Page 1 of Wolf, Willow, Witch
Chapter one
TehlorNilsenchompedona reusable straw, searching for tapioca pearls at the bottom of her almost empty cup. The house on Staghorn Way stood before her like a fresh corpse, empty and fuckingbasic. She sucked soggy boba into her mouth and chewed loudly, assessing the renovated porch and stark white shutters. Total new-age Victorian. Straight out of a Magnolia Network special. She half-expected a middle-aged woman wearing designer overalls to burst through the front door and call the house a ‘fixer-upper’ or ‘the perfect project’ before twirling around with a paintbrush thrust skyward.
But it was a run-of-the-mill veteran who owned that cookie-cutter house, and Bishop was still cruising through the Bible Belt with their dapper little exorcist, leaving their houseplants thirsty and alone.
Gunnhild, Tehlor’s plump, spotted rat, sat on her shoulder, stretching her pink nose toward the door.
“No knives this time, I promise,” Tehlor cooed. She toed at the welcome mat with her pointed faux-ballet slippers and pushed it aside, revealing a single key.
The door whined open. She stepped inside, scanning the shadowy staircase and tall ceiling. The last time she’d breached that entrance, she’d captured a handful of displaced ghouls—coaxed into the house by a stubborn demon—and offered their naked power to Níðhöggr. It was impossible to know if the great dragon had accepted her gift, but after she’d completed the ritual, prayed to her gods, and chanted under the full moon, Tehlor woke with an assortment of rose petals strewn across her bed. Someone had smiled upon her, at least.
Power was a borrowed thing. Sometimes the gods soaked her to the bone, and sometimes they left her parched and desperate, scrabbling for a sacrifice that would earn their favor. Flowers weren’t her fuckin’ jam, to be honest. But they’d been pretty enough.
Gunnhild’s tiny claws pushed through her beige blouse and needled her skin. Tehlor kicked the door shut behind her and twirled in place, inhaling a long, deep breath. She’d scraped this place clean of any spirits. Pulled them through the barrier between life, death, and the in-between, and peeled back their lifeforce like overripe fruit. Despite her successful harvest, and Colin Hart’s botched, angelic ceremony, a foul presence lingered. She couldn’t place the source of the energy—rage nestled in the belly of the house—but she recognized its brutish hum. Knew the shape of a spirit bending upward from the basement, reaching for another vulnerable magician to latch onto.Like a remora on a barracuda’s belly. She crossed the living room, dragging her finger across the banister.
Each step brought her closer to the peculiarity stewing beneath the floorboards. She tapped the edge of the archway on her way into the kitchen. Set her empty cup down and skipped her coffin-shaped fingernails across the copper kettle on the stove. Hummed as she cradled a philodendron’s rubbery leaf and strode through the adjacent sitting room toward a closed door situated at the back of the house. Hidden, almost.
“Well, would you look at that,” she cooed and jiggled the doorknob. Locked, of course. Her voice lowered, husky and private in the lonesome house. “What’re they hiding, Gunnhild?”
On her shoulder, the rat cleaned her snout.
Tehlor summoned a shred of power. It inched through her veins, seeping into the lines of her palm. Whatever favor the gods had leant her after her sacrifice to Níðhöggr, it was fading. Feeling her magic lessen was annoying. Like a half-assed orgasm. She grasped the doorknob again and twisted, loosening the lock until it snapped open. On a hard tug, the hinges wheezed, and a strong gust tossed her fair hair. Gunnhild settled in the dip where Tehlor’s shoulder met her throat and crouched there, sheltering from the unnatural wind.
Death permeated the air. Sweetness like turned buttercream filled her nostrils. She inhaled, sucking in the dust leftover from mishandled magic then turned on the light and descended the staircase. The basement held an unusual chill. Electricity sparked on her skin, dancing across the runes tattooed on her knuckles.Something has been torn in two. There’d been a split of some sort. Life had been removed from a thing unused to living, and Tehlor sensed the heaviness of its leftovers heaped somewhere nearby.
