Chapter Six
CHAPTER
SIX
ALDERIC TRIPPED ON a rock as soon as they plunged through the archway, taking Lyssa down with him. She swore and shoved him away, rolling onto her back and raising her pistol. Her hands shook; she took a deep breath, trying to calm the adrenaline sparking through her.
If Honey follows you here, you’re going to have to shoot her.
Lyssa was good at killing faeries. Humans were harder, and ex-lovers were hardest of all, no matter how much their betrayals still stung.
But the Door was no longer a Door. It was only a stone arch in the middle of a dense wood, shafts of golden afternoon sunlight creeping through the canopy overhead. A crow glared down at them from a nearby oak tree, and Brandy barked at it, wagging his tail.
They were safe. Honoria hadn’t followed them.
Lyssa holstered her pistol and pushed to her feet, brushing dirt and fallen leaves from her backside. Her hands were still shaking, her heart punching inside her chest. She took another deep breath, allowing the sun-dappled air and sweet scent of blackthorn to soothe her nerves.
Meanwhile, Alderic crawled into a nearby patch of ferns and started retching.
“You okay there, Al?” Lyssa called.
“No, I am not okay.” He wiped his mouth on a frilly handkerchief he produced from his pocket. “We walked through a wall.”
“We did.”
“Into a forest that makes me feel … squeezed,” he complained, staggering to his feet.
“You’ll get used to it.” She had puked her guts out the first time she had found her way into the Wood, too, though it was as much from the shock of Eddie’s death as the nauseating press of magic.
Alderic looked around, his eyebrows furrowed. “Where are we?”
The real answer was complicated—a slice of some other realm that nestled alongside theirs like spoons in a drawer, the liminal space between the mortal world and Faerie.
A place the faeries used to pass through as easily as stepping over a threshold, until the humans started killing the wilds and inadvertently closed all but a few of the doors between worlds.
Lyssa settled for the easy answer.
“The Witch’s Wood,” she said dramatically, waggling her fingers, and the crow cawed.
“Witches?” Somehow, Alderic’s skin went paler than it already was. “You didn’t say anything about witches.”
She laughed at the look on his face. “What? You don’t like witches?”
“I don’t like magic.”
“Magic just saved us both from being stabbed to death in your parlor. Besides, the witch and I come as a package deal. You want my services, you’ll also need hers.”
Alderic grunted a begrudging assent and looked behind him at the stone arch. “I thought Birch was my friend,” he said, sounding hurt. “Insomuch as a stranger who happens to drink at the same establishment as you every night can be your friend. Who was that woman, by the way?”
“That was Honoria. The leader of the Hound-wardens. She’s the reason I didn’t get to kill the Creightonville Horror.
” And the reason Lyssa’s shoulder stiffened up whenever it rained, thanks to a vicious slash from that stupid bronze sword of hers.
There were other reasons the rain made Lyssa think of Honoria, and they pissed her off just as much as the aching shoulder did—the memory of the two of them entangled in a hastily pitched tent, listening to the storm rage outside; the way rain-drunk grass was the exact green of Honey’s eyes.
“What was wrong with her?” Alderic asked, scattering Lyssa’s memories before they could pick her raw like the vultures they were.
“You mean aside from being a bitch?”
“I mean the way she seemed completely tongue-tied,” he said.
Lyssa tapped her left hand. “The symbol carved into her palm. It’s called a geas—a spell that compels her to obey the parameters set by whoever cast it.
All of the Hound-wardens have one somewhere on their bodies, to prevent them from spilling information if they’re captured.
” At least, that’s what Ragnhild had told her, after Lyssa had drawn the symbol for her on the smithy floor.
It was a fidelity-glyph, a mark of secrets kept, of loyalty unbroken even in the face of unspeakable pain.
A geas that had to be taken up willingly for it to work, the witch had said, her eyes glistening with sorrow as Lyssa crushed the stick of chalk into powder with her fist, fury consuming her until she stalked through the Gate into Warham and beat the shit out of the first person who provoked her.
Alderic frowned. “Will she come after us?”
“She can’t get in here, now that the Door is closed.
” Lyssa put her hands on her hips, studying the stone archway.
There was a time Honey would have been able to get in anyway, but she had turned her back on Lyssa and Rags, and therefore on the Wood—and it didn’t take betrayal any easier than Lyssa did.
“She’ll stay near the Beast. Make camp in Bleakhaven, gather a small army, and wait for our return.
