Chapter 30. Ambrose #2
I glanced at Priscilla. Her eyes were wide, her brows slack with relief, but the corners still burned with unshed tears. I could only hope she had managed to get the answers she needed from her mother in time.
After pulling my mates into my arms, relief washing through me at their touch, I stepped toward Priscilla and rested a hand on her shoulder. She flinched, but didn’t pull away, her gaze still fixed on the house.
The house that had been her friend throughout her childhood. Her refuge from an abusive mother. And now, her savior.
I searched for something comforting to say and came up empty.
Thankfully, I didn’t have to. An impatient Creep appeared in the window again, her porcelain arm jerking in a sharp, irritated Follow me gesture.
All four of us exchanged a curious glance before doing as the doll bid, padding through the grass to Creep’s new position and heading into the house. The floorboards creaked merrily beneath our feet as Creep pitter-pattered ahead of us.
As she reached the glass door to the greenhouse, it swung open on its own, and she skipped inside.
And that was when we saw what had become of Isadora Raisin.
The tip of a foot—a red high heel dangling precariously from it—was suspended about a meter off the ground.
The matching shoe lay discarded on the soft earth below, nestled among old bones and coated in a sheen of shimmering saliva.
The rest of Isadora was encased within the pulsing petals of Mordi.
Caitlyn barked out a laugh. “Creep, you genius!” she said, scooping the doll up and clutching her to her chest.
Creep froze at the sudden affection, her body going momentarily limp against Caitlyn’s chest. Then her small porcelain arm lifted and gave Caitlyn a gentle, tentative pat on the shoulder.
A few seconds later, however, it seemed Creep had quite enough of the physical affection, because she began swatting Caitlyn in the face with surprising determination.
“Is she dead?” Priscilla asked, her tone wary as though she feared either answer.
“I shouldn’t think so,” Caitlyn said, placing a thrashing Creep to the ground before striding over to Mordi and tickling the bulging curve of a petal where Isadora’s knee would be.
“Mommy fed you a leg of lamb the other day, didn’t she, baby?
” Caitlyn cooed. The plant quivered in delight.
“So she’s probably in there all cozy and unable to sing for a few days, isn’t she? You clever girl!”
As if on cue, Mordi’s petals peeled back just enough to reveal an ankle. It kicked wildly, sending the remaining red heel skittering across the greenhouse floor.
The petals snapped shut again, engulfing Isadora completely, and the thrashing ceased—her body once more suspended in whatever sleep-like state the plant induced.
“Well,” Caitlyn said brightly, clapping her hands together as she bustled past us, “let’s sit down, have some cocoa, and figure out what to do next.”
***
A low, impressed whistle echoed through the greenhouse as the Council investigator stared in disbelief at the bulging Mordi—Mordiflora dentata, or toothed death flower, as Caitlyn had explained with absolute pride—which was once more engulfing Isadora’s legs after successfully demonstrating that she was, indeed, still alive.
“So let me get this straight,” The Council investigator said, glancing between me, Caitlyn, Blaise, and Priscilla.
“Your mom”—she pointed to Priscilla, then to the Mordi—“is a half-witch, half-siren who arrived at your coven”—she pointed at Caitlyn—“twenty-seven years ago while she was pregnant with you”—she pointed back to Priscilla—“who are a quarter siren and three-quarters witch.”
Priscilla nodded.
“But instead of just going about her business and trying to fit in,” she continued, “your mom decided to steal other people’s things.
And then blamed her lack of acceptance on not being a full-blooded witch—in Briar Coven, a coven famously made up of part-witches, part-succubi—as if that were the reason the magic refused to fully accept her into the fold. ”
“It’s a good thing I only inherited her looks, not her brains,” Priscilla said in her usual cool tone.
A grin tugged at the corner of my mouth, and even Caitlyn seemed to be struggling to keep her face straight.
In the time it had taken the Council investigator to arrive, Priscilla had explained everything to Caitlyn.
She’d explained why she’d turned into a bully as a child, so her mother would believe she had no friends to invite over and compel.
That Purdy-slash-Creep had been a gift from Ms. Cole, and how she’d come home from school one day to find the doll torn to pieces.
How she’d run to the house in tears, where the magic had fixed the doll and had chosen to animate her.
