Page 43 of Muddled Magic

Aunt Hyacinth bent down and retrieved the grimoire, brushing the leaves off the covers and clutching it tightly to her chest. She left the demon claw right where it was.

“Yes,” came Grandmother’s clipped reply. “Immediately.”

“Don’t mind if I do,” Lewellyn said loudly, hands on his hips and showing off his nakedness for anyone to see. I immediately averted my eyes, though I noticed Aunt Eranthis taking a curious glance. “No one offered me a robe.”

“Let me, dear,” Daphne said, shucking the floral shawl from her shoulders so quickly Flora almost lost her balance. Daphne gave Aunt Eranthis a warning look, and the witch dutifully turned her gaze to the storm in the sky.

Besides this little exchange, no one else moved. There was a standoff, the Circle of Nine versus the Crafting Circle, each looking to their respective leaders to signal what the rest ought to do.

It seemed to grate on Grandmother that I was no longer her obedient and subservient pet but a witch with her own will and mind who was clearly deciding if Aunt Peony’s suggestion and her own command were worthy of being followed. I let her stew for a second. Or three.

“Meadow,” Mom began softly.

Dad put his hand on her arm, silencing her interference.

“It’s safer by the hearth,” I agreed finally, crouching down to retrieve the demon claw and the parasite bracelet. Slipping both into my pocket, I took a step forward towards my home. And maybe even towards reconciliation, though that seemed further down the road than I’d originally thought. Relieving the grimoire of the curse had been met with far less fanfare and appreciation than I’d expected. Then again, I hadn’t expected to learn that it was my own grandmother who’d cursed it.

Grandmother inclined her head and spun on her heel.

She hadn’t taken more than one step before a wind rose. Black smoke and swirling embers rose from the ground where the glittering remains of the demon half-heart lay. Grandmother’s revitalized face turned ashen, and she barked a command I couldn’t hear over the roar of leaves and smoke and sizzling cinders. The coven converged into a defensive formation as Lewellyn yanked Daphne behind a tree, taking Flora with them, and Arthur shifted into his bear form, the robe around his waist shredding like tissue paper.

Free of the parasite bracelet, I raked my iron cuffs against each other and summoned my battle magic. I was done being defenseless, of being afraid, of being naïve. I could do something here. Maybe. I had never seen anything like this before.

Sawyer fluffed out his fur beside Ame, both felines arching their backs and spitting as a figure stepped free of the infernal whirlwind. The smoke and embers ceased as if they had never been, not even the ground where they had sprouted scorched or smoldering.

Though he appeared human, was even dressed like one—though his clothes were circa Victorian-era nobility—his crimson eyes, pointed ears, and the bull-like horns curling from his shiny black hair assured me he was something quite different all together.

“If you didn’t want my protection anymore, Iris,” the demon said dryly, “you could’ve just said something instead of stabbing me quite literally in the heart.”

CHAPTER TWENTY

“Arcadis,” Grandmother greeted, her tone carefully neutral. I didn’t know how it was possible, but she stood even straighter than before. “Why don’t we have this discussion—”

“By your cozy little farmhouse hearth where you can attempt to trap me with a containment spell? I think not,” the demon snapped, the black nails on his fingers lengthening into five-inch talons. He bared his white teeth into a feral sickle of a smile, canines so long they nearly pierced into his lower lip. “We’ll have it right here and now, thank you very much. Since I am the offended party here, it is only fair, wouldn’t you agree?”

She didn’t, but she didn’t protest either. What she did do was flick a hand, simultaneously ordering the coven to stand down and encouraging Arcadis to continue. When she reclasped her hands in front of her, her knuckles were the same shade as oracle bones.

“Thank you,” the demon said brightly. I didn’t know what unnerved me more, his physical presence or his mood swings.

My family quelled their battle magic, the red runes on their cuffs snuffing out. Not even a glow remained on their fingertips, but I knew from the tension roiling off them that their magic simmered just below the surface. From the looks on their faces, none of them had ever seen a demon like this before either. Some seemed morbidly curious and cautious while the others stared at him like he was a prowling lion that would attack at the slightest movement.

With his crimson gaze still fixed on Grandmother, Arcadis pointed one of those wickedly sharp talons at the grizzly bear. “Do I have to be worried about that?”

“No,” Grandmother answered, sending me a poignant look.

Dispelling my own battle magic, I put a hand on the bear’s shoulder. The grizzly’s growl ceased, but the shifter remained in bear form, muscles tense. Shari found my other hand immediately, her fingers clamping down painfully and shaking so hard it was sending tremors up my arm. I squeezed her back: Stay calm. Stay silent.

“Fantastic,” the demon said, his canines retracting and his talons shortening to fingernails so he could rub his hands together without impaling himself. On one of his fingers, a gold ring glowed like a tiny star, twinkling with the movement. “Now, since you, Iris, were instructed in the proper method of nullifying our contract, which one of you lot used the crass method of impalement?”

The coven was silent. None of them so much as even blinked, nor looked in my direction. I didn’t volunteer myself, either, every instinct screaming at me to stay small and hidden. From the way a dappling of sweat had broken out across my unshakable grandmother’s forehead, it became apparent very quickly that this Arcadis was nothing short of a monster shaped like a man.

“Am I to guess, then?” The demon prowled forward, stalking down the line of coven members and sniffing. The witches remained deathly still. “Not you, not you, no, no…”

He spun around, his grin broadening as he looked me up and down. He seemed positively delighted, as if he were at his own birthday party and had just received the gift he’d been pining after all year long. “Could it be? That the uninitiated witch had the gall where others three times her age did not?”

The bear growled as the demon stalked closer. My hand in his fur tightened in warning. I had no idea what Arcadis was capable of, but if the bedtime stories had any truth to them, he was someone not to be trifled with.

“Quiet, beast,” Arcadis said flatly.

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