Chapter 5

Kate

Brooks McDowell, a man who went missing in 1955, is on his knees beside me, using a needle made of bone to stitch up the side of the black leather pants I'm now wearing.

I've been given a bowl of stew, plenty to drink, and very little explanation.

"I had no idea who I was making these pants for," Brooks says in a voice that's low and hot, his dexterity with a needle impressive in those giant hands. His lips are dangerously neutral, but his gaze is focused and steely. "Never let myself believe they'd be for a woman."

"I told you, didn't I?" Tanner teases, cocky and arrogant and more than a little scary. He's adding strands of my hair to a heavy necklace made of bones and flowers and dead moths. Still shirtless. Still bloody.

Marlowe, the one I refuse to look at or speak to, is pulling items from a cedar chest.

Brooks leans in and uses his teeth to snap the sinewy thread, tying it off with quick movements and then snagging my hips in such a strong grip that I gasp. His hands are rude, but his eyes are too serious. He scares me the most out of all three. I'm offered a humorless smile as he turns me to the right, so that he can start on the other leg of my pants.

"Who caught her?" Marlowe bites out, lips canted in a sneer. "Not you, Tanner. And here I thought you said that you hadn't failed a hunt yet."

"Did you do that by yourself? Or did I handle the Hag?" Tanner's retort is gravelly and thick, like he's spent so long in the woods that he's no longer civilized. His gold and black hair is split down the middle, and his smile is full of shit. "But if it makes you feel better to claim the win, then by all means, go right ahead."

He's responding to Marlowe, but he's looking at me.

I decide to pose a question of my own.

"Since Marlowe claims that sticking his fingers in me was part of some spell, did you plan to do the same to whoever you came across? An elderly woman? A teenage boy?" I don't bother to hide my disgust.

They want my help to cast a spell, one that they claim will send us all home. I don't have to like it—or them.

"Better than getting the shit beat of you, eh?" Tanner never stops smiling. He turns back to his necklace-making as my head spins. His crow caws from its perch on the counter before pecking at a loaf of crusty bread with a dangerous black beak.

I'd be crazy not to consider that this is a dream or a hallucination. But if these men—the ones that I recognize from all the lore surrounding the Witchwoods—are telling the truth, then I can't take the time to figure it out.

Every day here is a moon cycle back home? I close my eyes to shut out the fear and worry. Next month, I'm supposed to start my biggest job to date: the infamous Pink Lady. The house was built in the late 1800s by some lumber baron as a wedding gift for his son. It's a gorgeous Queen Anne with bay windows, a turret, and charming gingerbread trim.

It's also a huge fucking paycheck.

I have no idea how I'm going to do the job with only one employee (i.e. myself), but that problem, which felt like the biggest problem in the entire universe only yesterday, means nothing to me now.

Oh my God, Flick. Just thinking about my dog alone in the woods ignites my veins with an electric sort of panic. Then there's my business. Unpaid bills. My grandmother's house. Georgia. She'll have called the cops already.

The needle stabs into my skin, and I jump, eyes flying wide as I try and fail to jerk back from Brooks. He has one huge hand splayed on my lower back, and it anchors me in place as firmly as a lead weight.

"Seriously?" I ask, with a healthy dollop of bravado.

These men are on a mission, and they firmly believe I'm their key to escaping this place. No matter how angry I am, how fiercely I fight, how desperately I want to flee out that door atop the stairs, I'm not going anywhere. They're not going to kill me either, not so long as they think they need me. I can afford to be ornery.

"Consecration by blood, North," Brooks explains as he rises—and rises and rises —to his feet. On his missing poster, Mr. McDowell was listed at a healthy but reasonable hundred-and-eighty pounds. Now? He's well over two-fifty and rock-hard. Something about living in these woods has changed all three of these men.

He chucks my chin with his fingers and leans down, the unnatural green of his eyes sparkling.

"Now, take off your shirt." He smiles tightly at me, crossing his arms as he waits to see if I'll comply. When I don't immediately hop to it, Brooks reaches out and snags the hem with a single finger. "Either you take it off, or I take it off." He leans down to look at me, and he isn't smiling anymore. The big red eye on his hat blinks, just once. "You'll like it better if you do it."

