Chapter Five #2
True. ‘You want us to present a united front?’
‘There’s strength in numbers.’
Indeed, but it would place her under his protection. And while Alpha werewolves were no doubt a delight in bed, they could be troublesome creatures. Nosy. Meddlesome. Prone to swooping in and taking control.
Emberlyn was a person who moved to the beat of their own drum. She didn’t like people trying to coddle her, tread over her independence or interfere with her choices.
But then, she couldn’t picture Ripper caring much about what she was doing or fussing over her safety. And she could do with some good connections right now. It might help keep the coven and Carver off her back. She could deal with them, she just didn’t want to have to.
Ripper, well, he was the ultimate protector and defender. Dangerous. Loyal. Dependable. That made him a very good deterrent.
Also, she respected him, because it took some strength for a person who’d been through what he’d endured to stand in front of her now – whole and healthy.
Emberlyn nodded. ‘I’ll agree to it.’
‘Allies, then?’ He held out his hand.
She looked down at his open calloused palm, surprised. Werewolves didn’t accept or initiate touch easily. You had to wait for them to invite it.
She placed her hand in his, choosing to ignore the zap of static that shot up her arm. ‘Allies.’
His eyes darkened in a way that told her he’d felt that zap as well. ‘Good.’ He slowly released her hand. ‘I know you probably have to head to work but, as the boundaries of our territory now touch, we should settle a few things.’
Her palm tingling from the skin-to-skin contact, she almost rubbed it against her thigh. ‘Such as?’
‘I took a walk along the territorial line. It cuts through one of your grandmother’s gardens. Some weird cluster of plants.’
‘Oh, her Poison Patch.’ Emberlyn hadn’t realized that it didn’t fall within the line.
‘If you want the other half dug up and replanted on your side of the metaphorical fence, I’ll get my wolves to do it while they’re tidying our landscape – so long as you don’t care that they’re on your land.’
She would have asked why he’d do her such a favor, but she supposed it was more that he wanted the garden out of his way. And, well, they were allies now.
‘I don’t mind.’ She took another sip of her tea. ‘They should be careful, though. Some of those plants aren’t friendly. They snap. Sting. Bite. That sort of thing. And they’re all toxic.’ Millicent had doted on them like they were her children.
‘I don’t want any magickal surprises. Is there a chance Millicent laid any traps on the land for trespassers?’
Emberlyn hadn’t considered that before but, knowing her grandmother . . . ‘She might have. Want me to come take a look?’
‘It’d be appreciated.’
Emberlyn drained her cup and then placed it on the porch table. ‘Let’s go, then.’
They descended the steps together and strode down the path. Though their bodies didn’t touch, it felt as though they did on account of the static buzz of energy he was giving off. She suspected it was due to the fact that there’d be a full moon tonight.
They exited the front yard and then circled around to the unfenced land on the right of the manor. It was a pretty sight, complete with various trees – hawthorn, apple, hazel, blackthorn.
‘How are your heels not sinking into the soil?’ asked Ripper, a slight gruff note to his voice.
She smiled. ‘Magick.’ The wild grass brushed over her feet as she followed him to where one of his wolves stood.
Said wolf curved his mouth. ‘Hi, Emberlyn,’ he greeted, his deep-brown eyes smiling.
She felt her lips hike up. ‘Morning.’ She liked Kerr. Tall and burly with unkempt russet hair, he was a good guy. One of the Watchers.
There wasn’t a police force at Chilgrave. The town had what was basically a crisis unit. Anyone could be a Watcher. They protected, safeguarded, resolved issues and enforced laws.
Ripper wore authority, so he was an obvious choice for a Watcher. He hadn’t accepted the position when offered it, though. He would hunt, put out metaphorical clan fires, lead search parties and all that jazz. But he mostly focused on his clan.
Kerr’s smile dimmed. ‘It must be weird being in that house with no Millicent plodding around.’
‘Not as much as you might think. A lot of the time, she was in the basement or her study, so I was mostly left to my own devices.’
Both males frowned at that, seeming surprised.
‘Anyway, let’s check that she left no magickal landmines.’ Chanting low, Emberlyn let out a thin rope of glittering magick motes that snaked along the grass, searching. ‘Don’t worry, my magick won’t damage your land or set off any traps; only locate them, if there are any.’
‘What you did yesterday . . . that was pretty impressive,’ Kerr praised. ‘I don’t think I’ve seen you use magick before. I mean, I’ve knocked back plenty of your potions, but I bought them from your laundry hub. I never saw you create them.’
‘It’s a pretty boring process to witness, so you didn’t miss out.’
‘I hear Millicent left you to Ripper in her will.’
Emberlyn narrowed her eyes at the taunting note in Kerr’s tone. ‘She did it to needle me. I once told her that no man would ever own me.’
‘Ah,’ said Kerr. ‘So, you allied with our clan now?’
‘I am. And, yes, it means you can all come to me when you need magickal advice or intervention if you wish to.’ Feeling her magick tug at her, she looked over to see the glittering rope circling a spot on the ground. ‘Hmm, we have something.’
