The Companion Witch, page 13
“What do you sense?”
“When a healer witch dies, she promotes growth wherever she lays.” She pawed at the greenery, pulling it to the side. The writing was faint on the stone, barely legible. She saw “JON”, but the rest was washed away by history. “These plants are growing from leftover magic in the soil. You can tell by the tips of their leaves.” With a delicate hand, she displayed a bunch of leaves towards his curious eye. “They’re tinted pink. If this is her, she was nothing but a healer witch. My best friend is one.”
He frowned and ran a thumb over the pink edges. “You have a best friend?” The frown had transformed into a sneaky smile. It seemed as if he hadn’t meant to ask. She swallowed and stared at the gravestone.
“Why are you looking for Margaret Jones? What’s special about her?”
He stooped to the ground and examined the grass. “I found a few diary entries from her.”
“How?” she asked.
He looked up at her with a surprisingly boyish grin. “I dreamt for the first time in that haunted house of ours of her grave and then found a few of her journal entries in our departed host’s library.”
“What did you find?” Her second question was What do you mean you dreamt for the first time? But she could ask him later.
“Because Margaret Jones may have known that there was a vampire masquerading as a settler among her people. That’s why she was killed. It wasn’t about her witchcraft. It was about what she knew.”
Her mouth dropped open. “Tell me everything.”
“She kept details about her visits as a midwife. She had a particular client living next to a high-ranking official within her colony. He was delightfully absent from daytime proceedings and always seemed to be lurking around servant girls, very young ones that he’d brought over through indentured servitude. They covered their necks with bandanas. I suspect he was one of the Roots.”
A sudden chill came over her skin. She wrapped her arms around herself. When she glanced at Magnus, she was surprised to see a clouded look on his face. He was staring at her. She bit her lip.
“What?”
“Lulu,” he began carefully. “There’s something I’ve been wondering…” Her stomach dropped and it wasn’t from the after-effects of the teleportation. “How do you know for sure that Margaret wasn’t dealing with demons?”
She opened her mouth, but nothing came out at first. In the middle of a chilly graveyard, they stood, facing each other with a blanket of silence. Finally, she thought to speak. “I have some experience with demons throughout my work, Magnus. Trust me. She wasn’t dealing with demons.” Her tone was definitive, but her heart thundered wildly against her chest.
His eyes held something. A flash of Celestine, a hint of her mother…disappointment. She turned away from him and faced the gravestone to speak, “I don’t believe that Margaret Jones was anything but a talented midwife and healer witch.”
“I trust you,” he said in a voice that nearly throttled her soul. He stepped to stand beside her as they gazed down at the tombstone together. “Poor thing.”
“She was murdered because she suspected that official was a vampire?” she asked, grateful to switch subjects. Bugs, emerged from the past winter, chirped around them.
“Yes. I believe he was a Root. Not the boy from the other sources, but certainly one of them.”
“How do you know he was a Root?”
“Roots are especially evil,” he said with a dark voice. “There are malicious vampires in this world, just as there are murderers among humans. When vampires are turned, they are often bloodthirsty in the first few decades if they’re not properly trained. Our clans have done exhaustive work to ensure that there is some form of structure among our species, some kind of rules to command the chaos. But, Roots…Roots are powerful in ways that I suspect we can’t imagine. When they turn humans into vampires, they turn them differently. If you’ve been around since ancient times, perhaps since we all emerged from the African continent, wouldn’t you be a bit batty?”
“I suppose,” she said with a sinking feeling. “Why don’t Seymour and Rima believe you?”
“Because they don’t want to,” he said with a shrug. “And why should I blame them? It’s an outlandish proposition and for most modern vampires, even if it was true, it wouldn’t change much.”
“But you believe that this is something big,” she said. “The Roots.”
His eyes glimmered in the moonlight. A biting smirk came to his face. “I do. I believe that it’s a great tragedy to not pursue ultimate knowledge and…” He trailed off.
