Chapter Thirty-One #2
My eyes adjust hour by hour. The piercing teeth in the caverns are only stalactites and stalagmites; the wide mouths opening to consume us are just branching tunnels.
Mazes like this riddle Appalachia, stretching for miles underground, across state lines.
An endless, connected root system, most parts hidden and unexplored.
For good reason. If the Widow Witch isn’t our biggest threat, getting lost will be.
My boots slip on the moist limestone rock, losing traction, and I keep sliding right into the Warlock, who’s annoyingly balanced. The farther we go, the wetter it gets. Underground streams snake around us, pools of water collecting like mirrors across the ground.
“Not mirrors,” the Warlock says when I make the observation.
No—more windows. Much to the horror of my stomach. Arna Jean was right: The older Witches love their portals.
For what feels like hours, the Warlock proceeds to guide us through the cave pools, in no discernible pattern. One minute, we’re on an uneven tunnel path, and then he steps right into a pool like he’s simply changing lanes on a highway, pulling me with him.
“Shortcuts,” he explains between jumps.
Men and shortcuts, honestly.
Each blind jump into a cave lake feels like that first steep drop on a rickety state fair coaster. At least it’s too dim for him to see the green color of my face. At last, we finally stop to rest in a vast, echoing chamber.
It has to be night by now. Hell, I can’t tell. In a cave, it’s always midnight. I’m too exhausted to care. I go horizontal fast, reclining on one of the two sleeping mats we brought. We switch from flashlight to stationary battery lantern.
Stark shadows dance across the Warlock’s face, so I can’t get a grasp of his expression when I catch him staring at me.
“I’m famished,” he says. “You?”
“Too tired. Give me a second. I’m no vernal poultry anymore.”
“Please, you’re not even old enough to run for president.”
“I will be by the time we get out of this cave. I think we’re going in circles.”
“Then that means we’re on exactly the right track.”
I shift to see him fully. He sits next to me, elbows resting on raised knees, back propped against a hunk of limestone. “How are you coping so well in the dark? Aren’t you half plant? You’ve got no sunlight down here.”
“I have my own sources of sunlight.” He casts a sideways glance at me. “Remember when you asked me why I liked plants so much?”
“You said they’re better than people.”
“Better listeners than people. But I love them for their resilience. They can grow in terrible environments. Even here, in this cave. Leave trees alone and they’ll grow for centuries.
And that’s before any attention or care.
Plants will outlive me, you. Everything.
” His voice grows ragged. “They’re certainly not frightened by the passage of time. ”
“Well, don’t let me stop you. There’s some liverwort over there that looks lonely.”
“Unfortunately, you’re easier to talk to.”
“A compliment? You feeling okay?”
“Don’t torture me right now, Ms. Frost.” He drags a hand down his face. “I’ve made a colossal mess of things. You’d still be safe at the Apothakery if it weren’t for me.”
True. The thought is oddly… bland.
I don’t like seeing him this way. Anxious. Spread thin. Fighting wars on two fronts. At least he’s got an appetite, normal hunger cues. “Do you know why my apple butter is so good?”
“Because you make it?”
“No. Well, yes. It’s the vinegar.”
“Vinegar?”
“Just a touch. The sharpness heightens the sweetness.”
“We both know if anyone has the potential for sweetness in this situation, it’s you.”
Don’t blush, don’t blush. “What I’m saying is, everyone is their own sugar and vinegar. We’re both. Some days there’s more of one, so we just have to try to balance it out.”
Hazel eyes, sunken in severe sternness, grab hold of me. “We never finished our discussion. After I told you the truth about the deal I made.”
“Are you asking if I hate you, like you promised I would?”
He presses his lips together. Waiting.
I’ve been wondering myself, but my brain’s brooding feels like a ruse. The beating muscle in my chest already made a decision, the minute I saw my mom in that wheelchair.
“I was angry, sure. How could someone make that deal, not knowing the consequences?” I can hear him holding his breath.
“But what if the Widow Witch offered me the same thing, a second chance at making different choices when they mattered most, a way to save my mom? Even knowing how that bargain went wrong for you… I would take it.”
And I’m not ashamed to admit it.
“Ever since I took over the shop, I’ve felt like I’m already seventy, skipped over a whole life someone else lived. A different Honey. A happier one. So I understand why you did it.”
“And I know that feeling,” he says. “Once Ms. Zeen and I understood there was no home to send Lazlo back to, I was selfishly glad. If I couldn’t rewrite my own past, I could ensure this boy, however he got here, would have happy memories.”
My thoughts swirl into a mess of marbled cake batter. Anyone would love Lazlo, but the Warlock’s guilt still seems older, deeper. Stuck in his bones. A reason is there, at the edge of my mind, like a crumb caught under a gas burner, sparking and smoking until it sets off an alarm.
“Why did you lie to me?” That’s what bothers me, more than any secret itself. “I thought you might’ve trusted me enough to tell me.”
He takes a labored breath. “Would you have taken the job knowing that your patient is a child, and what would happen if you failed?”
An answer sticks in my throat. I’d like to think so. But this is exactly why I didn’t tell him about my mom. I didn’t want to concentrate on the illness, or an inevitable sad finale. I wanted the attention to be on the possible. The hope. The tomorrow.
I hate that he lied. But I understand why he did.
“It wasn’t my initial aim to withhold the truth. But then you showed up at the Manor, smiling, and you were so unbelievably bright and—” His mouth clamps shut.
“I don’t hate you,” I finally say. “You hate yourself enough for the both of us. But I don’t forgive you, either. So I’ll let you keep apologizing for another decade. That ought to do it.”
He almost grins. “You assume I’ll still be around then. Could you really tolerate me for that long?”
I hope so.
Before I can answer, he’s rustling through his pack. My fingers are crossed he’s going to pull out an atlas of this cave system that will point us in exactly the right direction. It’d be called something like Incorporeal Deadly Lairs of Magical Folk and Other Appalachian Caves.
“If I have a decade of apologizing to do, I best get started. Consider this the first apology of many.” He hands me a thick square of wax paper.
Sandwiches. He pulls out sandwiches.
In the lamplight, I can’t see what kind. Screw it. I take a huge bite, suddenly ravenous. Then pause. No way in hell. How did—I take another bite, to be sure. Well, butter my biscuit.
The flavor slingshots me back to growing up, my mom plating a quick dinner for me on busy baking days. I haven’t tasted this blasphemous yet flawlessly sinful combination of pork and fake cheese since childhood.
“A Spam and Cheeto sandwich? Are you serious? How did you know these are my…” Favorite is too disappointing a word. My religion?
“Your mother told me at the hospital.” Cough. “She likes to talk.”