The Vine Witch (Vine Witch #1)(5)
“Surely you must have been sent notices about the taxes?”
“Well, yes. And I know I paid some money. But it was never enough, according to the statements. The whole thing had the smell of rot to it,” she said, shaking her head. “Especially when Bastien came around to present an offer on the property.”
“He showed his face here? After what he did?” Elena nearly drew blood as her clenched fingers dug into her palms. “He tried to buy Chateau Renard?”
“He’s been buying failed vineyards all over the valley the past couple of years. It wasn’t long before he showed up here with cash in one hand and a bottle of wine in the other. His wine.” Grand-Mère snorted. “It was a very short meeting.”
Elena could do nothing but shake her head. Everything that man did led to greed and betrayal. And now he’d tried to buy the very place where her heart, blood, and soul were sewn to the soil. If there was one piece of hope she could hold on to, it was that he’d failed to steal Chateau Renard.
Elena slid her arm around Grand-Mère’s shoulders to comfort her. “It’s not too late. Now that I’m home again we can fix this. We’ll raise the money somehow.”
“No, you don’t understand. I sold Chateau Renard.”
“Sold? But that’s not possible. To whom?”
“To me,” said Jean-Paul as he stood in the doorway holding a bottle of wine and two extra glasses.
CHAPTER THREE
Elena stood outside among the vines, snow falling gently on her shoulders. An unnatural chill had settled in her skin after the curse, and the last place she wanted to be was caught out in the cold, but there was nowhere else to go. That man had bought the only home she knew. He’d even claimed her old bedroom overlooking the eastern fields for his own. Lamplight glowed in the upstairs window, mocking her while she shivered in her stolen, stinking clothes with nowhere to go, no place to call home.
Oh, he was a sly one, letting Grand-Mère stay on at the house after he’d paid her debts. Clever him, arranging it so he owned everything yet still benefitted from the prestige of her family name and perceived blessing. Mortal men. What flaw was it in their ape brains that convinced them their schemes were paramount to everyone else’s?
She shouldn’t have yelled those insults at him before storming out perhaps, but without the house, the fields, the harvest, how would she ever start over? She’d been pledged to the Renard vineyard since she was five years old. She was Chateau Renard’s vine witch. The terroir and she were one. If she no longer had that to depend on, how would she ever reclaim the life Bastien had stolen from her?
Elena stared up at the house in tears. She couldn’t tolerate the thought of that imbecile man buying the vineyard and allowing wine to age in spoiled barrels. Couldn’t he taste the moldering mushrooms in every sip of that swill he’d made? Grand-Mère might have lost her touch, but it was hard to understand how things had gotten so bad. Even if he didn’t know how to sterilize a barrel properly with burning sulfur, Grand-Mère did. No, something more was at work. It wasn’t just the barrels. The grapes themselves were tainted too. She could still taste the corruption on her tongue.
But the problems of the vineyard weren’t hers to worry about anymore.
Unable to stare at the void of her uncertain future any longer, Elena instead did what she always did. She leaned into her intuition. Walking a little farther down the vine row, she placed her hand on one of the oldest canes, one planted by Grand-Père when he was still a young man with a new wife. The vine, black and gnarled with age, had already hardened off in anticipation of winter, but she knew the vitality that ran dormant in its veins. She closed her eyes and held on, concentrating as she tapped into the life source inside the vine and inside herself.
Though her magic wavered at first, their energy mingled deep in the vascular system flowing under the hardwood. After a few slow breaths, she located the plant’s pulse. The vine was worn out, no question. Not from neglect or deficiency, but . . . something else. She leaned in, barely breathing, her senses heightening as she slipped into the shadow world. Following her third-eye vision, she detected a black thread of energy running from root to cane. Lifting her gaze, she spied a pattern of spells and hexes interwoven over the vines. Yet none of them were strong enough to account for the melancholia she sensed deep in the roots. This was a profound grievance, a lament that echoed within a hollow space inside her. She yearned to understand its pain, but the feeling pulled back, vanishing under her touch. She let go, and her energy disconnected from the vine.
She was still recovering from the experience when Grand-Mère approached from the house, carrying a woolen shawl. “I always wished I’d been born with shadow sight. Such a remarkable talent.”
And a vulnerability, Elena thought, remembering too well how she’d been ambushed while in her trance state. After her return home, she couldn’t help feeling she’d been blindsided yet again.
Grand-Mère offered the shawl, then rubbed her thumb and fingers together, reading the air. “It’s bad, isn’t it, the spellwork? I can feel the electrical charge from the magic every time I step outside. I tried countering a few jinxes, but nothing I did ever seemed to make any difference.”
Elena wrapped the shawl around her shoulders. “It isn’t just one. There’s an entire network of spells over the vineyard. But I don’t think the usual charms would work to stop them anyway. There’s a black aura running through the center. A reverse curse to thwart any attempt to fix it.”