Chapter 2

Kate

The gravestone is unremarkable.

I’ve walked by it a thousand times just taking Flick for a walk. There’s a popular trail that snakes right through the middle of the cemetery. The grass around the monument is well-maintained, but the cement marker itself is brittle, chipped, and covered in slick patches of moss.

Brooks McDowell

1931-1955

Best big brother, son, and cousin.

Cherished dearly and sorely missed.

There’s another gravestone beside it, but this one has a little cherub etched into the bottom.

Sharyn McDowell

1943-1955

Best little sister, daughter, and cousin.

Loved wholly and for—

A piece of moss interrupts that last word, making it hard to read. I look up at Brooks, but he seems okay, staring down at his sister’s headstone rather than his own. He’s standing on my right. Tanner on my left. Marlowe has squatted down, peeling away the moss that’s blocking the last word.

Forever.

Loved wholly and forever.

Of course.

“Gather plenty of moss, plenty of dirt,” Brooks instructs. We’re all wearing our witch hats, the afternoon sun throwing uncanny shadows behind us. They’re too dark, too vicious, those shadows. They have strange angles. They have antlers and wings and tails and horns.

My hat has teeth and maybe just possibly licked my head.

I’m so fucking thankful that nobody else is here with us today. The cemetery is empty, slices of yellow sun cutting through the fog. Birds are chirping. We’re the creepiest things inside that iron fencing.

“My parents must be buried somewhere around … ah, here.” Brooks turns and finds them across the path. They have a shared headstone despite the gap in their death years, despite his mom remarrying after his dad passed. “Great.”

Brooks spins slowly back to his grave, falls to his knees, and then he punches his own headstone as hard as he can. It cracks, bits of cement coming loose. There’s blood all over it, but his face is as obtuse as ever.

He’s not okay, is he?

All six eyes on his hat are bloodshot.

“Gather up plenty of this cement, too.” Brooks stands, attention fixed on his ruined grave. He’s frowning and squeezing his hand into a fist, dribbling yet more blood over the epitaph engraved with his name. “We have to grieve while we’re here. Just like we had to feel awe in the canyon, and lust at the hot tubs. Part of my quest to escape the Witchwoods was so that I could grieve properly.” He swallows, like he’s pushing back the anger. “I knew very soon after meeting my mentor that I wasn’t going to see my family alive. This has been years in the making.”

Brooks touches the side of my face with bloody fingers and then turns, walking through the graves and disappearing into the cemetery. It seems like he wants to be alone, but I’m not sure.

“Let him suffer.” This is Marlowe, spilling his honest feelings with zero shame. He’s gathering up the spell ingredients while Tanner peers after our Southwoods with a frown of his own. He notices me staring after him and offers a flat smile, wolf ears curled strangely. Lo continues. “I received my punishment. It’s his turn now.”

“And this is mine.” Tanner gestures after Brooks, his smile a little crooked, his shadow slinking through the graveyard like one of the undead. “Go after him if you want, Kate. I’ll pretend to give you some privacy.”

“I appreciate the attempt.” I’m being serious. Tanner can tell, and he does his best to smother a surprised smile. He’s still jealous, but at least I managed to amuse him some.

Marlowe yanks his hat brim down, spilling blue forget-me-nots all over the dirt.

“Just don’t get too far away. I won’t like that.” Lo doesn’t look up, his shadow a strange ink blotch around his feet, its edges unclear and murky. The demon wings steal across several unkempt gravesites on either side of him. Most of the graves are soggy, covered in weeds, and sprouting Witchwoods mushrooms.

Not the McDowells’ though. Somebody still cares enough to come here.

“Roger that, West.” I nod, look at Tanner, nod again. “East.”

I jog after Brooks, and he smiles when he sees me speed-walking to keep up. He slows his stride and then stops entirely, turning to look at me and pushing the brim of his hat out of his face. I’m not sure that he knows the six red eyes up top are crying.

Brooks holds out his arm for me, very handsome in that black, wool peacoat with fog-kissed red hair and a swoop of black bang.

I take his arm, and we walk.

“What do you think my sister’s children make of all this? Me … being on the news. Everywhere. All the time.” Brooks works his jaw. Yeah, okay, it does seem like he understands the internet. “They probably think I’m a fraud, that I’m mocking the family.”

“They might,” I admit, but I obviously don’t know them as well as he … Well, I guess he doesn’t know them either. Few (if any) of the current McDowells were born when Brooks went missing. Those people are simply related to the ones that Brooks loved the most.

