Hawthorn Witches: Demons & Dracaena, Sorcerers & Sumac, Werewolves & Wisteria (Hawthorn Witches Omnibus Book 1)

by A. L. Tyler

  I heard him snap his fingers.

  Before my eyes, the paper in front of me filled with pencil markings and erasings, all in my own handwriting. The homework was done. I blinked at it.

  No longer able to control the impulse to pretend he wasn’t there, I gave Charlie a sidelong glance. “It’s not the same thing. I need to know this stuff if I’m going to pass the placement exams.”

  And with another snap of his fingers, the room went dark, and I sat up straight. It took my eyes a moment to adjust, and it took my brain another moment to grasp that we weren’t in the library anymore.

  I was sitting at a rough-hewn wood table in a stone room, like a dark castle with a high vaulted ceiling. I heard a match strike to life, and looked over just in time to see Charlie setting up a candelabra on the table next to my notebook. He ripped the completed page out, then offered me my pencil.

  “I had already done one through five,” I protested, still glancing around the room in suspicion. “And where the hell are we?”

  “Hell,” Charlie said cheerfully.

  I placed my palms on the rough grain of the table and rose to my feet, going to the nearest window and staring out at a dark cobblestone alley below. The wind was cool against my cheek, and only a few wisps of cloud accompanied the full blue moon that hung in the sky.

  “This is hell?” I turned back to Charlie, raising an eyebrow.

  “If you define hell as the place where demons dwell, then yes, this is hell,” he said, crossing his arms and leaning back against the edge of the table.

  I turned back to the window. “It looks like Europe.”

  “It looks like what I want it to look like,” he said, coming to take me by the shoulders and lead me back to the bench at the table. “Time passes differently here. And by that, I mean that it won’t pass at all. Do your homework and we’ll go back when you’re done.”

  My mouth opened, but no words came out. The thought that time didn’t pass here didn’t seem possible, and the idea that I was going to have to do physics homework here in the coming (non-)hours was equally bizarre.

  Charlie paused at the door to the tall tower. “Spell work can only happen on the physical planes, so I can’t teach you anything but theory here. But you can do your homework so your hours there are mine.”

  A small squeak escaped my throat just as he tried to leave, and he turned back.

  “I have a job…” I said, still a little dumbfounded. “I have to do chores at the greenhouse.”

  “Why?”

  “Why?” I felt my eyebrows go up. “Because I need the money if I’m going to move out in the fall.”

  “Grades and money…” Charlie ran a hand over his face. “Just make a deal with me, and I’ll give them to you. As much as you want.”

  “No…”

  “Because you want to earn them,” he said condescendingly. Charlie stared at me for a long moment. “I’ll do the chores for you. But your hours on Earth belong to me until our deal is done.”

  He left. The door made an unnaturally loud clang as he shut and locked it, and I heard his footsteps descending.

  Alone with my thoughts and my schoolbooks, I didn’t know what to do. The thoughts that overtook me made me so anxious that I couldn’t concentrate.

  This was a place where time didn’t pass. Charlie had found a way to literally give me more hours in a day, and somewhere in the universe (or maybe another universe—I wasn’t sure) my friends, and family, and all of my world were sitting frozen in waiting.

  I had all the time in the world to waste or use. I’d never had the luxury before, and somehow it felt wrong to be using it on something as stupid as homework. This place was a gift, and I thought it should be used it to learn a new language. Or become a talented musician or painter. Or solve world hunger, or turn lead into gold, or read every book ever written…

  The things that could be done with a sentence in hell were amazing if given to the right person.

  I sat back down at the table, still marveling, and picked up my pencil, shaking my head. I had to remind myself that magic was a bad thing. It had already screwed up my life in innumerable ways, and I wasn’t going to let Charlie’s fancy European hell tempt me to get in any further.

