Chapter 9. Ambrose #2
I bristled at the thought. Of course I wasn’t. I’d just met the love of my life—the one being who could, and already had, begun to loosen my unhealthy fixation on Blaise. That alone was enough to knock anyone off balance.
Forget about him, I told myself. Forget about all of it. You walked into this unprepared—now think.
With deliberate effort, I pushed everything else aside and narrowed my focus, emptying my mind until there was nothing left but the hob.
I focused my energy outward, sending my shadows to comb the undergrowth, sliding along bark and leaf, slipping into hollows and twisted roots, until they brushed against a pocket of magic tucked deep inside a rowan tree.
I pushed through the brush toward it, careful to make just enough noise to announce myself.
The knotted hollow came into view, and with it, a pair of phosphorescent green eyes gleaming from the darkness within.
“I’m not here to hurt you,” I said, lifting my hands slowly as I drew my shadows back in. They coiled upward around me like an inverse waterfall, pooling obediently into my palms.
The hob’s eyes narrowed with suspicion.
“I only want to ask,” I continued, keeping my voice calm, “if you would consider returning to the house.”
A high-pitched hum emanated from the hollow, vibrating through the clearing. It climbed in pitch and volume until the bulbous eyes began to roll backward, narrowing into watery slits—and I realized the hob was laughing at me.
I clenched my jaw and waited.
The hum broke into a rasping cackle, and spindly fingers slid from the darkness, curling around the scarred bark.
Gray skin, nicked and blistered, showed beneath layers of ingrained dirt.
Thick callouses were barely visible under the grime, its yellowed, splintered nails blackened at the tips, forest debris packed beneath them.
The fingers flexed, and slowly, the hob dragged itself free of the hollow, laughter still wheezing from its chest.
Its nose emerged first—long and crooked, scored with tiny cuts as though it had fought its way through brambles.
Wiry white brows followed, framing those rolling, luminous eyes.
Cracked lips stretched thin around rows of razor-sharp teeth, fresh cackles hissing through them as tears streamed down its hollow cheeks, carving clean tracks through the dirt.
Long, pointed ears snapped back into place as it forced its head through the gap, a battered burlap hat perched precariously atop its skull, wobbling with each breath as though it might topple at any moment.
It twisted its body sideways, fabric tearing as it forced its shoulders through the hollow, then its torso.
The knitted sweater it wore hung in tatters around it.
What had once been Isadora’s most prized garment had now been claimed by the forest, torn and frayed, caked in dirt, a thick blood-dark thread trailing behind it like a discarded vein.
The creature nearly stumbled as its bare bowlegs emerged, followed by its feet—comically large, red-raw at the heels and blackened with caked forest dirt.
It was the first time I’d seen it up close, and without Isadora’s wards between us, it was deeply unsettling.
It wasn’t the creature’s appearance that set my skin prickling, but the crackle of raw and ancient power rolling off it, and the piercing, almost eager, glint in its eyes.
A deeper unease crept over me as those bulbous eyes dragged slowly over my form. This was no longer the knee-high, almost comical creature in tattered clothes that bounced harmlessly off the wards and vanished back into the undergrowth.
This was something else entirely.
Static snapped in the air around it. Sharp teeth flashed as it shifted its weight.
Only the thought of pleasing Isadora kept me rooted to the spot. Any other time, a creature like this would’ve earned a respectful bow, a murmured apology for disturbing it and the sight of my ass as I high-tailed it out of there.
For Isadora, I thought.
After a low sigh, I said, “Hello. I am Ambrose, and I’ve been...”
Been what? Hired by the witch who took over your house? Fallen madly in love with her? Planning to spend the rest of my days at her side, right after I figure out how to either appease you or get rid of you?
“I live with Isadora now,” I finished, the words sounding thin even to my own ears. “And I was wondering if you might want to come back. And if not... maybe we could find you a new home.”
The creature’s knees bent. Its maw stretched open, wider than it should have been able to, and I could have sworn the yellow, cone-shaped teeth elongated as a menacing hiss slid through them.
Its voice was ancient and hauntingly feminine. “She’s no normal witch,” it murmured. “She’s muddled your thoughts, demon. Just like she did to old Ashra. Come closer,” the creature coaxed softly. “Let Ashra set you right.”
The creature crooked a scabbed finger, beckoning me closer, and something at the back of my mind whispered that I should trust it. Then Isadora’s warning cut through the thought like a blade: Do not let it touch you. Do not let it fill your head with its lies.
The creature tilted its head, its brows knitting together, as if it could feel how close it had come to convincing me.
Its lips peeled back from its teeth in frustration, but the snarl faded just as quickly.
The creature’s face softened, settling into something almost..
. pitying. Without the scowl or the grimace, stripped of menace, it looked strangely gentle.
I pressed my luck. “Will you come back with me? To Isadora?”
The change was instant. The creature let out another low hiss, the sound vibrating through the clearing as whatever softness it had worn peeled away.
Its eyes sharpened, glowing faintly in the gloom.
“That thing will never be my witch,” it snarled.
“My witch is gone. I feel it in my bones.” It leaned forward, teeth flashing.