Doesn’t mean he knows them. He probably won’t ever be able to have a relationship with them.

“They might,” he agrees, and then he sighs, turning to look at the cemetery again. It runs up a hill, from a small, rarely-traveled street to the woods. Old and lumpy and quiet. “This place was brand-new when I left. They hadn’t even put in grass let alone buried anyone here. My parents got a good deal from a door-to-door salesman.”

“A … what? Like, a guy selling burial plots door-to-door?” I can’t even imagine that.

“Yes. Just like that.” Brooks walks us up the hill to the edge of the forest. “Bigger trees back then.” He’s staring hard at the copse of redwoods, the eyes on his hat red but no longer tearing up.

“I told you: this was all clear-cut in the early sixties. This is a second generation forest.”

We stand there together, and I shiver because I’m wearing my witch boots and hat with a skintight black dress that just barely brushes my knees. It has a plunge in the back, a border of crystals on either side.

It was part of a Halloween costume once.

This is all that I had. I like to wear overalls and, after having worn this dress today, well, I now love wearing overalls. So comfy. This is miserable.

Except for the way that Brooks watches me.

He slips his coat off and puts it over my shoulders, warm and scented with a touch of flour from baking, a whiff of ash and ember like fire. Brooks runs a hand through his hair. He fixed it this morning, slicked it back in a way that I think was popular in his time.

It’s been entirely undone by now, ruffled by the wind and by his fingers. It’s slightly tousled, and begging for me to touch it. It’s soft at the nape of his neck, remember?

I slip my arms into the jacket, so that I can wear it properly.

“You shouldn’t have punched your own headstone. What if your family regularly comes here? Somebody left flowers.” And they had. They weren’t very old either. Only a few petals had fallen onto the moss carpet beneath their metal vase.

“I don’t deserve a headstone. Only a man who saved his little sister deserves a headstone.” Brooks puts his hands in the pockets of his slacks and then looks out toward the woods again, like he’s trying to process two-plus-years of Witchwoods memories all at once.

He’s serious.

He truly believes that.

My heart fucking bleeds for him.

I wish it didn’t, but it does. Like I said, soft squishy heart. I shouldn’t trust these men, but I do. I’m not sure if it’s because of the spell that makes us a coven, or because they back up all the promises they make with actions.

All three of them came into the Witchwoods after me when they could’ve left me there.

They cook me breakfast. They play with my dog. They mow my lawn.

We’re compatible in bed. So damn compatible.

I felt like a goddess in that hot tub, with three faithful, fervent worshippers.

Brooks looks a bit like a zealot this morning, all eight of his eyes on me again.

His attention is on the pale heart-shaped line of my cleavage before he remembers where we are and shakes his head. He pauses to stare at something over my shoulder. Tanner, probably. Knowing that our coven member is stalking us does nothing to dampen the carnal glaze in our leader’s poison-green eyes.

He knocks me back with his next look. It’s as wild and hot as the magic crackling at his fingertips. Brooks shakes his hands out, like he’s just realized what he’s doing. Flowers sprout around my boots, and I swallow back a rush of nerves.

I really like these guys, don’t I? Outside of everything. Beyond everything.

“I’m not fucking you in a cemetery,” he murmurs, and then quickly corrects that. “I’m not fucking you next to my family’s graves. A different cemetery would’ve been fine.”

I smile at that.

“You’re assuming I’d let you. We already have a sex tape out there. Let’s not add fuel to the fire.”

“After we’re done dealing with the gate, we’ll spell ourselves so that people don’t notice us in public. Then I can fuck you whenever I want, wherever I want.” Brooks reaches down and takes my hand, a move so shocking that I forget the witty quip resting on the tip of my tongue. I gape up at him as he shifts his huge body to stare down at me, eyes cast in shadow from the angle of the sun and the brim of his hat. “And I do want you, Kate. Just so we’re clear about that.”

Brooks’ hand is big and rough and warm, and he runs his thumb over my knuckles every couple of seconds. He tugs me back toward the path, grabbing trinkets here and there. A stone from the top of a random headstone. Some dead flowers that he stuffs in his pocket. Spell supplies.

“You know that you’re full of shit, don’t you?” I tell him as we wend between two copper urns on concrete pedestals. It took me that long to come up with a response to his words. My hat is desperate to lick him, to taste his emotions, but I’m trying to give the men some privacy for their feelings.

