26. Chapter 26
Willow
The nightmare was empty. It was silent and hollow.
The old orphanage was quiet, its halls haunted as I dragged my naked, cold feet down its corridors.
Cobwebs had settled on every nook and cranny, every edge and slope they could find.
The spiders crawled over every inch of space, twirling over my toes, stumbling against the furniture, pacing in a dizzy haze as I stepped out into the quadrangle.
The three-headed pale lady stood at the gates—past, present, and future staring at me.
“Am I dead?” I heard the wind ask in my stead.
The pale lady didn’t answer. The pale lady wouldn’t answer. She only backed away, vanishing into the winds with my past, my present, and my future.
Willow, a familiar voice called in the distance, and the ravens stirred, floating in a vortex above me.
I couldn’t remember. I couldn’t recall why that voice was so familiar to me. I couldn’t understand why it made my heart ache, why my fingers had sunk into my chest, nails drawing blood against my skin.
Ghostly hands gripped me by the back of my neck, sliding up until fingers tangled in my hair. And then the familiar echo whispered in my ear. Honey.
My feet slipped over the rocky sediment as I ran, following that echo into the belly of the barren woodland covered in charred leaves and dark feathers.
A quiet stir in my chest forced me to glance back at the orphanage, and a sudden warmth bloomed against my eyes when the phantom of my young self forced a bright smile on her sunken, bruised face, waving at me.
I could suddenly feel the weight of my lungs as I inhaled and exhaled when a whirlpool of darkness sucked me in it.
Heaviness had settled at the back of my skull, making my head feel like it weighed as heavy as stone.
My pulse rocked steadily against my breastbone, vibrating down to the tips of my toes.
The warmth of tears sliding down my cold temples made me shiver, and I pressed my face to the silken pillow and smelled vetiver and bergamot.
A sting behind my eyes made my eyelids hurt to peel them open. Dark silk sheets. Burgundy velvet-draped curtains. Copper brocade wallpaper. My Hell was a familiar one. But it wasn’t the devil who laid across from me. Nor was it death.
I blinked a few times until his face sharpened. His phantom, a dark mirage conjured to haunt me, laid there at the other end of the pillow.
“Are you real?” I whispered with my mouth still half pressed to the silken surface, salt and sorrow on my tongue, and a taste of longing smelling of cloves settling in my throat, making me sick.
“Only sometimes,” he said, resting a hand against my face, his thumb brushing the surface of my lips so very gently. “Only when I’m with you.”
Burying my face against the pillow until my vision grew heavy from suffocation, I sobbed, teeth aching, ribs breaking, skin burning. I sobbed as he pulled me against him, as he gently pressed a kiss between my eyes with a possessive finality—how could death have me if he had me first?
I sobbed even as I pressed my face against his palm, inhaling him until I could feel my lungs burst.
“You came back to me,” he whispered.
“I heard your call,” I murmured, sinking against him and closing my eyes again, freefalling into another nightmare. No…a dream.
I love you, his voice echoed, as the brightness swallowed me in.
When I woke up again, someone else was sitting at the edge of the bed beside me.
The fear I’d imagined him when I’d woken lingered, but not as strongly as the scent of cloves being burnt in the distance, not as strongly as the faint taste of whiskey I licked off my lips, or the feeling of the tie wrapped around my neck, or the other ones wrapped around my wrists.
I ran my fingers over the dent in the silk sheets, still holding the shape of the harsh contours of his body. Blinking the haze of the morning sun out of my eyes, I pushed up on an elbow. My mouth parted with a gasp when I recognised the dark curls. “Ethel?”
She swung around, her eyes red and her cheeks wet. “You stupid hag!” she yelled, smacking my shoulder repeatedly until Arthur hauled her off me. She kicked and screamed at the air. “Let me go, you ridiculously strong leech!”
“Told ya’, my name’s Arthur. And stop writhing, witch. Or you’re going to hurt yer wee self.”
“Art, it’s okay,” I said, pushing myself up against the bed and lifting a hand in her direction.
She launched at me, sobbing as she wrapped her arms tightly around me in a suffocating hug. “Why would you do that?”
“I was going to die anyway.”
“I will hate you forever.”
Forever.
“Speaking of dying,” I started, a little afraid I might stir awake some devil who’d been waiting for my soul in the Beyond. “Why am I not dead? How am I still here? Unless we’re all on the other side. But that can’t be.” I poked her in the belly. “You’d be in Hell.”
