Mortdale

13. Chapter 13

Willow

Alow hum poured out from somewhere, pulling me into a nightmare I’d had too many times.

It was winter—it was always winter. The air was so cold it hurt to swallow.

I stood in the middle of the old orphanage quadrangle, toes sinking into the spiny shingle sediment.

Each time I tried to take a step, I sank deeper and deeper into it, trapped there in a sea of bloodied feathers, a thousand black eyes staring into me.

Who’d put a malediction on a child? The words echoed, and I turned to see the headmistress standing by the doorway. A cursed witch is a jinx. We have to kill her, Agnes.

The sediment had swallowed me up to my neck, and I choked on blood and feathers.

Agnes hovered above me, lowering to a crouch as she caressed my face gently, humming that same melody.

Over and over. She watched me drown, bloodied granules filling my lungs with each inhale.

Her smile was soft, gentle. And then her hand covered my face, pushing me into the sediment.

Shhh, a colder, harsher voice hummed close to my ears, and my lungs filled with the scent of bergamot and vetiver. You’re safe.

Sweat peeled down my brows, stinging my eyes. The one bare moment I could manage to pry them open, I saw Logan grab a man of some age by his collar and back him against my bedroom wall until his specs fell from his face and shattered to the ground. “She does not need it.”

“She is a danger to herself and others.”

“The only one in danger is you,” Logan spat in his face.

“I’ve been a doctor to this family for nearly two hundred years.

You will not want to see what will happen to her if you don’t get this under control.

She needs to be medicated or the same thing that happened to Cassandra will happen to your wife.

I warned Heath about your sister, and he refused to listen until it was too late.

” His tone turned sympathetic. “It can’t be helped. It is their nature.”

The doctor groaned when my husband shoved him to the ground, and said, “Get the fuck out.”

“That’s enough now,” Morgana said, hitting the floor with her cane. “Let us leave the poor girl to rest.” Her diamond-adorned hand came to brush against my cheek. Her sigh was grave as she murmured to herself, “She’s suffering enough as it is.”

“I’m not leaving her,” I heard Logan say, and then felt the bed dip just before I faded back inside the nightmare.

I wasn’t exactly sure what time it was when the slight scent of cloves in the air stirred my stomach. But I resented how quick my body became aware of him.

I realised I was on the bed, not under it, exposed and vulnerable.

Only a little relieved to find Piper right next to me, clutching Thomas to her side.

I had not slept on a bed for at least thirteen years.

Once ghosts realised you could see them, there was no stopping their persistent harassment and torment and demands.

They’d once kept me awake for an entire week until I’d been weak enough to be possessed by one.

It hadn't been as fun for them as it was for me when they’d eventually realised that inhabiting the body and mind of a witch with a curse wasn’t exactly a cinch.

Those three nights in a coffin thirteen years ago had been perhaps my most peaceful.

Cabinets, closets, tubs; I'd slept in them all, in search of the same serenity.

“It was hard for the doctor to reach under the bed,” he said when I looked up to find him leaning against my bedroom door with his hands in his pockets. His gaze went to his niece clinging to my arm, asleep. “And she was insistent on staying.”

“She’s been doing it for a while,” I told him, adjusting my stiff buttocks on the mattress, careful not to pull on the needle the doctor had stuck in the crook of my elbow.

“She always drops by my room first. Fusses around in my bed for a little and then comes here.”

That’s why she always smelled like him.

“You want her back?”

“Tell her I am very sad about it. It ought to buy me some good behaviour for some time.”

His eyes darted to the tie that was tightly clutched in my hand. The one I’d stolen from his study.

“To catch nightmares,” I told him, tucking it under my pillow. “Everyone seems to be terrified of you. Nightmares included.”

He studied me for some time before crossing the distance of the room to sit on the bed with his back to me. “You always have them?”

“I’ve never known not having them.” Curses did more than kill. They haunted. “How long was I out for?”