“Excuse me?” Brooks turns to me, his hat’s eyes blinking in a random order. A small one up top. The big one in the middle. One underneath. “Full of shit, how? Because I said that I want you? No, I definitely meant that. Care to clarify for me, North.”

North. Hah. His lips are quirked in a lighthearted tease.

“That’s not …” I trail off, watching my feet so that I don’t trip. The cemetery has uneven ground, bits of old cement protruding from the earth at random angles. Tree roots. Small metal plaques with the names of people long-since forgotten. “I wasn’t talking about that. Your sister, Sharyn … You deserve a headstone, Brooks.”

He stops walking, but maintains the firm grip he has on my hand.

There’s this strange tugging in my lower belly, like a cramp that started when we got too far from Marlowe and won’t stop until he’s in range again. If we were forcefully separated somehow, would it hurt to be further apart than this? Would the pain rip me to pieces the way it’s threatening to now?

“My sister is trapped inside the Hag Wytch, but I can’t do anything about it.” Brooks lifts his head to stare at me, his expression stripped of affection and good humour. He’s completely serious. “I thought that having a coven would give me the power to kill the Hag. It didn’t. It gave me the responsibility to make sure the three of you don’t meet my sister’s fate.”

I try desperately to come up with something to say.

The high cost of leadership. Brooks could ask us to fight the Hag to save his sister, but he’s prioritizing our well-being over his other goals. Fuck. My eyes are as salty as the sea fog settling in at the bottom of the hill. Some of it stirs beside us. Tanner.

His shadow slips past without him attached to it.

Brooks’ gaze snaps that direction, antlers black and wild on either side of his hat.

“Being true to my coven means being untrue to my sister. This is the choice I’ve made.” He meets my eyes again. “I do not deserve a headstone. I do not deserve to be remembered. Everything that I am, everything that I will be, starts right here.” He points at the ground with his free hand, witch claw extended.

Thump. Thump. That’s my heart right there, pounding for him. Brooks can tell that he got my pulse racing, but he pretends not to. Just like Tanner is pretending not to eavesdrop.

We start walking again.

“That’s far enough away,” Brooks says, almost absently. “From Marlowe, that is.”

Our Westwoods is pacing when we get back to the McDowell grave, his skin dotted with beads of sweat.

“Seriously?” he asks with a scowl, like we betrayed him by walking too far. I could feel it. Brooks, too. Tanner. He reappears between a pair of mausoleums, Ebon circling in the sky above his head. A happy coven is one that sticks together.

The Witchwood Boys were right about that, too.

“Did you get everything?” Brooks asks, checking over the bag of supplies that Lo gathered.

“Leave me to do the task and then question my competence.” Marlowe gives me a companionable look, but then his attention snags on Brooks and the shape our hands make while twined together. Lo frowns again, and his hat grows thorny brambles.

Brooks ignores him, tossing the cloth sack over and leaving Marlowe to catch it. Tanner makes his way over to us, wolf ears facing in opposite directions to take in as much sound as possible. He pauses next to the group, his bird landing on his shoulder.

“We have a few hours to kill before we hit the other cemetery. What was it you wanted us to do?” Brooks looks at me like he knows what I’m going to say, but isn’t happy about it.

“We’re going to buy you guys some phones, so we can keep in touch if we get separated.” I sound a little smug. Can’t help myself. Brooks is going to give in because he knows I’m right about this—even if he wishes I weren’t.

“We’re never going to be separated,” Tanner tells me, shrugging like this is obvious and I should’ve known it. He’s beautiful in all black, with that split hair and his dual-colored eyebrow. He shaved nice and fresh for this visit, but I miss his stubble already. Shouldn’t have to wait long for it to come back. “But if phones are what you want, let’s make it happen.”

“I want a phone anyway,” Marlowe declares, briefly removing his hat and pushing his dark hair back from his face. It’s the color of an oil spill under the sun, black but glistening with rainbow colors in the light. “And some headphones. I’d also like a new computer, and whatever the newest gaming system is, but I’m assuming we can’t afford it?”

We start toward the car together as I think about that, my hand regrettably slipping from Brooks’ grasp. That was nice, to hold hands with him. I liked it.

“Maybe not now, but when we get paid the second half from the Pink Lady job.” I yank on my dress, trying to keep the black fabric from creeping up my pale thighs. Marlowe works his jaw and pretends not to notice, but his hat blooms with wildflowers and gives away his true emotions anyway. More wildflowers bloom under me as I walk. It’s embarrassing.

