creepy hollow 05.5 - scarlett

by Rachel Morgan

  “Uh, let’s see.” He closed the lid and wiped his hand across the top. Silvery words rose from the depths of the woods and glowed upon the surface. Places, potion names, numbers. “We’re stopping at two stores near the Pearl Strait, then we have a large delivery for the head healer at the Unseelie Court, then we’ll stop at a store operating in the non-magic realm in Grimstad, Norway, and last on the list is Creepy Hollow, where we have one personal delivery and one store delivery.”

  “Ooh, the Unseelie Court? How exciting. Creepy Hollow sounds ominous, though.”

  “It can be.” Thoren placed the box into a leather satchel, then opened one of the desk drawers and removed a black candle. “You might wind up with your heart ripped out by some terrifying magical beast.” Beth blinked, unsure whether to believe Thoren. He lit the candle with a snap of his fingers. The resulting flame was a brilliant white. He looked at her over the top of the flame. “Just kidding. I’ll be there to rescue you if something like that happens.”

  “How comforting,” Beth said, wondering if she ought to stay at the mountain after all. She didn’t get the chance to change her mind, though, because Thoren took her hand, held the candle up between the two of them, and with a blinding white flash, everything vanished.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Traveling by candle was a stranger feeling than traveling with the enchanted ring Beth’s mother had given her. Her skin burned as she fell through bright white nothingness, as if the flame itself wrapped around her. The moment she felt ground beneath her feet once more, the discomfort vanished. The periphery of her vision filled with orange-pink sunset skies on her right and a rock face rising steeply on her left. She blinked at the black candle Thoren still held up between them, now an inch or so shorter than it had been. “Wow. That was … different.”

  Thoren let go of her hand and put the candle away. “Sorry, it’s difficult to be exact when traveling long distances. We’ll need to walk a half mile or so to get to our first stop.”

  Beth stared up at the pearlescent rocks shimmering in the afternoon light, then out to the narrow stretch of sea on her right and the cliffs on the other side of the water. “That’s okay,” she murmured. “I don’t mind walking past this.”

  They ended up on a pier beside a bay where a large community of fae lived on boats. The first delivery went to one of the makeshift stalls set up on the pier itself, and the second to an unfriendly old woman on a dilapidated boat who seemed eager to conduct business as quickly as possible before disappearing below deck.

  Beth was excited for the third delivery, hoping she’d get to catch a glimpse of the Unseelie Court. She remembered her mother’s tales of the court’s lavish beauty and the vibrant color of the faeries that filled its halls. How thrilling it would be if she could see it all for herself. Sadly, she and Thoren ended up meeting the head healer at a dingy tavern somewhere, which wasn’t nearly as interesting.

  The hour or so they spent in Grimstad was odd. Beth felt the difference in the air around her, so dead, so still, so utterly lacking in magic. She thought of Jack and Zoe, and even of her father. She didn’t care that she’d left the man who never loved her, but guilt gnawed at her insides whenever she pictured the two people she’d been closest to for years. The two people she’d simply abandoned. But she wasn’t ready to see them again. She wouldn’t be ready until she knew she’d never hurt them. So she put the thought of them from her mind as white heat blazed around her once more and she and Thoren arrived at their final destination: Creepy Hollow.

  Gnarled trees and tangled branches surrounded them as they walked toward a clearing bustling with activity. After pushing their way past leaves that cycled through rainbow colors and climbing over giant mushrooms, they finally joined the crowd of faeries, elves, dwarves and other magical beings going about their daily business. There were open stalls, shop fronts built into trees, and archways that led inside the trees themselves. “I feel like I’m on the set of a movie,” Beth said. “This is just unreal.”

  “This is your world now,” Thoren said. “Time to get used to it.”

  “So where are these dangerous beasts you were referring to?” Beth asked. “Should I expect one to jump out at me at any minute?”

  “They tend to stay away from the clearing. Wander off on your own, though,” he added in a low voice, “and you’re bound to come across something that thinks of you as a tasty treat.”

