Chapter Fourteen
Honey’s Helpful Hint, from
Honey Frost’s Southern Cookbook for Recipes Gone Wrong:
A festival for honoring the beginning of summer, Beltane is also a time for celebrating love and fertility. With bonfires, vibrant greenery, and other symbols of heat and the oncoming summer, this is also a holiday for welcoming change—and growth.
Girl, you sound like Momaw with a bridge to burn. Slow. Down. He what?”
“He canceled the Beltane celebration, and he’s got these godawful flyers,” I whisper into my phone, even though the first floor of the farmhouse is empty.
Lazlo and I made it back to the Manor without any more trouble in town or the Warlock catching us, but Sunday supper was a stoic affair.
I wasn’t in the mood for conversation after what happened.
I debated telling the Warlock about Webb, but I would’ve had to confess to our forbidden jaunt into town.
After I made a quick batch of elderberry turnovers, the fire I kindled for a fight at the market smoked out in my chest, and I went to bed early.
Not a lie. I did sit on my bed—and waited to hear the others retreat to their rooms.
Then, barefoot to be silent, I snuck out into the house, Webb’s sneer from the market clawing me from any rest.
Which is why I’m slinking through the Manor after dark. On a hunt.
Ignoring the Warlock’s rules against wandering is becoming my favorite sport.
I refuse to believe bad is the default in people, especially in Foxe Holler.
Momaw certainly didn’t. So if the Warlock is actually cursed, as Webb claims, this house is the best place to find the truth.
Even if I have to peel answers out from under the country-chic wallpaper, panel by tacky panel.
My mom hisses through the phone. “That man. How far does he really expect to get with this propaganda?”
Ever since I smuggled Wi-Fi into the Manor, I can call the outside world from most dark corners of the house, and a girl can’t snoop properly without her mom.
I’m not sure what I’m looking for exactly, but I turn down halls I haven’t walked before, peek through doors I’ve never opened. Nothing but empty rooms and shadows.
“But what did Webb mean about a curse? Does he think the Warlock is lying to me about his illness?” Silence. I check my cell’s connection. “Mom, I can hear you holding your tongue.”
“I’m thinking.”
“You’re not thinking, you’re agreeing! With the spider!”
“The spider—who?”
“Just because he doesn’t look sick doesn’t mean he isn’t. I’ve seen it. His magic is weakening.”
Already, my toes are numb, like the floorboards are made of ice.
Even a May evening shouldn’t get this cold.
Definitely regretting my choice to wear nothing more than my favorite oversized T-shirt as a pajama top.
The Warlock told me the soil around the house stays colder—a clue I should’ve paid attention to?
I suppose a curse could siphon the warmth and life from a house and thus its owner. Or vice versa.
After he revealed he was dying, I thought about the possibility of a curse, then dismissed it as Witch’s magic. Maybe I was too quick to shrug off the idea.
“You think he looks fine?”
“Mom.” I move deeper into a darker hallway. There aren’t even any windows, so I get no help from the moonlight. I try a few of the doorknobs in hallway. No luck. All locked.
“Fine as in fine, or fine as in fine—”
“Mom.”
“Hun, I’m stuck in a hospital, I need entertainment.
Listen… how much do we really know about Warlock Knight?
No matter what age he looks like, he’s had time to make enemies.
Curses happen, even to Warlocks. Maybe it’s not so bad, a mild one, like his coffee goes cold quickly or something. But Lord, that would be terrible…”
My chest tightens. That strong taste of thyme, the Widow Witch vanishing with a snap of the Warlock’s fingers, the intense power in his stare… If the Warlock is cursed, it won’t be simple. Like a good crème br?lée, under the armor of his crusty surface, there’s no flavor of him that’s mild.
In the periphery of my vision, a locked door I definitely already tried cracks open.
Curious.
I slip into the room before the house can change its mind on me. It’s dark, but not dark enough to delay my cry of surprise.
Vines have consumed the entire room.
No, not just vines. That beaded succulent plant that looks whimsically chic in the daylight.
But these particular stringy green strands cover the windows, choke the light fixtures, and buckle the hardwood floors like relentless tree-root systems under sidewalks.
I try to wedge open the door again, but it gets stuck in a thick, Medusa’s-head bunch of the pearls.
There’s a slight slithering sound. I hope it’s barn snakes. Something tells me that would be less terrifying.
But I’m not that lucky—it’s the vines. They’re growing.