She explained the years spent in secret friendship, and how Priscilla had never been trying to steal the recipes—she’d only wanted to visit her only childhood friend.
And how, even after her mother had been exiled, she’d never quite known how to shed the hard, steely exterior she’d armored herself with. It had simply been easier for everyone to keep hating her, just in case her mother ever tried to use her against them again.
Caitlyn had definitely softened a little toward Priscilla after that.
The investigator jabbed a finger back toward Mordi. “And nine years ago, she was finally exiled for attempting to usurp the head of the coven, but left you behind as a kind of spy,” she said, looking to Priscilla, who shifted uncomfortably.
“In name only,” Priscilla said, glancing at Caitlyn. “I never actually spied for her. No one liked me enough to tell me anything important.”
The Council investigator looked back down at her notebook. “Because you deliberately made everyone hate you.”
Priscilla nodded.
“So, the second to last time you went to visit your mom, you knew something wasn’t right,” The Council investigator stated.
Priscilla nodded. “My mom had moved into a new house that came with a hob. She told me the previous witch had abandoned the house, and she’d had to compel the hob just to make it stay.
She treated the hob like a personal slave, and I couldn’t leave it under her compulsion.
” Priscilla’s mask of disinterest had slipped, her voice now laced with genuine empathy.
“Uh-huh. So, at this point,” the Council investigator continued, “you’re still unaware that your mother had actually murdered the witch to take her house.” Priscilla nodded. “And you decided to free the hob from her compulsion using a—” She glanced down at her notes. “—magic shell.”
Priscilla’s eye twitched. “I’m only a quarter siren, but I learned how to imbue shells without my mother knowing. I would sing to it every night, concentrating my song into it—”
“Your song being one meant to unravel a compulsion.”
Priscilla gritted her teeth at the interruption but continued.
“Yes. Mother wasn’t the brightest person.
If she was, she’d have realized that our siren lineage wasn’t from a branch whose strength lay in compulsion.
Our lineage was quite the opposite. We were most famed for creating siren shells that dispelled compulsion, trading them with supernaturals crossing the Atlantic for hundreds of years.
I stole a shell that belonged to my grandmother and made it into a siren shell when I was a child.
I would use it to break whatever compulsion my mother had put on me that day.
I gave it to the hob to break her compulsion, as well as one of my mother’s sweaters, then compelled my mother to think it had simply freed itself. ”
“Which brings us to the next part,” the investigator said. “The hob, understandably unhappy about being compelled, began attacking the house and your mother, forcing her to call in Shadowbound Security.” She glanced between Blaise and me. “Which is how you, Ambrose, ended up under her compulsion.”
Blaise’s shadows coiled around me as a crackle of Caitlyn’s magic skittered up her arms in anger.
“In the meantime,” the investigator continued, “you, Blaise, took a job with Caitlyn”—she pointed her pencil between the two of them—“who had hired you to keep you”—she pointed at Priscilla—“from stealing her recipes—”
“I never actually wanted the recipes,” Priscilla cut in.
The investigator flicked through her notebook and said, “You only let Caitlyn think that, but in reality you were sneaking around her house because it was where you used to go as a child to escape your abusive mother. You also left your doll, Purdy, here—which the sentient house then magicked to life as a companion for you.”
The investigator glanced up from her notes and pointed toward Creep, who was keeping silent vigil beside the carnivorous plant.
At the mention of her name, Creep slowly rotated her head a full one-eighty.
The investigator visibly shuddered. “Creepy doll,” she muttered under her breath.
“And when you arrived here, you realized that she was your mate.” The pencil moved between Caitlyn and Blaise, who both nodded.
“Meanwhile, you, Priscilla, were on your way back to your mother’s, where you found him”—the pencil shifted to me—“under her compulsion.”
She glanced back down at her notes. “So you lured him out to the woods where the hob now lived, forced him to wear this magical seashell thingy to break the compulsion, and then sent him all the way here to warn his colleague that your mother had discovered the sentient house and was on her way to try to enthrall it too—once she finished making her magic seashell.”
Priscilla rolled her eyes at the complex, sacred magic of imbued siren shells being reduced to magic seashell but nodded nonetheless.