With a growl, I tear the shirt over my head and toss it aside, panting.

"Good girl, North," Brooks tells me, and I resist the urge to scream.

"Katelynn Poppy, actually." I force myself to exhale, wondering what my face is going to look like on a missing poster. On some viral video with sappy music that showcases all of the Witchwoods victims. Me. I'm a missing Witchwoods victim. "If you're going to trap and use someone against their will, you should know their real name."

None of the men apologize for Marlowe's actions, and I get the idea that either of the other two would've made the same choice given the circumstances. Looking at Tanner, I get the idea that he might've made a worse choice.

Looking at Brooks ... the worst.

"Listen, North," Brooks continues, acting as if he didn't hear my name. "I've been trapped in this hellhole for years. Do you know what that's like, to wake up every single day and know that thirty have passed back home? My grandparents are dust and ash. My parents are dead and buried. If my siblings or friends are alive, they'll be in their eighties or nineties. Hell, I'm sure most of them are dead, too. I am not going to skirt around your precious feelings. Frankly, I do not fucking care."

He walks away from me and then pauses, tossing a haughty, purse-lipped frown over his shoulder.

"Bra, too. Take it off." When he sees that I'm just standing there, he turns fully around and cracks his inked knuckles. His antlered shadow mimics him. "Same deal as with the shirt. You or me, North."

"Fuck you," I spit at him, fighting my way out of the sports bra I wear for work. I toss it onto the floor and cover my chest with my arms, but Brooks isn't looking at my breasts. His eyes flick there briefly, but I see that he's making an effort to turn away.

"Lo, act like a gentleman or I'll box your ears." Brooks moves over to the table, hauls it onto its side and rolls it out of the way. He leans it against the wall and then does the same with the chairs, stacking them and clearing an empty space in the center of the room.

"I haven't seen a woman in almost a year," Marlowe explains, moving over to me and dropping a witch hat onto my head. The brim hangs over my eyes and I reach up to push it back, the sound of charms jangling as I do. I keep one arm over my breasts as he looks down at me, a slow smile capturing his full mouth. He's beautiful, but edgy, unnerving. I hate him. "Besides that, you're a part of our coven, Miss Poppy. We're going to get to know each other on a level you can't possibly imagine."

"If I have to participate in this ritual to get home, then I'll do it. I have no obligation to fraternize with you after that." It's so hot in this room. The fire is cracking high and bright, and the place is well-insulated from the cool dampness of the woods outside. Still, I have goose bumps and a chill I can't quite shake.

A pit of corpses and the oddly sweet scent of rotting flesh.

"Fraternize?" Marlowe asks, taking a step back from me. If I let myself think about his fingers, stretching me wide then—

"Yes, fraternize. It means to associate with in a friendly manner." I pause as Marlowe tilts his own hat back to get a better look at me. The green roses on it wilt in real time, and a cluster of black tulips bloom in their place. "Or at all."

He just snorts a laugh and turns away to check on Tanner's progress.

"Are you finished yet?" he snaps, hands on his hips, bare foot tapping out a rhythm of impatience on the polished wood floors. "We don't have a lot of time left until sunrise."

"What happens at sunrise?" I can't resist asking, but I regret it almost as soon as I do. All three men turn to look at me with varying levels of hunger. I'm their meal ticket out of here, and they won't let me forget, not for a single breath.

"Sleep happens." Tanner lifts a scarred brow, bisected down the center and pierced with a silver bar. One half is black, the other gold, just like his hair. Very fancy.

"Sleep, huh?" I'm unamused, but Brooks interrupts the conversation before I can ask anything else.

"It's doubtful that we can perform both rituals in a single day. It'll be a difficult enough challenge just for the one. Do you three want to keep chatting or cast this spell?" He uses a broom to sweep the floor, like that's a part of the spell, too. Is his attitude also an ingredient?

Dickhead.

Tanner weaves one final strand of hair into the necklace—if you could even call it a necklace—and then makes his way over to me. He moves like a hunter, studies me like a predator. Smiles like a sure thing.

