Chapter 8

Suddenly there wasa sweep of air close to my neck, and I whirled to find Arthur directly behind me, the longer brown locks of my ponytail slipping between his outstretched fingers. What would he have done if he'd chosen to tighten his grip on my hair? Give my ponytail a playful, teasing tug? Or thread his fingers against my scalp and jerk my head back to plant a searing kiss against my mouth? Amber flashed in his hazel eyes, something predatory taking over—

"Watch it!" He grabbed my arm and yanked, halting my run so I didn't collide into the group parked in front of the next sign.

The bag with the focaccia exhaled a heavenly rosemary-garlic breath as it was crushed between us, and for a moment, I wanted to hurl it into the corn for daring to block his chest from pressing against mine. Besides, it was warring with that scent of old-growth forest that clung to him like a second skin, a fragrance I felt on a visceral level. It was wild, it was powerful, it spoke of secrets hidden in the deep and forgotten places.

Somebody get me a bottle of Riesling because I wanted to lean in and explore him further. And from that amber returning to his eyes, the way his hand hovered inches from cupping my cheek, as if he were afraid I was a phantom that would disappear at his touch—

"I don't know, I don't know," Flora fretted shrilly. "I don't even own a television! Daphne?"

"Like I have a spare moment between making dream catchers and the animal shelter and milking goats?"

"Shari?" the garden gnome quipped, panicked.

She shook her head, bat wings flapping. "If it's not Battlestar Galactica, I haven't seen it."

"Mis-TAY!" the garden gnome screeched.

I snatched my hand away from where it pressed—no, molded—over Arthur's chest and wormed forward to examine the plaque. My heart was beating so rapidly I had to suck in a breath just to get my eyes to focus: The first onscreen curse word is attributed to which movie?

"Gone with the Wind!" I cried.

"You're sure, cider witch?"

"‘Frankly my dear, I don't give a damn,'" Arthur quoted beside me. "We turn left."

"Tallyho!" the garden gnome trumpeted.

The pack surged into the corn maze once again, jostling bodies shifting Arthur and me to the rear. The previous thrill of his bold touch of my hair was gone, a shyness returning. I cursed the emotional roller coaster I always seemed to ride around him, the fluctuations between desire and duty, feeling in my heart that the invisible tether pulling us closer together was right even though my education and upbringing screamed it was forbidden.

Were shifters off-limits to all witches, or just us Hawthornes?

And just like that, my attention snapped from the fun I was having to the mission I'd tasked myself with, almost as if Grandmother had screamed, "Focus" directly into my ear. I was here for a warlock, not Arthur Greenwood.

"That's for you," I said, gesturing to the focaccia loaf he still held. "A-an apology, for running out on you last night."

"You okay?"

No admonishment, no judgment, just an honest inquiry after my wellbeing. This man was the embodiment of compassion, and it made me feel even guiltier than I had before. I gave him a grateful yet rueful smile."I am now, thanks."

"I would have gone with you, you know. To make sure you… Well, for whatever you needed."

When I didn't say anything—too embarrassed and humbled by his generosity—he lifted the bread to his nose and gave it a sniff through the brown paper bag. "Though, if this is how you want to apologize, I suppose I could take offense to a few more things here and there."

"I hope you like it."

"Everything you make is perfect. But I do mean it, miss," he said, unwilling to let the previous subject go just yet. "Whatever you need. I'm here."

Flushing, for the mixture of elation and devastation was churning inside me something fierce, I was spared the need for an immediate reply when we reached the rest of our pack just in time for the decision to turn right.

"Misty, get up here," Flora chided. "That last question was about common medicinal plants and we could've shaved off a few seconds if you'd been there to back up my decision!"

"Duty calls," I told Arthur lamely, worming my way through our team members to reach Daphne.

The older woman showed no signs of fatigue, and I was beginning to wonder if she'd used to run marathons in her younger years. She'd tucked up her billowing skirt into her belt so it wouldn't get caught, her lithe tan legs keeping an even pace.

Our path emptied us out into a wider intersection this time, one dominated by an aforementioned watcher platform. At our appearance, the gypsy on the platform lit a fuse, and a single small firecracker whistled into the sky. It exploded red, and less than a heartbeat later, it was answered by another firecracker somewhere off to our right.

