Chapter Twenty-Six
Honey’s Helpful Hint, from
Honey Frost’s Southern Cookbook for Recipes Gone Wrong:
A giggling girl and a gaggling hen always meet a terrible end.
—Meemaw Hazeleen Frost
Warlock Knight peers down at me.
A visibly held breath leaves him as he looks me up and down. “Are you hurt? Lazlo?”
My usually steady chef’s hands are shaking. “In need of some of Ms. Zeen’s calming tea, but no worse for wear.”
“You’re in luck. She came along.”
“Lazlo first?” I ask, still in shock he’s here, he found us. Found me.
“Indeed, hand him up. I don’t think that cellar is long for this world. The stairs are nonexistent on our end. Mind the splintered wood.”
Once Arna Jean and I hand off Lazlo through the hole that was previously the cellar entrance, the Warlock gives him a quick fierce hug, though his eyes stay on me over the boy’s shoulder.
He whispers something to the kid I can’t hear, then passes him off to the safety of Governess Zeen’s waiting arms.
Next goes Beauregard, Ms. Buchanan insists, and he launches right into a flustered Rett, whose glasses slide askew with a slobbery lick. Then we free the old woman herself, somehow without dislocating one of her hips, and finally the Warlock and Silas haul Arna Jean to the surface.
It begins to rain.
My turn.
Before I can insist on climbing out myself, the Warlock hauls me right into his arms. Under the thick haze of thyme, he smells like wet, clean earth, and I try very hard not to press my nose against his neck.
The cold drizzle has me damp to the bone, and I relish the warmth from his large palms at my waist.
“All field trips are to be approved by me, Ms. Frost,” he murmurs. The words would carry an edge if it weren’t for the teasing quirk of his lips.
“To be fair, you would’ve said no.”
He raises an eyebrow, like we’re just having a Good Old Normal Bicker, not standing in the wreckage of a tornado. This close, I notice his cheekbones, already sharp and high, jut out more than usual.
He clears his throat. “It took me longer than I intended to find you. We had to figure out where you’d gone, and I couldn’t expend magic on a tracking spell in case we needed to—no one could get here to help because the streets were impassable in the squall and the fire department was putting out other literal fires… ”
He’s ranting. He never rants. He doesn’t even realize he’s still holding me.
“So everything went awry when I left the Manor. As I suspected.”
His chest expands under my hand. A fortifying breath. “Thank you. For finding Lazlo.”
The low timbre of his voice leaves my ears humming. “Thank you for the rescue.”
“Give your regards to our postman. It was his wish that moved the tree.”
Only then do I notice the massive crater a toppled oak tree’s exposed roots have left behind. My wish was for you, I want to say. After every secret I’ve wrested out of the man, I don’t want to be anywhere else. But right on time, worry crowds into my head.
The bags under his eyes are the same color as the evening sky.
If he refrained from a simple tracking spell to conserve power…
Now that I know his health and energy decline right along with Lazlo’s, I wonder how he even managed the magic needed to power Rett’s wish, especially after bolstering the Manor’s wards before the tornado hit. He’s pushing his body and his luck.
“I’m surprised to see you three working together,” I say, in lieu of letting my anxieties get the best of me.
“I might have gotten off on the wrong foot with them. Especially Mr. Key.”
“Oh?”
In response, his hands squeeze my waist, pulling me closer against him.
Maybe my nerves are on high alert, but I can feel exactly where his thumbs press into my hip bones, moving in unconscious circles.
I’m defenseless against the oncoming heat under my skin, and that’s even before his gaze tracks a brave drop of rainwater as it crests over my cheek, down to my lips—
“Mr. Knight!”
This time, it’s Rett who interrupts us. We break eye contact long enough to see the postman waving at us from a dozen yards away. The rest of our group is already halfway back to the property’s gravel drive.
“Mr. Knight, you’ve got… company.” Rett says the word like ants or insufficient postage.
We step apart and follow Rett back through the trees, toward the Manor’s gate. Whatever moment the Warlock and I were caught in is gone, embrace over. But the entire walk back, he doesn’t let go of my hand.
We emerge from the overgrown brush and onto the gravel drive.
My truck is right where Arna Jean and I left it, blocking the path up to the farmhouse.
