Page 8 of When Wishes Bleed

I lit the sage and its earthy aroma filled the room, rich and cleansing. I led the smoke, letting it waft into every corner of every room, on all five floors. Once I finished, I could finally breathe easier. Not because the sage expelled any danger, but because one task of the many I’d mentally listed was finished and I could begin another.

I made my way back downstairs, raising every window pane that wasn’t stuck to the sill, and pushed all the dingy curtains back. A thick layer of dust hid the intricacies of every solid surface. Gusts from outside didn’t dislodge a single particle as far as I could tell, but the musty smell that had settled into the walls began to drift away by the cleansing wind.

In the parlor, I lifted the sheets from the furniture, piling them in the room’s corner. A deep purple couch with plush pillows propped against the backrest was flanked by twin mahogany chairs that hadn’t been occupied since before I was born, but looked brand-new. Everything did. It was as if Mother had whispered a spell to preserve it all just as it was. Maybe she did. Or maybe Fate had taken care of my inheritance until I could claim it.

Maybe this was his gift to me. He warned me away from peeking in the windows like the other witches over the years, but today, he wanted me to have this. He wanted this House and everything in it to be mine.

This is your past and future, I told myself.

Brecan returned with my clothes, including boots and piles of gloves, with the wicked gleam I expected still twinkling in his eyes. “Which bedroom is yours?”

“I’m not sure yet. Just set everything in there on the bed,” I suggested, gesturing to the nearest bedroom, located down the hall past the living room.

He complied and strode back outside. “I’ll be back with more,” he promised over his shoulder. If Brecan was anything, he was honest. By mid-afternoon, the cabin was empty, save for the bare furniture I no longer needed.

My only friend thought that quite enough work had been done for one day. Or maybe he was trying to lift my mood, considering the dark promise of the evening’s events. “Come outside with me,” he pleaded.

“If we go into the Center, everyone will stare at you.”

He gave an ornery smile. “I’m okay with that.”

“Wayra won’t be.”

He blew out a breath. “With all that has happened, perhaps it’s not the time to push,” he conceded. “Find me after?” After you find and hang the young man Fate wants, he meant. His eyebrows rose expectantly as he waited for my reply.

I swallowed. “Afterwards, I’ll come back here. I need to perform a few readings.”

Brecan hid his wince. He and I both knew that the likelihood of a single soul seeking me out after I hung a lower sector male would be absolutely nil, but Brecan was too polite to voice it. In any event, I had to try. This was one of the few times a year people from the other twelve sectors, which we called the Lowers, were allowed into The Gallows, and I needed any and all payments I could garner.

I looked around the House and blew out a breath. This place would take a fortune and another three hundred years to restore.

He nodded. “I’ll find you after things wind down, then.”

When he kissed my cheek, his lips lingered a beat too long. I pressed my eyes closed and wondered what it would feel like to really love him. To feel fire within my bones whenever he was near. There were spells for that.

I watched him quickly walk away from my House toward his own, where the House of Wind was being decorated with swaths of iridescent blue fabric, as delicate and sheer as the air itself. The female witches wore their best gowns and capes to match, held together at the neck by sculpted silver fasteners meant to mimic the swirling motion of the breeze.

From the window, I watched as my grandmother Ela oversaw the decorations for the House of Earth. The young witches called forth vines of ivy, guiding them as the new growth spiraled around the columns and railings. Great vines of cascading flowers bowed overhead, slowly showering petals that would never run out.

Ethne led the witches at the House of Fire as they formed pits that would later burn with colorful flames in every hue of the rainbow. At dark, they would light the entire Center with strategically positioned bonfires stacked vertically, so tall they’d overshadow the tallest of the forest trees.

Witches from the House of Water manipulated the fountains in front of their home. From the depths of their pools roared horses pulling chariots with angry, determined riders behind them. Bay greeted the first of the visitors from the lower sectors who gathered to watch a watery battle unfold. Their oohs and aahs echoed through The Gallows.

More people emerged from the wood and entered the Center.

I quickly dressed in my finest gown, a soft black velvet devoid of frills. Smoothing my hair, I hurried to gather my supplies.

I carried a small table outside and set it up in front of my House, covering it with a swath of black fabric. I arranged my casting cloth on top, placing a heavy crystal on each corner to hold it in place against the Wind witches’ gusts. Citrine. Amethyst. Obsidian. Tourmaline.

The amethyst crystal that held down the far-right corner was from the tree-clinging boy. His strange familiarity pricked at me again, but I still couldn’t place him. I stubbornly shoved thoughts of him away.

From my House, I brought out a deck of fortune cards, a crystal ball, and my silver bowl of wishbones. The cards and crystal were what citizens from the lower sectors expected, but the wishbones might call to someone.

I plucked a pair of chairs from the kitchen, situating them across the table from each other. I had no watery show, no petal-showering flora, no extraordinary twister or column of flame. Just the promise of a simple reading of fortune and a hope that someone – anyone – would want what I offered. And that the person would come to me soon.

Perhaps I could squeeze a few readings in before the condemned crossed into The Gallows.

Over the years, witches had paid me for readings in the form of scraps. Plants, when they had too many to fit in their perfectly measured garden rows. A ream of fabric when the dye clung too heavily to appropriately represent their Houses. Measures of rope they no longer needed.

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