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

by A. L. Tyler

  “Dad!” I plastered a smile on my face as I went in for a hug, and then took the fruit salad from Janet with a smile as Josh passed a giddy Rosie off to her grandfather. “So glad you two could make it!”

  Lyssa had my arm in a claw-like grip as she gave Josh a look. He put on a smile and turned back to strike up a conversation about sweater vests with Janet as my dad carried on an upbeat chat with Rosie.

  I let her drag me to the kitchen, and we kept our voices low.

  “You gave him blood?!”

  “It was a protection spell!” I said in a hush. “I don’t see what the big deal is!”

  She grabbed an apron and snapped it out with an angry flick of her wrists and a toss of her red-blond hair before putting it on over the black dinner dress she was wearing.

  “Blood has a lot of uses!” she said. “Stop giving him any of your other cast offs unless you’re sure you know what he’s using them for!”

  My eyes went wide, both with the paranoia of realization and a stubborn need to defend my actions. “I’m his bridge, Lyssa! He’s not going to do anything to hurt me!”

  “You don’t know that!”

  We both fell silent, glaring at each other. Lyssa finally broke eye contact to put the fruit salad in the fridge, and that was when Gates stepped in.

  She jumped up on the counter and waited for Lyssa to stand back up from behind the refrigerator door. My sister’s eyes froze and her expression faltered when she saw Gates sitting there, her cat eyes narrowed, not speaking a word.

  “It’s nice to get the family together for dinner though, isn’t it? Even despite all this weirdness?” I said in a casual tone as I stepped up next to Gates and crossed my arms. We couldn’t have timed it better, because right then, Rosie gave a loud squeal of a laugh, and my dad’s jovial bellow followed. “It’s easy to get comfortable and take it for granted. Nice for dad to get to see all of his kids for dinner. You know who else would like to see all of their kids for dinner again?”

  Lyssa looked like she was going to cry, but she shook her head when she looked at me. “Annie… this won’t help her.”

  “Do you have a better plan?” I raised my eyebrows. “Because right now my best friend is a cat and I have a demon who keeps dropping in unannounced.”

  “Oh, you don’t mean Mr. Jones, do you?”

  I spun around and Lyssa’s eyes went wide. Janet had walked in on us.

  “I—no!” I managed. “I meant this other guy, he just keeps coming around. Mr. Jones has been great. I think I’ll ask him to get me an extra lock just in case this creeper doesn’t stop, but I’m sure he will. Right?”

  I looked at Lyssa, but she didn’t say anything.

  “And I’m sure you’ll make friends when school starts, Annie. But there’s nothing wrong with having a cat as your best friend…” She reached out to pet Gates just as Josh poked his head in behind her to mouth the word ‘sorry.’ “Sometimes I think animals are better friends than people. Do you girls need any help in here?”

  Lyssa reached for the silverware drawer insert and passed it to her. “I think we’ve got it covered, but do you mind setting the table?”

  As soon as Janet and Josh had gone, Lyssa turned back to me with a calculating expression. She took a deep breath, and then grabbed a knife from the block next to the stove. The overhead kitchen lights sent a sharp bright line down the blade as she pinched a small lock of hair and cut it free, laying it on the counter.

  “Tell Charlie it’s for him,” she said, her lip curling a little. “But it won’t help Gates. Only Kendra can fix this, Annie, and she’s dead. I’m sorry, but it won’t help.”

  She heaved another heavy sigh as she walked from the kitchen, and I started plating the pork chops. I took a deep breath of my own, and couldn’t help myself when I smiled a little. Gates gave a little purr and an enthusiastic meow before jumping down and trotting back to the living room.

  “Charlie?” I whispered under my breath.

  I couldn’t see him, and I couldn’t hear him, but when he stepped closer to gather the hair from next to my hand, I thought that he would be grateful.

  When he leaned close to my ear to whisper, his voice held only determination.

  “This will do, Thorn,” he said. “Enjoy your dinner, and then get some sleep. The next items on my list will require a little more footwork to acquire.”

