Chapter 7
SEVEN
“Are you ready?”
“Yes.” Joss ran her hands down the front of her aubergine blouse and tucked them into the pockets of pressed and pleated camel khakis. Linked gold chains encircled her delicate throat, matched to the gold chain drop earrings she’d struggled to insert just twenty minutes earlier.
To all appearances, the witch was calm and collected, ready to face whatever lurked behind the doors of her childhood home.
But Blaire felt the nerves trickling across their bond.
She absorbed as much as she could, borrowing steadiness from the ancient oaks lining the drive and sending their strength into Joss.
They had slept through the morning and into the early afternoon, or so Joss said, but by the time Blaire woke, the witch had already filled her kitchen counters, table, and the front room with the cauldrons, bottles, vials, dried herbs, and ritual instruments from Roan Mountain’s summit.
“I can get a shed,” Blaire had said, dumbfounded by the mess.
She had not considered how Joss got everything up to the mountaintop, but she had the answer now.
Joss would have had to commune with Hexen Holler before beginning the ritual, much as Blaire did; she must have hiked to the summit, carrying only what she could and summoning the rest.
“We’ll build an extension,” Joss had replied absently. “Off the kitchen. Or add an office and a second door to the bathroom once we build an en suite to the bedroom.”
Had Blaire any remaining doubts about where she and Joss stood, they were erased by the ease with which she fitted herself into Blaire’s life and home.
She knew better than to question her. Once Joss had made up her mind, it was as sure as a done thing. That, at least, had not changed in her four years away.
Still, nerves persisted, and Joss hesitated on the threshold of the Braddox house.
“It’s alright if you’re nervous,” Blaire said in a low voice. She eyed the camera hung in a corner over the door. “Your mom is terrifying.”
“No, she’s not.” Joss shoved her finger against the doorbell. She rolled her shoulders and lifted her chin, affecting a confident stance that Blair knew was only partially for show. “She’s a thief.”
The door opened a moment later, and Joss strode in before the butler—the Braddox family had a butler. In Hexen Holler. And if that didn’t tell any hedge witch everything they needed to know about Geraldine, she didn’t know what would—could greet them.
“I know where she’ll be, Chester.”
Chester ducked his bald head. Liver spots freckled his shiny pate. “Welcome home, Josephine. We’ve missed you.”
“We?” Joss spun on a heel. “Did you think I forgot that you were the one to help me ‘sneak out’ that night?” She crooked her fingers around the words. “How else did my mom know to be waiting at the gate?”
Chester’s shiny dome pinkened. He lifted his head, mouth working silently. Joss flitted her hand in dismissal.
“I’ll speak with you after I’ve dealt with Geraldine.” Her heels clacked across the floor, and she raised her voice, the next words cracking against the ceiling and shooting back in an echo like a maelstrom of arrows. “See to the tea, will you?”
The door to the parlor slammed closed behind her, leaving Blaire at the door beside a mortified Chester.
“Hey, buddy.” She nudged him with an elbow. Chester turned a wan eye over her, clearly disappointed in her jeans, boots, t-shirt, and flannel ensemble. “Bathroom still near the kitchen? I gotta pee.”
“Right this way, Ms. Carver.”
#
The mood in the parlor was tense as a cat in a room full of rocking chairs.
Joss and her mother sat across from each other, Geraldine straight and poised in a tall wingback chair beside the fireplace, Joss with her legs crossed and body eased into the corner of an overstuffed loveseat.
Though her face was calm and her posture relaxed, Blaire felt the slamming of her pulse as clearly as though it were her own.
Behind her, the Braddox family portrait filled the wall. Late afternoon sun filtering through gauze curtains at the window winked along the gold frame, and a ray of warm orange light fell over a younger Joss’s face, as though the sun itself recognized the true Witch of the Demesne.
Between mother and daughter, set neatly on the ornate coffee table, was a tea service for three.
Finger sandwiches piled high on a china plate beside a dip and vegetables arranged around the bowl like a sunburst, both untouched, of course.
Geraldine would never be so rude as to eat before her guests.
She was a witch of the people, or so she had fooled the entirety of Hexen Holler for years.
Blaire eased into the room, closing the door behind her. The quiet snick of the latch brought the attention of the Braddox witches snapping to her.
