The Witch’s Pet

Chapter 1 Hannah

Hannah

The bonfire burns hotter as I toss another piece of Riley into the flames. I mean, not her, specifically, but memories of her. I have no idea where she is, and to hell if I care.

The fire warms my front while the late October chill drags its fingers down my spine, the temperature dropping as the sun dips below the horizon.

I’ve reduced three boxes of Riley’s belongings to ash, from clothes to love notes to the toothbrush she kept in my bathroom, and I still can’t figure out why she dumped me.

My whole body wants to sink into the earth as her soccer jersey ignites.

The memory of her wearing it, grass-stained and sweaty as she picked me up and spun me around after her last game, barges into my mind.

Then the smell of her lilac detergent dissolves into the acrid scent of burnt material.

My eyes water—from the smoke, obviously—and I blink to clear them.

“Don’t take this the wrong way, Han, but this isn’t the most conventional way to process your feelings,” Dean says from his perch on my back steps.

His long legs are folded awkwardly, and his pale face is rosy from the cold.

He sips the pumpkin spice latte he brought me, which is probably iced after sitting in the wintry air for an hour.

I shrug. “This is cheaper than therapy.”

And more effective. One cathartic night of burning everything, and then I’ll move on.

Anyway, between my pitiful wage at Book Nook and saving for university, I don’t have the budget for therapy. Believe me, I looked into it long ago.

The flames swell, casting writhing shadows across my flat, square yard.

The world looks extra dreary and colorless tonight, with the gray sky pressing down like a wet blanket and the forest behind the fence, where I’ve spent countless hours alone since I learned to walk, buried in decaying brown maple leaves.

The neighbors have gone into hibernation for the winter, leaving the dead-end street so quiet that all you can hear are crows.

Perfect night for burning the last of my ties to the girl who pulverized my heart, I guess.

“And I’m not just randomly torching things.” I poke the crumbling logs with a metal broom handle. “I’m conducting an investigation.”

“Into…which materials burn the fastest?” Dean asks.

“Into why Riley started acting like I had the plague before dumping me via text.” I shake back the sleeves of my oversized black hoodie and pick up the book she left behind, The Encyclopedia of Herbs. “Something was going on with her in the last couple of weeks.”

Dean’s footsteps squelch closer on the wet grass. “What d’you mean?”

“She changed. For starters, she suddenly became interested in stuff she didn’t care about before.

Asked me to dig up books from work about folklore, local history, and…

” I show him the encyclopedia. “She started collecting herbs and crystals. It made her bedroom smell like the forest. One night, she showed up with scars on her hands and arms. She said they were from work, but…”

Dean furrows his brow. His many piercings glint in the firelight. “But she works at a coffee shop.”

“Exactly. The most dangerous thing there is the espresso machine.”

“Steam burns?”

I lift a shoulder, at a loss.

I can still feel the texture of those dark scars under my fingertips, raised and rough against the smooth brown skin I’d memorized.

When I’d traced them, asking what happened, she pulled away so fast I was left grasping at nothing.

And when I offered to help, she rolled her eyes and snapped, “You’re overreacting to a few little bumps. Stop making everything a big deal.”

Her cold dismissal still stings. She acted like I was a nuisance for caring.

“The thing is, the scars looked old,” I tell Dean, “like they’d been there for years. But…” But I knew her intimately. I licked and kissed her from head to toe every night. “Those scars weren’t there before,” I finish simply.

“Okay, that is pretty weird.” Dean’s breath mists, and he wraps his scarf one more time around his neck, hiding the lower half of his face so I can only see his narrowed brown eyes.

I flip through the book, scanning one last time for anything strange. No hand-written notes, highlighted text, or dog-eared pages. So I chuck it onto the flames, where it lands with a heavy thump and begins to smolder.

A shame. I liked that book. But I want to move on properly, which means I can’t keep anything that reminds me of her.

As the pages curl and blacken, my heart flutters nervously. What was Riley hiding from me? Did she meet someone else who’s into herbs and folklore? Or is she just changing as we get older, getting bored with the girl who was nothing more than a post high school fling?

My stomach clenches at the prospect that that’s all I was to her.

I nudge the final box with my foot, rattling its dwindling contents.