  I did my homework. I don’t know how long it took, and it didn’t matter, because Charlie showed up just in time for me to finish. With a snap of his fingers, we were back in the library where we had been before and I was stuffing my books and notepads back into my backpack to leave the school. As I walked out, the aid and the librarian were still cleaning up the mess that Charlie had made by collapsing a shelf.

  I strolled out of the school and down to my car, and drove to the greenhouse without further incident.

  ~~~~~~~~~

  When I arrived, Lyssa was already in a foul mood. It seemed that the shipment of spider plants had come in with a few unwanted guests. Little red specks of spidermites were crawling all over them, and having suffered this particular catastrophe before, I knew what was coming.

  “Anise—” she started sharply.

  “Hose them, repot, and use the diatomaceous earth,” I said, going for my apron and a pair of gloves. “Got it.”

  I left the back room just long enough to get what I needed. When I came back, Lyssa was gone and Charlie was there. He had arranged the same divining supplies as the night before on the workbench.

  I stopped. He smiled.

  Snapping his fingers, the crates of spider plants started to sort themselves out. He gestured to the arrangement of magical supplies.

  “Practice, Thorn…”

  I looked halfway over my shoulder, and opened my mouth to protest.

  “She’s busy helping someone diagnose a slug problem,” he said lightly. “And then she’s going to help someone identify a tree clipping before she goes and organizes the annuals because some punk kid decided to mix them all up.”

  I raised an eyebrow.

  “Her words, not mine,” Charlie replied. “I’ll warn you when you need to look normal. Now practice.”

  Pursing my lips, I did as he said. But after the marigolds and the wax, he heaved a sigh and looked at me with displeasure.

  “You’re distracted, Thorn.” His eyes landed heavily on me as he leaned on the opposite side of the workbench, his arms placed wide to make his stance all the more intimidating. “You need to focus.”

  Breathing deep, I looked up to meet his gaze and tried to remember that we had a deal where he wouldn’t physically harm me.

  “How does hell work?” I finally asked. The mechanics of it had been percolating in my mind since he had taken me there.

  Charlie stared at me, and a slow smirk spread across his face. He pulled up a bench to sit down, eyeing me with unusual interest. “Knowledge is what makes you tick, Thorn. You want knowledge the way that other people want love or money. Why? Are you going to use your knowledge to get your love and money?”

  Talking to him was a more dangerous pursuit than I had wagered. One question in, and he had already hit on something I hadn’t even fully realized about myself.

  “Hmm…” Charlie sat back, still analyzing me. “Knowledge is forever. Money goes away, and even love can be taken away, but your knowledge is your fortress. You’ll have it as long as you’re you, until death do you part.”

  “Maybe longer.” I stood my ground. “If death is really so arbitrary.”

  “Maybe longer,” he repeated. He didn’t blink as he looked me in the eye. “Do you ever wonder if love crosses that barrier, too?”

  I looked away and winced, because he wasn’t talking about Vince, and we both knew it. He was talking about my mother.

  “Get out of my head,” I muttered, trying to focus more on the objects in front of me.

  “I wish I could tell you that she’s still alive as well,” Charlie said quietly. “But I never knew her well, and she doesn’t concern me. I suppose it doesn’t matter either way, now. That ship has sailed.”

  “Has it?�
� I asked.

  He eyed me with something like suspicion, and I realized that I had inadvertently hit on one of his weaknesses.

  “I can bring back the dead,” he said with a raise of his eyebrows. “But I can’t turn back time. Years lost are years lost. No one I’ve ever met, mortal or immortal, can make the hourglass run in reverse. Would you want your mother back, if I were so kind as to offer?”

  The glint in his eye told me my answer up front, but the idea did give me pause. I thought about my father, and the way he had buried himself in his career since her death. He had tried to keep going like he was still whole inside, but over the years I watched as he slowly peeled away from the things that had made them who they were as a couple. He didn’t sleep in their bed anymore, preferring to make up the recliner downstairs instead.

