Chapter Thirty-Three
Honey’s Helpful Hint, from
Honey Frost’s Southern Cookbook for Recipes Gone Wrong:
Memories are the best recipes, and a recipe is only as good as its ingredients.
We’ve got forty-eight hours to cure a formidable Hedgewitch of Holler legend.
No big thing.
We split up to cover more ground, and the Warlock shuffles outside to look for ingredients I might need, muttering about the state of the garden.
I immediately pilfer the kitchen. Cornmeal, dark potatoes, molasses, ears of corn dangling from the rafters.
And moonshine. Plenty of moonshine. The fridge, an icebox that predates the first Roosevelt, holds an entire zoo of game and unlabeled jars whose contents jiggle.
I don’t open those. Okay, so the pantry might be more woefully barren than the Manor’s when I first moved in.
But the Witch wasn’t totally lying about the cottage having what we need. I find what I’m looking for hiding above the kitchen: a low-ceilinged loft, each wall a bookcase stacked two rows deep. Her library of grimoires and magical texts.
The first few books I grab snap closed on my fingers. But my frustration pricks more than the pain. When I threaten to start cracking spines, the assault stops. For now.
Déjà vu wallops me. I’ve traded one tetchy library for another.
Then I get snooping.
After a while, I hear the back door. When I peek down through the loft’s open spiral staircase, I see the Warlock carrying an armful of odd metal tools that look less for gardening and more for torture.
He peers up at me from below. “Good news. The Witch’s garden might be dying, but it’s coughed up a few wilted herbs you might be able to use.”
“And the bad news?”
“The garden is more dangerous than the hounds. Don’t go outside without me. The Witch has amassed an impressively nasty collection of anthropophagous plants.”
“You mean carnivorous?”
“I do not.”
Right. No midnight pee trips to the outhouse, then.
“Care to tell me how you plan on finding the recipe that will cure whatever’s eating away at her wretched soul, in less than two days?”
“I already know what recipe I need,” I call down. “I just have to find her copy of it.”
“Of course you do.”
“I’ll try not to be insulted by the lack of faith.”
“How—” He lets out an Ah. “You saw her memories when you shook her hand.”
“Manners.”
“Like I said, too clever for your own good.” The words are low and deep in his chest.
Not going to lie, that voice has my breath shallow.
The satisfaction doesn’t last long.
Using my magic to peek at someone’s innermost headspace without asking makes me feel as slimy as whatever’s living in the icebox. The Witch’s memory was old, dark, and out of focus, but it appeared for me without prompting. Like it was waiting to be discovered.
“If you know the end product, can’t you simply deduce the ingredients?” he asks.
I snort. Oh, my na?ve little Warlock. “It has to be the exact ingredients and amounts from her own dish. A recipe is only as good as its ingredients.” Another Momaw-ism.
My chest seizes. Momaw would know where an old Witch keeps something important and personal. The closest thing I have to an old Witch is… an old Warlock.
I peek over the loft so I can see him fully. “Innocent question: Where would an ancient magical being hide a precious memento? Something priceless?”
He frowns back up at me. “Not every Warlock hoards valuable treasure or gold. Common misconception.”
I roll my eyes. “I said priceless, not valuable.”
“Is this a riddle?”
“Not all Witches like riddles. Common stereotype. Shame on you.”
“When someone says innocent question before a question, it’s usually not innocent.”
Ridiculous man, I think he’s stalling. “Don’t make me come down there.”
His eyes travel across my face in a slow way I’m not prepared for. Definitely stalling.
“I wouldn’t hide it,” he finally answers. “I’d keep it where I could see it every day.”
I shuffle back into the loft before he can see the heat in my cheeks. This man would barely look at me when I first moved into the Manor, and now I wish he’d stop. Who gave him the right to have such good focus.
“I’ll be outside,” he calls up. “Try not to set the cottage on fire.”
“Not without you,” I singsong back.
Something clangs down below and I hear him swear before he disappears outside again.
I spend a chunk of our precious time gathering all the cookbooks and grimoires I can find. Luckily, nowhere near the number in the Warlock’s library. It wouldn’t kill her to have a single armchair up here, though. Does the Witch never find herself in need of some sitting?
I start reading. The hours and light from the cave’s open ceiling drain away.
Eventually, I make a nest of books and blankets at the Witch’s kitchen table, a hunk of old oak as cracked as she is.
The kitchen fireplace keeps the cottage lit, and I sit as close as I can to the flames. It’s June and this place is freezing.
