Payback's a Witch (The Witches of Thistle Grove #1)(65)

“Just let it happen,” Talia advised, smiling lazily up at the ceiling. “It’ll be like this for a little while before it fades. If you don’t fight it, there’ll be less of a crash at the end.”

I took a deep breath, letting myself sink deeper into the swimmy sensation. “Duly noted.”

“So what did you think of her? Her Fearsomeness, that is. The Dread Laaaaady.”

I snorted a laugh. “She was actually surprisingly charming. I mean, also horrifying, obviously. But in a very compelling way.”

“You should have told her you thought so. She’d have loved hearing that.”

“Yeah, pass,” I said, shuddering at the thought. “She also felt like she could think me out of existence if I rubbed her the wrong way.”

“Except she’s apparently all about you Harlows,” Talia pointed out. “Which, no offense, came a bit out of left field.”

“None taken.” I looked out of the window, where the ripening moon hung above the Witch Woods, so fat and close it seemed like a magician’s trick, like you could pluck it like a dime from the sky with a simple sleight of hand. “No idea what that was about, either. It’s not like Avramovs and Harlows have some storied history of friendship or anything.”

“And what did you make of the last part?” Talia laced her hands together with exaggerated import. “That whole wink-wink nudge-nudge together business. She was practically playing charades with us by the end.”

I closed my eyes and thought back to the founder’s cryptic eyes and her joined hands, her fingers so significantly intertwined. Forge onward, together, echoing in my mind on loop.

And then, assisted by the pleasant, free-associative drift of the séance afterglow, I had a sudden flash of seemingly unrelated memory—Talia’s hand skimming over my mother’s animated primroses as they recoiled from her. Then Talia’s remembered words, when she explained why this would be.

Avramovs feel anathema to them. Or at least, that’s what Linden thinks, and she’d be the expert.

“You know what,” I said slowly, still making the connections as I spoke, my brain leaping from thought to thought like a toad traversing lily pads. “I’m not sure this is what she meant, but . . . it does give me an idea.”

“Oooh.” Talia lifted a languid eyebrow, leaning forward. “Do tell.”

“So, Thorn and Avramov magics are fundamentally incompatible, right? They do green magic, life-and-light stuff; you do necromancy, death-based spells. Kind of . . . anathema to each other. Like what you told me in my mom’s garden, the way you described why animated plants don’t react well to your presence.”

Talia nodded slowly, her gaze shifting back and forth somewhere above my shoulder as she ran this through her mind. “Okay, with you so far.”

“So what if you and Rowan combined your raw magics, braided them together?” I barreled on, flushing with sudden excitement as the notion unfolded in my mind, gained breadth and clarity. “I’m thinking they’d cancel each other out into something like . . . like a nullifying field. So if Gareth starts gaining on you too closely, boom—you two spring a trap around him, keep him from advancing any farther.”

“So it would be like antimatter, almost,” Talia said, breathless, her eyes lighting with appreciation and that familiar, feral thrill. “Or antimagic. Harlow, that’s a stroke of genius. I mean, batshit too, and dangerous as fuck; just think how insanely unstable a medium we’re talking here! Nothing like that’s ever been done before, I don’t think. But also, yeah . . . just, wildly genius.”

“I really think it might work, if the two of you are game,” I said, glowing with the compliment. “I know it’s risky, and asking a lot. But at this point, we go big or go home, right?”

“And risky or not, there’s no chance in hell we’re not going to at least try it, now that you’ve thought of it. I’ll run it by Rowan, but after the way Gareth dunked on us last time, I think he’ll be more than down.” She lifted the samovar to me in toast, taking a swig and then offering it to me. “Cheers, Harlow. All may not yet be lost.”

I took the samovar and toasted her back, feeling almost giddy with renewed hope. Then we sat quiet for a minute, both lost in separate thought, the silent dark pooling around us like slow waters. The Bitters grounds were perfectly still, broken only by the faint calls of night birds, the shrill chirrups of daredevil bats swooping around the mansion’s many turrets and towers.

Then Talia turned from the window to look at me like some lovely harlequin, half her face submerged in shadow, the other half limned by the moon, each feature flung into cameo relief. Her pale eyes glittered like something out of a Billie Eilish song; a starlit ocean, or the sky above some frozen alien world, much colder than ours but maybe even prettier.

“Smells like rain out there,” she said, tipping her temple toward the window.

“It’s going to rain very soon,” I replied without thinking. “It already is, over by Hallows Hill.”

She cocked her head, giving me a questioning look. “And how would you know that?”

I frowned, wondering how the hell I did know. More than know, I felt it, with just the tiniest bit of effort; the surface of Lady’s Lake trembling as each droplet struck the water, the quivering of the needles and leaves of the surrounding trees as their branches shook under the chilly onslaught, even the clammy saturation of the soil itself. Even stranger, there was nothing at all odd or out of place about this extracorporeal sensation; it felt like a natural extension of my own senses, as commonplace as if I were feeling my own skin and hair drenched during a storm.