  I wouldn’t want her back for me, because it was too late for me. She had missed too many years when I needed her, and I would never get those back. If she came back, we would be strangers for all the time we had missed. The last time she had seen me, I had barely started middle school and I still slept with a teddy bear. Now, I was moving out and summoning demons. What she would think about the woman I had become terrified me.

  It was too late for me…

  But it wasn’t too late for my dad. Maybe I was being an idealistic child, but if she came back, I thought the two of them would carry on like she had just been gone on a long vacation.

  “No,” I said with certainty. “No more deals, Charlie. We’ll finish this one together and then we’ll never see each other again.”

  “Oh, I never promised that, Thorn.”

  With a sigh and a hard look, I stared at him until he continued.

  “You’ll want me back,” he almost purred. “The women always do.”

  I raised an eyebrow. “Your humility is matched only by your charm…”

  “For Kendra, it was companionship,” Charlie said. He snapped his fingers and I jumped, but I realized he was only trying to direct my gaze back to the scrying crystal. “And for you, it’s knowledge. I can provide it in spades. If you don’t want any more deals, then I’ll teach you to do it yourself. Binding a demon is the lazy witch’s way of doing things, anyway.”

  I glanced up from the crystal, but only briefly. “You would teach me to raise the dead? Why would you do that?”

  “Because I like you, Thorn.”

  “Be serious.”

  Charlie stood up from his stool, walking slowly around to stand next to me. I felt my pulse quicken, and swallowed the anxiety in my throat as I continued to stare at the crystal. Charlie bent over, putting one hand on the table next to mine as he leaned in close. I felt his breath on my ear.

  I heard Lyssa in the shop front. She nearly came into the back, but then a customer called her away.

  “Demons need an anchor to come into any realm,” he said. The smell of sulfur on him was so foul that I had to fight the impulse to move away. “A person of at least adequate magical intention to whom we can attach. That soul serves as a sort of bridge between this world and ours. I survive on the things I procure here through my dealings, and it’s been a lean few years since Kendra banished me. Be my bridge, Thorn, and we don’t have to be friends. We don’t have to exchange niceties, even. Be my bridge, and I’ll teach you everything you ever wanted to know.”

  Chapter 6

  I turned to look at him. He stared at me, without blinking. He was still so close that it felt stifling.

  He was much taller than I remembered.

  I started to shake my head, but Charlie gave me a wink and nodded at the door before I could say anything, and I heard Lyssa approaching just in time.

  Picking up the diatomaceous earth, I leaned over the nearest spider plant, and I tried to look busy.

  “Annie—”

  Lyssa stopped, taken off guard by the strange collection of things that had remained on the workbench. I suppose Charlie had left them so I could practice.

  “Wow. You finished already?” She walked over to inspect my work, furrowing her brow. “That’s got to be some sort of record…how did you do all these so fast? I should have had you sorting out the annuals. Some punk kid decided to mix them all up.”

  “Focus,” I said without blinking.

  Lyssa cocked her head at me and then crossed her arms.

  “What?” I asked.

  “Nothing,” she said resolutely. “I was just going to ask you if you wanted to stay for dinner. I’m having Josh pick up burritos.”

  I smiled. “That sounds awesome. Thanks.”

  We went to the office together and she wrote down my order. But before I could leave, she held a finger to her lips and pulled down a jar of some sort of dried plant matter from one of the shelves. She picked up the ceramic mug she used to drink her morning tea and dumped it into the wastebasket before dropping the dried leaves in, quickly followed by a lit match.

  I cocked my head awkwardly. “Um, Lyssa, whatever you do behind closed doors is your business, but this isn’t really my thing, so—”

  “It’s sage, Anise!” she said in exasperation. “Who taught you to do a finding spell?”

  I blinked. I wasn’t sure what to say, or what to even think. “I just—well…”

  “It wasn’t me and it wasn’t Kendra,” she said matter-of-factly.

  I chewed my lip, deciding that a half-truth was better than a flat lie. “I found a stack of Kendra’s books the other day with Gates. I was just messing around.”