She frowned. “What is it?”
He shook the weight from his shoulders with a laugh. “Just thinking…they’re unsettling. Six beings walking the world with ancient knowledge and mysterious powers.”
“We’re all a bit creepy,” she said with a sigh, looking again at the headstone. A sudden stir in the wind swept a fragrance beneath her nose. She gasped and grabbed him. With a swift movement, she forced him behind her and whirled to face the entrance of the graveyard.
A group of cloaked figures emerged from the fog. There were seven in all. Her heart froze. She recognized that scent, the blend of herbal spices that surrounded certain groups, each perfumed substance a signature calling card.
“Who are they?” he asked from behind her.
She narrowed her eyes at the approaching group. “Magnus, I believe we’ve stumbled across the modern Salem coven.”
Chapter 19
Lulu
The central figure removed her cloak with a grand gesture, patchouli streaming out of the black woven fabric as it shifted. Her silver streaked hair was piled magnificently into an intricate braided up-do with flowers woven into the plaited hair. She set her ancient eyes, a terrible midnight blue, on Lulu. The irises flashed between the moonlight. The group’s shadowy presence brought an awful hot sticky air to the graveyard, a stark contrast against the chill among the dead. For the second time tonight, Lulu thought of vomiting and fought against the urge.
“Sisters! It’s not every day that we receive visitors to our charming haunts,” the woman drawled and brought her hands together in a gesture of delight. Lulu could only think of Celestine, who held her head pompously high during ceremonies. But this woman was different. There was a sharpness in her gaze that wasn’t merely paranoia of the outside world. This was a deep wisdom. It was sometimes a wicked thing to be wise. The woman swept her hand forward in a dramatic movement and smelled the air with purpose. “Ah, a companion witch?” Her eyes flashed and a devilish smile appeared. “I’m right then. You carry the scent of guardianship.” She reveled in being right, Lulu knew. That was how many coven leaders kept their power. They were not unlike maternal dictators in a sense. She held her other hand tight into a fist.
“And a vampire,” one of the cloaked women behind her said with a shiver in her voice. Lulu could barely make out a chin covered in freckles beneath the shadow of the hood. The coven leader raised a single finger to demand silence from her muttering followers. They were silent in half a beat. If Lulu listened hard enough, she could almost hear the skeletons underground craning their necks in coffins to eavesdrop on the drama. Delightful.
“Out for a night stroll,” she told the coven leader with a biting smile. “That’s a nice note of jasmine in your coven’s perfume.”
The coven leader’s eyes flashed. “My name is Esmerelda. I’m the High Coven Leader of our lovely Salem lot. And you are?”
“Lulu.” It was the only answer she offered. Her arm was still poised over Magnus, who hovered beside her. She could see his roving eyes glancing over the group. He didn’t seem nervous.
“We love what you’ve done with the graveyard,” he said with a wink to Esmerelda, who glared at him with poised coldness.
“Charmed,” she said in an acidic voice. “Miss Lulu, what’s a witch roving around a graveyard with a vampire? What coven do you hail from, darling?” The term of endearment was wrapped in spikes.
Lulu stared hard at her. “Surely, you’re not that thick, High Coven Leader.”
Esmerelda simmered with fury as her cloaked members broke out into dark whispers. Again, came the lifted finger, the absolute sign of control. Lulu fought an urge to roll her eyes and tell the whole group of them to get a damn life.
“Lulu, you poor thing. All alone,” Esmerelda cooed in a haughty tone. “What kind of a witch has no coven?”
Magnus shifted beside her. Someone from the group stepped forward. “A traitorous one,” the cloaked figure whispered darkly. “Might as well cut off your left hand. There’s no loyalty left in her.”
Lulu was very careful about what she did next. She gently pressed a hand over Magnus’ chest to force him to take a step backward. In a swift movement, she stepped forward and settled into a state of absolute calm. Composure was everything when dealing with a snotty band of witches. She had lived her whole life dealing with that. There were worse monsters out among this world.
