The Bitterwine Oath Page 9

  Sometimes I felt unworthy of Malachi’s friendship. I was blind to half the world, and she was my guide. It was as though she could see in the dark and I could not. Her suffering made her sage; the darkness educated her in its terrifying mysteries. She spoke its language, and she was drawn to others who spoke it. At school, we brought Johanna into our ranks. Malachi made sure to be at my house on Monday afternoons, when Dorothy Hawkins—who worked as a housekeeper at the Cartwrights’ place down the road—came to do our laundry. Dorothy trusted Malachi and spoke openly about the senseless murder of her brother. In their presence, I felt naïve and useless, a stranger to suffering even though my older brother, Daniel, had fought in the Great War and I had daily worried for his safety until he returned. I may as well have been a toddler playing in the corner while they spoke of the sins committed against them. I was once foolhardy enough to recommend that Dorothy approach my father, a lawyer, for help bringing her brother’s murderers to justice. She laughed.

  But Malachi assured me of my value as her friend and as her apprentice. Though I possessed no magic of my own, she recognized my gift for gathering natural materials and preparing teas, elixirs, herb bundles, and the like. She said my touch brought a playful energy to every one of her earth spells, from honey abundance jars to lavender beauty charms.

  As for the pendulum that had started our friendship, I used it to try to divine whom I would marry or which dress I should order. But Malachi, Dorothy, and Johanna began to ask darker questions. Like whether they ought to seek revenge.

  TEN

  Natalie Colter

  ONE MONTH AND SEVEN DAYS UNTIL THE CLAIMING

  All through the night, sinister shadows scuttled through my dreams, but the sunrise banished them.

  Basking in the moment that Levi and I had shared, I stretched languidly in bed and shivered. When would I see him next? Everyone would be at the Heritage Festival, but that was almost three weeks away. I hoped I wouldn’t have to wait that long.

  My alarm rang, reminding me that I needed to get ready to babysit Avery. That evening I had a meeting for festival volunteers. I wouldn’t have the luxury of time to replay Levi’s words like an addict needing my fix.

  I threw off the sheets and bounced to my closet to get dressed, but something caught my eye. Atop the mountain of my dirty clothes hamper, my tank top from last night bore a reddish-brown stain that resembled dried blood and dirt mixed together. Frowning, I separated it from my swimsuit and gave the stain a sniff, finding it oddly fragrant. I’d earned a few bruises climbing the fence, and there were scratches on my legs from the underbrush, but I hadn’t cut myself.

  Someone knocked on our front door. I heard Mom greet Lindsey and welcome her inside. Maybe she’d forgotten I was working today.

  Chucking the shirt back in the hamper, I grabbed a pair of shorts and a flowy floral blouse.

  “Hey,” Lindsey said. She cracked the door and peeked inside.

  “Hey. I can’t run today. It’s my first full day with Avery.”

  “That’s not why I’m here.” She stepped in and closed the door. Her rich brunette hair was pulled into a neat ponytail, and she wore skintight, black athletic wear. She carried a duffel bag that usually held a change of clothes and toiletries for after our runs. “Where’s the Book of Wisdom?”

  “Book of Wisdom?” I asked, slinging a glance at my shelves.

  She dropped the bag. It sounded curiously heavy. “The leather book Kate gave you.”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  “Wow, Vanessa did a number on you.” She stalked over and snapped her fingers in my face. When that didn’t accomplish what she wanted, she spoke at the ceiling, as though addressing a higher power. “This would be an auspicious hour, please and thank you!”

  “What are you doing?” I sidestepped her to shed my sleeping shorts. “I need to leave for work.”

  “No, you don’t. Kate asked Emmy to take over today.”

  “What? Why?”

  “This is more important than your summer job. Kate knows that better than anyone.”

  “More important than saving up for a car that I can take to college? Because that’s important.”

  “Yup.” She scooped up my backpack and rummaged through it before heading straight for my desk drawer. “Here it is.” Victorious, she held up a thick, ancient leather journal. “Maybe this will jog your memory.”

