Chapter 39
Chapter
Thirty-Nine
“Uh… Tamsin?” Goldie’s voice came out as a shaky whisper. She knew it wasn’t her, but in the heart-stopping terror of the moment, it was the only name her brain could find.
“She’s occupied,” said a calm, steady, and terrifyingly familiar voice from the dark. “But I’m sure she’ll be right with us.”
Slowly, Goldie turned, every movement measured and careful.
A figure stepped into the clearing, emerging through a break in the hedge wall.
For one impossible heartbeat, her mind refused to accept what she was seeing.
“Jonah?” she breathed.
Jonah Pell stood just inside the circle, a gun steady in his hands. His face was drawn, etched with a resigned expression.
“Jonah, what…” Her throat tightened. “Why are you pointing that thing at me?”
“I’m sorry, Goldie,” Jonah said. His voice cracked as he spoke her name. “You really are a lovely woman. But this isn’t personal.”
“People pointing guns at me always say that,” she whispered.
“Well, actually, it is personal,” a second voice purred. “Just not with you, dear.”
Goldie’s head snapped toward the entrance of the Grove Core’s heart.
Tamsin strolled into the clearing with effortless grace, her presence spilling in like sweet, suffocating perfume.
In front of her was Splice, bound in thick cords of shimmering silver light.
The magic coiled tightly around his torso and arms, pinning them to his sides.
He stumbled as the spell jerked him forward, like a marionette yanked on invisible strings.
“Tamsin—” Goldie started, but her coven leader simply flicked her wrist casually, and silver cords shot outward like striking snakes. They wrapped tightly around her chest and arms, squeezing the breath from her as simultaneously they yanked her violently to her knees.
Tamsin gestured again, and Splice lurched forward as though shoved by an invisible hand. His knees buckled as he was forced to his knees beside Goldie.
Jonah lowered his pistol, the gesture slow and defeated.
“Tamsin?” Goldie’s voice came out thin, edged with confusion and rising fear. She looked helplessly at the coven leader who had guided her, mentored her, shared wine and gossip and spell work.
The first question that made it through the fog was stupidly mundane. “How did you even get in here?”
Tamsin smiled, slow and indulgent. “Please, darling. Do you think I don’t know how to bypass a few municipal wards? Those charms are practically decorative.”
She turned slightly, catching Jonah’s eye. “Be a dear and anoint the southern marker, won’t you?”
From her pocket, she produced a small dark vial and tossed it to him. He caught it cleanly and moved to obey without a word.
Goldie stared, disbelief locking her in place as firmly as the cords around her. This couldn’t be real. It had to be a nightmare, some glamour wound too tight to see the seams.
Beside her, Splice gave a low, guttural growl that vibrated through the clearing. The silver light binding him shivered in response but didn’t break.
“So,” Tamsin said lightly, as if addressing guests at a dinner party, “do you want to tell them, or should I?”
Jonah shifted, gaze fixed on the ground. “Why do we need to tell them anything?”
Tamsin moved toward the center of the clearing, her skirts whispering against the moss. She knelt and began to pour a thin circle of salt.
“Because, according to my research, understanding is a key component of this particular working,” she said sweetly. “I’m not just indulging in theatrics, darling. It’s essential to the magic.”
Jonah’s lips twitched unhappily. He finally looked up, sorrow flickering in his expression as rose from the southern marker. “I suppose I owe you that much,” he murmured, moving over to Goldie’s side. His hand lifted and brushed a curl away from her face with unsettling tenderness.
Splice growled again, his gaze fixed on Jonah like twin blades.
Goldie didn’t move. Her pulse hammered so hard she could feel it in her teeth.
“We can’t let you do your ritual to heal the land,” Jonah said quietly. “Everything has to break first, because only then can we avenge my brother’s murder.”
Goldie blinked, the words scraping against her brain. “Your brother?” she managed. “Marlow Truckenham?”
Tamsin barked a short, humorless laugh that cut through the clearing like glass.
Jonah shook his head. His voice came rough, unraveling. “No. Elijah. He was killed here, thirty-three years ago.”
Goldie’s mind reeled back to the vision: the boy in the circle, blond hair, blue eyes wide with terror. The same faded blue as the man standing before her now.
Her throat constricted. “You knew about the ritual. How?”
Tamsin’s smirk sharpened. “Because I told him.”
Goldie whipped her head toward her. “But how? I didn’t see you in the memory. You weren’t there. You’re not even on the Land Trust! I thought it was the original signatories who did all this.”
Tamsin’s sighed. “No, dear, I wasn’t there. But I was the one who found the spell. I gave them the words, the cutting, the bind.”
She paced the salt circle as she spoke, each step deliberate, each syllable measured. “Marlow wanted his name on the papers; I preferred mine off them. He took the glory, I took the power. I stayed unseen and reaped the rewards.”
Her expression softened, briefly, something wistful flickering in her expression.
“We were lovers once, you know. Marlow and I. That’s why I helped him.
At first.” She let the silence linger, then shook her head.
“For years, it worked, even after Marlow and I went our separate ways. Until he decided he wanted to sell the Holdings. He had the majority share, you see. He could force the sale and cut me out entirely.”
She brushed an invisible speck of dust from her sleeve. “I didn’t want him to sell, of course. To lose part of Bellwether to some soulless corporate machine? Unthinkable.” A faint, cold smile curved her lips. “For all my sins, I do love this city.”
Her laugh cracked through the clearing, sharp and brittle as ice. “So when the Ashenvale talks began, I started to pry. I looked back into the ritual. And in doing so, I found the boy’s brother.”
Her hand lifted, elegant and unhurried, resting lightly on Jonah’s arm.