There was her.
She lifted a hand to her lips, mimicking the finger motion that Esmerelda had wielded before. “I would be careful about what you say to me,” she said in a low, controlled voice. “I’ve traded my coven for far more powerful alliances.”
The graveyard shifted. Not all at once, but the grass began to bend towards the Salem coven and the gravestones began to shiver like butterflies attempting to break free of splintering cocoons. Esmerelda sucked in a breath and Lulu knew why. That was the smell. The rising smell of something from the depths of the fiery lands below.
The sign of a witch who had dealt with the shadows.
The ultimate sin.
“Blasphemy,” Esmerelda spat viciously. She shook her head so fiercely that one of her intricate braids dislodged and flew out of its nest along with a flower. “You are a disgrace to our kind.”
Lulu said nothing but took another step forward. The group shrank backwards, and Esmerelda’s eyes widened in fear, something that Lulu imagined didn’t happen often enough.
“Unless you can give us information about a witch named Margaret who was killed during the Witch Trials, I would suggest that you and your coven crawl back to your compound,” she said. “I imagine that’s the only place you feel safe.” She added the last part because Celestine’s face came up again in her mind and she hated it.
Esmerelda snapped her hood up and turned on a quick heel. “Never come here again!” she barked back over her shoulder before vanishing with the crowd. There was one figure that seemed to linger a breath behind the others, but the fog came and then they were all gone in an instant. As quickly as they’d come. Magnus sucked in a deep breath and looked around the graveyard before turning back to Lulu with an expectant look.
“I think I speak on behalf of all the graveyard when I ask exactly what the fuck just happened, Ms. Witch?” he asked. She sighed and groaned, tried to ignore the dissipating smell of sulfur as she pinched her nose. “You seem like you wanted to kill that woman.” He wasn’t terribly wrong.
“Coven leaders get me worked up,” she said lamely. He crossed his arms and stared at her.
“Worked up? Worked up is what happens when Seymour drags me out of library for a forced family blood dinner. That wasn’t worked up. I thought I was going to have to stop you from ripping out her throat,” he muttered. “And what was that trick with the grass? God, I thought Lucifer himself was going to march into the graveyard.”
Her heart sprang upwards. That trick. “Of course, it was a trick. A cheap one,” she added quickly. “We should get back the house, Magnus. Covens don’t talk to outsiders, but there’s been too much supernatural presence in this place for one night.”
He pressed his lips together and glanced at the gravestone. “Can you take a picture of her, at least?” She brought out her phone from her pocket and snapped three photos with flash, making sure to get the ancient wearing of poor Margaret’s name. Her cell service was turned off to block any incoming calls or someone tech-savvy enough to track them.
“Nobody knew she was innocent,” she muttered as she slipped her phone back into her pocket. “She died for nothing. Absolutely nothing.”
“She was murdered,” he said in a low tone. “Taken down by a murderous creature that I unfortunately call a brother of the night.”
“You’re not a monster,” she said as they stood together, staring at the grave.
He said something strange, “Not yet.” It was in a voice so soft that she almost missed it. Before she could ask him about it, he was linking his arm with her own and leading them to the edge of the graveyard. “Teleportation time again, love. Your favorite.”
The second time was worse.
All she could think about as the world melted away from them was of Esmerelda’s scrunched up face. Of the fear in her hateful blue eyes, of the disgust when she knew what Lulu was. A witch with no coven, a witch that had made an unholy contract. Magnus shifted beside her as they landed. Acid rose up in the back of her throat as she felt his claws brush her back.
He doesn’t know. He can’t know. I’ll never tell him.
And then she did vomit.
All over Magnus’ boots.
