Then she turned and walked back the way she’d come—waiting for the rest of us to follow.
CHAPTER 25
Noelle
The pathto Flora’s place was barely a path at all—more like a suggestion, like wild deer had carved it out and she’d followed in their footsteps. We walked single file, flashlights mostly off now, the glow of Flora’s lantern casting long shadows over the underbrush. Beau kept his arm around my shoulders, holding me tight. Milo, to his credit, stuck to my side like he’d sworn an oath to protect me.
I made sure to tell him he was a very good boy for leading us to the forest witch.
It felt like hours, but we probably only walked twenty minutes before we broke through the trees and into a small clearing. A cottage sat at the center of it—squat, lopsided, with a tin roof and thick vines crawling up the sides like the forest had tried to eat it and Flora had just told it to fuck off. A stack of chopped wood was piled against one wall, mason jars hanging from the eaves. Some were filled with herbs, others with…stuff.
I could have sworn I saw one filled with teeth.
At this point, I wasn’t going to question it.
The windows glowed warm from the inside, fogged uparound the edges. There was a porch—half screened-in, half not—with a rocking chair, a shotgun propped up next to it, and a pile of dog-eared field guides stacked beside it. Wind chimes whispered somewhere in the dark, catching on every gentle breeze.
And a dog was sitting in the window.
A fuckingyorkie, entirely out of place, yapping like crazy.
“Welcome to the edge of the map,” Flora said, stepping up and unlatching the door.
The second she pushed the door open, the yorkie launched into a full-blown tantrum. Tiny paws scrabbled against the ancient wood floors as it raced toward us, eyes rolling, teeth bared.
“Jesus Christ,” Holden muttered. “What the hell is that?”
“That’s Pickles,” Flora said. “She’s very emotionally intelligent.”
Pickles snarled at Holden as he raised his hands in surrender, Milo flinging himself onto the floor and rolling onto his back as if to keep the peace. Pickles ignored Milo entirely and made a beeline for Whit instead, ready to run another threat assessment.
“Uh…hey, pretty girl,” Whit said, crouching slightly, palms out like he was trying to reason with her. Pickles barked a few more times…then she moved forward to sniff him.
Then she just…stopped.
Only to growl at Holden the moment he moved.
“What the fuck is her problem with me?” Holden muttered.
“I told you,” Flora said. “She’s emotionally intelligent.”
Flora barely paused to take off her boots before padding across the crooked floorboards and heading straight for the cast iron stove. She moved mechanically—opening a drawer, fishing out kindling, tossing it into the belly of the stove
“She’s emotionally intelligent,” Holden grumbled again,glancing at Pickles, who’d posted up like a gargoyle on the arm of the couch, eyes locked on him, daring him to breathe wrong.
“You say that like it’s an insult,” Whit said, picking a spot on the floor beside Delilah and giving Pickles a respectful nod.
Flora set the kettle on top of the stove and grabbed a bundle of dried herbs from a hanging hook overhead. She started breaking off sprigs and dropping them into a metal teaball, muttering something under her breath—not quite a prayer, not quite a recipe.
Once the water was heating, she turned to face us, hands on her hips.
“Anyone hurt?”
We all kind of blinked at her.
“Like—physically,” she clarified. “Scratches, bites, burns, psychic feedback loops, unexplained marks, lost time, sudden nosebleeds…”
“You forgot possession,” Shane offered weakly.
