Page 26 of Thistle Thorns

“Meadow! Aunt Forsythia mentioned a bear.” Rose pinched Lilac’s cheek. “Sis is so jeal—”

“Put Boar back on,” Mom said sharply, and just like that, my hopes were dashed about talking to Lilac about shifters. At least right now. Tonight might be another story. “Boar, clear everyone out of the kitchen except for Hare and Buck.”

Then Mom rose from her kneeling position, took hold of my elbow, and ushered me from the hearth room. I snatched up my paper birch-bound notebook from the workbench shelf on the way out and shoved it into my foraging bag. If I wanted to keep my family from snooping through everything I owned, I needed to keep all my personals literally on my person at all times.

As we squeezed through the cluttered kitchen, Mom told Grandmother, “They’re ready for you.”

Grandmother nodded and went to kneel on the hearth stones, and we all suddenly found something else to do elsewhere. Even Aunt Peony turned down the flames on the stove and made herself scarce, taking her bowl of half-made biscuits with her and sending Dale out to help Aunt Hyacinth finish unloading the sedan.

While I chafed to be ousted from my own hearth room, and no doubt a conversation I had every right to be a part of, I didn’t get a chance to voice my complaint, because Mom—who still had a hand on my elbow—gave me a push towards the stairs.

I’d had enough of being pushed and hustled in my own house and was about to unleash the tirade of my life on my mother when her ivy-green eyes gleamed in warning.

“I’m going to finish setting up the guest room,” she said loudly to anyone who was listening. “Meet me upstairs,” she mouthed. Something told me we weren’t going to stuff pillows into pillowcase or organize all the toothbrushes.

Aunt Eranthis only nodded absently, her concentration on her enchanted needle, and Aunt Peony gave a noncommittal yet chipper, “Uh-huh!” as she focused on not getting any flour on her cousin’s tailoring as she finished rubbing the butter into the biscuit dough.

“C’mon, Sawyer,” I told my cat as we headed for the front door. “We gotta get that stuff inside before it gets totally soaked.”

“Oh, yeah,” he said, hot on my heels. “The stuff.”

When I gave him the stink eye for his failure to sound convincing, he wrinkled his nose at me. Yet no one protested, obviously assuming we’d gone to help Aunt Hyacinth.

But instead of helping her and Dale unload the car, we skirted around to the east side of the wraparound porch. I dug the vial of apple seeds out of my foraging bag, tossed one over the railing, and chased after it with a zap of green magic. No sooner had the seed disappeared beneath the creeping myrtle vines did a sapling sprout, rising up fast like a beanstalk. Hooking a hand under Sawyer’s belly, I latched ahold of the sapling in my other hand and swung into its branches. It grew tall enough for me to reach my bedroom window, and a moment later, a rain-dampened witch and a dewy cat snuck inside.

We padded into the hallway to find Mom already at the attic port, the pull-down ladder extended. She was up the ladder by the time I set my foot on the first rung, and I held my breath as I climbed, hoping it wouldn’t creak under my weight and alert the family downstairs that something sneaky was afoot.

“Not you, tomcat,” Mom said. After I’d finished the climb into the attic, her wiry frame had moved quickly to block the entrance, Sawyer poised on a rung right below the trap door.

“That’s my witch, lady,” he replied tartly. “I don’t leave her side.”

“Exactly. Which is why you must go elsewhere so everyone thinks she’s not with me up here.”

Sawyer flicked his amber eyes to me, questioning.

“The spare bedroom,” I said quickly, picking up on my mother’s urgency. “Lock the door behind you and make a bunch a noise like we’re moving stuff around in there.”

Sawyer started down the rungs, pausing halfway down to send me a sour look. “I don’t have thumbs, remember? There will be no locking of doors. And so far, they’ve forgotten about collaring me, and I don’t want to remind them by ‘misbehaving.’ So don’t dawdle.”

When he was on the ground, Mom hauled up the ladder with the help of a glowing green whip, then lowered the trap door and straightened quickly. “We don’t have much time,” she whispered, sweeping first to the left and then to the right to check the vents on either side of the attic for eavesdroppers. Her bare feet didn’t even whisper over the dusty floorboards she walked so silently. She paused at the full-length mirror and the protection barrier I’d made to contain the shadowman I suspected to be lurking in the grimoire. “Did you layer this? It’s quite ingenious.”

“Mom, what’s going on?” I asked, redirecting her focus.

After adjusting the swivel on the mirror so it faced the ground, she returned quickly, taking ahold of my hands and giving them a squeeze.

“Your grandmother is not the villain you think she is, honey,” she began. When I started to pull away, her fingers tightened on mine. “We all took the vow willingly, just as I told you in the woods. At the time, it was a good idea, but…”

“What did it take from you?” I asked, echoing the question one of them had posed to Grandmother.

“You were right to call it a curse, because that’s what it became. The fae… their bargains are tricky, full of loopholes and nuances. We had to supply the half-heart with magic in order to keep it alive and the protection spell active. It got greedy.” Mom released me to rub at her center of her chest as if it ached. “That’s one of the potions your aunt Peony has bubbling on the hearth—a restorative. We’ll be fine.”

“You could’ve just told me,” I pressed. “You can tell me.”

Mom shook her head, but she didn’t protest when I took a step back.

“Why not? Don’t you trust me?”

“Oh, I do, honey. Trust has nothing to do with this. And… maybe you’re even ready for the truth. Your tenacity, your flexibility of mind… You’ve handled everything beautifully since you left.” She smiled softly. “I guess we didn’t know the real you at the manor.”

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