That’s what she usually does, when she gets wind that I want to kill a Hound.
We’ll have to hope that they don’t capture and move it, in the meantime.
” The idea of it was a knife in her gut, fear hammering against the anvil of her heart.
“They won’t know where it is,” Alderic said. “Not exactly.”
“Right.” The map leading to the Beast’s den was in Alderic’s parlor.
Lyssa conjured the image of the cluttered space in her mind, comforting as a talisman.
An entire army could search that room for months on end and never find what they were looking for.
But it still wasn’t enough to assuage her fears completely.
Honoria wouldn’t let a messy house and a missing map stop her.
“The forest isn’t that big, though. With enough people, the Hound-wardens could comb the entire thing in a matter of days. ”
“The forest might be small, but it holds more secrets than you realize,” Alderic told her, picking a piece of fern out of his hair.
“Compasses refuse to work there, and the trees are so dense that it’s easy to get lost. Even my map would be useless without me to explain the landmarks to you.
Right now, I am the only one who knows where the Beast is. ”
“It doesn’t matter,” Lyssa argued. “Honoria has time and numbers on her side. If there is a Hound to be found, she will flush it out eventually.”
“The Beast cannot be flushed out,” Alderic said.
There was an edge to his voice, as though he were offended by her misgivings.
“I have been studying it for some time now, and it seems to only emerge a few times a year. The remainder of its foul existence is spent in a state of hibernation, and its den is so well-camouflaged that the Hound-wardens could turn over every single stone in that forest tomorrow, and they would still fail to unearth it without my cooperation.”
He looked like he was about to say more, but at that moment, the crow that had been watching them swooped down from the oak tree, landing in front of them, and morphed into Nadia with a blur that made Lyssa’s eyes itch.
Alderic let out a yelp and nearly knocked Lyssa over as he attempted to hide behind her.
“Is that her? Is that the witch?” he hissed in her ear.
Lyssa looked at him incredulously. “You’re not afraid of a knife to your throat, but you’re afraid of a baby witch?”
“Witch in training,” Nadia corrected with an expression that could curdle milk. “You’re not supposed to bring strangers here.”
“We were all strangers here, once, remember?” Lyssa reminded her. “Besides, it was an emergency. Go tell Rags to expect company.”
Nadia lifted her chin, her jaw set. “I don’t take orders from you.”
“You’re right. A surprise visitor would be better. You know how much Rags loves surprises.”
The little witch scowled and turned on her heel, crashing through the undergrowth in the direction of the cottage. “Raaaags! Lyssa brought a man here!”
Brandy whined, and Lyssa nudged his rump with her foot. “Go on,” she said. “I’ll be fine.” With one last growl at Alderic for good measure, he bounded after Nadia.
Lyssa and Alderic moved at a much slower pace—Alderic’s shoes were not exactly made for hiking through the woods, and he had to stop two more times to throw up.
Still, he was doing surprisingly well, considering how many pints he’d had at the Morningstar.
Lyssa would have blacked out ages ago, but Alderic didn’t even seem tipsy anymore. When she commented on it, he shrugged.
“I have a good metabolism.” Then, with a wry smile, he added, “I also have a sneaking suspicion that Molly waters down my beers.”
When they finally got to the cottage, Nadia and Ragnhild were out on the porch swing.
Nadia was wearing the smug expression of a child who has tattled to a school teacher.
Rags looked furious. She glared at Alderic and sniffed the air, her nostrils flaring as though he had some sort of odor clinging to him.
The only things Lyssa smelled on him were his flowery perfume and the remnants of the beer he had thrown up.
“Is there a reason you brought a stranger stinking of faerie-magic to my door?” the witch demanded, turning her glare on Lyssa.
Alderic raised his eyebrows in surprise. “Faerie-magic?”
“The claw,” Lyssa told him. “Rags, this is Alderic. You can call him Al.”
Alderic got that pinched look again. “Actually, I would prefer it if—”
“Al, this is Ragnhild—we call her Rags. You’ve already met Nadia, Ragnhild’s apprentice.”
“Alderic,” the old witch said, tasting the name on her tongue. “Who is he and why is he here?”
“He hired me to kill the Beast of Buxton Fields,” Lyssa said, her pulse quickening as she said the words. It still didn’t feel real. “And before you ask—yes, he knows where to find it, and he has one of its claws.”
The witches gaped at Alderic in disbelief.