I listed off, my voice barely louder than an exhale. "The spell limiting its feeding to the elders of my coven is still intact, otherwise—"

The young tomcat gulped audibly.

"Exactly." I stroked him some more, relaxing us both. "I did sense its aura. It was almost overwhelmingly hungry. But there was something beneath the hostility… Resentment, maybe? I-I think it's not just a parasite, but a prisoner, too."

"I do not feel sorry for it," Sawyer said vehemently.

While I'd heard him, my mind was already leaping ahead. With a yank, I freed us from my makeshift comforter fort, allowing some fresh night air to bathe our faces.

"Hey!" Sawyer wiggled back into the safety of the comforter until only his whiskers and amber eyes glowed in the moonlight.

"If it's a prisoner," I reasoned, "maybe it'll show leniency to whoever frees it."

"That thing is no better than a rabid, starving lion, and you think it'll just pass you by if you're the one to free it from its cage?" Sawyer's voice cracked like a pubescent teenager's. "It'll eat you first, Misty! Then me!"

"I'm not stupid," I said, somewhat snippily. Our tensions were still running very high. "I'm just saying there might be something to exploit. An edge I wouldn't normally have. I'm trying to look at all the options here!"

Pulling the tie from my hair, I scratched my scalp and loosened up my brown locks before flopping back onto the pillow. Perhaps the scalp stimulation would jog loose a thought on how to proceed.

"How can you sleep knowing that thing is in the crawlspace?" Sawyer demanded, his voice still pitchy with fright. "I'm going out with the hobs tonight!"

Despite his threats, the tabby cat didn't move out from under the comforter. Then, in a ponderous voice, he said, "You know… maybe you should try a simpler examination instead. Like with a selenite crystal."

"What?" I'd only ever heard of using crystals for cleansing and using as batteries. Or as siphons for diminishing a witch's power, which was basically like charging a battery anyway.

"Selenite," he repeated. "I've been learning about crystals in school. Selenite's a powerful cleanser, but it's also used for revealing the truth of things."

"So's the spell I just used upstairs. Kinda."

"Yeah but the selenite crystal is less ‘poke the grizzly bear with a spear' and more ‘watch the grizzly bear from a long way off with binoculars.' It's how Fanga Longclaw—the headmistress of Grimalkin University—confirms if familiars and witches have bonded."

He'd mentioned as much when I'd confronted Brandi with her abused toad familiar, Cletus. My magic had caused their familiar bond to become visible, enough for Cletus to bite and sever it.

I gnawed on my bottom lip as I considered. Grandmother had always said crystals were a crutch, had only allowed us to use them in a limited number of applications, and certainly never when a spell could suffice. Plus I'd learn faster through poking the thing in the grimoire than spending hours or days just watching it. "I don't know… weak witches use cry—"

Sawyer swatted me on the cheek with a velveted paw. "They also layer spells, too! And what are you now, with that parasite ring on your finger? If Ame was here she'd call you prideful and actually claw you!"

From the vehemently way he'd spoken, I wondered if he'd actually received such a reprimand from Ame. Talented individuals often had a matching level of hubris.

I threw up my hands. "Fine! We'll do it your way. As it so happens, there's a wagon at the Carnival Cauchemar tomorrow that sells crystals. Chalce's Crystal Emporium; maybe she'll have selenite there."

"Then we look but don't touch," Sawyer said, shivering again and leaning into me. "Though, not too long. Maybe it can look back, and learn."

I lifted my hand, letting the tourmaline of the parasite ring glint in the moonlight. "It will not meet the real me until I'm destroying it."