Chapter 5
Wyrdmother, Verdant Hollow Coven
The stench of wilted rosemary and burnt tallow clung to the walls like mold.
I stepped over the corpse of a shattered mixing bowl and waded through the carnage of the Waters cottage, my patience unspooling with every crunch of glass under my shoe.
I’d sent Olive, Maggie, and Teela ahead, but of course it took a proper witch to see that their search amounted to little more than a tea party for sociopaths.
“Check the floorboards again,” I said, and Olive—the tallest of the three, her strawberry-blonde hair yanked back in a too-tight bun—hunched her shoulders and poked a broom handle at the plank seams. They all reeked of nerves.
I watched, lips pressed thin, as Maggie, she of the constantly peeling cuticles and wandering eye, scoured the stone hearth with a pocket mirror, looking for charms or sigils Laurel might have left behind.
None of them would dare look at me.
It still astonished me that Laurel Waters had managed to die without leaving so much as a strand of hair for me to use.
Even now, her body lay embalmed on ice, waiting for whatever sanctimonious send-off the Hollow would cobble together.
And not one of these idiots had thought to collect a single personal effect.
Olive hovered in the doorway to Aspen’s room, hands fluttering like anxious doves. “There’s nothing here, Wyrdmother. Every drawer’s empty, and the grimoire’s gone. We checked the loft too. Just old linens.”
I advanced, letting the heavy silence work on her.
The room had been stripped to the bone. The girl’s duffel, the single quilt, even the photograph by the window had been taken.
I surveyed the emptiness, then eyed the place where, as rumor had it, Laurel used to stash her potions: an alcove behind the bed, veiled with a strand of dried marjoram.
The marjoram was gone, its scent obliterated by panic.
“Is it so hard to believe she saw us coming?” I muttered, more to myself than to them. “The last of her line, and she didn’t even try to hide.”
Maggie sidled up, a pair of latex gloves snapped over her hands. “Should we try a calling spell, Wyrdmother? If the grimoire’s in range, maybe we can—”
“No,” I cut her off. “She’d have shielded it by now.
If that girl has half the brains her mother had, it’ll take more than a calling spell to flush her out.
” I grabbed the edge of the mattress and flipped it, sending a drift of stale feathers into the air.
A spider scrambled for cover; I flicked it away.
Behind me, Teela had started sorting through the kitchen trash, desperate for approval.
She found nothing but coffee grounds and broken crockery.
I snorted and moved to the living room, where the fire had been left to die a quiet, ashy death.
I squatted beside the hearth, fingers searching for scorch marks, hidden sigils, any hint of what Laurel had been working on in her final hours.
There was nothing but a faint blue residue on the bricks. A charm for protection, maybe. It hadn’t worked.
Olive waited for me to stand before reporting, “The men you sent after Aspen—”
“Failed.” I finished for her, rising. “Of course they did. She’s her mother’s daughter, even if the magic never fully came in.” I dusted my hands, then turned a withering stare on the trio. “Which one of you watched the back road?”
Silence. Then, finally, Teela: “I did, Wyrdmother.”
“Then it’s your failure. Let it eat at you.
” I let the words land, savoring the way she flinched.
“Aspen Waters slipped into the woods and is halfway to freedom, grimoire in tow. Do you know how many generations of Waters witches that book spans? The spells within are older than the Hollow itself. I just hope I don’t have to explain to the High Coven that I lost it to a chubby little half-witch. ”
I spat the last word, and the room seemed to contract around me. And even the Coven did not know the one spell that I was certain that book held. The spell that would set me at the head of the High Coven and the Council itself. It would set me at the head of the entire supernatural world.
Maggie tried to rally. “We have her mother’s blood. If you’d allow it, I can work an echoing spell—maybe use the blood to locate—”
I whirled on her. “There is no blood. You left the body on ice, didn’t you? Once it’s been preserved, it’s useless. You’d know that if you’d spent less time whoring around with the Garrets and more time reading the codex.”
Maggie blanched and shrank behind Olive.
I straightened my dress and gave myself a moment to collect my thoughts.
Losing the grimoire was humiliating, but not irreversible.
Aspen would be found eventually. What worried me was the feeling, sharp and cold in my gut, that Laurel had managed a final trick, one last act of defiance.