“He was living in Chicago, working some dreary little job, wasting what little spark he had. It didn’t take much to draw him in.
I offered him a position that suited his talents—and his grief.
And once I had him, I fed him the truth, one piece at a time. ”
She sighed, a delicate sound of practiced regret. “And then it was time to use the leverage I’d kept all these years.” Her gaze slid toward Goldie, sharp as a knife. “What you unfortunately found, dear. The bead.”
Goldie’s breath caught, but Tamsin was already smiling again.
“My insurance. My contingency for helping them perform the rite. No one but Marlow ever knew I was the architect, and that suited me just fine. He hated that I kept it, but it was a small price for my participation, and he knew it. That knowledge gnawed at him for decades: the simple truth that while it was in my hand, he could never quite move against me.”
Her voice smoothed back into calm precision.
“All I had to do then was arrange the handoff. A generous slice of the Ashenvale deal in exchange for the bead.” She spread her hands, as if describing a minor business negotiation.
“Marlow came to the Grove Core for the exchange. Jonah stepped out of the shadows and shot him.”
Tamsin’s expression flickered. “We didn’t mean to lose the bead,” she admitted. “In the chaos, it fell and disappeared into the earth.”
“Into the earth?” Goldie whispered, the memory snapping into place: the way the soil had shifted, the bead rising from the dirt and rolling to her hand.
“Yes.” Tamsin’s voice thinned, annoyance bleeding through her composure.
“That was an unexpected complication, but not enough to change my plans. You see, the bead is keyed to the original ritual’s signature, so it can’t be opened without an original participant or someone who can speak the land.
” She made a faintly disgusted face. “Like your Thornfather, apparently.”
Goldie stared at Jonah, searching his face for some trace of the man she’d once met. The one who’d brought her coffee, who’d smiled easily, who’d seemed kind.
But the man before her was pale and trembling, his jaw locked, eyes darting anywhere but hers.
“Jonah,” she said finally, her voice raw and incredulous. “Why? I get wanting to kill your brother’s murderer, but she was part of it. Why go along with this? Why not expose them?”
A short, humorless laugh broke from Jonah.
He met her eyes at last, and she saw not a confident killer but a man already hollowed out.
“Expose them? You think anyone would’ve listened?
Me, a nobody, a transplant, against Marlow Truckenham and the entire Land Trust?
They’d have buried me so deep my ghost wouldn’t find daylight. ”
He looked away, voice tightening to a brittle edge. “Tamsin promised me something no one else would. She’ll make sure Elijah is remembered. She’ll tell his story.”
“And, of course, the money didn’t hurt either,” Tamsin added brightly. “Justice is so much more satisfying when it comes with a dividend.” She placed a crystal at the northern point of the circle, her fingers steady and precise.
Goldie’s chest burned. “Then why stop us?” she blurted, voice raw. “Why block the ritual? We can fix this. We can heal the land.”
Her mind raced for compromises, for anything that would make the violence unnecessary.
“Listen. Once Mycor’s stable, we can formalize a transfer.
A new pact, a binding, whatever it takes.
We stabilize the Grove Core, you’re compensated, Jonah’s brother gets his legacy, the rezoning still goes through. Everybody wins.”
She turned to Splice, hope clinging to her like a warm coat. “Splice? Right? We can do that, can’t we?”
Tamsin let out a long, indulgent sigh, like a hostess humoring a foolish guest. “Yes, that would be one solution. But I don’t want things healed. I want the Grove Core to collapse. Completely.”
She spread her hands as if presenting a diagram.
“Plan A was surgical. Remove Marlow, rattle the remaining trustees, then position myself as the only one who could stabilize things. Let them come to me, begging for a solution.” Her smile was razor-sharp.
“There’s a certain advantage to being one of the most powerful witches in the state, after all. ”
Her jaw tightened. “Marlow’s dead-man switch ruined that.
So I moved to Plan B: total collapse. Look at the pattern: council members slipping into comas, the land’s pulse stuttering, the Thornfather wasting away.
It isn’t a coincidence. The old binding is fraying.
When those ties snap, the Land Trust collapses with them.
If the Core fails, every old claim unravels.
Ledgers, pacts, inherited privileges, all gone in a single fracture. ”
Her smile widened, small and victorious.
“And when the dust settles? I step forward to ‘save’ the Holdings. The Ashenvale deal collapses. Uproar follows. When the smoke clears, Bellwether will need a steward. I intend to be the only person left with both the credibility and the leverage to claim it.”
She set the final stone into place, completing the intricate pattern on the ground. Straightening, Tamsin dusted her hands and clapped once. “Well then,” she said brightly. “There we go. I think we have everything.”
“B-but you said you didn’t want us to do the ritual,” Goldie stammered, words snagging in her throat.
Tamsin turned. Her smile never wavered; if anything it grew colder, harder. “Oh, I don’t want your ritual, dear. This is a different one.” She swept a hand to the salt circle at her feet. “This one is about erasing inconvenient bodies.”
Jonah looked at Goldie. “Does it have to be both of them? Couldn’t we just take out the plant man and leave her? She’s clever. We could bring her around. You said she had potential.”
Tamsin’s smile thinned to a blade. “No. I’m tired of dealing with loose ends.”
Her hand shot out toward Jonah.
A bolt of black energy slammed into his chest with a wet, cracking sound.
Jonah’s breath locked in his throat, his spine bowing backward in a silent scream.
For a moment he hung there, rigid and trembling, then collapsed, his body folding in on itself like a puppet with its strings cut.
Goldie stared, horrified, as a thin trickle of blood slid from his open mouth and dripped onto the mossy floor of the Grove Core.