Page 28 of Muddled Magic

Then it was a mad dash grabbing this and that from the kitchen—anything I might find useful that the Camping Spell had missed—plus the witch atlas out from under my cushion by the hearth, and I was out the backdoor and into the rain. The nearby plants came alive at my call, shuttling all the boxes and bags after me to the stables and the unmarked sedan I’d prepared.

Overhead, lightning ripped apart the sky. Boiling black clouds illuminated in reply, the answering thunder so vicious that even the roar of the summer rain did little to dampen its peals.

I practically flung myself into the driver’s seat, dropping the goldfish plant’s pot into the nearest cupholder with trembling fingers. They shook so badly, the keys slipped from their frantic stabbing at the ignition port to the footwell. My fingers scraped against the rubber floormat, each pass they missed the keys ratcheting up my panic another notch. The more I delayed, the more time there was for my family to learn what I had done and come after me.

With a frustrated huff, I shoved the seat back as far as it would go and lurched down after those blasted keys. Blood rushed to my head, roaring in my ears. My forehead rammed into the steering wheel, and it was only the brief blare of the horn that wrenched me upright.

My arm.

I was bleeding out.

Thistle thorns.

Gulping down a breath, I fought for a measure of calm. I couldn’t heal myself it I was actively channeling battle magic, and my blazing cuffs certainly said I was still doing that very thing. Taking another breath, I released my hold on that savage magic, letting the glow of my hands lighten to that familiar emerald green. Then I unwrapped the soaked fabric encasing my arm and fought a surge of nausea.

And then, from the back of my mind, came Grandmother’s voice: Focus.

I heard her so clearly I actually screamed in the car, but she was nowhere in sight. No Hawthorne was. But that might not be the case for long.

Focus, that voice told me again.

Right. This would all be for nothing if I passed out and hit a tree not even a mile from the manor.

So, first things first.

Seal the wound.

I laid my glowing hand upon my arm, stemming the bleeding and sealing up the worst of the claw marks. They were deepest by my elbow, but I passed my hand all the way down to my wrist, just to be sure, and froze when I noticed something sticking out of my cuff.

A claw.

By the Green Mother!

I yanked it free of the iron cuff and hurled it into the passenger side footwell. Its true origin was still a mystery—what had that glamoured not-dog been? Was it truly a fiáin, or something darker? A dem— No. A Big Nasty. To call them by their real name was to call their attention, and I certainly didn’t want whatever had chased after Marten to have a cousin that would then chase after me. I’ll deal with it all later, I promised with a shudder.

And then I was out of time. I’d lingered long enough. It was now or never.

I held my breath as I started the ignition, the old car reliably coming to life, but the sound of the storm drowned out all sound. The raindrops were so fat they sounded like hail on the roof as I eased the sedan out of the old stables. The tires squelched on the red brick path; their protest, too, erased by the storm. I kept the car lights off to prevent discovery and squinted into the gloom of the manor’s lanternlight as the windshield wipers made a valiant effort to sweep away the curtains of rain.

No one but myself stopped me at the ivy-covered pergola that arched over the drive between the manor and the stables. There was still one last piece of magic to perform. Rolling down the window, the rain mercifully slanting away from the opening, I dropped the bloody remnant of my dress bandage to the bricks.

Trembling, I called upon my magic one last time. The seed within me opened and unfurled into its familiar tree, roots and branches stretching and brimming with power. There’d been no time to brew a Carpet Phlox Potion to amplify its effects, so I hoped this last Vanishing Spell had enough oomph on its own. Clamping down on my apprehension, I put the whole of my intent behind it. I let myself imagine what it would be like for my family if I failed to free them, what more atrocities they would commit while under the sway of that parasite in the grimoire, of what the rival coven had in store for us. Putting the whole of my will and the very core of my being behind it, I said in a low but steady voice,

“Hide me from memory, from thought and mind.

Vanish like smoke and leave no trace behind.”

There was no film of magic that settled over the manor or its estate, no boom of finality, but I knew it had worked when that heap of cloth beside the car vanished from sight, not even the blood that had been soaked loose by the rain remaining to slip between the cracks in the bricks.

Meadow Lavender Hawthorne was no more.

As I eased onto the town’s main thoroughfare, a good ten minutes from Hawthorne Manor, I wigged the witch’s atlas free from where I’d stuffed it down my dress. I knew how to get to the nearest east-west highway from here, it was just a matter of deciding where and when to stop.

There was no way to know how long my Vanishing Spell would last, so I needed to establish a new hearth quickly. One night’s drive from the manor was too close for comfort; I had to put at least a quarter of the country between us, at least six hundred miles.

The storm had throttled back from “raging” to “persistent,” and while I was no weather witch like Uncle Stag with the experience to make such a claim, I deemed the driving conditions safe enough to split my attention. Spreading the atlas over the steering wheel once I finished entering the highway, I used two fingers to zoom on the area of the Midwest I’d abandoned looking at earlier that evening. Certain supe landmarks and densely populated areas had me drifting away to Southern Indiana.

Huh. I tapped on a little square indicating a small town center, and the statistics dutifully opened to the side.

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