  “How did that get there?” I asked, buttoning my shorts and stalking over to rip it from her grasp.

  “Nat, I need you to remember everything.” She unzipped her duffel bag, removed a pouch, and waved it near my nose like smelling salts.

  “What is that?” I asked, backing away.

  “Bone ash and charred lavender buds.”

  “Bone ash?” I repeated. The smoky scent stirred something in the basement of my memory, something made of shadows and secrets, like an old trunk locked away, its horrors hidden from sight. I imagined the trunk covered in thick dust, imagined blowing that dust away just like Vanessa blew the herbs and ash from my hand last night.…

  “Oh my god.” I stumbled back and dropped onto the bed. From the stones in my yard to the animalistic howls that filled the night, everything came stampeding back. “What did you do to me?” I asked through gritted teeth. Talismans and cold-blooded animal sacrifice—these I could process, even if I couldn’t process my best friend’s involvement. What I could not wrap my head around was the chilling idea that someone could hijack my memories.

  “I’m sorry, we just couldn’t have you asking questions last night. We had to make you forget.”

  “You’re one of them,” I whispered. “A Malachian.”

  I expected Lindsey to avert her brown eyes, to fidget her hands. Deep down, she had to know it was wrong to associate with murderous fanatics, no matter how charismatic or coercive they may be. But her expression struck an unnerving contrast with the pictures of us wearing goofy smiles displayed around the room. The dark strokes of her eyebrows were hard lines, her glittering smile and uninhibited laugh distant memories preserved only in the frames on the wall. “That’s not what we call ourselves,” she replied.

  “You’re manipulating me. Twisting my preconceptions, making me think things are real that aren’t. Is this how the Malachians brought you into their cult?”

  “Like I said, that’s not what we—”

  “Fine, the Wardens. Whatever you want to call them, they killed the twelve boys in the sanctuary, didn’t they? In 1971?”

  Lindsey rolled her eyes, a flippant response to murder. I wondered how I hadn’t noticed anything different about her until recently. Over the past six months, she had smiled, laughed, and socialized less. Her hips used to sway when she walked, but now her gait was plain, confident, square-shouldered, as if the cords of muscle framing her feminine curves had quietly become more pronounced. “I can’t answer your questions.”

  “You’re going to have to.” I rose to her level, refusing to be intimidated. That competitiveness we shared was coming to the fore with a vengeance. “I’m not going to drop this.”

  “I don’t want you to drop it. But last night wasn’t supposed to happen the way it did. You weren’t supposed to see what you saw yet, and Vanessa and I didn’t know what else to do. Miss Maggie was busy with something important, and she’s the only one who can answer your questions.”

  “Why her?” I brushed my thumb over the Malachian mark—or Warden’s Rune—stamped into the cover of the journal. “Is she your leader? The Triad?”

  “You heard that, huh?” she asked, defusing the tension by strolling around to look at the pictures of us. “She’s one of three. Kind of implied in the name.”

  “What were you trying to protect me from last night? Was it them? Miss Maggie? The Triad?”

  Lindsey turned. I saw the same fear in her eyes as last night. Whatever had been with us in the woods near the cabin elicited genuine terror. I just needed to find out if the Triad and what inspire
d that terror were one and the same.

  Lindsey thought she was protecting me, but it was she who needed protection. She was in too deep.

  “If you’re in danger, we need to tell Jason,” I pleaded, squeezing her arm. “Let’s tell your mom. I just want you to be safe.”

  “You don’t understand…” She trailed off, biting into her bottom lip. “I literally can’t tell anyone anything, just like you literally couldn’t remember anything.”

  “I overheard you and Vanessa talking about a blood oath,” I said gently. “Is a blood oath what’s stopping you? Is that why you have so many cuts?”

  She didn’t acknowledge my question. We stared each other down. For all my fascination with cults, I had never learned how to “deprogram” a victim. I didn’t want to say the wrong thing and drive Lindsey away. But I didn’t want to fall down the rabbit hole myself.

