7. Walking in a Warded Wonderland
Walking in a Warded Wonderland
“I can’t believe you...” Delilah was still fuming as she and Scarlett made their way to the casino. “I should’ve shown that nitwit what real magic looks like. But no-o-o, no. You made me let that hack in the hat off the hook.”
“Whatever you say, Dr. Seuss.” Scarlett matched her sister’s furious pace, but every crunch of gravel sounded like a tiny accusation. You should’ve done something . “I get that you’re mad. But putting some kind of magical whammy on a total stranger would not have defused the situation.”
“Who said I wanted to defuse anything ?”
“We need a plan, Del. We can’t just pop off without thinking it through.”
“Since when? That’s your whole brand, isn’t it, Scarlett? Shoot first, ask questions later?”
“I’m maturing,” Scarlett insisted. “I’ve evolved.”
“Yeah, right.”
As the sisters made their way out of town, the winter forest closed around them like a fretful parent.
These trees were here when the first witches fled Salem, when Oak Haven was nothing but desperate women and raw magic and pure determination to survive.
They’d be here long after the Melrose sisters had come and gone.
“They’re just magicians ,” Delilah muttered. “Just small-time, silk-scarf-wielding nobodies.” But even she could hear the doubt in her own voice.
“Time to bury that myth. I know, our whole lives it’s been witches are real; magicians are fake .
But they built a forty-story hotel in a week, Del.
And I still don’t know how. I didn’t see a bulldozer.
Or an excavator. Not a single dump truck, not one.
Nothing. Just poof, and it was there. And I mean, just look around. Where did all the trees go?”
The clear-cut zone around the casino was like a gaping wound in the forest, raw and wrong. Even the trees at the edge of witch territory seemed to shrink away from it.
“I don’t know if witches have been simply wrong about magicians all these years,” Scarlett continued, “or if they’ve been lying to us young folks, or?—”
Delilah whirled around to face her sister. “You take that back. Witches don’t lie.”
Scarlett made a huffing sound, and her breath was visible in the winter air. “Everybody lies, Del, come on.”
Delilah’s expression went as dark as the shadows between the trees. “I don’t. Truth is truth, period.” She returned to stalking down the road like a hungry apex predator. She passed the old stone wall that marked the edge of witch territory... and kept going.
Her sister followed, a mischievous smile playing on her face. “Now you sound like that historian guy. Hey, he’s pretty cute, yeah? You and he certainly seemed to hit it off.”
“Oh, don’t start.”
“What? I’m just saying. It’s not every day we get a handsome nerd traipsing through town.”
“I agreed with him because he was the only one talking sense. Which at that moment, just happened to align with my completely justified rage.”
“Uh-huh. And the way he kept looking at you like you were the Mona Lisa come to life had nothing to do with?—”
“I swear, Scar, if you don’t stop? I will turn you into a toad.”
They rounded a bend in the road and there it was: the casino erupted from the winter landscape like some fever-dream merger of Hogwarts and a Kardashian bathroom, its mirrored surfaces reflecting and distorting the winter sunset.
The main tower reached toward the sky like a bully’s middle finger to good taste, but the entrance was where the worst aesthetic crimes could be seen.
Where the Excalibur Hotel in Vegas had princess turrets at the front, this monstrosity sported a lineup of giant top hats, each one rotating slowly while puffs of smoke emerged.
Mechanical white rabbits popped out of the hats at regular intervals, their red eyes glowing with demonic intensity.
A fountain danced in front of the main entrance, with jets of rainbow-colored liquid spelling out “MAGIC IS REAL” in Comic Sans.
“Oof, look over there. Is that...” Scarlett squinted. “Is that a topiary rabbit being sawed in half?”
Sure enough, the landscaping featured a series of sculpted shrubs depicting various magic tricks.
A rabbit emerging from a hat, a prone woman levitating above a platform, and yes—a rabbit being bisected while somehow maintaining a cheerful expression.
Like Edward Scissorhands had a mental breakdown at a birthday party.
“Never give magicians a landscaping budget,” Delilah muttered. She squared her shoulders and marched toward the entrance.
“Del, wait. Hang on a sec, there’s something you don’t?—”
But Delilah wasn’t listening. Someone was about to receive a rather substantial piece of her mind about both their terrible taste and their acts of botanical cruelty.
She stomped straight at the golden awning and suddenly bounced off thin air like a bluebird hitting a plate-glass window.
“Ow! What the—” She pressed one hand against the invisible barrier. Little sparks of angry magic crackled around her fingers.