Parked at a slant just below it is Stamp of Approval.
Ms. Zeen and Lazlo hunker with Ms. Buchanan and Beauregard in the back of the empty mail truck, out of the drizzle.
“Peace be with you, Miss Frost. Glad to see y’all are safe.”
For the love of—not now.
Pastor Oris Webb stands on the other side of the large iron gates, one side of which is holding on to its hinges with something stronger than even Gertha Fudge’s faith.
His truck sits in the road, engine running, headlights shining right at us through the rain. Blinding. Downed trees litter the area.
What did Fudge say? A home free from the threat of magic.
This looks all kinds of bad.
The Warlock and I stop just inside the Manor’s gate, facing Webb. Silas, Rett, and Arna Jean remain behind us with the rest of our group in the mail truck.
“Mr. Knight, I presume?” Webb asks.
With my overalls and the Warlock’s sour expression, we’re nailing the Holler Gothic look, like some Grant Wood knockoff. These two have never met in the flesh, but based on the Warlock’s glower, he knows exactly who this beige man is.
“Pleasure to meet you.” Webb levels his attention on the Warlock’s hand, tight around my own. And smiles. “Not a moment too soon, it seems. A Witch and a Warlock make quite the damaging pair.”
“Couldn’t get your followers to come out during a literal tornado?” I ask. A confrontation at the farmers’ market is one thing, but accosted on our own driveway? Not today. “I’m sure you have bigger concerns right now than bothering us.”
“Please, indulge me. This tornado rent right through the middle of town, phone lines are down, and I’ve come all this way to talk, as a representative of us folks without magic.”
The Warlock goes rigid against me, his grip tightening on my hand.
Why is the Widow Witch causing destruction all over town when the Warlock is up here?
As far as I know, she doesn’t have a vendetta against all of Foxe Holler.
She’s never used a widespread storm to take a husband before.
She’s too efficient. During a normal spring, she comes for one person, and no one else is caught in the cross fire.
Then again, this hasn’t been a normal spring from the beginning.
“Did the Widow Witch finally take someone, then?” Ms. Zeen asks from behind us.
“By some miracle,” Webb says, “no one was harmed. Yet. But our church is a wretched, pitiful thing. Service will need to be relocated for the foreseeable future. We have lost yet another focal point of our community to magic. Just like our library.”
The tension in Mr. Knight’s body pulses right into my own muscles. If we hoped to convince folks there’s no such thing as bad magic, that chance has shriveled up. The universe has some wretched timing. Almost perfectly so.
“Judging by your barn, Mr. Knight—what’s left of it—even you can’t escape dangerous magic.”
In the aftermath of the tornado, it didn’t even cross my mind to check if the Widow Witch left her usual scorch marks, her familiar threat burning in the earth. The chill of my fear begins to dissolve as my suspicion brews.
Webb needs a villain more than peace.
I step forward, trying to look formidable, but it’s hard when my bangs are going this way and that. “You can’t blame all magic for this, or all Witches in the Holler. Not even the Warlock.”
“Whether higher or lower magics, neither bodes well for regular townsfolk. Someone always ends up hurt. Especially the innocent.”
“This is the Widow Witch’s doing. Blame her,” I press.
Sickly glee skitters across Webb’s face.
“Excellent point, Miss Frost. The Widow Witch seems particularly interested in Mr. Knight this year. Why is that?” When I don’t immediately answer, he peers toward the mail truck with greedy curiosity.
“I’m glad to see your boy is well, Mr. Knight.
It would have been a shame, had he been swept away. ”
The Warlock does a double take toward the mail truck, but his doubt isn’t quick enough.
The preacher notices, a spider eyeing a tremor in his web. He tsks. “In a time of crisis, you didn’t know where you own boy was? Any sensible parent would agree carelessness is a form of neglect.”
“He was safe,” the Warlock rasps, his thumb jittering in tight circles over my palm. “He is safe. His well-being is always my first priority.”
“Can a Warlock be a caretaker if he’s fighting threats, as well as capable of violent, unpredictable magic himself?
Can the community trust Witches if a Witch herself is the cause of such mayhem?
In our time of modern medicine, perhaps we don’t need Farewitches at all.