“Hello.” She waved at Geraldine and sent Joss a smile. Geraldine pinched her mouth, eyes narrowing just as Chester’s had at her appearance. “Good to see you again, Ms. Braddox.”
“Please,” she said with all the sweetness of a sumac berry, “it’s Geraldine, now that we’re all adults.”
“If it’s all the same, I’ll stick to formalities.
” She strode across the long room, pausing to eye the framed photos on a buffet along the wall.
They were of Hexen Holler and the surrounding towns, all featuring Geraldine at the center, surrounded by people of the demesne.
Firemen and doctors, a cluster of veterinary techs at a dog adoption, a gathering of school children, and a portly older man holding a massive check signed in Geraldine’s looping hand. “Is this Seven Devils?”
“The new elementary school,” Geraldine confirmed. “The Braddox Family made a generous donation from our trust, isn’t that right, Josephine?”
“Joss,” she corrected.
Geraldine clicked her tongue. “I remember there was some difficulty getting your signature notarized. Where were you that summer, Athens? Rome?”
“?esky Krumlov.”
“Ah, yes, that’s right. The C.R.O.W. internship with the Advoccultant General’s office. Czechia is lovely in the summer. Have you ever been, Blaire?”
She cocked her head at Blaire’s approach, smiling like a shark.
“No, ma’am.” Blaire sat beside Joss, clenching her jaw to keep from smiling when Geraldine’s pursed lips tightened at the lack of distance between her and her daughter.
“Pity.” Geraldine tutted and tapped a nail against the brocade armrest.
“I hope you don’t mind.” She set a hand on Joss’s knee and reached for the teapot.
“It’s been a long while since I had any of Chester’s tea.
” Blaire poured herself a cup, gesturing to Geraldine with the pot.
“Would you like some?” She nodded. “Babe?” she asked Joss.
A flicker of humor bubbled between them, none of it reaching Joss’s face.
She also nodded, and Blaire hummed as she poured, standing to hand a steaming cup of tea to Geraldine before giving Joss hers.
“Remember when we used to spike it with my Uncle Ross’s moonshine? ”
“I do.” Joss grinned at her over the rim, blowing lightly before sipping. Her eyes fluttered closed, a soft smile easing her features. “The blueberry was my favorite.”
Blaire winked and downed her cup in one big swallow.
“How endearing to find you have not changed.” Geraldine smiled flatly at her and sipped. Her brows pinched then rose, and she took another, larger mouthful. “To business, I suppose. Although I had hoped to have this conversation in private.”
“Whatever you have to say to me, mom, you can say to Blaire.”
“Well.” Geraldine sighed. “Perhaps it is best that she hear this directly.” Swallowing a third, final mouthful of tea, Geraldine set her cup on the table and faced Blaire.
A lightness filled her head and limbs, at odds with the scowl being leveled at her.
“It is no secret that I have never approved of your… relationship with my daughter.”
“Is it ‘cos I’m a dyke?”
Geraldine’s eyes bugged, and a loud, sharp laugh burst out of Joss. She slapped a hand over her mouth, waving Blaire on with her half-empty teacup.
“That’s it, right? I’m not fancy enough for a C.R.O.W. witch. Just a backwoods hedge witch obsessed with plants and pussy.”
“By the Goddess, Blaire.” Geraldine pressed back in her chair. “We don’t need to be so crude.”
“Why not? It’s what you think, right? I mean, you hexed your daughter to get her away from me, so why don’t we just say it out—”
“I hexed my daughter to keep her from getting stuck in this shit hole,” Geraldine spat. A hand flew to her mouth, fingertips pressing against her lower lip as shock slackened her face. “I mean, not that Hexen—”
“So you admit it?” Joss sat forward. “You hexed me and stole the demesne from your own daughter.”
“Oh, please, it should have been mine from the get-go. That old bat was senile. She never should have given this Goddess-forsaken demesne to a child.”
“Oh, this is fun.” Blaire crossed her arms and sat back, content to let the Braddox witches go at it.
Besides, she loved it when Joss got heated.
Her complexion darkened, her rich eyes blazed, and she gave her whole self over to the argument, backed by the genuine conviction she was right.
And the thing of it was, her stunning, brilliant, dangerous witch usually was correct.