The Vine Witch (Vine Witch #1)(59)

It worked.

The emotional pull she could no longer deny drew her senses deeper until her shadow-self emerged in a cold room swamped by darkness. The stone beneath her feet and the echo of space around her made her think of the abbey’s cloisters or an underground cave, but the smells were wrong. Her nose detected oak, vanilla, and fermenting wine. And something sulfuric. She was in a cellar, a large one, but the silence made her fear she had miscalculated.

She was too late.

But then a spark of candlelight flared at the other end of the room, and the Gothic ceiling, with its arched ribs and center posts, came into view. She knew the space at once—Bastien’s famed cellar, a series of caverns and tunnels begun eight hundred years earlier by the same ambitious monks who’d planted the first vineyards. She knew if she touched a finger to one of the supports she would still hear their workaday chants droning in the stonework. Yet she dared not move lest her spirit disturb the air and cause the candle to flutter. Instead, she tilted her head and listened for a heartbeat.

In the corner near the light, two of them. No, three. One beat at the frantic pace of a panicked human, one with the cold tick-tock of a serpent on the hunt, and the third tapping out a frenzied rhythm like wings battling a storm. It was not the heartbeat of a creature of this world. Then a head bent forward into the light, the hair gray, and the skin creased and flaccid with age.

It was the face of an older woman . . . but the eyes . . . they flashed in a familiar glittering blue as they stared out over the flame. Then they narrowed to peer into the darkness, and the nose twitched, seeking out her scent.

Elena let go. She reeled herself in, hurling backward through the liminal space to reenter her body. She woke from her trance with her head spinning and her heart galloping.

“Thought I’d lost you for a minute. You went all creepy quiet and still,” Yvette said.

Elena pulled her veil free and sucked in deep gulps of air. “I saw her.” She shuddered recalling the wrinkled face that stared out at her with those piercing eyes. They were the same stunning blue she’d remembered and yet full of malice. As if a mask had been ripped away.

“You saw her? You mean the cat killer murderer witch lady?”

“I’m too late. She has him. In the cellar tasting room. I think he was tied up.”

“Merde,” Yvette said, covering her mouth with her hand. “You don’t think she’ll kill him too, do you?”

The thought fish-hooked Elena right in the heart. “Yes, but not yet. She’s waiting for something. Me, I think. But why do it underground? Why hide in the dark?”

Yvette looked over her shoulder at the carnival coming to life. “Because she feels safe there. It’s familiar. Just like the carnival is the first place I run back to.”

Elena’s head snapped up. “She gets her energy from the damp and the dark. Things underground. Unseen. Out of the light.”

“Like a—”

“Like a demon.”

Elena got to her feet and passed Yvette the crushed box of allumettes and cigarettes, apologizing absentmindedly for the damage.

The young woman tossed the useless tin to the ground. “Never mind those. What are we going to do?”

“We? We aren’t going to do anything.” Elena retrieved the crystal shard from her pocket and thought about the meager herbs she might gather for a spell. It would never be enough.

Yvette lifted her mask. “Like hell we’re not.” She stepped in front of Elena, blocking her path. “You can’t let her get away with it.”

“I don’t intend to.”

“Look, I know you don’t think much of me, but I want to help.”

“No offense, but how is a carnival worker who runs a kink trade on the side going to help me confront a power-addicted witch who, in all probability, is bound to a demon? You can barely read a spell book.”

“Right, I’m shit at magic. I’m shit at life. But I’m still a witch, and you’re going to need my kind of help.”

“Really? And what kind is that?”

Yvette straightened. “Let’s just say, between the two of us, I’m not the one claiming I’m innocent.”

The confession sent a shivery dart through Elena’s conscience. She’d known the young woman had been locked up for murder, but she’d let herself half believe it was a false accusation like her own. “Yvette . . .”

“It’s true. According to the rule of three I’m already damaged goods. I didn’t have much learning growing up, but I know that much about magic. If it comes to it, if she tries to do to this man what she already did to the other, you’ll need me. Maybe snuffing her out for good is the thing I can do that you can’t.”

And you might also die in the process, Elena thought. But before she could dissuade the young woman, a commotion on the other side of the fairground erupted. Performers who ought to have been in position to greet customers for the carnival opening hightailed it for their wagons. And somewhere men shouted as an argument broke out.

“That’s Gustave, the carnival owner,” Yvette said, craning her neck toward the noise. A shrill whistle followed, sounding a warning. “Uh-oh.”

“What is it?”

“Les flics.”

“The police? They found us already?”