Chapter Fourteen
The Black Shuck lunged.
He was even larger when he was coming directly at you, teeth gleaming, eyes flashing. The teacups rattled under the force of his growling. Panic crawled up Briar’s throat, choking her.
Ethan twisted, spinning her out of his arms as if they were dancing. She skidded toward the counter, catching her bad hip. Ethan did not hesitate; even as he had spun her, he had taken another dagger—this one made of iron—from his belt. He slammed it into the floor.
Magic exploded, the familiar salt-and-fennel smell momentarily overpowering the acrid blister of the Black Shuck’s breath, too close, too close.
But Ethan’s shield held.
The Black Shuck hit a wall of witching energy and fell back, paws scrabbling. His saliva hit the corner of Briar’s apron, sizzling through the thick cloth.
“Get behind the counter,” Ethan snapped. A single iron dagger shield would not last long. They needed a coven of bog witches, swords forged on Samhain. A feather plucked from the tail of a gryphon. None of which Briar stocked next to the chamomile and the apple-mint tea.
Twyla cursed, throwing her own knives. Ethan slapped one away before it could pierce his eyeball.
When three Keepers thundered down the hall, it was not an improvement.
An oil painting of cliff grasses under a storm fell off a nail and crashed to the floor. Something else shattered in the kitchen.
“By order of the—Gah!” Oliver, because of course he was the one to lead the Keepers into her cottage, broke off with a choked yelp when the Black Shuck turned his head and barked. The teacups shivered more violently in their saucers. The violet flowers in the clay pot closed up on themselves.
“Fucking mayhem,” Ethan muttered at Briar. “Are you sure you’re not part demon?”
“This wasn’t my idea! None of you were invited here!”
“Just stay the hell down.”
As she had no intention of having her throat ripped out by a Black Shuck—or sliced by a knife, she thought pointedly in Ethan’s direction—Briar stayed down.
She had never had occasion to witness a true magical battle.
She battled slugs and root-rot and pixies who stole the foxglove flowers to drink out of because it intensified the effect of mead.
Haven mostly dealt with complaints about the hotel beds, glamours, the cost of pearls.
John and Grant fighting over their competing businesses.
Once, the mayor and a duchess came to blows inside the fountain over a game of magical pall-mall.
And her mother had dealings with irate spouses on a regular basis, but Petal’s face usually softened much of their ire.
A proper magical battle was messy.
Even without a Black Shuck. He rippled with power and rancor. Briar could hardly blame him. Usually, salt and iron were used to stop most magic in its tracks. It worked for village witches and cunning men and charm-singers.
It was not quite enough to stop a Crow.
Or a Keeper, regrettably.
They worked with iron on a regular basis, using it against each other so often that while a scatter of iron nails on the floor was enough to make Briar’s green magic hesitate, it was not nearly enough to make the others pause.
They had so much more experience pushing through the pain and the prowl of power.
Briar gritted her teeth. She had her own skills pushing through the pain.
Let them deal with a dodgy hip on a daily basis and see how well they fared.
But in the end, they did not fight with spells. Instead, it was daggers and fists and a great deal of trying to avoid the giant, angry magical dog. Snapdragon vanished inside her chest, tucking his feathers in.
The Keepers split their focus between Twyla and Ethan.
The Black Shuck did not appear to care whom he mauled, as long as he got blood in his mouth.
And throughout it all, Ethan was dark and calm, like a shadow in a garden on a hot day.
A place to retreat to, a storm cloud that might drive you indoors but would also steal away the scorching heat.
His dagger caught Twyla in the thigh when she tossed a charm in Briar’s direction.
Oliver tried to stab Ethan and hit the wall instead, blood streaming from his nose. Two teapots crashed to the ground.
The Black Shuck snapped his jaws at one of the Keepers, knocking over a chair in the process.
Twyla threw a potted ficus.
The tearoom would not survive much more of this.
And even without the use of spells, the cacophony was attracting boggarts.
Briar saw the quick shadows, heard the telling, raspy giggling from the hydrangeas.
The bells on the door handle and the wind chimes in the trees would not be enough to keep them out, not from this.
They consumed wayward witchcraft as well as freshly baked loaves of bread left unattended, the last best bit of the stew in the pot, the freshest cream. But they loved mayhem best of all.
Haven worked hard to keep boggarts from the streets and the back gardens and the beaches.
They were mischievous, hungry creatures who sowed chaos and dissent.
They undid knots, tangled skeins, mixed up the potions and the poisons on the shelf.
They were exceedingly dangerous in the kitchen of a green witch.
And one of them crouched on her threshold, short and wrinkled, and cackling. Behind it, an oak tree branch cracked, falling and cleaving a table in two.
Not in her house.
And not in her bloody garden.
She might not be able to take down the Order or an Iron Crow, but she could do something. Even if it was with rose-petal honey and a fistful of flowers. A few herbs, a silver boline. She needed everyone to get the hell out of her house.
Immediately.
She stayed on her hands and knees, reaching up for one of the ivy clippings and a teacup. She dropped the ivy in the cup, and added bits of amber, remembering a honeybee she had once seen trapped in an amber egg in a museum in Hallow. She needed something more, something with kick.
Ethan stabbed down, slicing through Oliver’s sleeve.
Blood spattered. His silver crow claw and hagstone tangled around his neck.