“Mom, I have to go. I have a succulent situation.”
“What did I tell you, just shave in the right direction—”
“G’nightMomIloveyoubye.”
I stuff my phone into my bra and study the ravenous greenery I’ve waded into. The endless vines undulate like a pulsing heart. But the house opened this door, so this is the room I want. Granted, this is the same house that tried to boil me. But there has to be something in here worth hiding.
Tiptoeing into the room, I’m careful not to step on any writhing stalks, but the plants move out of the way on their own, making tiny lily pads of clear floorboard for me.
Not soon enough, I finally spy an old chest underneath the vine-curtained windows.
Before the sentient plants strangle my nerves, I hop over to the chest and fling it open, bracing myself.
The vines don’t react. The house is taking pity on me for once.
Piles of framed photos, faces paused in time, stare back. As before, the same woman with glossy dark hair looks up at me. She’s slightly older, but her elegant laugh lines are still there. Unlike before, this photo is in color, so there’s no mistaking the hazel eyes.
The Warlock’s mother.
There are hundreds of photos in here. Like someone went through the entire house and removed every single memory until not even a ghost of this family remained. That photo in the library, the house must’ve… plucked it from here? For me?
One question solved, another pops up. Freaking dandelions over here.
Just then, a vine shoots out and wraps around my ankle. It yanks, hard.
I go down, hitting the hardwood in a riot of noise.
The framed photo cracks, glass shattering. I don’t even get the chance to scream before the vines are on me, dragging me across the floor.
Soon I’m covered, only an eye here and a hand there peeking out of the carpet of greenery trying to suffocate me.
I try to scream, but a vine wraps around my mouth and I’m too caught up in a tornado of panic to think anything else beyond I’m going to die in nothing but a T-shirt like some pitiful Winnie-the-Pooh.
At least I told my mom I love her—Mom! My chest flares with heat, heart racing. What’ll happen to her if I don’t survive?
Suddenly, a dry cracking sound echoes in the infested room. I glance down at the vines mummifying my body. They’re shrinking, shriveling up.
No—rotting.
I scramble away as soon as I’m free, portrait forgotten, and sprint the hell out of that room.
And slam right into Warlock Knight.
He catches me around the waist with a gloved hand and hauls us free of the doorway just as a writhing vine launches for my calf. Then he raises his free hand toward the vines and snaps. Just once.
The door crashes shut, sealing the rotting vines inside.
After the chaos, the hall is starkly soundless.
As I finally take a few non-strangled gasps of air, the Warlock studies me with, let’s say, extreme dissatisfaction. “Ms. Frost. You could not underestimate my surprise.”
Too much in shock, I still haven’t untangled myself from him. Did he just maim his own plants to help me?
“Don’t flatter yourself,” he answers, seeing the question on my face. Curiosity wins out over his anger, and he looks to the door like it’s a puzzle. Not a fun one. “That rot was not me.”
Withering, Ms. Frost. Withering.
I force myself to take a few deep breaths. “What—”
“Senecio rowleyanus.”
“What did you call me?”
“That’s the name of the plant. String of pearls.”
I must be imagining things, because then the Warlock says a very odd thing in a very odd, soft way that makes my toes go all tingly. “Anything bruised beyond your pride?”
He’s asking… if I’m okay?
No! I’m a blushing disaster!
“I’m stellar.” And definitely hallucinating, because I swear his arms tighten around me a fraction.
But in the next moment, he unthreads his tall frame from mine, his gloved fingers lingering half a second too long.
Goose bumps skitter up my bare legs, and I almost miss his warmth.
He’s still in gardening clothes, but barely: gloves, but no shoes, untucked shirt like he was getting ready for a shower to clean off the soil.
“Why have the plants taken over like that?”
A scowl is visible on his face in the dim hall. He brushes imaginary dirt from his sleeves, like he was the one about to be a succulent’s secondi. Rude. “Why shouldn’t they? I don’t need the space.”
“The room is a death trap, that’s why!” I sputter. “This isn’t just some rebellious rutabaga, sir. I was almost a midnight snack.”
“If only someone had warned you not to roam at night.”
I see tonight’s forecast is grouchy with a heavy chance of sarcasm.
“Unlike the danger of the house’s illusions, the plants here are very real. I warned you not to upset them.”
“Me upset them?” I’m about to unleash a helluva rant on this man.
Then his gaze falls quickly down my body and immediately back up, such an unconscious flick I might have missed it.