“Two days,” he said, reaching to pull the needle out of my arm. “Piper was really worried about you. Everyone was.”

He lowered his mouth to the crook of my arm, where blood had beaded out of the needle puncture. His tongue lapped against my skin, licking the trail of blood before his lips wrapped around the puncture, gently sucking.

I shifted to my side when a heavy weight slipped from my stomach to settle between my legs, my knees brushing against his thigh.

His thumb still moved back and forth over the crook of my elbow. “What happened?”

“Maybe sticky-fingers gave me something. I woke up with her whole fist shoved in my mouth one day. I shudder to think where that hand had been beforehand.”

“She doesn’t get sick. She’s a vampire.”

“Is she though? I saw her mark,” I said, and felt him grow tense. “How is it possible, Logan? Every answer I have had is illogical. Our species do not mix.”

He reached to pull down the nightgown that had slipped up and gathered around my thighs.

As he brought it down, his cold fingers brushed the length of my leg.

“My great grandmother was a witch who was given to the Blood Pact. Sometimes the trait follows. Sometimes it doesn’t.

Cassandra had a mark on her shoulder, too.

As did my brother, Heath. As does Morgana. ”

My eyes widened. I shook my head in an attempt to rearrange all the rattling thoughts in there. “How do they—”

“Practice magic? They don’t.”

“How have you managed to hide the fact that there are Mortdale witches?”

“We haven’t hid it because there are no Mortdale witches.”

“The Cleansing. It’s for them, isn’t it?”

“By design, yes. Later, when the pact was agreed upon, the Basilica required all witches living in Mortdale to go through the Cleansing, pronouncing them free from their oath to the Goddess of Death.”

“That’s just ridiculous. A witch will always be a witch.

No matter how many times you scrub her under holy water.

Piper and all the others will always have an affinity for magic.

Do you know how dangerous it is to suppress chaos?

I was only a year old when I hurt the first living, breathing thing.

Simply by looking outside the window. How has it gone this long without an accident?

” My eyes paced between his as I lifted myself on an elbow until I stood face-to-face with him.

“There has to have been accidents, right?”

His eyes flashed and his jaw tightened. He didn’t say anything, and he didn’t need to.

The more I thought about it, the worse it got. What were the chances this was connected to the Madness? Shit. What were the chances this was connected to the deaths of the Crimson Weaver witches? The only thing that made me pause was: why now?

“Does Agnes know of this?”

“We believe she’s been suspecting it for a while.” He sighed, rubbing a hand over his tired, sleepless eyes. “You don’t know, do you?”

“Know what?”

“Agnes was married to a vampire. She was given to the pact many years back, a year after Sybil, who you spoke to that day. They were close friends, Agnes and her.”

“What?”

He nodded. “She left Mortdale pregnant after her husband died.”

I shook my head. “She doesn’t have a child. Only a maiden can become a Holy Mother.”

He leaned forward, resting a hand on the mattress, just against my hip, and caging me there against him.

“I don’t know about your coven rules, but she did have that child.

A girl. She’d be twenty-seven this year.

We tracked the midwife and got all the information, but we lost track when Agnes became Holy Mother after succeeding Milota. ”

To say he’d left me shocked was an understatement. I shook my head, hoping to rearrange the dangling thoughts. “Why are you interested in this imaginary child?”

“Because by the Law of Epiron, a vampire must reside in Mortdale. Unless—”

My eyes widened. “Unless that baby was also a witch.”

“Precisely.”

Drat.

Was this why she had sent me here? Because she would be forced to hand that child back? Because she was terrified that her daughter might follow the same fate as the other red maidens? Was that why she’d been insistent on me killing whoever was harming them?

My attention returned to reality when he said, “You’ll turn twenty-seven this year.”

I nearly choked on my laughter. “Absolutely not. I’m half human, as the orphanage headmistress loved to remind me every single day of my half-bred status. I was born with a reverse half-moon mark. And I don’t even like blood like that.”

