Witcha Gonna Do? (Witchington #1)(18)

I’m hoping for the answer to be “a peaceful life in the library with no Council or Resistance agents looking over my shoulder and my parents off enjoying their lives as free people again,” but one look at Griselda’s face confirms that it is not going to be that. “What do the cards say?”

“That your whole life is about to change.”

From his spot at the window, raccoon Newt lifts his glass in a toast.

Fuck. My. Life.





Chapter Nine


    Tilda . . .



It’s not every day I get summoned to go see Griselda, but here I am on her front porch with a few sprigs of fresh thyme from our family garden and exactly thirteen dried blue violet petals pressed between sheets of thin parchment per her message sent via hummingbird. I have no idea what spell she’s going to be cooking in her kitchen cauldron, but it’s going to smell better than her bunion soup from the other day.

Griselda opens her front door and lets out a relieved sigh. “Thank the fates, you’re here.” She snags the bag of goodies I brought and clutches it to her vintage Soundgarden shirt with tour dates from 1994 on it.

“Come inside.”

I follow her back to the kitchen, where there’s a tipsy-looking raccoon and also the hobgoblin of my nightmares sitting at the table and drinking what looks like whiskey. Okay, it’s actually Gil Connolly, but that’s practically the same thing—especially since he’s wearing a woolly sweater that is almost the exact shade of woodsy green of a hobgoblin’s hair and, you know, he’s mostly evil.

He glances over at me and there’s a flash of shock in his green eyes, and for a second his lips start to turn upward as my pulse skitters into overdrive and every nerve in my body becomes a tool of divination tuned in only to him. There’s a whole inhale of an almost-moment when everything feels light and the soft kind of warm, like when you wrap yourself in a towel straight out of the dryer. However, by the exhale, he catches himself and the smile inverses into a scowl directed right at me. All that fuzzy heat turns into a backdraft fire of embarrassment at getting fooled again that toasts me to a burnt crisp.

Determined to ignore the asshole at the table, even if I’m still pretty curious about the raccoon, I sidle up to Griselda at the island. “Why is he here?”

“Because,” she says as she stirs the thyme-scented broth starting to bubble in her cauldron, “I’m sending you two on a mission.”

Gil’s jaw tightens and he shoots up from his chair. I swear I can see him counting to sixty billion in his head as he strides across the flagstone floor over to us. Paying me no mind—who cares if I am ignoring him, it is so rude of him to pretend I’m not even here—he stops on the opposite side of the island from Griselda and plants his palms on the slate countertop, practically vibrating with annoyed disbelief.

“She’s going on a mission?” he asks, his voice low as if I’m not right here.

“Yes,” Griselda says as she adds in the blue violet petals one at a time. “I need you both to go out and gather agaric mushrooms for a spell.”

That announcement makes Gil’s jaw drop and my brain jerks to a stop for a second before I blurt out, “But they’re poisonous.”

“Bah.” Griselda waves her hand dismissively. “That’s highly exaggerated.”

“Yeah, that whole death-cap-mushroom PR campaign they’ve got going with posters in every herb shop and apothecary is a real stroke of genius,” Gil grumbles.

“Keeps the supply available for those who have legitimate use for it,” Griselda says. “I just use them for a little nonmagical zombie powder—temporary, of course. For fifteen minutes, the witch or goblin or mean fairy is mellowed to the point of inactivity.”

“Why do you need it?” I ask, racking my brain for any spell that isn’t deadly that calls for one of the most poisonous ingredients that can be found in witchery.

“If I wanted you to know,” my godmother says, the first bit of annoyance creeping into her tone, “I would have told you in the first place.”

I know from experience that that is the end of that conversation, and yet one glance out of the corner of my eye at Gil and the way he is now looking at me with a determined snarl has my mouth going anyway. “But why do I have to go with him?”

“There’s a troll.” Griselda stops stirring and looks from Gil to me before leaving her cauldron—the wooden spoon continuing to stir on its own—and walking over to her supply pantry.

My stomach tightens with worry. “As in a club-you-in-the-head troll or a solve-my-riddle troll?”

“Bit of both.” She comes back from the pantry and hands me a small, hot pink burlap bag that looks like it would hold a bag of whole coffee beans and not much else. “Now go and don’t come back until the bag is full.”

The raccoon gives us a little wave as Griselda hustles us out the front door, slamming it shut the minute we cross the threshold, leaving us alone on her porch, neither of us looking at the other as we stare out at the tree-lined street.

Awkward?

So very much.

Gil holds out a hand to me. “Shall we?”

“We can Uber.” Which would alleviate the need to touch him, since being a big ol’ null means I can’t fly.