She closed her eyes and swayed on her feet, bracing herself with a hand on the back of a ratty recliner.Death-marked.She jerked away and gasped. Gunnhild squeaked.
Places held onto pain, items kept the imprint of aggression, walls were watermarked with memories, and that nasty chair had witnessed the departure of a soul. She remembered a corpse slouching there, grayish and gone, and tempered her grin, whirling around, searching for the source.
“Come on… Where are you?” She took Gunnhild from her shoulder and placed her on the cool floor.
Pacing back and forth, Tehlor held her palms face-up, feeling for something,anything. She closed her eyes again and swung from left to right. Spread her fingers until they ached. Huffed with frustration when the stagnant energy refused to budge.Don’t be stubborn. She chewed her bottom lip, bratty and impatient.Don’t be a coward. But nothing changed, or moved, or manifested until Gunnhild sniffed around the base of the wall. It was then, as her familiar’s dainty snout tracked a patch of freshly laid concrete when Tehlor Nilsen noticed the half-assed masonry job hidden behind a linen shelf.
“No fuckin’ way,” she muttered, sighing the words like a premonition. She glanced at Gunnhild who stood on her back paws and gazed up from the floor. “You thinkin’ what I’m thinkin’?”
The rat wiggled her nose and skittered away, climbing atop the recliner to perch on its armrest.
Tehlor had been a ballerina in another life. She’d spun on sore toes in pointe shoes and pretended she might become a bird or a bat. A creature with the means to make falling look graceful. She wasn’t as athletic as she used to be, but her adrenaline surged as the shelf toppled over and crashed, splitting the air with a loudbang. She reveled in the hard connection of her foot against the wall, how the blow shook her ankle and radiated through her calf, causing her kneecap to shiver. Her legs had carried her through long rehearsals. Endured midnight ice baths. Stayed taut and reliable. Besides her pride, they were her strongest asset. The concrete hadn’t cured long enough to sustain much abuse and caved inward on another clumsy kick.
Brick gave way, falling onto the floor and atop a body wrapped in black garbage bags. Rot billowed into the basement. Tehlor gagged and swatted at the air, trying to shoo the smell of bile and decomposition.Nasty shit. She slapped her palm over her nose and punched a hole in the bag with her fingernail. The plastic split easily. Beneath it, pale, bloated skin shone yellow and splotchy in the dim lamplight. She tore the plastic until the form became a person, and the person became vaguely familiar. She remembered him differently—angry-eyed and walking in Fenrir’s shadow. As a man, he was plain. His straw-like, ashy hair had greyed, and his features were distorted, but she knew him, somehow. Felt the ebb of his lifeforce nudging against the terrestrial plane, searching for a fissure to widen and slip through.
“You’re stubborn,” she murmured, crouching to stare at him over the edge of the broken brick.
She thought of Fenrir, sacrifice, and godhood, and remembered a fragment of curious lore…
Wolves guarded Valhalla.
Gunnhild gave a terrified chirp, and Tehlor laughed in the dank, grim space.
“Let’s seehowstubborn.”
Tehlor had stolen from crematoriums before, but she’d never stolen from a business specializing in beloved pets. Snatching someone’s bestie from their front yard wasn’t really an option, and the Rainbow Bridge Pet Mortuary was the only place in Gideon where she’d found a fresh body.
Gunnhild rode in the pocket of her knitted cardigan, making uncertain noises as Tehlor hauled a purebred Siberian Husky into Bishop’s house. The dead dog wasn’t heavy, but its limp limbs and stiff body made maneuvering it through the hall really fuckin’ difficult.
Finally, she plopped the blanketed furry body on the basement floor and swatted her palms together, huffing out an accomplished sigh.
“See? Easy,” she said to Gunnhild, who climbed into her palm when she offered it. She placed the rat on her shoulder and set her hands on her hips. “Two bodies…” She nodded, glancing at the unearthed man and the canine corpse. She scanned the rest of the materials. “Needle, tube, cauldron…”