His hand resting against my hip grasped the fabric of my nightgown, tangling his fingers in it. “You don’t have a mark.”

“What?”

“That day when you fainted on me. I noticed you didn't have a witch’s mark.”

We were so close he could probably see the lies in my eyelashes.

“My skin condition makes it a little hard to see. But it’s there,” I said, ignoring how his eyes dropped between us.

“Your sister’s and Piper’s marks are upside down.

” I thought about it for a while. “It would be easy to tell who the other vampire-witch is. I’ve seen most of the girls in the coven naked. No one has that kind of mark.”

“Maybe Agnes didn’t introduce her into the coven.”

“Or maybe she’s dead.”

“She’s not. I could smell her in your covenstead. Like I can smell you all over my things when you break in places you shouldn’t be.”

“Maybe it’s rhinitis.”

His tongue brushed the length of his upper lip as his gaze dropped to my mouth. “Maybe.”

“Is that why you were hanging inside the covenstead that day? To suss out her location?”

His eyes rose to mine again. “No.”

There was no space away to shrink from his attention. And I didn’t even want to. I wanted to bask in it. “Why would it be so bad to reveal to the world that there are witches born amongst your kind?”

“Because segregation was chosen to maintain peace in Epiron. A separation of species. If there’s something threatening with unity, then that fragile veil of peace would shatter.”

“It’s unfair. And not to mention dangerous.”

“I know,” he said, reaching to pick a single strand of hair that had stuck to my lip.

“You agree with me?”

“I agree with the freedom of existence.”

“But?”

Tension filled every muscle in his face. “But until I’ve figured out that existence isn’t threatened by political or religious powers, I have to hide it.”

“The exarch and the parliament.”

“And the king,” he said with a mild sneer, which gave me the smallest peek at the length of his fang.

“Why were you arguing with that doctor?”

“It was nothing.”

“Is he still alive?”

“For now.”

Both of us turned our heads left when Piper yawned, and said, “Are you gonna kiss her?”

“She’s sick, Bunny. I don’t want to catch whatever she has.”

“Asshole,” I muttered under my breath, laying back against the pillow, trying to ignore every chill that spread all over my skin when he raked his eyes down the length of me.

Piper giggled. “That’s a bad word.” Her little mischievous eyes slid to me as she hugged Thomas. “Bear will arrest you and take you to the pavement.”

Logan sighed. “Parliament, Bunny.”

“That’s what I said,” she sighed, brushing Thomas’s moustache one hair at a time.

I nudged him with my knee. “Why are you in your uniform?”

“There’s another outbreak up north, near the human border.”

I peeped at the shadows pacing relentlessly outside of my bedroom.

“They’re waiting for you.” I sat up again, my ribs brushing against his arm still firmly caging me in.

We were barely a hair's length apart as I said, “You should let me in your study so I can have a look at the records you’ve collected.”

“When I come back. We’ll go through them together. And maybe I can keep all my belongings safe from my wife’s sticky hands.”

I bit down my smile as I laid back down. Lifting my foot, I poked him in the stomach. “And stop punching Art.”

“Arthur,” he said, wrapping a hand around my ankle and pinning it against the mattress.

“What about him?” I asked, grabbing Piper and holding her against me like a shield.

He grasped my chin. “You’ll behave until I’m back. And no more fainting.”

“Yes, sir.”

His eyes flashed. “Yes, Logan.”

“Of course. That’s what I meant.”

“You’re friends, you and Boo?” Piper asked her uncle, itching her nose.

“I’m her husband, Bunny. Better than a friend.”

Her eyes gleamed. “I want a husband.”

Logan looked like he was going to be sick. “Over my dead body. I’ve told you, you’re not allowed to get close to boys. I will have to arrest them, Bunny. Pin them to the fucking pavement. Boys are bad. Dirty and bad. You can never trust one.”

“But, Bear!”

I threw my head back and laughed, feeling my stomach burn from amusement.

His hand came to gently cup my face and his thumb softly brushed across my lashes before he stood and left.