They flanked her as she stalked over to the spot. ‘You’re going to have to stand back,’ Emberlyn warned, reining in her magick to change its intention. The magick motes blended, twisted, spiraled and then poured into the ground. Soil parted until an object came into view.
Squatting, she felt her brow pinch. It was a glass jar filled with several things, including rusty nails, glass shards, red pepper and pieces of rotten meat.
She hovered her hand above it; felt the negative energy scrape at her palm as she read the spell’s intention. ‘Huh.’
Ripper moved closer – which was annoying, since his feral energy stirred up every drop of power she possessed. ‘What?’
Emberlyn sprinkled some magick down onto the jar, letting the glittering motes slip through the loose seams of the spell to dissolve the negative energy. ‘This is not Millicent’s work.’
‘You’re sure?’
‘Positive. Can one of you grab me a leaf from the butterbur plant over there?’
‘Uh, yeah,’ replied Kerr, who then melted away.
Ripper shifted even closer to her. ‘How do you know it’s not your grandmother’s work?’
‘It’s sloppy,’ she replied. ‘Spells are meandering loops of interlacing magick. Think knitted items. You don’t want holes, snags or pulls.
This spell here? The pattern is slightly uneven, the edges weren’t bound and there are dropped stitches.
All this not only weakens the spell, it also leaves it vulnerable to being undone. ’
Kerr returned with a large, roughly heart-shaped leaf. ‘Here.’
‘Thanks,’ she said, taking it from him.
Ripper squatted beside her. ‘Do you know what kind of spell this is?’
Resisting the urge to frown at him for coming so close, she replied, ‘I do. Which is another reason I’m sure Millicent had no hand in this. She’d never poison the land.’
His brows flew together. ‘Poison it?’
‘This is a curse jar.’ Although the spell had dissipated, Emberlyn wasn’t about to touch something that had so much ill intent attached to it, so she curved the leaf around it before lifting it out of the soil.
‘Somebody wanted to cause damage to the land. This jar has been active for at least a month, so you may see some signs of degradation. Patches of dead grass. Bare shrubs. Brittle tree bark.’
Ripper’s gaze sharpened, a very low growl vibrating in his chest. ‘There are a few spots like that,’ he said, his voice rough in a way that made her nipples pay attention. ‘Who the fuck would want to curse the land?’
‘The coven wants to build on it, so it wouldn’t have been them,’ Kerr commented.
‘Not necessarily,’ said Emberlyn, standing upright. ‘They could have thought that if they made this area look barren and ugly, she’d choose to sell it.’ The jar was placed in the ground months before she died.
Ripper hummed, slowly straightening to his full height. ‘Maybe. The other clans wouldn’t care what happened to it, so they wouldn’t have had one of their witches do it. No one from ours would ever damage it. And you say it wasn’t Millicent.’
‘Don’t get me wrong, she was spiteful enough to destroy the land so that it’d be useless to the coven,’ Emberlyn conceded, using magick to push the soil back into the hole.
‘But they would have healed it eventually, so that wouldn’t have been enough for her.
And she’d have had no reason to harm the area if she’d planned on giving it to you.
I can understand if you’d consider me a possible suspect, but I have more self-respect than to perform such poor spell work.
There are far easier ways to poison land, anyway.
If I’d done this, the area would look like a marsh by now. ’
Ripper’s eyes flitted over her face. ‘I believe you.’ He flicked a look at the jar. ‘I thought the coven didn’t approve of casting curses.’
‘It’s like I said yesterday, nobody uses magick for good all the time.’ The coven’s rebel faction came to mind.
‘Think there might be other jars buried around here?’
‘I doubt it, because there’d be more evidence of degradation. One jar is enough to afflict land with several sporadic areas of decay. But I’ll check.’ Emberlyn sent her magick out to search the area once more but, thankfully, found no additional curse jars.
‘Now that you’ve dug that up, will the land heal?’
She felt her nose wrinkle. ‘Not for a while. I can inject some healing energy into the earth if you want. Call it payment for your clan replanting half of Millicent’s Poison Patch on my side of the invisible fence.
’ At Ripper’s nod, Emberlyn wrapped the leaf tight around the jar and then gave it to him. ‘Do not touch the jar.’
His raised brow said he didn’t appreciate her tone.
‘You’re Kerr’s Alpha, not mine.’
Kerr snorted at that, which earned him a glare from Ripper.
She crouched down and planted both palms on the ground, fingers splayed. She chanted again, releasing her magick into the earth – stirring it, greeting it, blessing it, healing it.
Grass rustled. Shrubs tremored. Flowers bloomed. Tree branches creaked.
Done, she brushed one palm against the other to wipe off dirt as she stood. ‘It might take a day or two for the damage to completely disappear, depending on its severity, but it will heal.’
Ripper inclined his head in thanks. He went to speak but then stopped, his head tipping to the side as if picking up a sound. ‘You have a visitor.’
‘I do?’ It was ten seconds or so later that she heard the faint rumbling of an engine in the distance. ‘It would appear you’re right.’