“And if I learn Morana was felled by that thing’s hand, I will tear her apart and hang her bones as a warning to the next creature foolish enough to think it can own old Ashra. ”
Cold settled in my gut. I said nothing. I wasn’t sure what could be said.
The creature’s witch had abandoned her. Or died. And given the fury in its voice, the distinction mattered very little. And perhaps that alone explained why the hob had turned hostile... why nothing about this situation felt right.
“If you had an ounce of wit about you, demon,” the hob said softly, “you’d let old Ashra help you.”
Its spindly fingers flexed, and without meaning to, I drew my shadows closer, coiling them around myself, ready to strike. The creature noticed. A slow, knowing smirk tugged at its cracked lips. Then, slowly, it reached beneath the collar of its sweater.
When its hand emerged again, it let the object dangle like a lure between its fingers, swinging gently despite the still air.
At the end of the patinaed silver chain hung a small polished black shell, its dark surface gleaming faintly, pitted with tiny perforations as though it had been carved from porous stone.
“One touch is all it would take, demon,” the creature crooned. “And you’d be as free as old Ashra.”
Lies! Isadora’s voice cracked through the haze, sharp as salt and steel. Don’t let it touch you!
The creature lunged. It hurtled through the air, brandishing the necklace like a mace. My shadows reacted on instinct, snapping outward and plunging the clearing into darkness, whip-cracking through the void as the creature fought its way toward me.
A pained scream tore through the night as my shadows collided with the hob—coiling tight, squeezing around its body, lifting the creature from the forest floor like a black serpent readying to crush the air from its lungs.
You don’t want to hurt it, I reminded myself. This isn’t you.
Panting, I dragged in a steadying breath and forced my shadows to loosen. They peeled back from the hob’s face inch by inch. Its phosphorescent eyes were wide and glassy with panic. The hob choked and spluttered, its body bowing forward, the necklace still clenched in its hand.
“I—” My voice caught. I swallowed hard. “I’m sorry.”
The shadows vanished entirely. The hob hit the forest floor with a dull, breathless thump.
“You need to leave,” I said, the words trembling despite my effort to sound firm. “Find another house. Because if you come back...” I hesitated, then forced out the truth of what I knew Isadora would ask me to do. “Next time, I might have to kill you.”
I didn’t wait to see if the hob had understood. With one last, horrified glance at the pitiful creature curled in the dirt, I spun on my heel and bolted through the undergrowth, running back toward Isadora.
***
I could hear Isadora long before I could see her.
By the time I reached the garden gate, the crash of shattering glass and ceramics rang through the air, setting my pulse racing.
The only thing that stopped me from charging toward her in fear that she was being attacked was her frustrated scream following each smashed belonging.
I lingered at the gate, fingers tightening around the wood. A small, insistent voice at the back of my mind whispered This isn’t right. How could I be so completely in love with a woman like Isadora? Blaise might have been chaos, but at least he was kind.
Don’t leave me, Ambrose.
Her voice slid into my thoughts, soft and coaxing, threading itself through my doubt. Her voice was what carried me through the gate, back into the fold of her wards.
And just like that, the unease dulled. The tightness in my chest loosened.
Perhaps it was a mercy that Isadora was already apoplectic over something else. It meant that telling her I’d failed might land as little more than the cherry on top of an already disappointing day as opposed to an issue of its own.
Tentatively, I crept up onto the porch and risked a glance through the window. In the thirty minutes I’d been gone, Isadora had turned the house upside down. Cushions lay ripped open, feathers drifting lazily through the air before settling among splintered wood, torn books, and shattered crockery.
In the kitchen doorway, a flurry of airborne small appliances heralded Isadora’s stomping form before she vanished to the far side of the room—presumably in search of something else to throw.
The moment I opened the front door, I had to duck. A teapot whistled past my head and shattered against the doorframe, porcelain exploding across the floor at my feet.
“Isadora? What’s happened?” I asked, keeping my voice low and soothing.
“What’s happened? What’s happened?” she echoed.
A cold knot twisted in my gut. Had she already realized I’d failed her? The thought of being the cause of her fury was crushing. My body wanted to fold in on itself—to kneel, to apologize, to beg, to offer her anything that would make this better.
“I’m sorry, Isadora,” I said quickly. “I tried, but the hob—”
“Forget about the fucking hob!” she snapped.
She seized the vase of forget-me-nots and hurled it to the floor. It shattered, flowers, shards of glass, and water radiating in all directions as she let out a hair-raising scream.
Then, abruptly, her voice dropped, eerily calm.
“All this time,” she murmured. “All this time I’ve been forced to live like a common peasant. Doing everything myself.”
I bit back the instinct to remind her that she’d had a hob until recently. And now she had me.
Her voice rose again, fury lacing every word. “And there was one just sitting there—only a few hours away—all this time?”
She sucked in a slow, deliberate breath. In one smooth motion, she fixed her hair, straightened her blouse, and reached into her pocket. When she pulled out my phone and glanced down at the screen, her lips tightened before she began typing furiously.
She lifted the phone to her ear, her red heel tapping against the floor as she waited, debris crunching beneath it.
“Get here. Now,” Isadora said, her voice glacial. “And you better have one hell of an explanation for me, you little bitch.”