The Vine Witch (Vine Witch #1)(11)
Elena flew back into her body and opened her eyes. The wine label had dropped from her hand. She picked it up again, slipping once more into the trench of pain of his betrayal. With tears brimming, she held the label to the candle flame and watched it burn and curl at the edges until the paper crumpled into a pile of ash. After allowing a single tear to fall onto them, she swept up the remains and sealed them in an envelope. With a florid swipe of her pen, she labeled the outside “bitter ashes” and stashed it away in the drawer. Then she flipped the pages of her spell book and turned her mind to the study of poison.
CHAPTER SIX
Grand-Mère and Elena wheeled a brouette out to the field and made a show of pruning the old vines on the east slope while Jean-Paul hitched up his horse and wagon. At last he pulled onto the road and headed for the village. A trail of woodsmoke seeped out of the brouette as they waved their secateurs in his direction. Once he was out of sight, Elena removed the tallow wicks from her satchel and set to work on her counterspells.
Four twists of wolf’s fur, one for each direction, sizzled and burned at her feet as she and Grand-Mère stood in the center of the property. She recited the spell from her book, the words flat and shapeless in her mouth, and a veil of smoke lifted from the wicks and spread over the vineyard. And though a breeze teased their skirts and rain threatened to dampen their uncovered heads, the spell seemed to hold the smoke in place above the field long enough to swaddle the dormant vines with its protective magic. To the passerby, the winter vineyard looked no different than when filled with drifting smoke from the char burners, but to any witch with her nose in the wind it was a warning that Chateau Renard was no longer a dumping ground for anonymous hexes.
“Well, that’s one spell undone,” Grand-Mère said, holding her hands in the sacred pose to thank the All Knowing. “Finally the leaves should be able to breathe deep again when they unfold this spring.”
Elena watched the wicks burn down to the ground, worried about the compression of time. “How often does he go to the village?”
“Once a week, generally. Sometimes more if he has business to tend to.”
That wouldn’t be often enough. Not if she wanted to untangle all the spells interlaced among the vineyard before the growing season began. “I don’t know how I’m going to keep hiding the spellwork from him. He’s going to find out he’s working with a witch, and then what?”
“He’s been living with me for three years and hasn’t caught on, though I’m as useless as a mortal these days, so that’s not saying much.”
Grand-Mère dug around in the brouette and pulled out a clay container the size of a small gourd, the surface inscribed with a circle that had arrows pointing out from the center in the four cardinal directions. It was one of four witch bottles the two had brought with them to ward off disease and negative energy caused by malicious spells belowground.
“Your senses are merely worn around the edges some,” Elena said, removing a flagon of an old vintage she’d stashed in the brouette. She uncorked the top and poured a small amount of wine into the witch bottle. To that she added a snippet of Grand-Mère’s hair, one strand of her own, and a nail clipping belonging to Jean-Paul, which he’d left beside his washbasin.
The old woman’s fingers twitched as she watched the process. “You could always keep him spellbound. That is how you got him to agree to let you stay on until harvest, isn’t it?”
Elena cast a sheepish eye up at her mentor. “I didn’t use a spell on him. That would be illegal. I merely brought a wishing string with me and tossed it into the fire while we spoke.”
“Must have been a strong wish to come true so quickly.” Grand-Mère handed her another bottle to bury. “Of course you were always good at getting what you want.”
Could the old woman even doubt it? Elena’s veins practically ran red with wine from Chateau Renard. How could she wish for anything else but to be part of the vineyard? Its terroir was her blood, its mist her breath, its soil her bones, its harvest her unborn child. But covenants were covenants, and spells cast on mortals were strictly prohibited, though everyone fudged the rule now and then. Stars above, she’d never expected to encounter a winemaker in the Chanceaux Valley who didn’t wish for the services of a vine witch. Insulting. She couldn’t imagine how stunted life must be in the city to form such an attitude toward magic. All that stone and steel must obstruct the mind’s eye.
Half moons of dirt rimmed her fingernails as she patted the soil above the buried bottle. She said a few quick words in the name of the All Knowing, then stood and pointed to the next location. As they walked, the smoke from the tallow wicks settled, highlighting the filaments of energy crisscrossing the field. Though she could sense such things even without the help of the smoke, Grand-Mère needed help. Elena took her hand, creating a circuit so they could both see the extent of the hex magic as it materialized like a spiderweb after a light rain.
The old woman inhaled sharply. “Good heavens, I had no idea it was so extensive.”
“It’s impressive, isn’t it?” Elena had them climb the hill to the highest point in the vineyard. “The spellwork is daunting, but there’s a degree of elegance to a few of them that one can’t help but admire. See the multidimensional layering holding up the shadow spell over the rows of chardonnay? That’s no easy maneuver.”