The Vine Witch (Vine Witch #1)(63)

“I want you to still yourself, close your eyes, and concentrate on the shape of the star,” she said to Yvette. “The top point is straight in front of you.” While the young woman closed her eyes, Elena picked up the sack of salt and judged the weight of it in her hand. It ought to be enough if she was careful. Trickling the salt out in a thin stream, she traced a faint line around them on the floor, encircling the points of the invisible pentagram contained inside. She closed the circle at the top of the star and still had a spoonful of salt left. She returned it to the makeshift altar and raised her hands to thank the All Knowing.

She was working too quickly, but there was no time for a proper spell. If Gerda’s patience were stretched too thin, there was no telling what she might do to Jean-Paul. Elena’s instinct would have to carry her over the gaps in preparation.

Standing before the altar, she raised the tin of frankincense and let the smoke trail over her head. “Blessed be,” she said and placed the incense on the floor at the head of the invisible star. With the lavender and bay, she first trailed the herbs under her nose, inhaling their calming scent, and then placed them at the left point of the star. “I’m going to anoint us both,” she warned Yvette before smearing the young woman’s forehead with the olive oil. She repeated the gesture on herself, said a quick “blessed be,” and then positioned the vial at the right point of the star.

Yvette appeared to be in a near reverent trance as she observed in awe a ritual that should have been a normal part of her childhood. A flicker of worry for the young woman’s safety tried to invade Elena’s thoughts, but she cast it out. She had to be a tyrant against doubt now. She handed one candle to the young woman and kept the other for herself. Eyes wide with uncertainty, Yvette seemed to ask what she was supposed to do with hers. Elena snapped her fingers against the wick, lighting it with a quick spark. A sign her power was back under her control.

“Hold the candle in front of you and envision the energy of the universe converging around you. Draw it in like breath. Like sustenance. Let the energy build inside you. Fill yourself with light.”

The young woman took in several deep breaths, and Elena eased her into a sitting position, coaching her to keep breathing, to keep focusing on the light as she crossed her legs. The circle’s energy began to coalesce around them, shimmering in growing intensity. Yvette had finally entered the meditative state of semiconsciousness. The preparation was nearly complete. It was a sloppy job, but the All Knowing seemed to accept and approve her intent. Buoyed, she tipped her candle into the flame of the other, letting the wick catch. She dripped a pool of wax on the floor at the star’s left foot, then secured the candle upright within it.

For the final placement, she picked up the remaining salt from the altar and set it on the right foot of the pentagram. The young woman’s head drooped forward and Elena exhaled. Five points, five elements: spirit, air, water, fire, earth. And a hotheaded na?f sat square in the middle of it all.

With her offerings set in place, Elena recited a silent spell, directing her thoughts outward and upward.

Smoke, candle, oil, salt. Cone of energy form a vault. Safe within, safe without. Protect the one who sits devout.

Satisfied she’d done all she could, she slit open a doorway at the back of the circle with her athame and slipped out, closing it up behind her. The veil of energy appeared to hold. Yvette should remain protected inside the cone. With that burden off her shoulders, she tucked the athame at her waist and walked out the door.

The witch seething in the cellar could no longer wait.





CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

Jean-Paul could taste fear coiled in his mouth like a length of old rope, a dry knot he couldn’t swallow down. The winepress had inched another notch closer. The wooden boards pressed against his rib cage, bending but not yet breaking him. He eyed the mechanical wheel that controlled the pressure. He wasn’t sure he could survive another three clicks.

Gerda stirred the lees inside the barrels, doing the cellar work as if it were just another day at Domaine du Monde. But she’d seen him turn his head. The witch set down her stir stick and approached. He refused to look at her.

“Do you hate me?” She didn’t wait for an answer. “You know, if you’d come to the valley just a year or two earlier, I might have fancied you instead of Bastien.” Her fingers combed through his sweat-dampened hair, chilling his body. “We might have made a beautiful wine, you and I.”

He nearly choked on the thought. Why didn’t she just kill him and be done with it? Elena wasn’t coming. She’d disappeared before, and she would again. He tugged at his restraints, desperate to strangle the witch. “Get your filthy hands off me, you goddamned hag.”

“Hate it is,” she said with a sigh.

The wheel turned another click.

He shut his eyes against the pressure as the heavy timbers shifted lower, like an elephant squatting atop his lungs. But when he opened his eyes and gasped for a breath, something had changed. A shaft of natural light cut a swath through the cellar’s darkness. He had to twist his head around to find the source, straining to see through the stinging sweat that dripped into his eyes and fogged his glasses. After so long in the dark he doubted his sight, but then he saw her descend the stone steps.

Elena glowed in his vision, encircled by a veil of energy, as if she attracted all the light in the cellar, from the finger of daylight seeping through the crevice under the door to the unnatural flame flickering above the witch’s candle. Even her odd outfit sparkled as though it had been beaded with precious stones.