  She shook her head and laughed. There was probably some truth to his words, but she knew he was only trying to scare her. Thoren headed for one of the archways and walked beneath it into the tree. With no idea what to expect, Beth followed—and froze in the doorway with her mouth hanging open. There was a restaurant—an entire restaurant—contained within the circumference of this single tree. Did magic have no limits?

  She hurried after Thoren, who ordered something from the bar before aiming for one of the booths in the back. “Who are we meeting here?” she asked as she sat next to him and removed her scarf. It was uncomfortably warm in here.

  “Someone who calls himself Mr. A. He’s never given us his full name.”

  Thoren removed the box from his satchel and placed it on his lap where it was hidden from view. He then pulled a book from the satchel. After removing several bottles from the never-ending depths of the box, he opened the book to reveal an interior empty of actual pages. He placed the vials inside and closed the book.

  Just then, a man with a hood drawn over his head slipped into the seat across the table from them. “Ah, Mr. A,” Thoren said, reaching across the table to shake the man’s hand. “Punctual, as usual.”

  Beneath the shadow of the hood, Beth could see the man’s gaze turn toward her. “Who’s this?”

  “Malena’s newest apprentice.”

  Mr. A nodded slowly. He examined her for another few moments before turning back to Thoren. “You’ve got my normal order?”

  “Yes.” Thoren slid the book across the table. Mr. A took it and slipped it into an interior pocket of his coat, removing a flat silver shape the size of a credit card at the same time.

  “You’ve ordered the drinks?” he asked as he slid the silver item across the table.

  “Yes,” Thoren answered. He pocketed the silver while turning to Beth and adding in a low voice, “Mr. A knows people in the community, so we have to make it look like a legitimate meeting.”

  Beth nodded, though she doubted any of Mr. A’s acquaintances would recognize him with that hood drawn so far over his face. Thoren made polite conversation with him until their drinks arrived. Beth’s tasted lemony sweet with a dash of something like licorice. She wanted to ask Thoren what was in it, but thought it better to wait until Mr. A wasn’t around. He downed half his drink, then leaned a little closer. “I have a query about a different potion,” he said. “Angel’s Breath. Does Malena make it?”

  Thoren lowered his glass. “She does, but we don’t currently have any in stock. One of the ingredients—mermaid hair—has been hard to come by lately. We sold the last of our Angel’s Breath this morning.”

  Mr. A steepled his hands and tapped his forefingers together. “So you don’t know when you’ll be able to produce more?”

  “No. But you mentioned once that you have connections at the Unseelie Court. We’ve sold plenty of Angel’s Breath to the head healer there in the past few months. You may be able to purchase some from her.”

  “I try to limit my contact with the Unseelie Court. Wouldn’t want the Guild to find out.”

  “Of course.” Thoren leaned back. “I’ll ask Malena to let you know as soon as she’s made more.”

  Mr. A nodded, then tipped the remainder of his drink down his throat. “Well, it’s been good catching up,” he said, placing the glass on the table, “but I must be on my way.” He slid across the seat and stood up. “Until next month.” And with that, he headed for the door and disappeared into the crowd outside.

  “Right,” Thoren said, leaving a few coins on the table and standing up.
“Only one more stop and then we’re done for the day.”

  “Also in Creepy Hollow, right?”

  “Yes, just a few trees up the road.”

  Beth smiled at how strange that sounded. Homes and stores and cafes all inside trees. This would take some getting used to. She placed her scarf loosely around her neck as they walked outside. “Does anyone else in your family ever do deliveries?”

  “Tilda joins me occasionally, but not Sorena or my mother. Witches aren’t welcome in … well, pretty much anywhere outside of the Dark North.”

  “Oh.” She stepped past two little girls—elves, she guessed—who were fighting over a doll. “I’m sorry.”

  “It isn’t your fault,” Thoren said with a shrug. “We do magic differently, and people are afraid of anything that’s different.”