“But when you”—she pointed at me—“arrived here, half starved, and realized that not only was the witch your colleague-slash-roommate-slash-lover-slash-best friend was working for actually your mate”—she waved the pencil between Caitlyn and Blaise and me—“but that he was also mated to her too. And those feelings you’d been denying for years toward your colleague-slash-roommate-slash-lover-slash-best friend also turned out to be a mating bond between the pair of you, but you just never realized. ”
All three of us nodded.
“Which is presumably what distracted you from the warning Priscilla gave you to get everyone back to the coven.”
All three of us looked sheepishly at Priscilla.
“We thought we had at least a week,” I admitted.
“In the meantime,” she continued, pointing at Priscilla, “you came up with the grand plan to compel your mother into believing a week had already passed, meaning the magic seashell didn’t actually have much magic in it at all.”
Priscilla nodded.
“And so you both show up here with nothing more than a regular seashell,” she went on, “which means your mother couldn’t have compelled the house anyway.”
She flicked the pencil toward Blaise and me. “And she couldn’t compel either of you because you’d decided to wear magic earbuds bought because she”—she pointed at Caitlyn—“snores.”
Both Blaise and I nodded.
“And then the sentient house magicked itself on top of Ms. Raisin, conveniently placing her in the greenhouse with your person-eating pet plant.” She glanced toward Mordi, which obligingly allowed one of Isadora’s feet to slip free between its petals, which gave an almighty jerk before being swallowed again.
Beneath it, Creep clapped her porcelain hands together enthusiastically in an Again! Again! gesture.
“Which brings us up to now.” She let out a low exhale, shoved her pencil behind her ear, and said, “Yeah. That all makes sense.”
“Wait... really?” Caitlyn said, echoing my own disbelief. Laid out like that, the whole story sounded utterly ludicrous.
The investigator shrugged. “Stranger things have happened, Ms. Myers. But we’ll need all of you available as witnesses for Ms. Raisin’s trial with the Council.” She glanced toward Mordi before saying, “Ms. Cole is not going to be happy. She thought she was getting out of attending a Council trial.”
“Wait,” Caitlyn said slowly. “You’ve already spoken to my head of the coven?”
“About a separate matter, yes,” she replied.
“She’s got her work cut out for her this month.
First, the trial with the witch who hexed the mortal”—she ticked off a finger—“then the basilisk incident”—another finger—“then the trial involving the incubus who killed the mortal”—a third finger—“and now this.”
The Council investigator drew in a long breath as she deposited the notebook into an inner pocket of her cloak. “I think I’ve got everything I need. If you’ll excuse me, I’ll just figure out how to extract Ms. Raisin, and then we’ll be on our way.”
We all let out a collective sigh of relief.
And so, mugs of cocoa in hand, we sat and watched no fewer than five Council investigators spend a full thirty minutes debating how to get Isadora out, before Caitlyn finally offered a helpful “Maybe just ask nicely?”
We watched with glee as Isadora was eventually spat out by Mordi, drenched in a thick coating of saliva and cursing every one of us to hell and back.
The investigators quickly placed a mask that looked like something Hannibal Lecter would wear over her face, presumably to muffle her song, before escorting her into the back of their vehicle.
After Priscilla received assurances that the investigators would look into who her father was and whether he, too, had been a victim of her mother, we waved them off.
Through slightly gritted teeth, Caitlyn offered Priscilla a room for the night, much to Creep’s utter delight. Priscilla accepted, also through slightly gritted teeth.
The evening was spent with my mates curled up on either side of me in the nest prepared by Blaise, watching Hexes at Noon.
Priscilla, Creep clutched in her arms, watched from an armchair, rolling her eyes every time Caitlyn and Blaise quoted the upcoming lines, which was often, seeing as they’d both rewatched the show an ungodly number of times.
The night finally drew to a close with a decidedly brighter-looking Priscilla carrying a thoroughly delighted Creep into a spare room for snuggles.
After issuing a lengthy lecture on why it wasn’t appropriate to pick up where we’d left off before Isadora had arrived, what with Priscilla sleeping just next door—despite Blaise’s heartfelt argument that Caitlyn biting him was practically a medical necessity at this point—Blaise and I settled on either side of our mate, whispering into her ears all the wonderfully wicked things we intended to do to her the moment we were finally alone again.