The vote against me, the public declaration that Menace and Savannah’s bond was “true and just,” had been the first slap in the face. Now, even dead, she was laughing at me.
I curled my fist and drove it into the wall, relishing the shock it sent through my knuckles and the little plume of plaster dust. Teela let out a gasp. I ignored her.
“We’re leaving,” I announced. “This place is contaminated. There’s nothing left but ashes.” I gestured at the three of them, gathered like crows around a carcass. “Teela, clean up this mess. Maggie, call a car to the edge of the woods and tell them not to use the main road. Olive, you’re with me.”
We exited into the hard winter sunlight, the wind instantly cutting through the gauzy black sleeves of my dress. Olive kept her eyes on the ground as we walked.
After a stretch of silence, I decided she’d earned a crumb of explanation. “Do you know why I hated Laurel so much, Olive?”
She shook her head, braid stiff as a whip against her back.
“Laurel Waters was as powerful as I am. Maybe more so, in some ways. And she never, not once, let the Council see her true strength. She kept secrets, hid her lineage, and refused to tell a soul who fathered that pathetic little daughter. That’s what makes Aspen dangerous.
She’s the only one of her kind, and we don’t know what she’s capable of. ”
Olive swallowed, voice nearly lost in the wind. “Do you think the grimoire will open for her, Wyrdmother?”
“Not yet,” I said. “But it will. It always does eventually. And when it does, we need to be ready.”
We reached the car, a black town car with windows so tinted they might as well have been painted on. Maggie and Teela were already inside, whispering in low, urgent tones. I slid into the front passenger seat and watched the woods blur past as we drove.
After a while, Olive asked, “Should we go after her? Aspen, I mean.”
I smiled, all teeth. “No need. She’ll come to us. The world isn’t kind to girls like her, and she doesn’t know the first thing about hiding. We’ll put word out along the supernatural lines—let the wolves and the vamps play their games. Eventually, she’ll land in our lap.”
I spent the rest of the ride picking the dried wax from my fingernails, thinking about how Laurel’s eyes had looked in her final hours: defiant, but also…relieved. As if dying on her own terms was victory enough.
That had been my mistake; underestimating the sentimental.
When we reached the train station, Maggie jumped out and pulled the bags from the trunk. She kept her eyes on the ground, waiting for my permission to speak.
“What is it?” I snapped.
“I have the Council agenda, Wyrdmother. They moved the meeting up to tomorrow. They say the Iron Valor pack is to be discussed.”
My smile, this time, was real. “Of course it is.”
As we boarded, I let myself imagine Aspen’s face; afraid, cornered, clutching the grimoire as if it could save her. It would, for a time. But not forever.
As the train lurched away from Verdant Hollow, I allowed myself a small, private laugh.
“We’d all be better off if that pack were wiped from the earth,” I said, to no one in particular. Olive heard, but she knew better than to reply.
The trees gave way to open country. In the reflection of the glass, I watched myself smile, a thin crescent of satisfaction.
Council chambers always looked the same, no matter the continent or species. I suppose there are only so many ways to arrange a parade of monsters and egomaniacs so that everyone can pretend it’s all civil.
The Chicago High Supernatural Council room was an old bank vault, stripped of its safe deposit boxes and dressed up with too much velvet.
They’d taken pains to etch the stone walls with every sigil of peace and truce the ancient orders could muster, but it just made the place feel more like a tomb.
Around the circular table—a massive thing, polished so smooth you could almost forget the blood that’d been spilled across its grain over centuries—sat the worst of the worst, each perched on their little throne of power.
I strode in first, Olive and Maggie flanking me, Teela trailing behind with the luggage and a face full of open awe.
The witches’ seats were nearest the entrance, four cold iron chairs that always left the thighs numb and the ego bruised.
Not that I cared; I’d sat through enough of these charades to know the real work never happened at the table.
It happened in the shadows, in the bathrooms, in the alleys behind the host hotels.
King Rafe Mayfield of the Southwest Wolves was already here, pacing behind his chair like a panther denied its kill.
In a perfectly tailored black suit, the size of him defied sense: six-four, biceps straining the seams, hands like river rocks.
His onyx eyes flicked over us once, registering and discarding in the space of a blink.