  She played with the tassels of her scarf, considering his words as they walked beneath an archway and into Phoenix Moon Supplies. The store was a brighter, tidier version of Malena’s workshop, minus the workbench. Herbs, bottles, trinkets and charms lined the shelves. Several customers, including a familiar cloaked figure, were examining items and placing them in baskets. It was indeed Mr. A, Beth noticed as she passed him. He frowned at her and pulled his hood a little further over his face.

  Thoren walked to the counter and rang the bell hanging from the beak of a brass phoenix. A woman shouted from the room behind the counter, telling him she’d be out in a minute. Beth joined Thoren and looked through the counter’s glass surface at the knife display below. Beside the knives, in a bowl of water, floated a flower. With petals of white and palest blue, it looked almost exactly like the flower she’d seen in Malena’s workshop. “Thoren,” she said, “What kind of magic is that flower used for?”

  “Hmm?” Thoren dragged his attention away from the knives. “Oh, the water lily. They’re often used to house long-term spells. The kind of spells that need to last for months or years. People cast the spells and then transfer them into the flower. It’s exhausting. Takes a lot of energy.”

  “So … the one I saw beneath the bell jar in your mother’s workshop …”

  “Ah, that one.” He leaned his hip against the counter. “That flower holds all the spells that keep our home intact. Spells to keep the glaciers in place and to keep the ice cave frozen solid and to divert the lava flow away from our living quarters.”

  “So, not at all important then,” she joked.

  “Not at all,” he repeated with a chuckle.

  “Thoren!” A petite woman with spiked orange hair appeared in the doorway to the back room. “Sorry to keep you waiting. Come on back here.”

  The back room of Phoenix Moon Supplies was packed with boxes and shelves of goods. Extra stock, presumably. A ladder leaned against one wall near a small table, which Thoren walked over to. He placed his box on the table and began unpacking bottles and vials. The woman picked several of them up to check the labels and contents. She opened one, a vial with silvery sparkling contents that moved like liquid metal, and sniffed it. “Excellent,” she said with a nod. “No one gets it quite right like Malena.” She unlocked a wall safe with a wave of her hand and removed a drawstring bag. As she placed it on the table, Beth expected to hear coins clinking within it. Instead, the bag seemed almost to … move. As if something was alive inside it.

  Just then, someone rang the bell on the counter. “I’ll be back in a sec,” the storekeeper said to Thoren. She left the room to assist her customer while Thoren finished unpacking the box. He returned it, along with the twitching drawstring bag, to his satchel.

  Not entirely sure she wanted to know the answer, Beth asked, “What’s in the—”

  “Excuse me?” a loud voice enquired from the front room. “Where is the owner of this store? Miss Moonwood, is it?” Both Beth and Thoren looked around. A woman dressed in black from neck to boots with green in her blonde hair stood at the counter. In her hand she held a vial—a vial of silvery liquid that looked suspiciously like the vial the storekeeper had opened and sniffed.

  “Damn,” Thoren murmured, whipping his head back around and turning his back to the door. “She shouldn’t have taken that out there.”

  “Why? What’s wrong? Do you know that woman?”

  “No, but I know she’s a guardian.”

  “A guardian?”

  “A law keeper. From the Guild.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes. I saw the markings on her wrists.”

  Beth peeked over her shoulder as the storekeeper nervously approached the guardian. “Is that a problem?” she asked Thoren.

  “Potentially.” He sighed, closed his eyes for a brief moment, and added, “The, uh, illicit goods are supposed to remain back here where regular customers—and guardians—can’t see them.”

  “Illicit? You mean you’re—”

  “We need to go.” Thoren reached into the satchel and drew out the witch candle.

  Just outside the door, the storekeeper was feigning ignorance while the guardian said she needed to search the back room for other illegal potions. “Please don’t make this difficult, Miss Moonwood. I don’t want to have to force my way past you.”

  Thoren snapped his fingers and lit the candle.

  “You’re going to have to force your way through then because—”

  “Hey!” the guardian yelled. “Stop right there!”

