Page 34 of Muddled Magic

“Only after you declared them to be,” Ame snarled. “You forced Fern to choose between me and her family. It tore out a piece of her heart, just like it did mine!”

“Is that why Mother was so sickly?” Aunt Hyacinth asked, stunned. “Why I was an only child?”

“That had nothing to do with it,” Grandmother said firmly, growing irritated. “Now—”

“I wouldn’t be so sure.” Ame swiped at the air between them with unsheathed claws. “I’ll not allow you to ruin another bond again!”

“Is that tomcat your familiar?” my father asked me abruptly. From the sharpness of his gaze and the tightness of his tone, I would’ve guessed he was angry, but a little voice in the back of my mind offered a different viewpoint: He’s afraid.

Why would my father be afraid if I had a cat for a familiar?

I looked straight at my mother, whose fingers still twitched with that cat’s cradle of magic. “Release my cuffs and maybe I’ll tell you.”

“Lower the barrier, child,” Grandmother ordered.

“I think not,” Flora snapped.

“Quiet, gnome.”

The power of her voice slammed against the force field and made the ground tremble, Flora stumbling back with a yelp.

“Don’t you speak to her that way,” Daphne said, peeling halfway from Shari to shake her shillelagh at my grandmother. Shari had calmed, clutching her crochet needles firmly in both hands.

“I’m not just any gnome,” Flora blustered, adjusting her overalls. “I’m a Midwestern garden gnome. I wrangle wild tawny-backs and eat scrap metal for breakfast! You prissy city witches have no idea who you’re messing with.” With a battle cry, her short legs launched her into a full-out sprint.

But she didn’t charge the barrier. Instead the garden gnome swerved to me, climbing my leg like a feral squirrel and dashing down my frozen arm to yank the claw out of my hand.

“You can’t kill the heart, but nothing’s stopping me,” she crowed.

“Flora,” I gasped. “Wait!”

But she’d already flung herself into the air with the claw poised above her head in a two-handed grip. “Tally-ho!”

The protection spells around the spell book blasted her back with a thunderous boom. Only a witch could touch this grimoire.

A steaming garden gnome barreled into Shari and Daphne with such force that the two older women were knocked down, slamming into the shimmering force field created by the crystals. Lewellyn shouted a muffled protest against the gag, thrashing against the roots that held him fast against the base of the tree. My friends groaned as they fought to collect themselves.

Grandmother smirked.

“You’re really scraping the bottom of the barrel with this lot, Meadow,” Marten sneered. “You should’ve made friends with more powerful people.”

“Silence,” my father lashed at him, an angry wind rising with his voice and swirling the leaves around his feet.

Marten scowled under the rebuke.

“We’re not your enemy,” Mom tried to reason with me. “Drop the barrier and return the spell book and all will be well.”

“Not my enemy?” I sputtered. “You all sacrificed Stoat—a baby—to save Marten’s life after he messed up and got himself hunted down by demons.” I sent him a foul look. “I don’t know how you can live with yourself.”

My brother’s expression darkened, but by some miracle, he remained silent. He gritted his teeth, brown eyes snapping with anger.

“You don’t know what you saw,” Grandmother said crisply. “Now give me the grimoire.”

“I know exactly what I saw,” I snapped back, my grandmother’s eyes widening at my audacity. “It took me a while to put all the pieces together, but that emerald in the cover is not an emerald at all, but a demon’s half-heart.”

“Ridiculous,” Aunt Hyacinth snorted. “We’re witches, Meadow. We don’t trifle in the dark arts!”

“Of course we don’t, but someone else has.”

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