Magnus
Magnus had an absolute favorite human fluid: blood. Vomit wasn’t second place. But, there would time to tease the witch after she woke up from her rest. He’d laid her down on the couch with a glass of water on the table beside her and a trashcan nearby. He rinsed off his boots on the porch with the hose and left them too dry. In the library, he sat at the desk and thought about things. Margaret Jones, the Salem coven, the unjust murdering of witches, the graves that he’d been sulking about looking for ancient vampires.
Something was itching at the back of his head. Something that was screaming at him, but in a language that he didn’t understand. He set his head on the table and sighed, fluttering a stack of papers that he’d pulled from the old professor’s files. It was a sad, but fortunate tragedy that any of his descendants hadn’t pilfered the contents of his house. How had Seymour found this place anyways? Perhaps his brother had secrets.
“Witches,” he muttered to himself. “Witches, witches, witches.” He dreamt for the first time and it had been about a healer witch in Salem. His adventures had led him to Lulu, a companion witch. “Why am I suddenly surrounded by witches?”
The voice was screaming, but he couldn’t seem to listen. He floated back to the living room in his socks, tiptoeing around the couch. She was sleeping deeply. He sank himself into an armchair and watched her. It was odd for a vampire to see a human sleeping. A vampire had eternal life, but he never had rest like the living had.
She was beautiful when she wasn’t snapping at him not to get into trouble. No, she was beautiful even then. He thought back to her interaction with the coven. Such energy, such fight. He marveled at the strength within her body. His strength didn’t require daily upkeep with weights and sit-ups. Time passed uneventfully as he thought about human bodies and the way that her face sparked with determination.
Finally, her eyes fluttered open and she groaned at the onslaught of the early morning light coming in through the window. She sat up and then stared at him, staring at her, from the armchair.
“Have you been watching me sleep?” she asked with a shiver as she wrapped the blanket around her tighter.
“Yes. I read in a book once that human women find that romantic,” he informed her. She gagged and turned away from him, snuggling into the blanket with a groan.
“No, it’s creepy. You look like a serial killer. A weird hot serial killer.”
“Technically, vampires could be considered serial killers,” he said. “I agree whole-heartedly about me being hot though. Do you want something to eat?”
“Crackers.” And he was off, dutifully, to fetch crackers from the pantry. As he did, he smelled something in the air. Something oddly familiar. He frowned and grabbed the box of crackers while he walked to the front door. There was something rustling on the other side of the door. He steeled himself, hand hovering over the worn door handle. Someone was muttering something.
He ripped the door open.
She pulled her cloak back to reveal a face full of freckles and fear.
“Lulu,” he called from the doorway. “We have a visitor from the graveyard.” He shook the box in what he hoped was a friendly gesture. “Crackers?”
Chapter 20
Lulu
“I shouldn’t be here,” the young woman told them with a frantic sweep of her eyes around the kitchen. The edges of her robes were wet with morning dew and dirty from Georgia dust. Lulu set down a pot of coffee in the center of the table and tried to offer a sympathetic look.
“You’re here now,” Lulu said and dealt out the mugs like chips at a card table. Part of her was exhausted. Looking at the younger witch across the table was looking at herself when she left her coven: scared and alone. Freedom always came with the cost of certain attachments. Sometimes that meant family. Or a soul. She cleared her throat and mind of stormy memories. “Magnus, are you partaking in human caffeine today?”
“Sure.”
The woman stared at him with a slack jaw. “You’re not how I pictured vampires at all…Esmerelda said you guys are absolutely savage and cold-blooded. She said you kill people for fun and hunt witches for sport.” He was hovering over a crossword from the newspaper as she said this. Hardly the picture of intimidation, Lulu wanted to add.
“I don’t schedule my rampages until late afternoon,” he said with a smile that bared his fangs. Even after their adventures in the cemetery, he exuded sexiness that could only be described as neurotic undead academic. His shirt, the peasant tunics that favored a deep V-neck to show off his chest and a tiny gold chain this morning, could’ve earned him a spot on some of the romance novels that Lulu had found squirreled away in the room she was sleeping in.