  Baffled, a nervous smile crept to my lips. “What?”

  But Charlie didn’t answer. He was already gone, running back to his wardrobe of hair to stock his latest find.

  Chapter 5

  I tried to stop Lyssa after dinner. I wanted to know what she had meant when she said that blood had a lot of uses. She waved me off as she walked out the door with Dad and Janet still in earshot.

  Gates attempted to strike up a conversation late that night, thanking me for what I was doing for her, but I was too tired for more than a few exchanges before I drifted off to sleep. It was going to be Saturday, after all, and Lyssa had expressly told me at dinner that she wanted me to take a day off after all of the long shifts I had taken over that week. Now that I didn’t have a job to show up to, and Charlie had his hair, I was looking forward to a long, late sleep.

  Charlie had different ideas.

  “Thorn.”

  There had been a time when hearing the voice of a man in my ear as I lay in bed would have made me jump. Now it only made me crack an eye and check the time.

  “It’s three,” I said. “Give me another five hours.”

  “Dew from the morning glories,” Charlie prompted. “You have to get it before the sun hits them.”

  “Get it yourself.”

  “I can’t touch it.”

  Sighing heavily as I shoved my blankets off and sat up, I stared at him wearily. “What?”

  “If I touch the flowers or the dew, it becomes unusable for my purposes. You have to do it.”

  With my eyes hanging heavy, I resigned myself to my fate. He wasn’t going to leave this alone.

  Rubbing my face and then bringing my palms back to slide over my hair, I closed my eyes. “Fine. Whatever.”

  The next thing I knew, I was sitting in a field, still in my pajama bottoms and my camisole. The wet dew from the night was seeping through the seat of my pants and chilling my previously warm skin as the sun threatened to peek over the horizon. Charlie was attempted to put a small vial into my hand as I looked around in confusion.

  I finally closed my fist around the vial, and then stared around at the flowers around me. When he had said morning glories, I assumed he meant the large, colorful cultivars we sold in seed at the greenhouse. During the summer months, we even had a trellis wall where we grew the most popular varieties. But he meant wild morning glory, and those flowers were tiny. Each one held only a single dew drop, if that.

  “How much?” I asked groggily.

  “An ounce,” he said. “Two, if you can get it.”

  I cocked an eyebrow at him. Drip by drip, an ounce may as well have been an ocean.

  “We’re on a deadline here, Thorn…”

  “So slow time down!” I said, getting onto my knees to start tipping each tiny drop into the vial. “Geez, Charlie. It’s not like there aren’t other fields with other morning glories that are farther west where the sun isn’t up yet.”

  “I need these,” he insisted.

  Of course he did. I rolled my eyes and did what I could, as fast as I could, and I was surprised at how fast my little bottle filled up. Drop by drop, I filled it, and then he handed me another, and I got it filled halfway before a ray of golden sun pierced the darkness and blinded my sleep-heavy eyes. I instinctively covered the dew I had collected in my hands, and then corked the vial and handed it to Charlie, and the darkness fell around us like a heavy wet blanket.

  When the light returned, we were back in Charlie’s storage room in the Other Side. When I raised a hand to cover a yawn, Charlie snapped his fingers and the window flew open and a heavy gust of rain blew
right into my face, drenching me like a bucket of water had been thrown at me.

  I screamed in surprise as the cold dribbled down my front, and Charlie only stocked his dew with a face as impassive as Gates’.

  “No sleeping,” he said, repeating the one rule of the Other Side. It was for my own protection, because any human who slept on the Other Side became a demon, but that didn’t make it any less annoying.

  Shivering, I looked at him with malice, and another snap took us back to my dark apartment. At least it was warm there.

  I turned around to look, and checked the kitchen to be sure, but Charlie was gone, and without so much as a goodbye.

  Gates raised her head and started to get up, but I stopped her before she could step off her bed.

  “Charlie,” I grumbled as an explanation. “Go back to sleep.”