How did I get the hungry hat with the teeth and tongue? Maybe Lo’s hat should’ve been mine? Then again, seems like the hat powers are pretty random. Not sure how six eyeballs equate to fire, or wolf ears go with an easterly direction. Magic is kind of messy, isn’t it?

“We’ll transmogrify more leaves when we don’t need our blood and cum for other spells.” There goes Brooks, being annoyingly reasonable all over again. I wipe my hand on the front of my dress and he notices. He has the audacity to smirk at me.

“I would love to get into gaming,” I tell Marlowe, and he just fucking stares at me. “What? I didn’t have the time before, but with you guys on my painting team, we could actually afford to take weekends. Maybe even vacations.”

“We’re witches,” Tanner reminds me with this sexy little press of his teeth in his lower lip. He knows how to turn his head to ensure the sun hits him just right. Unconscious flirtation, and it’s working on me even if I know it works on everybody else, too. “We will take vacations. When we’re not using magic for tough shit like fear spells and gate bindings, we’ll be able to do a lot more. Just you watch. Brooks isn’t good for much, but he can write a mean spell.”

“Am I supposed to thank you for that?” Brooks replies coolly while Marlowe continues to stare at me. I pretend not to notice the intensity in his eyes, drawing out my phone and checking my notifications.

My friends have been calling me repeatedly all day, but I’m only replying via texts in the group chat. If I get on the phone with any one of them, I won’t be able to escape an in-person meeting, and then the guys and I won’t be able to dig up this corpse.

Without it, we can’t start the spell prep.

We need this dead man ASAP.

Don’t think too hard about it being Tanner’s dad.

“Yeah, let’s game together.” Marlowe’s voice is warm in a way that makes it even harder to look at him. “I like that.”

It’s quiet between us for a minute, but then we hit the truck and I’m reaching into my borrowed jacket for the keys. Brooks had them this morning, and I just assumed they’d be in his pockets. I thought I’d nailed it when he gave the coat up like a gentleman.

“Nice try,” he tells me, holding the keys up with a single finger. He’s lucky that he looks real good in suspenders. “Get in the car, Mrs. McDowell.”

“Mrs. McDowell?” Tanner repeats with a not so amused laugh. Marlowe’s look of sheer horror is more than enough to express his feelings on the matter.

“Cute. But that’s not how it’s going to be. All three of you are Mr. Poppy to me.” With a grin, I climb in the back with Tanner and we exchange a look.

I expect at least one of them to argue with me.

“Dennis stole my last name. Why the fuck would I want to be a Waverley anymore anyway?” Marlowe plants his elbow on the truck door and stares out the window.

“Everything I am starts here,” Brooks repeats. “Mr. Poppy is fine, but you’re still a missus. That’s non-negotiable.”

I could choke him. I would, if he hadn’t admitted to liking it.

But it’s Tanner with his knees splayed wide and his arm thrown across the seat behind my head that surprises me.

“We’re each getting our own recording device, right?” He cocks his head at me, and I blush. Not sure why. It’s just … his stance is so lewd. The shape of his cock is obvious behind those dark jeans. Ugh. What did he say to me yesterday?

“ I’m doing what I always do. Sorry, it’s easy. You like me for my body like anyone else.”

I make myself look at his face, and he lifts a brow. He knows what I was doing. Hopefully he can also see the effort I’m putting in to get to know him as a human being. Err, as a witch. As something more than a hot body and a hard fuck.

“Yes, all phones are recording devices,” I clarify, voice catching as Brooks starts the truck.

“If the public likes videos of us so much, can we show them what we want them to see instead of only the moments that are stolen from us?” There’s a growl buried in Tanner’s words, a warning that the public can’t hear but that the public should heed. If he gets pushed hard enough, he’ll push back.

“You … want us to post on social media?” It’s an idea that terrifies me to my core, but it’s worth considering. “Maybe we could make ourselves less interesting by telling the world that we staged everything?”

We could also inadvertently make ourselves more popular.

“I definitely don’t want anyone else seeing your cum face. Whatever it takes to get rid of these perverted rubberneckers.” Tanner keeps his attention on me, but it’s heavy. I’m the one that looks away, at the back of Brooks’ seat.

Is this a good idea, getting them phones? It’s probably better that I teach them now. We can’t hide from it forever.

Whether we like it or not, the Witchwood Boys are still trending.