Chapter 7
Jena stared at the crooked, wrought iron gates listing from the weed-choked drive at the side of the road. Visiting the ruins of the house she’d spent the first four years of her life in hadn’t been on her bucket list, but after the rough night Aggie’d had, it was abruptly a priority.
The whiskey had not agreed with the older witch, and she’d been up all night. That cough she’d developed was deepening, and Jena really didn’t like the sound of it. She’d hoped she could harvest the ingredients for a potion from the church grounds or around town, but it’d been slim pickings.
She wasn’t about to ask the coven for charity, and Aggie would rather keel over than go back to the hospital. When Jena had suggested it, the older woman had pitched a fit worthy of a toddler that had only exacerbated her condition.
Which left magic, and unfortunately, the only other place that might have what she needed was through those gates.
God, she hadn’t set foot past them in almost twenty years.
The last time she’d been here had freaked her out so badly she’d had nightmares for months.
Something about the burned-out ruins on the hill—the tor—and the standing stones at its crown…
Jena shook the memory away. It didn’t matter.
She’d been a kid then, and she wasn’t afraid of her own shadow anymore.
Aggie needed her, and Jena wasn’t about to let her down.
She sighed and hefted her spellbag from the passenger seat.
Dawn had already broken, and if she was going to do this, she needed to do it now.
The car door closed behind her with a thunk, washed-out sand from the drive crunching beneath her sneakers.
She squeezed through the creaking gate, beneath the loose chain holding it closed.
A faint prickle ran over her skin as magic rose up to meet her.
Her brows furrowed at the remains of an old ward, twin to the one they had on the shop.
This one wasn’t going to keep anyone with ill intent out, but it was still strong enough to make them think twice about it.
She stood, re-shouldering her bag and started up the drive. A chill went through her, the spot between her shoulder blades pricking with the feeling of being watched. It’s your imagination, Jena. Big girl panties, let’s go.
Still…the autumn woods were too quiet, laden with a weird anticipation that only grew as she got farther in.
The limbs of oaks, maples, and birch trees rustled, the sky still too dark to show their riot of color.
The skittering of leaves filled the unnatural silence as the breeze picked up, then died away.
She hopped over a rut where the drive had washed out, trying to remember what it’d looked like before, and failing.
She’d been so little when the fire had happened. Every now and again, she’d get a flash of memory. A room with pale yellow walls. Sunlight streaming through stained-glass. A big, shaggy dog…though Aggie swore they hadn’t had one.
Jena frowned, remembering it clearly, unlike her mother.
Aside from the distinct scent of her bergamot perfume, all of those memories were built around the photos in an album somewhere back at the shop, and her father had disappeared before she’d been born.
She wasn’t even sure what he’d looked like, not that she particularly cared.
He was gone, like everything else.
She passed between two cairns of stones, and the prickle of another ward raised the small hairs at the nape of her neck, its power even fainter than the first. Seven.
There would be seven wards to match the seven standing stones in the garden, protecting the node deep below, their power raised and rooted in the earth, nourished by wind and water—
And all of it razed by flame.
Jena closed her eyes and paused, her breathing stuttered. Aggie. This was for Aggie.
By the fifth ward, there was only the barest sigh of magic. The sixth and seventh were only discernible by their physical remains, whatever power had been harnessed to them long gone.
Blasted to shit.
Then the trees dropped away, and a fielded-hilltop opened up, the tor thick with goldenrod, black-eyed susan, and coneflower.
Jena’s gaze fell from the tumble of stones at its peak to scan the wildflowers.
A reverberation teased her bones, the power in the earth so much stronger here where the leylines crossed to form a node than it was in town.
Felix was right—again, damn him—its power was dense, wilder than she remembered, and more intense. Turbulent tendrils bled out from the node and swirled around her, calling to her, recognizing the blood running through her veins and trying to embrace her. Wanting…
Her eyes squeezed shut. Knuckles white. God, it would be so easy to fall into it—No. I’m only visiting, choose someone else…
A sense of laughter and denial. Finality and ownership. Welcoming whispers she couldn’t quite hear and a whisper of spicy citrus perfume…
Bergamot, like her mother had worn.