"Another team has reached the halfway point," Flora shouted. "Those Alder boys aren't getting that prize money if I have anything to say about it. Mush, Daphne!"

"We'll discuss your extreme competitiveness and how it makes you treat your friends like beasts of burden after we win," the woman said crisply, flying across the clearing to the sign where the next trivia question would direct us down one of three more avenues.

It was a mad dash to the center, the trivia questions just as wide-ranging as before, and we collided into more than one team in our pursuit to the center. Which was approaching rapidly. The corn maze, having grown on the undulating land of Southern Indiana, presently dipped, the shift in our sightline revealing another platform, this one much grander than the one manned by the gypsy watcher.

Red-flame sparklers fizzled from wrought-iron bowls, Jakob Tabrass in the center looking as menacing as before with his sunglasses and hands poised over the ruby knob of his cane.

"I think this is the last question, girls," Flora crowed. "Victory is at hand!"

I quickly crowded around the sign and scanned the question, a frown creasing my forehead:

An unbranded herd is discovered on the property line of two rival ranches. Do you:

A) share the herd—Right

B) fight and one rancher wins—Left

C) have the authorities decide who gets the herd—Center

"This isn't trivia, this is an ethics question," I said.

"An abbreviated form of the Prisoner's Dilemma," Arthur agreed. "Basically, if you share, both ranchers come out winners, but if you don't, someone—or both—will lose. If there are cattle disputes, the government assumes control of the herd until it can be decided, which usually means no one gets them."

"So which one do we choose?" Flora wailed.

"It's a moral question," Daphne said. "So I guess, whichever one makes you sleep well at night?"

"But what if I want all the cows?"

"Then you fight and risk losing it all," Arthur answered. "It says ‘one rancher wins.' It didn't say who that one was."

"And you're selfish," Shari pointed out.

"Well, nobody's perfect. We're taking a vote," the garden gnome shouted. "Obviously C is out of the question—the government takes enough out in taxes, they ain't getting my cows!"

"These are theoretical cows, Flora," Daphne said, "you do understand that, right?"

"Shush! Who votes A, sharing? Okay. Now who votes B, fight to maybe win them all? Misty! You didn't vote!"

"I—" I gulped as every eye pinned me in place.

It's not that I wanted to choose B, but my gut had twisted when I went to throw my hand up for A. Two rivals sharing anything implied a trust that there would be no backstabbing, that there was a communal truth between them, and what was I doing in Redbud, Indiana if not lying through my teeth every time I opened my mouth? These people—my friends—didn't even know my real name. That I wasn't just an average green witch, but a Hawthorne hearth witch. Progeny of one of the most powerful witch families in the entire United States. And if anything went according to plan, and I learned more about Jakob Tabrass's cane to help me expel the curse on the grimoire, I would be gone before Halloween. It all would be gone, as if I'd never been, and yet there would be a wake left behind me all the same.

"The majority already says A," I said quickly, "so let's just—"

"But what do you choose?" Arthur asked, stepping in front of me and blocking the rest of our team from sight.

"She's right," the garden gnome cried, more glad to have a decision than to be correct in her answer, for she'd chosen B. "To the right. Chop-chop!"

Arthur remained rooted to the spot, his gaze as intense as I'd ever seen it. Somehow he was bigger, almost menacing, and I wondered if Flora calling him a bad boy was more on the nose than any of us knew. And what did we know about him, anyway? He was new to town, just like me. "Misty. Answer the question."

Green magic threatened to flare at my fingertips at his tone, for the corn stalks to surge to life and swat him out of my way. "Why do you care?" I asked, though I knew exactly why he did. Did my moral compass point true enough for someone like him?

"Why can't you answer?"

They sky exploded overhead with sparks of cinder red, and from the gnomish curses loud enough to be heard over the noise, I knew Team Fruit Bat had lost.

But I wasn't going to. Jakob Tabrass had a knack for disappearing quickly.

I pushed past Arthur with a biting, "It would have been A," and hustled down the opposite path.