Chapter Seven
On her way home, Sorcha thought she saw a gray wolf in the distance.
And then much closer.
He kept pace, eyes glinting. But he came no closer, even when she pulled a hunk of braided sesame bread from her reticule and waved it at him.
She assumed a wolf would prefer a meaty bone of some sort, but even she did not carry raw meat around.
No matter how she tried to coax him closer, he would not approach.
He would not leave, either.
Until a howl sounded, shivering over the green and gold hills. His head snapped toward the sound and he bounded away. The howl was sharp, but thin. Haunting.
Sorcha was nearly home when the first paper bird found her.
She could not help a loud groan. “Now what?”
She hadn’t thought any would have survived after last night’s rain. Not to mention the fire, the ogre. The general violence. But here was one lone bird, soft, pleated paper folded into wings, ink for eyes. Magic made them blink at her.
But the spell was fading, and though the bird led her to the blackberry hedge along the road, there was nothing but berries and thorns. Nothing hid in the shadows, waiting for her help. There was not even a single beetle trapped in a puddle of water.
Disoriented, the paper bird made another dizzy circle around her before disintegrating, fire eating away at it until it was nothing but ashes dusting the wild white roses.
Not a good sign.
She stood there for a moment as the clouds chased each other overhead, shadows moving over the long grass.
She rubbed at the spot where her neck met her shoulder, where Aidan, of all people, had dragged his teeth and tongue.
Had awakened a sharp desperation inside her that she could not have predicted, not with a thousand tarot cards, not without a thousand tea leaves.
Not even with the soothsayer from Haven who sang his prophecies entirely unbidden, and mostly unwelcome.
People spent a lot of time hiding in bushes or up trees when they saw him coming down the street.
She did not need his gifts of prophecy to know something was not right.
The feeling of Aidan crowding his big body against hers, the gentle drag of his nose, and the warmth of his breath had all been delicious. Those shivers had made her want to stretch like a cat in a beam of sunlight.
This frisson was nothing like that. It did not tickle; it prickled. It did not tease; it warned.
She hurried toward Nettlestone and was not at all comforted when not a single pigeon waited for her at the gatehouse where she left them crumbs daily.
But today the courtyard was empty, gleaming with sunlight. Quiet.
It raised another prickle across her skin.
Nettlestone Hall was many things: slightly run-down, messy, welcoming. Filled with baking bread. But never quiet.
Not unless something loomed, something threatened.
There ought to have been the barking of the rescued hunting hounds, the mewing of kittens, the screech of the phoenix who liked to perch near the gargoyles on the tower and preen his red feathers.
Sometimes he attacked the blacksmith’s boy from Haven whom Sorcha had hired to deliver bread, just for his own entertainment.
Opal, the donkey with iridescent feathers, unfortunate recipient of a little boy’s spell to turn her into a Pegasus, ought to have been braying.
Even the Black Shuck was not snarling from the hills, demanding raw meat and scratches to his haunches.
Her only other warning was the flash of lavender eyes from a window above. Hecuba. She did not linger, as it was not safe, not with her understandable aversion to sunlight.
Definitely a warning.
But unfortunately, too late to do Sorcha any good. They really had to devise some new system.
Too late now.
It was some consolation that everyone else was already in hiding.
Especially when a large man with flat, dead eyes came out of the shadows behind her.
He was not as large as the Minotaur, but it was a close thing.
And he was definitely meaner. It was there in the turn of his mouth, the dead flatness to his eyes.
Aesop cradled kittens and fed wild sparrows.
This man would use their bones as toothpicks.
It did not signify.
Sorcha had no intention of giving way.
Even if she was running hot and cold all over. The cut on her arm stung. As if in response, the mark on her throat throbbed.
Very well, it signified a little.
She tried not to let any of it show. No tensing of her shoulders, no clenching her fists to hide the tremble of fingers. No guilty glances to and fro. She would not acquiesce in advance. She would not be intimidated. And she would not give away those in her care.
She smiled brightly even though it felt odd, her cheeks pulling as if even her own face questioned the cleverness of her tactics. Elderberry landed on a stone urn, seething with light.
“I’m afraid we don’t sell bread from the Hall proper, even for the equinox,” she said, deliberately pretending that must be the reason why a man who carried an axe on his belt might be wandering into the courtyard of a duke’s granddaughter.
“I’m not here for any fucking bread.”
Well, bollocks. So much for pretending this was all perfectly normal. It clearly wasn’t going to work. But it annoyed him, so she carried on. “Oh dear. Then I’m sorry, but we are out of cakes as well. I don’t favor them. You might try the bakeries in Haven.”
“Not here for that either.” He glared around the courtyard, at the tower and the smoke rising from the bakehouse chimneys.
She folded her arms, her smile small and hard, like an unripe crab apple. “Then I’m sure you’ll want to be on your way.”
He only snorted. She hadn’t expected any of it to work, of course. But one had to try. There were too many secrets here, too many creatures who needed protection. She might have no real hope of overtaking such a brute, but she would poke his eyes out with her thumbs if she had to.