  She paused for a moment, but then did as I suggested. I changed my wet clothes and got back into bed.

  ~~~~~~~~~

  Charlie made breakfast again that morning. And once again, he made too much.

  “I don’t need an entire pound of bacon…” I mumbled, trying to smooth my frazzled hair as I rolled into the kitchen at ten that morning. “I mean, geez, Charlie, are you fattening me up to eat me?”

  He gave me a somber look, and my expression fell.

  “Wait,” I said. “Are you fattening me up to eat me?”

  “Oh, no,” he said with a completely straight face. “I’m just preparing you for sacrifice.”

  I gave him an equally serious stare. “That’s not funny. At least make sure I get laid first.”

  “Hmm…” he made a face. “Can’t have a virgin sacrifice without a virgin, Thorn.”

  I turned around to grab the tea he had prepared for me, scoffing. “You don’t know that about me.”

  “You own underwear with math puns on it and more than one tee shirt from educational summer camps you attended. ‘Camp’ should be in quotes,” he said, still making a face. “So yeah, I’m pretty sure I do.”

  “Stay out of my underwear,” I said. “And that doesn’t mean anything.”

  Gates jumped up on the counter top, and sniffed at the eggs. “Annie, your favorite channel is PBS. He’s got you nailed.”

  Charlie nodded at her. “And that’s why she’s the cat and you’re not. Virgin sacrifice.”

  “I only have an antenna, and that’s all I’m paying for,” I replied, scooping myself a portion of eggs before Gates got her cat breath all over them. “And still not funny.”

  I gathered up a plate of food and sat down, dully stretching my neck and wondering if Charlie had really teleported me away that day to collect dew from morning glories, or if I had only dreamed it. I glanced up, and saw that he and Gates were both staring at me uncomfortably.

  My eyes darted back and forth between the two of them. “You’re not really going to sacrifice me, are you?”

  “No,” Charlie said quickly. The way he raised his eyebrows didn’t engender much hope. “But I would like to take you out this evening. I need some things that can’t be procured except from a specialist.”

  I raised an eyebrow, hardly insulted. “My dew collecting skills aren’t up to snuff?”

  “No…” He looked down for a moment. “I mean, no, they’re not, but that’s not the reason. You just weren’t born a century ago. We can’t get century-old poppies except from someone who was. Similar complications for roses grown only in moonlight and a dying man’s last words.”

  Gates stopped licking eggs from her whiskers, and we both stopped to stare at him.

  “Okey dokey…” I said sarcastically. “And where are we getting those?”

  “Stonefall,” he said.

  “Stonefall?” Gates repeated. “As in, Stonerfall? The hippie town?”

  “The very same,” Charlie turned back to me. “Wear something appropriate. I’ll be back for you at nine.”

  He shimmered into nothing, and Gates and I continued to stare at each other.

  “Stonefall…” I said uncertainly. Calling it a hippie town wasn’t too far from the truth. A lot of free spirit artist and new age types lived there. Gates was right, the town had a reputation for drug use. The idea that there was a legitimate store for magical items hiding somewhere in all of that tie-dye and incense was almost laughable. “What’s appropriate to wear to Stonefall?”

  “Tie-dye baggy shirt and pants with hidden pockets for your stash,” Gates said sarcastically. “Wear anything. And Lyssa’s right. I don’t think he’s using this crap to heal himself.”

  I took a sharp breath in and glanced around the room. Charlie didn’t reappear; he was actually gone.

  “I know when he’s here, even when we can’t see him,” she said. “He kind of shot himself in the foot doing this to me. I never knew cats were so sensitive. But I don’t think this stuff is for what he says it’s for, Annie.”

  I nodded. He had gone from requesting an item that made clear sense—Lyssa’s hair—to things far more abstract. And he wasn’t explaining it to me at all.

  My mind wandered back to my blood, and for a moment, I worried. But then I dismissed the thought. There was something about Charlie, and his ways, that made me trust him. Whatever he was doing, it wasn’t something to hurt me. Maybe I was lulled into a false sense of security because I was his bridge, or maybe he was somehow sedating me, but I felt like I would know it if he had a malicious intent.

  On the other hand, he probably wouldn’t have been trying to hide it if his purposes were completely innocent.

  I looked back at Gates and nodded again. “I know. You read, and I’ll ask. We’ll figure it out.”

