Chapter 11. Blaise
Caitlyn pressed a slender finger, tipped with chipped forest-green nail varnish, to her bottom lip. “Unless Priscilla is about to get a personality transplant, I don’t really know how we’ve ended up with one witch and two incubi.”
My mind whirred, offering explanations one after another—each more unsettling than the last.
Maybe one of them was never meant to have a mate at all. The thought hollowed my chest. It would devastate Devlin. And while Ambrose had never spoken openly about longing for a mate, I knew he wouldn’t want to walk this world alone.
Or maybe this Priscilla would somehow do something miraculous at the last possible moment and worm her way into the coven magic and be accepted despite everything Caitlyn had said.
And then my mind slid toward a darker possibility.
Maybe one of my friends was never meant to survive long enough to meet their mate at all.
My expression must have betrayed me, because Caitlyn’s voice softened. “It’s probably nothing, Blaise. Maybe there’s a witch out there born in the same Samhain cycle as us—someone fated to join our coven who just... hasn’t found her way here yet?”
“Hm,” was all I managed.
“Maybe if we figure out who’s likely to end up with Jen,” Caitlyn continued gently, “we can work out who’s left. Tell me what Ambrose is like.”
She asked it so innocently, unaware of how neatly she was tearing my heart in two.
My fated mate. The witch I was meant to build a life with. The witch who was adorable, and clever, and funny—someone I already knew I could fall in love with far too easily—asking me to describe the man who had already claimed a piece of my heart.
Ambrose doesn’t want you.
He hadn’t wanted to talk when I finally broached the subject of that night, of that look that told me he might want more.
He’d pulled away. He didn’t want me—and I needed to let him go.
I needed to open my heart to the witch standing in front of me, with her doe eyes and feral hair, the one who’d made my heart stutter and my stomach flip the moment I saw her.
So why had Ambrose held my hand like he couldn’t bear the idea of her taking me from him?
This was all sorts of fucked up. But at least the hard part was behind me. Caitlyn had asked, and I’d answered. She knew I had feelings for someone else—and she’d given me the space to work through it.
That had to count for something.
She deserved more than half-truths and tangled loyalties. She deserved me to really try.
“What about that tour of the house you promised me?”
Caitlyn eyed me suspiciously at the abrupt change in subject but didn’t press it. “I’ll show you whichever parts Creep will let me,” she said, rising to her feet and gesturing for me to follow.
Our first stop was the utility room, which led into a small downstairs washroom.
It contained everything one might need to wash clothes reasonably well a hundred years ago—a tiny tub, a washboard, and a bar of laundry soap that had clearly seen better days.
Thankfully, Caitlyn had also installed a modern washing machine and a dryer, each bearing knee-high gouges as if Creep had violently objected to their presence before begrudgingly allowing them to stay.
A deep ceramic sink held half a dozen cauldrons, all coated in a hardened mosaic of colorful residue and long-dead suds.
Caitlyn glanced up at me sheepishly. “Oops. I meant to wash those before I left.”
She quickly ushered me back into the kitchen. We didn’t have far to go—the next stop was the pantry.
The door swung open to reveal an entire wall dedicated to food, everything neatly stored in the same mason jars as the spider-mallows.
The opposite wall was lined with cauldrons, unidentifiable drying herbs, and gently fizzing potions.
I was fairly certain the two categories shouldn’t coexist in such close proximity.
I was just about to ask whether it was truly safe to eat cereal stored opposite a skull-marked vial that appeared to be hovering slightly above its own shelf when Caitlyn’s gaze snapped downward, toward the very corner of the pantry.
She dropped to her knees without warning, plunging her arms elbow-deep beneath the lowest shelf. A moment later, she resurfaced triumphantly, clutching a grimy mason jar filled with what looked like greening rat tails and mold.
“Ah-ha!” she squealed.
Her victory was short-lived.
A sharp crack filled the small space, and the jar vanished from her grasp. From the kitchen beyond came the unmistakable pitter-patter of small feet retreating at speed.
Caitlyn didn’t hesitate. “You can’t hide them forever, Creep!” she shouted.
Then she turned back to me, smiling sheepishly. “When Creep’s in a particularly foul mood, she likes to hide a rat tail in my food.”
I cocked an eyebrow. “Creep really doesn’t seem to be a fan of you.”