I remember his missing poster, too. 1988. Dirty blond hair curling around his ears. Big, confident grin. Slouched and sexy. Unbuttoned denim jacket over a white wifebeater and ripped jeans.

What happened to this man in the time that he's been down here? If he's been missing since the late-eighties, and only one day passes here per month back home then ... Tanner has been living in the Witchwoods for over a year. Marlowe has been here for about a year.

Brooks has been here ... for several years.

No wonder he's so awful. No wonder that they're all so awful.

I shift and the soreness between my legs reminds me of what happened in the woods earlier. If that was the first part of the ritual that they're talking about, the one that they're going to use to officially make me a part of their coven, then ... what happens next?

North, South, East, and West.

Four people, one coven. The only way to escape the Witchwoods, according to them. I don't know if I believe that, but I'm at their mercy. I turn my head and spot my horned shadow creeping across the wall. Witch. I don't know what makes a person a witch, but these men seem to think that I'm more than capable of playing the part.

Tanner removes the hat from my head, adds the heavy necklace, and then replaces it before stepping back. He leans down to look me in the eyes, a single wolf ear flattening, shadow tails swaying playfully behind him.

"We've been gone so long, what's another month or two? But for you? Missing for one month is a hell of a lot better than missing for two or three, don't you think?" He stands back up and turns to see Marlowe approaching with a metal mask swinging from a finger that's tattooed with esoteric runes.

I take it without another word.

"Come here." Brooks is waiting in the center of the now empty room, stuffed creatures staring back at us from the walls, some of which I recognize and others that I ... don't. Dried herbs and flowers, onions and apples, hang from the ceiling around the fireplace, and the entire house smells like cedar and rabbit stew and blood.

A lot of blood is shed inside these walls.

I approach Brooks in bare feet and leather pants made from an animal I've never heard of, shirtless but fortunate enough to be wearing a necklace that mostly covers my breasts.

His green eyes are sharp as he watches me, taking my shoulders and showing me where to stand.

"You are North. This is where you'll start every ritual. Understood?" I nod at him though I only expect to be completing two rituals: one to join their coven and one to go home. And I'm only doing the first ritual because it's a requirement of the second. "We're going to teach you a dance. The faster you perfect it, the better. If you fail to do that, the night will end and you'll fall asleep whether you like it or not. We'll have to pick up in the morning, and we won't have time for the spell to get us home." There's a long pause as Brooks surveys me with an energy and an interest that I don't have the headspace to unpack. "Can you dance, North?"

I see that my name isn't going to be used—at least not by Brooks.

"Sort of." I can feel my palms growing sweaty as Tanner and Marlowe take their positions in the circle. All three men are as shirtless as I am, equally scarred, equally inked, equally huge.

I swallow as Brooks lifts his mask up toward his face.

"Hum along with us." He pauses once before putting the mask on and gives me a look with life-or-death consequences. "Humming is okay. Talking will get us all killed. Worse than that: talking will get us trapped. " Brooks hooks the chain over his ears and adjusts the metal mask on his face. Tanner and Marlowe do the same.

I don't waste any time following their example.

Brooks begins to hum, and I realize what Marlowe must've been doing out in the woods: he was communicating with Tanner in the same way, calling out to one another using a hack in the system. That owl thing , whatever it is, doesn't respond to humming the way it does to talking.

Is it the reason that speaking here ends with a visitor getting trapped in the Witchwoods? I shift a glare over to Marlowe, and he notices. He is my reason for getting trapped here—whether the owl is a part of it or not. With only those black-glass eyes of his visible, I have no idea what the expression on his face might be.

He starts to hum along with Brooks, and Tanner joins in. I wait a few beats to catch the rhythm, and then I raise my own voice along with theirs. Three deep baritones, one feminine melody. It's oddly beautiful, but haunting, too.

Energy prickles across my skin as Brooks holds a hand out to either side of him, taking Marlowe's and Tanner's hands in his. I copy the move and grasp onto their rough palms.

And then we begin to dance.

I wonder why Brooks asked if I was religious. Because of the witch stuff?

This isn't so bad.

I can do this.

I can get home.