We have the healing power of faith, and what’s meant to be, will be. ”
I can’t take any more of this. “And when someone’s on her deathbed, is that the miracle healing power of faith, too?”
Webb sets his stare on me. “No need to insult me with subtlety. You might be a Frost but you are a Witch first. All magic is rotten, and it will poison our souls to the core. You’ve seen it yourself, have you not?”
This boiled chicken tender of a man surely isn’t accusing the indomitable Marigold Frost of being her own illness? Then realization creeps down the back of my neck. He knows. The truth about my mom, where she’s been. Her illness and my inability to cure her.
“Don’t worry, Miss Frost. I have bigger concerns than your mother right now. Farewitches don’t frighten me. So I’ll keep your secret. For now.”
Not out of the goodness of his heart, that’s for sure. If the town keeps believing the Warlock is the villain in my mom’s story, magic is the villain, too. And Pastor Webb wins.
“Besides, Mayor Frost wouldn’t have much of a chance charming the town council now anyway. Before summer is out, I’ll make sure you Witches don’t have a single holiday left on the community calendar. And by the time next spring rolls around, there won’t be a single Witch left in the Holler.”
“How dare you—”
“I do dare,” he snaps. “The only good magic is no magic. This will be safer for everyone. It’s a real shame, of course, that a storied institution such as your family’s Apothakery could be a victim of all this mess. But if I were you, Miss Frost, I would seek out other employment.”
I didn’t think my mood could get much worse, but here we are.
“You don’t get to decide what Ms. Frost can and can’t do.” The Warlock’s voice is halfway to a growl.
Webb pulls something from his pocket then, and I almost recoil. But it’s just another one of his golden-yellow apples.
“I’ll get to the point, Mr. Knight. After today, it will be clear to the Holler that the Widow Witch, for whatever purpose drives that devil, is after you this season.
The longer you remain in Foxe Holler, the more you put the town at risk.
The neighbors you’ve ignored for so long are concerned, especially for the well-being of that young boy. ”
“The Witches won’t see it that way,” I say. His congregation might buy this, but surely the rest of the town can smell the manure. Some of the town.
“Perhaps not. But I’m sure the Eldercraft would. In fact, I know they would be acutely interested to know if a Warlock was putting a child at risk. They’ve been known to bar a Warlock from using his magic for much less, haven’t they?”
“You have no jurisdiction with the Eldercraft,” the Warlock says, growing paler.
He might not, but Webb’s tied to all of this somehow. I know it. I just can’t see how.
Webb yanks the stem from his apple. “We’ll test that theory, won’t we?
You are no proper caretaker for a child.
Not when a Hedgewitch has made you her target.
Wrap up your affairs here, or I’ll have the Eldercraft at your door.
If removing you from the Holler could expel the Widow Witch as well, then the town will see me drag you from that mausoleum of a house myself. ”
“Good luck with that,” I say.
“I don’t need luck, Miss Frost, when I have faith.”
Webb takes a large bite of apple. Juice drips down his chin.
My ears buzz, the only flavor on my tongue bright red rage, like I’ve bitten a live wire. Before I know I’m moving, I place myself between Webb and the Warlock. “Leave.”
Webb sneers. Then his smile dissolves.
His apple, once the buttery gold of a chanterelle shroom, begins to decay right in his hand.
I watch in morbid fascination as the flesh withers and bruises like it sat under a hot sun for a month, in seconds.
He drops the rancid apple—it hits the earth with a gooey squelch—and his mouth twists in disgust as he spits out the bite he took.
Instead of crisp apple, a hunk of woody, purple mold lands on the ground.
A tiny worm crawls out of the half-chewed hunk.
Lazlo’s voice carries from the mail truck. “Metal.”
Webb spits again, this time at my feet. Impossibly fast, the Warlock lunges at him, but I turn and catch him, my hands pushing against his chest to hold him back.
The pastor wipes his mouth, revulsion warping his face. “Like I said. Rotten.” His chalky eyes don’t blink. “You have three weeks, Mr. Knight. Either the Eldercraft will come for you, or they will come for the boy. It’s your choice.”
He retreats, heading back to his truck.
Only once Webb is driving back the way he came do I notice the Warlock is still pressed up against me, his body tight with tension. No, he’s leaning on me. “Sir, are you all right—”
He sways on his feet and collapses.