  “I don’t know whether your group is responsible for the last massacre or is just a weird Malachi fan club,” I said eventually, “but I’m going to the police. I’m your best friend, and I have no choice.”

  “Will you tell them about your grandma?” Lindsey asked evenly. “You must have seen her contributions to the Book of Wisdom.”

  My eyes narrowed. “This is bigger than my grandma’s reputation, and I’m not going to let you use her to shame me into silence.”

  Lindsey raised an eyebrow, looking impressed at my gumption.

  “Come with me to the sheriff’s office,” I pleaded. Even though I would let my grandmother’s name be dragged through the mud to save Lindsey, I wouldn’t do it lightly. “As long as you haven’t hurt anyone, they’re not going to punish you. You’re a victim.”

  She didn’t move. I marched to the desk and reached around her to grab my keys and wallet, but she blocked me.

  “I can’t let you do this,” she warned.

  “Are you going to stop me? Hog-tie me and drag me to Miss Maggie’s doorstep?”

  She shrugged, but it came off more aggressive than ambivalent. “I could if I wanted to.”

  Scoffing, I tried again. She caught my wrist in a vise-like grip and muscled me back to the bed, tossing me on my stomach and pinning my arm behind my back.

  “Stop!” I said, trying to keep my voice low.

  She relented. I scrambled to face her and found her just as unruffled and determined as before. That maneuver had been effortless for her.

  “There’s a better way that doesn’t involve fighting.”

  “Better way to what?” I asked.

  “Keep you from doing something boneheaded. You can take a blood oath and promise me that you won’t go to the police until after you’ve talked to Maggie.”

  I laughed, a little madly. “I’m not doing that.”

  “Listen, if it doesn’t work, you can go straight to the station. But if it works, maybe you can admit that this isn’t about murder and manipulation—it’s about magic, and there’s so much more for you to learn and understand before you cry wolf to people who can’t help us.”

  I closed my eyes and massaged my temples. Her logic was sound, but I didn’t like it. “Fine,” I said.

  She returned to her duffel and extracted a length of twine, a cloth, and a sheathed knife.

  “Whoa!” I launched off the bed and dropped my voice to a harsh whisper. “What’s with the knife?”

  “It’s a blood oath, Nat,” she whispered back. “What did you expect?”

  “I was thinking just a pinprick or something.”

  “It won’t be bad. Trust me.”

  I cautiously surrendered a finger. She grabbed my hand and pricked the center of my palm. A blood drop bubbled up. She cut her own hand and bound our wrists deftly with twine. Blood to blood, she pressed our palms together.

  I grimaced. Our pulses beat in our warm, slick hands. Their rhythms gradually aligned, synchronizing, straining together like magnets.

  “Repeat after me,” Lindsey instructed. “‘I swear that I will not approach the police or anyone besides the Wardens until I have spoken to Maggie and have a clearer understanding of the situation.’”

  Raking in a weary sigh, I echoed her words, with a few corrections from her along the way.

  When she was satisfied, she closed her eyes and recited an incantation. “Power of blood, our heart-sworn oath secure; may our spoken word be vigorous and ever to endure. This vow my sister shall not break, for only maker can unmake.”

  Before I knew it, she had severed the twine and was using the cloth to dab away the blood. “See? That wasn’t so bad.”

  “It also isn’t real.”

  She tossed the bloody cloth in my hamper, repacked her duffel bag, and reached for my keys, tossing them to me on her way out the door with a smirk. “Good luck with the police.”

  I started to storm out but remembered the journal and doubled back. Their “Book of Wisdom” was the most convincing physical evidence I had, and they’d dropped it right in my lap.

  The sheriff’s office was located on the square downtown, less than ten minutes away. Full of righteous determination, I drove well over the speed limit.

  But as I left the open country behind and approached the grids of neighborhood streets, my truck’s engine sputtered out. Rolling to a stop, I pulled onto the shoulder and realized I was only yards beyond the street sign for Willow Way, Maggie’s street.