“I don’t think so,” he said. “See, I think you’re the one I’m looking for.”
Fear constricted her throat as if she had eaten too many sweet ices, pain seizing the muscles. She reached for the nearest weapon at hand, a broom. “I am quite certain we have not met before. This is all very untoward,” she added in her best granddaughter-of-a-duke voice.
It was mildly effective in the way that his neck turned ruddy, scolded.
And entirely ineffective in that he swaggered closer, cracking his neck.
Bollocks.
She was going to have to hit him with a broom. He really was rather large.
But smaller than an ogre. That was something.
Not enough to save her, but something all the same.
Worse yet, she had tossed her red cloak into the washbasin this morning. The kittens had clearly found it and considered it very entertaining, because it was currently half hanging off a hook where it must have gotten caught. A red cloak was not illegal. Women had red cloaks.
But she could not risk being associated with the Red Cloak. It would be too easy to connect the dots. To look too closely. A manor house that was home to a Minotaur, a hippogriff, a unicorn, a Pegasus, and a veritable army of kittens was not exactly subtle at the best of times.
The dogs barked louder, more frantically. There was no one else to help her. She was partly glad for it, as too many of them would be recognizable. And Hecuba would turn to fire and ash if she stepped in front of the wrong window, never mind directly into the afternoon sunlight.
Sorcha shifted slightly, as if she planned to run. The man sneered and circled, as though playing with his prey. She only stopped when she had him positioned right where she wanted him: with his back to the incriminating red cloak. She tightened her hold on the broom and planted her feet.
It was Sorcha and a broom.
And a dead dowager duchess.
Lady Gloucester appeared with a snap of icy sparks. Her snake hissed. “You do not have an appointment.” Her voice was all frost.
The man laughed. “Back off, old lady, and maybe I won’t snap your neck after I snap hers.”
The beat of silence was exquisite. By rights it should have flayed the very flesh from his bones. Granny’s eyes flashed like daggers. “I beg your pardon?”
The stones under him slicked with ice, crawling up his boots. He kicked it loose, swearing. Sorcha was honestly not sure if Granny was most insulted by the threat to her granddaughter’s life or by being referred to as “old lady.” Either way, the combination would no doubt be lethal.
Sorcha grinned despite herself. “You’ve done it now.”
He snarled.
Granny slammed icicles around him like a dungeon cell. “I think not.”
“Granny,” Sorcha murmured, “maybe you should go inside.”
“Certainly not.” Her grandmother sniffed. “And leave you alone with this lout? What would the neighbors say?”
“We have no neighbors, and I don’t think there’s any threat of having to marry him.”
“Not on my watch.”
Sorcha had no doubt her grandmother could take on a legion of villains and triumph. But this man looked the type who might have a weapon that would work against a ghost, next to his daggers and axe. He might have a spirit bottle or spell to trap her grandmother. To banish her.
He definitely had a glint to his glare that put her back up. It was seething, but more than that, desperate.
Sorcha rushed him without another thought.
The advantage was that she had given no warning. Only an absolute madwoman would attack someone like him.
The disadvantage was that she had not grown any stronger or any taller in the last three seconds, nor had she acquired a sword or a pistol or a spelled object of any kind. She was still a witch who talked to pigeons.
But she did catch him unaware enough to crack his nose with the end of her broom.
He grunted in pain, blood blossoming over his mouth.
It turned to icicles that jabbed into him when her grandmother added a blast of ghostly power.
Sorcha was quite sure the man had never been so bewildered in all his life.
It would not save her, unfortunately.
She tried to hit him again. He caught the broom and yanked her forward, off her feet. He wrenched her makeshift weapon and tossed it aside like it was nothing. She careened into a garden urn with a grunt as all the air left her lungs. An icy wind whipped around them, howling, biting, slashing.
He swore again, frost forming in his nostrils, furring his eyelashes.
The cold witching power of a ghost was unlike anything else.
The darkest midnight of the coldest winter solstice could not compare.
But it did not stop him, not for long. Even as he choked to get air into his freezing lungs, he pulled a charm from his pocket.
Her grandmother was a whirlwind of burning ice and flashing dagger eyes and hissing snake familiar, and then…nothing.
He had tossed an iron nail wrapped in red thread at her feet.
The sudden vortex of her grandmother vanishing and the cold magic going with her rang in the ears. Sorcha felt it in her teeth. And only the knowledge that iron would send her grandmother back to the place where she died and not banish her entirely kept her from panicking.
The man grabbed the back of her dress. He spat blood, his eyes gleaming with violence. “Got you now. And you’ll tell me where my daughter is or I’ll eat your entrails.”
He was only here for her. He was not here for anyone else.
Which was why she did not begin to fight in earnest until he had crossed out of the courtyard, away from her dogs, her chickens, her recalcitrant unicorn, and Hecuba, who could only pound on the window glass.
And then it was too late.