  ~~~~~~~~~

  Much later that day, I stood in the middle of a late-night street fair, unsure what I was doing there or how I had gotten there. I had been sitting in my living room watching an old antique show the moment before, and I was only dully grateful that I had listened to Charlie and worn something appropriate for a night out in Stonefall.

  “Thorn.”

  I turned to see him standing behind me, dressed as he usually was, like an off-duty educator. I took the coat that I had tied around my waist and pulled it on against the cool night air.

  He looked me up and down. “You look nice.”

  “I put on eye liner,” I said. “Where are we going?”

  “We’re there. Here. I know some people who have what we need.”

  “And you couldn’t just get it your damn self?” I raised my eyebrows.

  Charlie gave me a crooked smile and an understanding nod. “This isn’t warlock sorcery. It’s witches’ magic, and obtaining things the wrong way will void all attempts.”

  “You’re not using this stuff to heal yourself.”

  “Of course I am.”

  “What are you really using my blood for?”

  “My, what suspicions your sister has put in your head.” His frown stayed fixed as he offered me his arm, and I took it.

  Together we walked down the street of Stonefall, past all of the old buildings that had been remodeled into quaint boutiques. The city had an ordinance about keeping the aged patina, and the atmosphere was amazing, even if all of the smokers that surrounded us were not.

  “Charlie…” I lowered my tone.

  He took a deep breath, and then let it out sharply. “Trust… yes. Thorn, I am using the supplies to heal myself, but not in a traditional fashion. I wish to be human, and I require certain elements like hair and blood to make it happen. I don’t know why I hid it from you, as I’ll need you to compose the final ceremony anyway.”

  I stared at him as we walked, wondering if he was joking again, but he seemed serious. “You want to be human? Why would you want to do that?”

  “So that I may die,” he said.

  I stopped walking. Charlie stopped with me. He patted the hand I had looped through his arm with impatience, but explained anyway.

  “When you’ve lived as long as I have, and seen what I’ve seen, and done what I’ve d
one in the employ of Stark, immortality starts to wear on you,” he said with shining eyes. “The world, and all the doe-eyed little girls in it start to wear on you. It’s hard to keep going, wondering how long you’re going to be wasting your talents on the high school frenemies and crushes of the world before another megalomaniac comes along wanting to destroy everything he touches. I want to die. I’m ready to die.”

  “You’re committing suicide?” I said in shock. “You’re using my blood to kill yourself?”

  “Now, keep your voice down!” he said, leading me more firmly as we walked. “I didn’t say that. I said that I wish to become mortal so that I may die. I may live to a ripe old age after I’m mortal, though I hope not—things start to go south in a very literal and figurative way after forty for you peons, but still. I’m not making myself human to off myself as soon as I can. I just want…an expiration date. That’s all. An end to look forward to.”

  I tried to swallow the information without making an emotional scene. I didn’t even know why I cared. Charlie had been the bane of my existence since he had come into my life, and I should have been happy that he was getting an “expiration date,” as he called it.

  “But…why?” I asked. And then it occurred to me. “You haven’t been making me try to summon Kendra. Not since you came back. You decided I’m hopeless, and you’re becoming human so that you can do the spell yourself?”

  “Thorn…” he took a deep breath and sighed. “You’re too young to understand. I’m holding on to this world by half a bridge now that I’m stuck between you and Kendra. I’m exhausted all the time, and I have the fullest confidence that you will find her eventually. But after you do, after I have my closure, that’s it. I always promised you I would leave you alone after you summoned Kendra, and this is no different. It’s just that instead of disappearing back to the Other Side, I’ll go out your front door.”

  “No,” I said. “You told me you would leave me alone if I wanted you to.”

  Charlie paused, raising an eyebrow as he turned to me. A small, sentimental smile crossed his lips. “You’re reconsidering the offer?”