Wild is the Witch (63)

“What’s the plan?” Pike asks, and I look at him, suddenly too aware of what I’m about to do. I have to remove the curse right in front of him, so close together. He’s stuck here with me, and if I don’t do it right or I can’t unbind it in time, Pike will suffer for it.

My chest is tight, and I can’t get a big enough breath. There isn’t enough air in the world to get me through this, and I stand up and pace around the owl, so scared of what the next few minutes will bring.

I wish my mom was here. I wish Pike’s sat phone wasn’t broken and I could call for help. I wish I could talk to my grandmother and let her raspy voice soothe me. She had a way of making even the worst situations feel manageable, of lining even the most horrible days in strands of gold. I miss her so much.

I grab my inhaler and take two long puffs before sitting back down and bending over the owl. I unwrap his towel and look at his injury again. There’s too much blood.

I rock back on my heels, unable to stop the tears from running down my cheeks. Focus. I have to focus.

“What’s going on?” Pike asks, his voice more apprehensive than mean, and when I meet his eyes, he looks scared. “Please, tell me.”

I look around as if there’s something in the woods that can change this somehow, but there’s nothing. I take a shaky breath and move closer to Pike, sitting right in front of him.

He deserves to know.

I lick my lips and taste salt, but I don’t care. He’s seen so much of me now that crying in front of him doesn’t matter the way it used to. “It’s bad,” I say, my voice shaking. “It’s really bad.”

“For the love of God, Iris, just tell me.”

I wipe the tears from my face and nod. “I cursed you,” I finally say, the words so quiet I’m not sure if I even said them.

Pike stares at me. “You what?”

“I cursed you,” I say again, louder. “I didn’t mean to. Or—I did, but I didn’t mean for it to get out.”

Pike is looking at me as if the words I’ve spoken don’t fit, as if they can’t possibly go together. He rubs his thigh with his hand and exhales. “Explain it to me.”

So I do. “My grandmother taught me this ritual as a way of dealing with the things I couldn’t quite let go of. Stressors and anxieties and frustrations. She taught me to craft spells or curses that would carry those things, then bind them to something inanimate like a bundle of herbs before burning it all away. Kind of like writing letters you’re never going to send—I came up with curses I never meant to cast as a way of working through my feelings.” I pause and look at Pike. “It reminds me a lot of Leo’s tradition of throwing wishes in the fire.”

Pike flinches when I speak his brother’s name, so angry at himself for sharing that with me—a witch.

“Okay,” Pike says, nodding his head. “Keep going.”

“Well, I know you’ll be shocked to hear this, but I didn’t really like you before this trip. And when you started making those comments about witches, I got scared. It made me nervous having to see you every day, knowing how much you hate magic. Then you made that comment about how Amy should have been the one to burn.” I take a deep breath and look at him, his features blurring with my vision.

“Amy was my friend. My best friend. I was there that night, when her boyfriend burned on the lake. And when you said that about her, I was scared that you’d find out about me and my family and do something to jeopardize our life here. So I wrote a curse for you to make myself feel better, to try to work through my fear, but before I could burn it away, the owl swooped down from the trees and the curse got bound to him instead. Then he flew away with it.”

I wipe my face again and take a shaky breath, my chest aching with the effort.

Pike looks at the owl. “So MacGuffin is carrying a curse,” he says slowly, working through the words I just said.

“Yes, and the curse is bound to his life. If he dies, the curse will be unleashed.”

“Unleashed,” Pike repeats, grimacing. Then his eyes narrow and he looks at me. “What did you curse me with?”

I shake my head back and forth and back and forth, not wanting to answer. I don’t think I can. I choke back a sob and look at the ground, my whole body shaking with fear. I cursed him with something that could end his life in the exact way as Alex, but the risk didn’t feel real. I’ve written dozens of spells over the years, and not once has one gotten out. I didn’t think it through enough, and now I have to look Pike in the eye and tell him what he’s cursed with, tell him it was deliberate. It was intentional. That I wanted to do it, and I did.

“Iris, tell me,” Pike says. He doesn’t yell and his tone isn’t harsh; he sounds tired, exhausted, as if he’s given up—and that somehow makes this so much worse.

“I cursed you to become a witch,” I say. “A mage.” My eyes widen and my heart races as I replay the words, as I watch them hit Pike in slow motion. He visibly recoils and his eyes fill with tears.

“You did what?”

“I’m so sorry,” I say too quickly, the words rolling together into one. “It was this stupid curse meant to ease my frustrations—that’s it. You were never supposed to know about it; it was never supposed to even exist. It should have burned away like all the curses before it, but the owl changed everything.” I wish I could be stoic and emotionless so Pike can react however he needs, but I can’t find my breath, can’t calm myself down. “I’m so sorry,” I say again.