VenCo(101)

“What’s wrong?”

“We’re properly fucked.”

“Why? Did you hear from Lucky?”

“No. It’s this.” She slid the page across the counter. “Does it look familiar to you at all?”

Meena waited while Wendy put her reading glasses on.

“Think back. Think about how we ended up at Buzzards Bay,” Meena coached, as Wendy studied the lines under the bright stove light.

“I can’t . . . Oh, wait, I see it! It’s the brooch.”

Meena went over to her and used a finger to trace a distinct line. “The brooch that led us to the Tender, the one that belonged to Lucky’s dead mother.”

Wendy wrapped an arm around Meena’s waist. “Oh, baby, we’ve been over this. How could her mother be the final witch?”

“But we asked the women to dream about the location of the final witch and this is what we get—Arnya St. James’s brooch. If it’s her, we can’t complete the coven.”

“But the brooch belongs to Lucky now. What if Lucky is the final witch?”

Meena leaned against the counter, gathering the will to even continue to have this conversation, it was so bleak. “Lucky is already one of us. She can’t take up two spots.”

“Why not?”

“Because that’s not how it works.”

“Says who?”

They heard a shout; then Freya rushed into the kitchen. “You’d better get in here. We found something!”

Wendy and Meena looked at each other for a long few seconds, then followed Freya as she ran back out.

They found her pacing behind her chair. Morticia held out her hand. “Can we get that paper back quickly?” she said.

They handed it over and joined them at the laptop.

Morticia held the paper up beside the screen, comparing the lines and landmarks. “Yes, this is it!”

Meena leaned in to read the name of the town that sat on top of the X on Freya’s dream image. “Okay. We have a place.”

“And that means we have the witch!” Freya grabbed up Morticia from her seat and danced her around the dining room, spinning her wildly.



The trees changed from twisty to tall, and the air became a cool inhale instead of a damp exhale. There was the familiar scent of mushrooms and bark replacing the insistent, slow rot. She’d made it home—this was her own landscape. She turned a quick circle, smiling through exhaustion. This was now her dream.

She closed her eyes. First things first—she needed to protect herself the way Arnya had taught her.

Make it impossible for the monsters to move. Just like real life, you can’t get caught if the fuckers can’t catch up.

She pushed her feet into the ground, and purple violets began to erupt through the soil, unfurling like fragrant land mines all around her. Everything in place, she turned to Ricky’s spell.

She held her right hand in front of her chest, palm up and fingers curled so she could visualize every detail of the fragment of wood she’d cut from the Burial Grounds Café, details she’d memorized for this exact purpose, so that she could recall them with her eyes closed, even outside of her body.

The wood was jagged to fray, moist in the centre, porous, and compact. It fit in the biggest line on her palm, end to end, from the meatier heel to the bottom of her pointer finger. Small flecks of white paint clung to the outer edges. It belonged to a door, a door to a place, a place where the spoon sat in a drawer for years.

“Lucky . . .” The voice was somewhere between Malcolm’s and Jay Christos’s and full of condescension. “Lady Luuuuck. Where are you?”

The wood was jagged to fray, moist in the centre, porous . . .

“See, this is why you need to hold your cards close, my dear. Once you told me the repelling charm was a physical talisman, all I had to do was remove you from the physical world. You offered me the solution yourself.” He laughed, and it echoed through the forest until the leaves rattled on their branches, falling around her like sudden rain.

“Foolish girl. So many foolish girls.”

Small flecks of white paint clung to the outer edges . . .

“I love a good game of hide-and-seek.” His voice was all Christos’s now. “Boo!”

He yelled it from somewhere close, making her jump.

Ow! A sharp pain in her hand.

She opened her palm and saw the slivers of wood. One of them had pierced her palm, drawing blood. She’d done it—she had brought Ricky’s spell into the dream. Now all she had to do was let it pull her to the spoon, the same way it had pulled her through the Garden District to this house. She bent down, slid one piece under her bare foot, another in between her toes, and placed the third on the top of her foot. Then she closed her eyes and waited.

“I can smell you now. All that good wet. All that want. Come out now so I can touch you again.”

A branch snapped close by. She opened her eyes, and there he was, even more beautiful in the murky light, black hair against pale skin, a red tunic and pants, bare feet and a big smile.

“Mmmm,” he said, sniffing her deeply. “I am going to devour you.” He moved towards her, but it was as if he were walking underwater. The effort caused his veins to stand out in his temple, in his throat, at his wrists. She closed her eyes and focused.