“I tried to warn you!” Scarlett steadied her sister. “They’ve got the whole place warded beyond belief. Belinda tried to sneak in and ended up with her eyebrows singed off.”
“Really?” Delilah pushed against the invisible wall, letting her own magic probe at the barrier. The wards snapped back like rubber bands made of pure spite. “What kind of protection spell is this?”
“The nasty kind. We tried everything. Counter-spells, enchanted lockpicks, even that old trick with the mirror and the sage bundle that Jerusha swears by. Nothing has worked so far.”
Delilah pulled her hand back. Wisps of blue smoke curled from her fingertips where they’d touched the ward. “Okay, new plan. Let’s make a quick circle around the building, look for weak spots. Maybe if we?—”
“Shh!” Scarlett yanked her behind one of the larger shrubs as two gardeners approached, pushing a cart of pruning tools.
“—brilliant plan really,” the older gardener was saying. “The bosses are gonna be so pleased when they get here.”
“Wait, is that why we’re out here at this hour?” demanded his companion. As they passed some shrubs, he deadheaded a topiary dove with perhaps more violence than necessary. “To impress some stupid bosses ?”
“Listen, young one. The top brass has some powerful magic. You don’t mess with those boys. And if they want the topiaries spruced up in time for tomorrow’s meeting, then that’s what we’re gonna do.”
From the safety of their shrub, Scarlett turned to her sister, eyes wide. She mouthed, “ Meeting . Tomorrow ,” and waggled her eyebrows.
“ NO ,” Delilah mouthed back silently. “ Don’t even think about it .”
“And this game they’re running, with the tours,” continued the older gardener. “I’m telling you, it’s genius. By the solstice, those broads won’t know what’s real anymore. The boss says that will totally?—”
Delilah shifted position, the better to hear the men, and promptly lost her balance, taking down both herself and Scarlett in a spectacular crash of limbs and cursing. They tumbled out from behind the shrub in a decidedly un-stealthy heap.
The gardeners stared. The witches stared back. For a moment, nobody moved.
Then the older gardener reached for something in his pocket that definitely wasn’t pruning shears.
“Run?” suggested Scarlett.
“Run,” agreed Delilah.
As they sprinted back toward town, Delilah could have sworn she heard the topiary rabbits laughing.
They didn’t stop running until they reached Main Street, where Delilah finally slowed to catch her breath. “Well,” she managed between gasps, “that was...”
“Graceful?” offered Scarlett. “Elegant? A testament to the legendary poise of the Melrose women?”
“I was going to say ‘informative’ but sure, mock me if you like.”
“Del, you fell out of a bush.”
“It was a tactical surprise exit from concealment.”
“You landed on my chest, elbows first.”
“Tactical surprise ribcage.”
They walked the rest of the way to the Stargazer in companionable silence, though Delilah could practically hear her sister crafting the most embarrassing possible version of events to share with Nate later.
At least the running had warmed them up.
December in Oak Haven had always been cold, as if the weather itself was trying to justify all those cozy Christmas traditions Papa had loved so much.
Delilah pushed the thought away, trying to focus instead on their discoveries: the magical wards, the gardeners’ cryptic conversation, and the terrible rotating top hats.
“Oh ho ho, what have we here?” Scarlett muttered.
“What?” Del looked around, trying to figure out what Scarlett was—oh. A little electric car was parked in front of the hotel. “So? Whose car is that?”
Scarlett snorted. “Come on. Can’t you guess?”
They found Jasper in the lobby, attempting to check in while simultaneously babbling nonstop about the many intriguing architectural features of the building.
Mama was on the far side of the reservation desk, enduring the newcomer’s enthusiasm with the kind of forced patience she usually reserved for drunk wedding guests.
“The neo-Gothic elements are fascinating...” He was clearly oblivious to Mama’s expression; her smile was becoming increasingly wooden. “Though the Victorian influences in the wooden detailing suggest?—”
“There’s gonna be a meeting!” Scarlett burst into the lobby and marched up to the desk.
“Mama, we overheard some gardeners talking. We couldn’t get the details, but the magicians are gathering here tomorrow.
The big ones, apparently. Or, big enough to merit sending landscapers out to make everything perfect. ”
Delilah was right behind, nodding vigorously. “All those lies they’re telling? I don’t know why exactly, but they aren’t doing it by accident. There’s some sort of plan and?—”
“Girls! I’m so happy to see you!” Her mother’s relief at the interruption was palpable. “Perfect timing. Why don’t you show our enthusiastic new guest to his room while I check on... um... something in my office?”