I don’t risk taking my eyes off of her, but my attention isn’t fully in the present moment either.
“Come inside then,” she singsongs and waves me forward. “We can talk over tea—though I must mention,everythingcomes with a price here.”
Nodding, I follow her inside and hold onto the only thing I’m certain of anymore—Renata.
Walking toward the door, I glance around quickly, trying to get a sense of my surroundings. The sight of her garden makes my steps falter. The soil is a peculiar shade of light brown with a murky, greasy glint to it. I’ve only seen that once before… At the Dreaming Willow Inn.
“The mutt can come in, if he’s potty-trained,” Calista says when I pause outside the front door too long.
Whisper curls around my legs and snarls at her. His protectiveness and unease begins to course through me, and I have to tamp it down to keep my own head on straight.
“He goes where I go,” I say with conviction, waiting on the other side of the threshold from her main room.
“Let’s go then,” she says with a roll of her eyes and waves us inside. “You’re lucky I’m feeling generous today.”
When she isn’t looking, I take another look at the everoot garden, and then take the first step inside.
Looking around her main room, I’m not sure what to make of it. It’s not modern by any means, but there are a variety of luxuries from different time periods spread across the room. An iron and crystal tea table, a large velvet chaise where one of her large hogs is currently lying, and knick-knacks from all around the world.
Taking a seat at her small table, I wryly say, “He must be potty trained, I assume.”
She looks at me over her shoulder and follows my gaze.
Chuckling, she says, “Thankfully he came to me house-trained. In his former body.”
My brows raise, but I bite my tongue. Whisper is looking at the animal and whimpering. He isn’t scared butsad—confused.
“A little shapeshifting might be outside of a witch’s ability, but demons do not follow the same rules.”
Swallowing, I take the teapot she pushes toward me. Every survival instinct inside of me is telling me to throw the entire thing out the window, but the look she is giving me discourages that thought. I’ve neverheard anything about demons and hospitality norms, but offending her wouldn’t do me any favors.
I pour myself a cup, add a few drops of honey, and take a sip.
The hot liquid slides down my throat, leaving the familiar warmth that reminds me of home—of Renata. It fades just as quickly. In its wake, the slimy texture of a truth serum sticks like tar.
With wide eyes, I stare at her. She smirks, making sure I don’t spit it up.
Accepting it’s useless, I try swallowing past the sticky sensation. My mother used to administer the serums when we were teenagers. Nothing nearly as strong as this, just enough to get us to admit where we were sneaking off to, or why a curfew was missed. Sybil always jokes that the stickiness was there to catch all the lies before we could say them.
“Good boy,” she coos and pours herself a glass before chugging it down. “Now it’s fair.”
“Fair?” I ask.
The scale is completely tipped in her favor.
“We both have questions,” she says. Assessing me, she adds, “You are either very brave, or very stupid to come here.”
“Probably both,” I say.
She laughs and leans back in her chair, making me relax a little. I haven’t forgotten that she could kill me in half a second, or that she’d be able to hold my soul here for as long as she wants, keeping me from Renata. There are moments when she seems sonormal, if not a little bitter.
“Catch me up on what has been going on at the Dreaming Willow Inn for the last century, then I will answer three questions.”
“That’s it?” I ask incredulously. “That’s the price?”
“For three questions, yes,” she says. She looks impressed that I thought to clarify, and I wonder how much trouble people quickly find themselves in when she’s around. “Beverycareful what you ask.”
Nodding, I quickly tell her everything I know about the Dreaming Willow Inn, from a century ago to today. The disbandment of the coven, the fall of the Blackthorn Gray Witches, how Sybil and I are the first Divination Witches in the Vexley line since then, and how the five families have come back together to restore the inn.