“I’m giving myself until this is empty, and then I’m going to stop analyzing what happened.

No more caring about her and trying to figure her out.

No more torturing myself over someone who didn’t think I was worth a real explanation. ”

In my periphery, Dean studies my face. “It’s okay to feel hurt—”

“I’m more confused than anything,” I snap. And frustrated, and angry… Nothing about this breakup makes sense. The not-knowing gnaws at me, an ache so deep I can’t remember ever feeling anything else.

When I look back at the fire, the sky behind it is darker than a moment ago.

I cross my arms to suppress a shiver. My leggings offer zero warmth in this weather, and my socks are soaking up the lawn’s dampness through my Birkenstocks.

My hair is a mess, blonde tresses falling loose from my bun and sticking to my tear-streaked face.

I must look like as much of a wreck as I feel.

“Sounds like she was going through something,” Dean says. “People get into weird hobbies when they’re stressed. Remember soap carving during finals?”

I huff. “Whatever this was, it’s not as simple as taking up soap carving to get through exam stress. And why wouldn’t she confide in me if…” My throat gets painfully tight, so I shut my mouth and shake my head.

The fire pops, sending sparks into the darkening sky.

“Or,” Dean says gently, “we’re overthinking this.”

I pick up a box of Riley’s favorite chocolates that she left in my pantry: dark with lemon creme filling. The remainders rattle inside. “What’s the straightforward answer, then?”

“We’re only twenty. Maybe she wasn’t ready for something serious.”

I restrain myself from throwing the chocolates at him. “We were together for two years. Her toothbrush lived in my bathroom for long enough that it had to be replaced a couple times.”

“People change. Especially at our age.”

My eyes prickle all over again. We might be young in the grand scheme of things, but when I was with her, it didn’t feel that way. I felt like a woman in love, ready for commitment, and I never thought of our relationship as temporary and disposable.

But maybe Dean is right, and I’m looking for clues to something simple: she changed, and she just doesn’t love me anymore.

I hurl the chocolates into the fire, trying not to think of the time I fed one to Riley on the couch, and she’d sucked on my fingers with that playful look in her eyes. “These taste better when you feed them to me.”

God, I’m going to miss her. I already miss the sweet taste of her lips, the melody of her voice, her ability to make my whole day better with a smile…

I’ll miss the way she wrapped her strong arms around me and made me feel safe.

Not to mention how she made me feel desired—waking me up by sliding her hand between my legs, pinning my wrists above my head when she climbed on top of me…

I shake away the memories and pull out the last item from the box—the thing I’ve been avoiding.

“I think you should keep that one,” Dean says softly.

I snort. “Why?”

“Because one day you’ll want to remember the good parts, even if it hurts now.”

I scowl at him. Is he right? Should I hold onto some proof that what we had mattered, even if it ended in a way that makes me want to throw the whole planet into this fire?

“Maybe,” I say, my voice hollow.

I stare down at it—the leather-bound journal of handwritten poems that Riley gave me for our one-year anniversary. My traitorous eyes sting.

All these poems she poured onto the pages for me, and one short text message ended it all: I can’t be with you anymore. I’m sorry. No explanation. No conversation. She blocked me and everything.

I clutch the book tighter, as if hoping I can squeeze it to dust in my fists.

How can someone who meant so much to me, who changed my entire world, disappear so quickly?

She came into my life when I needed love the most, swooping in to fill the hole my parents left behind.

She made me feel like there was nothing wrong with me and made this empty house less lonely.

The crumbling logs blur as the unwanted memory crashes over me: the night she went from best friend to girlfriend.

It will live forever in my brain, a memory no bonfire can reduce to ash.

The air shifted as we looked into each other’s eyes on my couch, both of us knowing what we wanted but afraid to say it.

Next thing I knew, her athletic legs were straddling my lap, and her warm hands were pushing me back on the cushions.

The cool air raised goosebumps on my freckled, sun-kissed skin as she untied my bikini top.

She paused, gave me a chance to change my mind.

But I was ready. I remember her breasts as she peeled off her shirt, the dips in her waist under my hands, and my heart pounding as, tentatively, I leaned forward to lick a trail along her throat.