Caitlyn just shrugged. “Doesn’t matter. She was the one who bonded to me.” She raised her voice, clearly for Creep’s benefit. “And once it’s done, it’s done. No take-backs. Hear that, Creep? You and me forever. Ride or die, baby!”
I choked back a laugh. Caitlyn was a lot of things, and I was pleased to discover that a touch of manic was one of them.
She shrugged as she got to her feet. “Fate is a funny thing,” she said.
“You can either go against it or trust that it ultimately knows what it’s doing.
” Her eyes met mine, and she flushed. “I mean—with the house,” she added quickly, shoving a stray lock of hair behind her ear.
“I choose to believe there’s a reason Creep and I were meant to bond. ”
Flustered, she slipped past me and headed for the hallway.
Is that what I had to do? Trust that there was a reason Fate had made me fall for my best friend—only to tear me away from him and almost immediately place the woman I was meant to spend my life with in front of me? Was Ambrose a test? An ordeal crafted specifically to prove my devotion to my mate?
I pinched my thigh. I was going to need a spray bottle or something to stop my thoughts from constantly drifting back to Ambrose.
Caitlyn stopped so abruptly that I nearly walked into her. We stood in front of a faintly glowing green door. It took me a moment to realize the door itself was glass—the green coming from a thick coating of algae and creeping vines.
The door gave an almighty creak as Caitlyn shouldered it open.
Plants of every variety and color spilled from every surface of the two-story greenhouse. A white, cast-iron spiral staircase, cracked with rust and twisted with vines, led up to a balconied first floor, more greenery tumbling over its railings and tendrilling toward the ground below.
Caitlyn stepped inside. I moved to follow, but she stuck out an arm to stop me.
“How’s your magical plant identification?” she asked.
“Not very good,” I admitted.
“Probably best to leave the greenhouse off your list of places to explore, then,” Caitlyn said. “There are some really dangerous plants in here.”
She punctuated the warning by slapping away a vine that had begun to creep over her shoulder. As if that weren’t proof enough, she stepped aside and yanked open the door of a refrigerator that looked at least fifty years old... and pulled out a severed leg.
I was really hoping it was pork. It also might have been someone Creep had got to first.
Before I could ask, Caitlyn tossed it high into the air.
A pair of thick vines shot down from the balcony above, snaring the leg mid-flight. Globs of something viscous dribbled from somewhere above the vines, splattering onto the soil below. Then—like a scene straight out of a horror film—something massive began to descend from the iron rafters.
At first, it looked like a human-sized flower bud, its fleshy petals swollen and blood-red. Then the petals slowly unfurled. Inside was a lurid neon yellow, each petal lined with rows upon rows of barbed teeth.
The flower-creature lowered itself over the exposed bone of the leg and began to pulse. With every contraction, the leg was dragged deeper into the petalled maw, viscous saliva bubbling around it. When the final scrap of flesh vanished with a soft plop, Caitlyn tilted her head fondly.
“Hungry today, aren’t you, girl?” she cooed.
“What in the seven realms of hell is that thing?”
“Hm?” Caitlyn glanced back at the plant fondly, then at me. “Oh! It’s a Mordiflora dentata—a toothed death flower. They eat flesh, as you’ve seen, but they’re really quite adorable when they’re not hungry.”
“I’m sure,” I said flatly. “And... why do you have one?”
Caitlyn shrugged. “Came with the house,” she said easily. “She was in a terrible state when I found her, weren’t you, Mordi? I think Creep kept her alive over the years with whatever rodents and small animals she could catch. Poor thing was half starved.”
She stepped closer to the plant and reached up, gently scratching beneath what I could only assume was a chin, causing the plant to quiver appreciatively.
“But Mommy’s feeding you properly now, isn’t she?” Caitlyn crooned. “And in return, you let me harvest some of that precious dentivena for Mommy’s potions, don’t you?”
The plant pulsed with pleasure again.
Caitlyn turned back to me. “Anyway, Mordi is far from the most dangerous plant in here,” she said, stepping toward the door. “So don’t go in here with any silly romantic notions of picking me flowers, hm?”
“No, ma’am,” I said, stepping aside as she shut the door to the one room in the house I wouldn’t enter even if there were a fire and it was my only escape route.
The next stop on the tour was the basement, the door tucked neatly beneath the stairs. This was a brief visit, mostly because the door was very much locked.