  Thoren spun around with the candle in his hand just as glittering green sparks flew toward him. Beth shoved against his chest—and the sparks singed her gloves as they zoomed through the space Thoren had been standing in not a second before. He stumbled backward, the lit candle slipping from his hand and rolling across the floor. Miraculously—magically?—the flame didn’t go out, but the guardian had already vaulted across the counter and was hurtling through the door. Beth and Thoren lunged for the candle, but a spray of water shot from the guardian’s hand, dousing the flame as the three of them collided and fell to the floor.

  “Run!” Thoren yelled as the guardian swung one leg expertly around his neck while twisting his arm back. But Beth was already yanking her glove off, already doing the only thing she could think of. She shoved her bare hand against the guardian’s neck—just as a sparkling gold knife appeared in the guardian’s hand and sunk into Thoren’s side.

  Thoren’s cry and the guardian’s gasp were simultaneous. The knife vanished and the guardian’s grip on Thoren weakened. “What … what are you doing?” she asked, fear flickering in her eyes as Thoren pushed her aside and jumped to his feet.

  “Tora!” Another woman rushed through the doorway and ran to the fallen guardian.

  “Stay … back … Raven,” the guardian gasped.

  “Run, Scarlett!” Thoren grabbed Beth’s arm and tugged her to her feet. They ran from the back room and around the counter. Past the confused customers, through the door, around the tree, and into the forest. Leaves and twigs slapped at them, and the leather charm bracelet hooked on a low branch, yanking Beth’s arm backward. She gave an angry tug, pulling her hand free of the bracelet, and continued running. When they’d put some distance between them and the clearing, they slowed to a halt. Thoren clutched his side with one arm while digging into his satchel.

  “Illegal potions?” Beth demanded. “Are you serious? Tilda conveniently forgot to mention that part.”

  “They’re not all illegal,” Thoren panted, pulling an unused witch candle from his satchel.

  “Oh, well that makes it all better then.”

  “Look, they’re not bad potions. The Guild just has stupid, outdated rules about some of the ingredients.” He snapped his bloodstained fingers, but nothing happened. He bent slightly, clutching his side once more, and held the candle out to Beth. “You do it.”

  Fear whispered at the edges of her mind. “Are—are you going to be okay?”

  “Yeah, just light the candle. Think of flame and heat and releasing energy and—”

  Beth snapped her fingers and a flame ignited. Brilliant white
, instead of a normal flame, which must be due to the candle itself since she had no knowledge of how to produce different kinds of fire.

  “Think of home,” Thoren instructed. She wrapped her gloved hand around his wrist as she closed her eyes and did as he said. Bright light burned through her eyelids, and she knew it was working.

  It was only as they made their way across the slick surface of the ice cave, her arm wrapped around Thoren as he struggled to keep moving, that she realized the word ‘home’ hadn’t conjured up a single thought of her father’s ramshackle house in Holtyn.

  It had brought her here instead, to the place where—as much as she might wish to deny it—she felt more and more every day as though she belonged.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  “‘Sirens are able to turn on and off at will their ability to persuade and influence men,’” Beth read out loud.

  “Okay, so at least we know that for sure now,” Tilda said as she lounged on Beth’s bed, running her fingers through the smoke of her newest dress, a midnight blue one. She’d hunted through the shelves in Malena’s workshop until she’d found a book—a children’s one—that detailed the various magical beings of the fae world. The pages were yellowed with age and seemed to be gnawed at the edges, but Beth figured sirens must be the same today as they’d been when this book was written.

  “But we don’t know if I can do that,” she said, “being halfling and unpredictable and all that.”

  “We need to find out. And if it’s difficult, then you need to master control of it.”

  Beth, sitting cross-legged beside Tilda, shut the book with a groan. “Why? Can’t we just move on to the one and only power that I absolutely have to gain control of? You know, the thing you said you could help me with when I woke up here two months ago?”

  Tilda sat up and pushed her long golden hair over her shoulder. “I know you’ve been waiting a while. I’m sorry. But what’s the point in mastering one thing if you can’t master everything? And since sucking the life out of people will be the hardest part of your magic to control, we should leave it until the end, don’t you think?”