The Vine Witch (Vine Witch #1)(76)

He was an ordinary-looking middle-aged man in a gray suit. Clean-shaven, balding, soft in the middle, and yet he possessed enough vanity to wear an enchanted tie that shimmered with a silver glow. A trick to make his eyes sparkle now that natural youth had slipped away. She tilted her head and looked again. There was something familiar about those eyes, yet not enough to trigger knowing.

She lowered her gaze to where a chain looped from the button on his vest to the watch in his pocket. He didn’t need to pull the watch out for her to know what the case looked like. The image had never left her mind—a sickly green dragon’s eye with a vertical slit overlaid by an elaborate golden eyelid. Tick tock, tick tock, the lid had snapped shut and her life got sucked away. But his ordinary appearance threw her. What if he wasn’t the right person after all? What if the watch was more common than she’d thought?

And then he raised his voice.

“How dare you accuse me of subterfuge,” he said, pounding his fist against the table so that it rattled the silverware. “You practically begged me to fix your little problem. As I recall you handed over a pretty stack of cash and told me I was free to do whatever it took so you could be rid of the situation. That’s what I did.”

The nasal tone, the air of superiority, the twinge of false aristocracy—his identity came flying into focus. The face without the dramatic pasted-on eyebrows and pointed goatee. The eyes wiped clean of their black kohl. A wizard without his flowing robe and false nails.

“You!” she said, throwing back the curtain.

Rackham startled, then narrowed his eyes. “You?” Once he made the connection, he balked at his tablemate. “What is this?”

“Good heavens, what are you doing here?”

Elena pushed back the other curtain. Sitting opposite of the man who had cursed her and left her for dead was the woman who had raised her from a child.





CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

Was it a chance meeting? Coincidence? The All Knowing’s idea of a cosmic joke? Elena’s mind grasped for any reasonable explanation for why Grand-Mère would keep company with that man.

Then she spotted the brown vial gripped in her mentor’s trembling hand. The missing bottle from her workroom. The one she’d filled when deranged with the need for revenge.

Of course. It was the only explanation that made sense. Grand-Mère had sussed out the witch who’d cursed her and was willing to retaliate. Perhaps even commit murder in the name of vengeance.

Elena slid into the booth beside Grand-Mère and put her hand over hers. “Please don’t do it. I know what I said before about needing revenge, but it isn’t worth it. You don’t have to do this for me.”

Rackham pushed his glass of wine aside and leaned toward Grand-Mère. “What does she mean you don’t have to do this for her? What kind of setup is this?”

The old woman pushed Elena’s hand away. “It was never supposed to be permanent, Edmond. You promised me you knew what to do. That she wouldn’t be hurt.”

“You’ve always known how I make my living.” He took a swallow of wine before pleading his case to Elena. “I did what I was paid to do. Purely business.”

Grand-Mère’s eyes swelled with tears. “Your lies ruined everything.”

Rackham leaned back in his seat, lifting his eyes heavenward as if it were his curse to try and reason with a woman about business. To cope, he drained the contents of his wineglass in one swallow.

“How is it you even know this man?” Elena said, turning to Grand-Mère. “He’s a shady carnival palm reader who works out of the back of a wagon.”

Rackham snorted, indignant at the description. “Oh, Ariella and I go way back. I was the one who sold you to the Gardins after your parents died.”

Sold?

He set his empty glass down hard for emphasis. “That’s right. I know exactly who you are. You may disparage my carnival work,” he went on, “but it was your mother and father who were actually—”

“Edmond, no.”

“You knew my parents?”

“Of course I knew them. All those dark magic books you were so interested in—who do you think I procured those from?”

Intuition knows the truth when heard, but the sound can leave a terrible ringing in the ears.

“You’re lying.”

“Yes, you’ll find he’s rather good at that,” Grand-Mère said.

Rackham paused to cough into a handkerchief. “Clearly Ariella has kept you in the dark about your heritage, but it was your mother who taught me everything I know about curses and poison. Esmé and Raul were my mentors. That is until they were both hanged for selling their poisons to society women in the city who’d grown bored of their wealthy husbands.” He made a comme ci, comme ?a gesture with a wave of his handkerchief before stopping to cough again. “I didn’t fully see the resemblance before, but I should have known by the way you were drawn to the book on curses you were Esmé’s daughter. But then I expected you’d still be hopping around your swamp, plucking flies out of the air with your tongue. Or giving some stray dog indigestion by now.”

“Edmond!”

Hanged?

He leaned in and inspected her more closely. “How is it you’re even here in the flesh? That curse was taken straight out of Esmé’s grimoire.”