I don’t see the Warlock until long after sunset. When he comes back inside, I’m oddly comforted to see him covered in dirt again. “Hounds?”
He drops into the chair across from me. “Ferns. With a bad temper.”
The bags under his eyes are twice as noticeable as they were this morning. Gaunt shadows cling to his face. He’s starting to resemble the Witch’s hounds. But I have to trust he knows what he’s doing, the way he’s trusting me. The way he’s believed in me all this time.
I just hope that come the solstice, believing in him doesn’t mean losing him.
“We are not sleeping in the Witch’s bedroom,” the Warlock declares close to midnight.
We spent the evening in silence, me deep in the Witch’s books while he studied a small plant field guide he brought in his pack.
Dinner was the last of our packed food. He gave me the rest of the marshmallows.
I think they remind him too much of Lazlo.
With the gloaming now a true darkness, growing winds test the strength of the windows and the place is cold everywhere except by the fire.
Prompting the Warlock to make his latest bold statement.
“Or any room with locks, and I’d rather not find out what made the claw marks on the cellar door.” He nods to the fireplace. “We can roll out our mats in front of the fire. That’s safest.”
“Yeah. Yes. Good idea.” There are literal icicles in the corners of the room.
But in front of the fire… together? When I made our deal with the Witch, I didn’t register that staying here means having two nights to account for.
Two entire sleeps. Maybe I’ll just find some coffee and pull an all-nighter—
He unfurls our bedrolls. Next to each other. Then stretches out on his, feet facing the fire.
I flit around the kitchen, busying my hands with absolutely nothing.
Against my best efforts, I keep remembering the hooded look he gave me back in the cave.
Lord. I’m almost willing to take my chances in the Witch’s bedroom.
I’ve had some unremarkable sex, but have I ever just slept next to a guy?
The whole night? What if my body chooses this moment at thirty-one years old to begin snoring?
But it’s either this—a giddy yet terrified sensation—or face another too-dark corner of this hell-cottage.
So be it. I plunk down on my own mat right next to him.
Without a word, he throws a single blanket over us and rests his head on a bunched-up jacket. This close, I can see him swallow, the threads of muscle pulsing in his neck.
I’m saved from those unhelpfully distracting thoughts when an empty pot on a shelf above the sink gives a sudden jerk.
Out springs a bright ebony flower, glowing as if lit from within.
The Warlock perks up, head lifting. “A Midnight Bloom. I’ve never seen one in person.” Despite his wan face, his voice is reverential, full of boyish wonder.
I smile in spite of this entire crap situation. Even with our looming deadlines, this man finds time to be awed by plants. A minute later, the flower closes in on itself, the beauty of its petals just for the souls who find themselves awake in the emptiest, loneliest part of the night.
“Beautiful,” I whisper.
“And cumbersome to grow and keep alive. Okolona doesn’t have the patience.”
“Someone here did.” I think of the vicious garden outside and its beasties. “Oh! That’s why.”
“That’s why what?”
“I’ve been trying to figure out why you even entertained my early idea that plant toxins were causing your illness, since you already knew you were cursed, not just sick.
You thought there was a chance the Witch had used something in that garden to cast the original curse, that the cure could’ve been in the ingredients. ”
“See, Ms. Frost? I didn’t completely waste your time.” He leans back against his makeshift pillow. “We should sleep. Even the hounds have stopped howling.”
I nod, but his eyes are already closed. Spine rigid, I lean against a leg of the kitchen table to stay half upright. We’re fully clothed, but I feel like a cartoon animal whose fur has walked away. Now what?
“Are you well, Ms. Frost?” he murmurs.
“Mm-hmm.”
He cracks open an eye at me. “Your breathing says otherwise.”
“Just nervous. About the solstice. And the outhouse. It seems hungry, if that makes sense? It keeps groaning.” Rambling liar.
“Sleep, then. You might need the energy to fight a ravenous latrine tomorrow.”
“You enjoy telling me to rest, don’t you?”
“If I didn’t, you wouldn’t.”
I hate that he’s probably right. “I’m going to read for little bit longer. She’s got so many books, I don’t want to miss anything.”
Next to me, he throws one arm over his eyes against the firelight. The other is nudged up against me, his shoulder at my hip. Comfortable. Like we’re an old married couple nestled together on a chilly night like we have in countless previous lives. I don’t hate the idea.
“Good night, Ms. Frost,” he whispers, unable to fight his fatigue.
His breathing slows as I flip through another of the Witch’s grimoires.