Chapter 13
Wyrdmother, Verdant Hollow Coven
The only sound in the chamber was the brittle staccato of my fingernails drumming on the edge of the obsidian table.
I found it soothing, this steady beat a reminder of the discipline that had seen me through four wars, seven betrayals, and the slow, sticky decay of power that threatened every Wyrdmother once the first streak of gray curled into her hair.
Of course, my own hair had long since abandoned color, but I wore it in a crown of wild silver and platinum, thick as wire and twice as sharp.
No one dared call me old. Not if they liked the current shape of their bones.
The chamber was the heart of Verdant Hollow, and it reflected my tastes: black marble floors laced with gold, high leaded windows in the southern tradition, velvet drapes the color of dried blood.
One entire wall was devoted to the spoils of my reign—row upon row of glass vials, each labeled with names in a script only three living witches could read.
Some vials contained venom, some tears, some whispers. The rest were more dangerous.
I’d had my trackers on the hunt for Aspen since the day she’d fled.
I had heard she’d been found and was about to receive confirmation.
The anteroom doors swung open with the hush of oiled hinges and the cautious shuffle of women who’d spent a lifetime learning to read my moods.
Olive led, tall and too thin in the face, her robes immaculate, her eyes sharp as an undertaker’s scalpel.
Maggie and Teela trailed behind, both clutching black leather satchels and avoiding my gaze with the subservient air of junior nuns in a room with the Pope.
Olive bowed her head just so, enough to acknowledge my status, not so much as to seem afraid. She set a small lacquered box before me and unlatched the gold clasp. The smell that drifted out was not quite floral, not quite sweet. It was the scent of blood magic, old and raw.
“She has been found, Wyrdmother.”
She produced a square of receipt, folded into a neat triangle. “From Dairyville. A bakery called Buttercream a clear zippered pouch holding a small tuft of gray-brown fur. She held it at arm’s length, as if it might sprout fangs and bite. “This was found outside the girl’s residence.”
I reached for the bag, pinching the fur between two fingers. Instantly, a current ran up my arm—a tingle of residual energy, familiar and disgusting. “Wolf,” I confirmed. “Male. Unbonded. The only pack in Dairyville, Texas is Iron Valor.” I spat the name like a curse.
Teela’s hand shook as she scribbled my words into her ledger.
“So,” I said, letting the syllable hang like a sword, “the little dud has run to the mongrels. How poetic. Laurel always did have a sense for melodrama.”
I let them bask in the humiliation for a moment, then snapped my fingers. We needed more information about her relationships. I had to know how she could be exploited for the easiest extraction.
I looked at my girls and let them know we had a bit more work to do.
“Get the bowl.”
“Understood, Wyrdmother.”
Olive took her place on my left, then silently handed me a small silk pouch, weighted at the bottom by something dense and slightly moist. “What we have of her hair, Wyrdmother,” she murmured, eyes on her folded hands.
“Put it in the bowl,” I said. Her fingers trembled just slightly as she worked the drawstring and dropped the hair into the oil. It hissed, then vanished.
Maggie and Teela crowded together. Maggie reeked of burned sage and cheap gin, but her instincts were good and her sense of loyalty, though mercenary, was at least predictable.
Teela trailed behind, her bare feet leaving little ghostly prints on the flagstones.
She was the least skilled of the three, but the most sensitive, and therefore the most useful for scrying.
They stood around the bowl with me, hands linked, heads bowed in anticipation.
“Let’s see our little wayward child,” I said, and dipped my own hand into the oil, just to the wrist. The surface clouded and then cleared.
In the shimmering dark, Aspen Waters appeared, framed by the bright yellow and white awning around the window of a bakery.
She wore her hair loose, like her mother always had, and the sight of her hands—capable, steady, dusted with flour—almost made me nostalgic.
Almost.
Teela exhaled, her voice dreamy. “She’s with them now. The wolves, seems to be attached to one of them in particular. The scarred one.”
Now, this piece of information changed things and gave me something I could work with.
“Describe the perimeter,” I ordered.
Teela’s brow furrowed. “No wards on the outermost fence. Protected by brute force. She comes and goes freely.”
“Of course she does,” I said. “She never learned to build a proper shield. Assemble an extraction team. I have a plan.” I traced the edge of the scrying bowl with a single nail, leaving a thin red track in the oil. The best way to draw your prey was to use the proper bait.