Enough. The node was screwing with her. She wasn’t here for it and wasn’t going to be.
Jena slammed the door to her power closed and took the little crescent knife from her bag, the node scratching at the edges of her consciousness like a persistent stray.
God, that was annoying—Ignore it. You can ignore it for Aggie.
This is for her. Jena centered herself and gave thanks before bending to her task and gathering from the bounty before her.
Her path rambled, plant to plant as the sun rose in the sky.
Dense clouds of sprites and pixies chased dragonflies through the field.
She paused to watch them. Jeez, every harem from the western woods had to be congregating here.
They zipped around her, their rapid little voices all blending together in an incessant chattering buzz as they flitted around, randomly dragging over whatever they thought would interest her.
She thanked them, putting odd pebbles, a rusted button, leaves, and blooms in her spell bag, but drew the line at the mouse skull, suggesting that it would make one of them a fine hat instead.
She slapped at a mosquito. Weren’t there enough bugs to keep them busy?
You’d think they’d be starving. Not that she’d suggest they find something to eat.
Pixies would absolutely take a chunk out of you if they thought they could get away with it, and talking down to them was the quickest way to get bit.
She snorted. Yeah, that’s what she needed, to be scratching at pixie bites on top of everything else she was dealing with. But, like Felix had said, places of power drew things, and there was certainly an abundance of magic here. No wonder Matilda was worried about this becoming a mound.
A whisper of the node’s power skated over her psyche again, and she closed her eyes, fighting its seductive pull. No. There wasn’t a chance she was going to shackle herself to it and spend the rest of her life rotting on a hilltop outside of Havers. Find someone else!
Bergamot teased her nose again. But we’ve been waiting for you…
Jena’s heart jumped at the faint whisper.
Shit, had she imagined that? She ran her arm across her brow.
Delusional. She was delusional, and that was bullshit.
There were tons of other witches. Maybe she had sunstroke.
It was already stupid hot—especially for October, but she suspected she was lucky the weather had been so weird this year.
If they’d had a hard frost, she wouldn’t be able to harvest half of what she was finding—
A long, rectangular stone pool abruptly stretched out before her.
She glanced up. Crap. She hadn’t realized she’d gotten so close to the ruins, but there they were. Her mouth went dry, and she wet her lips.
Bittersweet and wild rose had covered the jagged remains of the house she couldn’t remember living in, softening them.
The remaining windows no longer looked like gaping maws, and she couldn’t see down into the belly of the basement, though she clearly remembered the hole and the deep well of sidhe-blue at its center.
Here on the north side, a grove of trees had grown close, and the scrap of shaded lawn had gone mossy, overgrowing the stone-lined path leading into the garden.
She pulled a mason jar from her bag and knelt at the rim of the pool to fish out a clump of duckweed with an eye out for any naiads lurking in its depths.
Little jerks would pull her in if they could.
She sighed, grabbing a soggy clump of green.
Hopefully, she could figure out where the heck Aggie had shoved that dehydrator from a handful of Christmases ago.
Jena frowned and sat back, screwing on the top of the jar before adding it to the rest of her haul. A breeze from a sprite zipping by teased the fly-aways from her messy ponytail, and she absently tucked them behind her ear, looking east.
The hill the manor had been built on sloped away then butted up to a dense wood.
Once upon a time, her family had owned all of it down to the river that was supposed to be somewhere out there.
Now it, and the rest of the three-hundred and fifty acres surrounding the property, belonged to a private investment firm.
The handful of acres the ruins were on she supposed were technically hers, but she couldn’t do anything with them.
They were held in some kind of a convoluted trust with a list of contingencies and stipulations a mile long.
Bottom line—she couldn’t sell it, and at this point, when—not if—she died “without issue,” it would go to the coven.