  Kendra stared at me for a moment, but she didn’t look like she was buying it. “Which book?”

  “You know about the books?” I asked, flabbergasted. “Then why would you leave them lying around—”

  “Which book, Anise?”

  “The… blue one,” I lied. I had only read one book, and it was green, and it hadn’t had this spell in it. I was taking a shot in the dark.

  I saw her eyes narrow, and the fact that the greenhouse had recently been vandalized by teen witch hooligans seemed to come back to her. Her jaw dropped open, and she leaned back, shaking her head.

  “Oh…” Looked more disappointed than I had ever seen her before. “Oh, no…Annie! What did you do? That girl, the girl at your school…was that you? You cursed her with a freak peanut allergy?”

  “No—no!” I shook my head, taking a step toward the door as my palms started to sweat.

  “It was on the news, Annie—a girl who has no known medical problems suddenly developed a lethal peanut allergy, and if that was strange enough, she survives swallowing peanut butter. I know a curse when I see one.” Lyssa blocked my way. “Where is Gates, Anise?!”

  My eyes wandered, but there was nothing and no one to help me. My gaze landed on the smoldering sage in the tea mug sitting on the desk; I guess it must have worked on demons, after all.

  Following my stare, Lyssa’s eyes closed in a silent prayer as her jaw dropped open. She raised one hand to her hip, and the other to cover her mouth.

  She refused to look at me. “Anise Hawthorn, did you summon Charlie?”

  I didn’t answer. I was still trying to concoct something to say, but I took too long.

  I didn’t have to say anything, because she knew. Lyssa was grabbing for the cup of sage again, cursing up a storm.

  The guilt that washed over me was nothing compared to the indignity of having been accused. And in the end, indignity won.

  I crossed my arms and stared her down. “You know, if you had just told me all about this to begin with, none of it would have happened! And Charlie doesn't seem like such a bad guy, especially since Kendra was keeping him a slave for all those years!”

  “A slave?” Lyssa asked, confounded. She turned around and looked at me with a calculating expression. “Is that what he told you? Annie, demons need to be contained to be safe. He wasn’t a slave, and if that’s what he’s telling you, then I can only imagine what he’s trying to accomplish by it.”

  “Yeah, well, that's his word against yours,” I sa
id. “Did you know Kendra isn't even dead?”

  Lyssa looked at me, caught somewhere between shock and despair. “Of course she's dead.”

  “Charlie says—”

  “Charlie would say that,” Lyssa spat, raising her hands to the air like she was trying to physically catch her words out of nowhere. “Charlie's the one that killed her.”

  I stopped myself when I felt my jaw dropping open. I had no response. If it was true, then Charlie was a much better liar than I had taken him for.

  Lyssa's eyes softened at my response. She set the sage down and stepped forward and pulled me into a hug. I don't think I'll ever forget the smell of her shampoo clashing with the sage right then, because I had never stopped to consider the eventuality of Kendra having enslaved a demon.

  Charlie had been clear that he was owed her soul upon her death, and that was how he claimed to know that she was still alive—he didn’t have her soul. He said that she had reneged on some sort of deal they had and banished him, but he had been short on details.

  Kendra had ended their association knowing that she was going to anger a demon who effectively owned her soul. Or if she hadn’t, Charlie had been around when she died.

  And at the very least, he had done nothing to stop it.

  I raised my arms to hug Lyssa back, thinking about the little locks of my hair he had taken in exchange for our deals.

  “Annie, tell me what you did,” Lyssa said. “I'll help you fix this.”

  “I summoned Charlie,” I said, swallowing the lump of hesitation in my throat. “And I made some deals…I’m not sure…I don’t remember how many, two or three…”

  I tried to slow down and think, and Lyssa let me go on while she restocked the burning sage. There was the deal when I first called him, to take care of Jennifer Wilmot. To my relief, Lyssa didn’t judge me too harshly for the end result there. She said there was no way I could have known what Charlie was up to. Then there was the second deal, where he had promised not to harm me, physically, at least, until I had delivered Kendra to him.