The Vine Witch (Vine Witch #1)(10)



That man. A cloud of privilege had risen off him like morning fog the moment she’d confronted him in the field. He was a peculiar one. City raised and book fed, intelligent and generous, yes, and yet malnourished when it came to a belief in the profound. He’d been taught to believe in only what he could see, feel, hear, taste, or smell. There was a time she wondered what it was like to live with such confinement of spirit, until she found herself held captive inside another creature’s skin.

Was that what it was like to be a mortal?

An unexpected pang of sympathy for the man crept up on her as she wiggled her toes inside her soft slippers—well, with the one notable exception. Though Old Fox had nearly eaten her alive, she was glad for the physical reminder of what she’d endured. The ache kept the fire of revenge burning, stoking the hard coal of hatred that smoldered day and night within her. And for that she would hide her magic from the mortal and let him continue believing the world he saw was the world he lived in.

A page in the spell book rippled softly, as if disturbed by a breeze. “Yes?” she asked, and the words “strand of wolf’s mane” shimmered on the page in iridescent green ink. “Ah, of course. Clever book. You found it.”

She sorted through the upper shelf to locate the woolly stuff. If dipped in sheep’s oil and twisted with a braid of cotton to form the wick of a candle, the smoke from the flame would repel the miasma that had been allowed to creep in over the fields each night. The Toussaints from the Alden River valley had used that particular spell on Chateau Renard before to stifle growth. Grand-Mère should have been able to counter the jinx on her own, but the old woman must truly have lost her edge to let the damaging fog linger over the property for so long. For humans, old age stole their hearing, their sight, or their mind. But when Nature was unkind, witches lost their intuition.

Not finding the wolf’s fur stored with the jars of teeth and claws where she’d expected, she searched through the drawer until she located a paper envelope labeled “Hair, Tails, and Whiskers.” She found the necessary strands inside but was curious to see what else Grand-Mère may have misplaced. Half a dozen envelopes were stacked inside the drawer. One contained dried owl pellets, another the tail feather of a nighthawk, and one held a pressed primrose, sealed between wax paper. All useful for adding to various potions, but not kept where she preferred to store them. She removed the remaining envelopes from the drawer to see what other mysteries they held, when a stray slip of paper fell out from between them onto the worktable.

More potent than anything she’d yet handled, her fingers trembled as she picked up the faded and brittle scrap of paper. On it was an ink-drawn illustration, a stately house centered under a bold font that read “Domaine du Monde,” the wine label for Bastien’s premier red, the wine she’d helped coax into existence for him just before she was ambushed.

She’d felt the yank on her conscience to confront him the moment she returned to the valley. Even now she had to grip the edge of the table to keep from running down the road and throwing a curse-bearing brick through his front window. Time and patience, she reminded herself. Revenge allowed to ferment would carry the most power. But as she stared at the house on the label, she felt her resolve slipping. There was a way to see the place without actually going there. This, too, she’d resisted, but the longer she stared at the illustration, the stronger the impulse became to give in to her curiosity until she found herself drifting over the line into the shadow world.

Her vision darkened, the walls fell away, and a sepia sky opened above as sight and sound distorted at the edges of her consciousness. Her mind flew her to an abandoned stretch of road in the valley four miles away. The chateau where she’d spent countless lazy afternoons believing she was in love materialized out of shadow. The sight struck her as familiar yet strange. The years had changed the house in unexpected ways. The main structure was as she remembered, but a pair of grand turrets now anchored each side, and a new balustrade encircled a second-floor balcony, where a stargazer might search for an impressionist’s vision of the night sky. A fence surrounded the property now too—cast iron embedded with amulets and protective spells, topped with fanciful metal finials. As Elena walked past the gate, she felt as if lightning itself had been channeled into the metal. She’d never encountered anything like it. The woman’s spellwork was even better than she’d thought. Most witches would need a lifetime to master such a graceful enchantment.

Lamplight from a window at the top of the east tower drew her spirit eye upward. A woman’s silhouette crossed in front of the glass. She could understand why a bierhexe might be persuaded to work at a successful vineyard. For some, power was the only elixir that mattered. And Bastien had that now. It radiated off everything he’d touched, though she wondered if the witch behind the glass knew what Bastien was capable of if he didn’t get his way. Had she compromised a part of herself for him?

Just then the window darkened. A face peered outside. Another’s third-eye vision pierced through the veil of shadow, searching for an intruder. She knew she couldn’t be seen, at least not in her physical form, but she shrank from view anyway. Still the intensity persisted, as if a psychic lantern swung its light over the yard, searching. It was her first encounter with one of the northern beer witches, and so far the rumors of their striking abilities proved true. The bierhexe’s perception practically assaulted with its vigilance. To know Bastien had that kind of protection put a frost on Elena’s hopes for easy vengeance, but she’d never give up. Not until her heart got the peace it deserved.

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