  It could be a coincidence. I’d never expected my hand-me-down truck to last this long, which was why I put most of my summer job money into savings for a new car. As a test, I told myself I intended to drive to Maggie’s house and turned the ignition. The engine rumbled healthily back to life. Playing along, I changed course and turned onto Willow Way. But as soon as I drove past the far side of Maggie’s property line, the needle of my gas gauge flung itself from half-full to empty with almost comical certitude.

  My breaths came in bursts, faster and shallower as I started to feel like a rat in maze. Until this moment, I could have believed the Wardens were nothing more than tricksters and manipulators. But now…I could see that there were powers at work here that I couldn’t deny and didn’t understand, powers that could warp my circumstances to prevent me from breaking the oath I’d so carelessly sworn.

  Magic was real.

  Whatever that meant on a grander scale, I couldn’t even begin to process. But acceptance of something beyond my control—something strange and terrible—started to settle, cool, cement.

  Good thing I hadn’t pledged my eternal servitude.

  “To Maggie’s, then,” I muttered, and shifted into reverse, parking under the shade of an old oak tree in front of her house.

  As I trod up the path, I clutched the journal fiercely enough to leave a palm print of sweat on the aged leather. It felt heavy in my grasp, as though my acknowledgment of magic’s existence had given more weight to its pages.

  Malachi’s power was real. That meant Lillian had told the truth in her book. She wasn’t some nitwit—she was a witness, maybe even an accomplice, to accidental murder.

  The Pagans of the Pines had only intended to curse the twelve men, but the curse went awry and they killed them. How had the girls’ descendants made use of their magic? What was their mission, their purpose? Was the 1971 massacre a copycat crime? A ritual? Or an accident?

  I knew I couldn’t trust the Wardens. I wasn’t here to swallow everything Maggie told me with a spoon. No, I was here to find out how Grandma Kerry had been involved, what the cultists wanted from me, and if I could pull Lindsey and Vanessa out.

  Most importantly, I needed to know whether the eldest among the group were murderers…and whether they planned to kill again.

  Maggie’s house was exceptionally warm and inviting. A few years ago, Southern Homestead had featured it in their print magazine. Outside, it was white with a wraparound porch and green shutters. Fat bumblebees buzzed around the front garden, their hums underscored by a distant lawnmower. Flowers bloomed in pots and beds with such eagerness you might have thought Maggie was
Demeter in human form.

  But maybe she was something else.

  I gathered my courage and knocked on the door. For seventy-odd years old, Maggie answered with alacrity. “Well, good morning, Miss Natalie,” she said, fluffing her snowy hair. She looked dapper and harmless in a turquoise wrap, crisp Capri pants, and gaudy, granny-chic jewelry.

  But I remembered the abhorrent crimes she may have committed as a young woman and steeled myself to look straight into her mint-green eyes. “I have questions for you.”

  “What sort of questions, hon?” she asked. Her bright smile was a touch too oblivious.

  “I want to talk about the Wardens.” I held the journal like a preacher giving a hellfire sermon. “I saw my grandmother’s writing in here. And I know Lindsey, Vanessa, and your granddaughter are involved.”

  She didn’t play coy. “Where did you get that?”

  “Kate gave it to me as a graduation gift. She told me it was from you.”

  Even when Maggie smirked like a crook, she looked as regal as an old queen. “That rascal,” she said, planting a fist on her hip. “She and I are two peas in a stubborn pod. Come on in.”

  I twisted to glance at the stretch of semirural street. It was a quiet Monday morning, and most people were already at work.

  I hadn’t expected to settle this on the front porch—that would be much too ill-mannered for Maggie Arthur—but I hadn’t pictured myself venturing alone into her house like the protagonist of a low-budget horror film, either.

  However, this place was familiar. I convinced myself to go as far as the living room, a bright haven of natural light and Bible verses painted on rustic wood signs. Wide windows with soft blue curtains lined the back wall, facing a sprawling garden that covered at least an acre, not including the greenhouse.

  Maggie closed the door behind me.

  “Lindsey said that a blood oath stopped her from telling me anything,” I explained. “She said only you could help because you’re part of the Triad…or something?”