His silver rings flashed. So did the amulets hanging from his cross-belt and the leather pouches at his hip.
And the glass vial with a single strand of dark hair, the color of wet seaweed and glittering with magic.
One did not grow up on a magical island and not learn to recognize a strand of mermaid’s hair.
She darted forward, then waited for him to smash his dagger down on the other Keeper’s knife, sending it clattering to the floor.
She pivoted and tugged the bottle free. When she popped the top off, she was immediately inundated with the sound of the sea on the sand, the taste of salt, a song she could not quite make out, but she knew someone was singing it just for her.
Mermaid magic. She remembered it from that day on the beach with Petal.
It could fill a witch’s mouth with seawater until they drowned.
But used in a binding spell, it could also strengthen every aspect of the work.
She wrapped it around the ivy and covered it all with honey. Thick, glistening honey that was too dear to waste. It stuck and held the ivy fast. She whispered over it, the way she whispered to her plants, “Bind them fast.”
She crawled to the edge of the counter, peeking out. Magic and blood clogged the air. Three more teacups had broken. Her mother’s statue of Aphrodite, made entirely of seashells, lay in shards.
“Enough,” Briar said.
It was as good an incantation as any spell written in any ancient grimoire.
Because she meant it. To the depths of her soul.
She threw the teacup. It shattered, yet more crockery she would have to replace. She would be serving tea in seashells if this kept up. Assuming she even had a tearoom left to run.
That desperation, more than anything, added fuel to the spell.
The ivy vines shot out of the cup, gleaming with honey.
They reached the Black Shuck first, then the Keepers, Twyla, and, finally, Ethan.
The green tendrils were not strong enough to hold anyone in place on their own—that was for the imbued honey to do, and the whisper of Briar’s desperate magic, the strand of mermaid hair.
The sudden silence rang in her ears.
Oliver reached for his jet pendant, but he was moving too slowly.
The honey and the ivy were already doing their work.
The other Keeper struggled, the tendons of his neck swelling with effort, all to no avail.
The last Keeper, who did not look like a Keeper at all, merely looked curious, as if he would have taken notes if he could have.
Twyla ground out a curse, but there was no magic available to make it real.
Briar pulled herself to her feet. “You lot have no manners at all,” she declared, thoroughly disgruntled.
While they remained stuck, she limped toward the Black Shuck.
He was also straining against the honey spell.
His teeth really did resemble knives from this close up, breath fetid like smoke and bog water.
Briar reached for the chain around his neck, and he growled.
She tensed. “I don’t like this either, I assure you. So don’t make such a fuss.”
“Briar,” Ethan warned softly. He was the only one not fighting the spell, the only one waiting patiently to spring into action. And he was still the only one who looked properly menacing.
It didn’t stop her from replying, “Hush, I’m busy.”
She would pay for that remark later, she had no doubt. She felt it in the narrowing of his eyes.
The iron chain was cold, the kind of unnatural cold that burned. The Black Shuck’s growl faded to a whimper. “I know,” she said. “We’re going to get this horrid thing off you.”
“Don’t you dare!” Twyla struggled, sweat beading her brow. “It took me months to break him.”
“Just count yourself lucky I don’t let him eat you,” Briar snapped. She hoped the same for herself, if she was honest. This was not her most clever plan, but it had to be done. Quickly. The spell would not last much longer. “It’s no less than you deserve.”
“He’s mine.”
“He belongs to the moors,” Briar returned. She pulled the chain free of the Black Shuck, his fur matted and snarled with dried blood. “Don’t eat me, if you please.”
She pushed against him with her entire body weight, aiming him toward the door into the garden.
With any luck, instinct would carry him in that direction and not toward the others.
The chains she carried to Twyla, looping them around her shoulders.
Her fingers felt frostbitten already. Twyla cursed at her.
“Briar, don’t let her touch you. Back away from her,” Ethan ordered her quietly. “Now.”
Briar, though current evidence might suggest otherwise, was not a fool. She backed away hastily.
“Behind me,” Ethan said. “Quickly.”
Oliver had managed to finally pull his jet pendant from his neck. It had already cracked, absorbing the wild magic lashing the air. He let a shard fall and ground it into the ivy with the heel of his boot.
Her makeshift spell severed.
The Black Shuck streaked through the open door and leapt over the potted geraniums, and the far stone wall, before the others could fully pull themselves free. The boggarts screeched and fled, leaving a trail of shredded leaves and flattened grasses.
Twyla staggered under the weight of her spelled chains, turning pale. She had no time to wriggle free, no magic left to help her. She went down to her knees. One of the Keepers followed, pressing a jet pendant to her chest. She choked.
“The entrapment of magical creatures without a license is quite illegal,” the man in the buff trousers with a pocket watch said dispassionately. “You’ll be kept until you can be tried for your crimes.”
He was clearly not a Keeper, but they obeyed him as though he was. Oliver snapped an iron collar around Twyla’s neck. Twyla shuddered, going even paler.
When Briar also shuddered, Ethan stepped in front of her. The tearoom was full of the sounds of witches trying to catch their breaths. There was blood on the floor. The acid breath of the Black Shuck lingered, as did the scorched smell of salt and fennel and the sticky sweetness of honey.
And a lady at the back door, squeaking in surprise. There were dahlias on her bonnet.
Briar sent her a shopkeeper’s smile, weary at the edges. “I am afraid we are closed this morning.”