She grabbed the nearest pillow, smacking me with it repeatedly until Arthur snatched it from her. “Hey! You’re really pissing me off, coffin-lover.”
Henry pursed his lips, sending a worried look in Arthur’s direction—who was too busy glaring at Ethel. “You must have had Logan’s venom still in your system when you—”
Oh my Goddess. Wait. No. Was this like an Opera subscription thing? Oh, Saints. I had changed providers, after all. “So, I’m—”
Arthur threw his arms wide open. “Welcome to the better side, witch-woman.”
I skimmed my fingers over my teeth, and Arthur threw his head back, howling with laughter. “Just shitting with ya, witch-woman!” he howled. “Cursula here saved the moment.”
She threw a slipper at him. “Zip it, bat-boy.”
“Alright, charmy.” He returned her slipper back to her. “Weapons down. You’ll get yourself in a pickle.”
I sat up, glancing at the doors. I could smell him all over me. All over the bed. All over the air. My lungs were filled with him, and the urge to run out and search for him was severe. But the need for answers was growing severe, too.
Her eyes lowered as she pulled her sleeve to show me her mark.
It was no longer the full circle it had always been.
Now it was just a half moon. Only it was not a normal half moon; it was upside down.
“She had us threaded together since we were babies. I pulled the truth out of Marilla just before I ran away from Crimson Weaver. It wasn’t a malediction.
You weren’t cursed. I was sucking the life out of you.
” She swallowed, looking like she was going to be sick.
“Half of mine and half of yours, they make—”
Two half witches make a full witch. “A full mark.”
Ethel swallowed hard, averting her hurt eyes to the far distance of the room so I couldn’t see them.
“She was ashamed and disgusted by the fact, apparently. Her father was a famous hunter.” Her throat rolled when she swallowed what looked to be a nauseated gulp.
“The kind who hunted mutts. He was excommunicated and killed for it. Marilla told me he almost took down the entire Briar lineage until Agnes married the vampire count—my father. Her marriage pardoned them.”
My fingers tightened around her clammy hand, holding her close to me. “How did you—”
“Your husband found me a few days ago. I ran away from Meridian after a letter he’d sent me, explaining his theory about my origins—about how Agnes is my mother, and how I’m also…
you know…half vampire. And Henry safely smuggled me into Mortdale.
He’d had an inkling I was Agnes’s half child since our wedding.
But it got weird once the issue of the mark came to be.
All half vampire witches had an upside-down mark.
I didn’t; the thread is why I’ve never had the urge to feed on blood, why I never developed any vampiric trait.
” With a sigh, she ran a hand over her eyes.
“A few more weeks and…and it would have been complete. You would have died.” She braced her forehead against mine.
“He was going to save you. He was trying so hard to save you. He gathered every witch in Mortdale who had some practicing past and put them together to work this through and break the thread. He saved you.”
My smile shook. “He saved me a long time ago.”
“He’s really upset about this.”
I chuckled. “He’ll get over it.”
She held my hands in hers. “Your father is Agnes’s brother. And that bitch-witch was my mother. Which means…we’re cousins.” She put her palm against mine. “My blood has always been your blood, too.”
I wrapped my arms around her neck, wiping my tears away. “What will happen now?”
“All of the puppet soldiers have been laid to rest properly this time. The Blood Pact has been abolished as of last night and the Blood Chalice has been locked away. Marilla and a few others have been excommunicated from the coven and arrested.”
“Who’s taken over as Holy Mother?”
“Sybil Fortuna. Your new queen granted her divorce from her husband.” Her grimace was pitiful. “Apparently, my dead bitch-witch of a mother had made her my godmother, and she’s been acting crazy motherly on me.” She shivered, holding back a gag. “It’s creeping me out.”
I laughed, but no one else did, not even her. So, I glanced over my shoulder, where everyone’s attention had gone.
Logan leaned against the door, watching me. “You think you can laugh after what you did?”
Warmth sat at the bottom of my stomach at the sight of him.
The others offered me sympathetic looks as they quickly vacated the room, leaving me there alone with him.
He dropped his cigarette on the floor, still watching me as he stepped on it. “Say you’re sorry for the fucking stunt you pulled with Agnes.”
My nails dug into the silky sheets, grasping at anything to contain the urge to run to him, to bury my face against his chest, to drag my teeth across his skin, mark his throat so everyone knew he was mine. “Not feeling very apologetic at this very moment. It wouldn’t be very heartfelt.”
“Say it.”
“I’m very sorry.”