“Your Aunt Pernella,” he began suddenly, redirecting the conversation, “despite what lies you may have been told, was a daring witch with a brilliant mind for charm casting and the most impressive library of spellbooks I’ve ever seen. She had been collecting since childhood. Grimoires, field guides, ancient spell scrolls . . . It was all in her workroom, right down in the —“ He turned to her reading nook, frowning at the chintz floral wallpaper. “Right down in the cellar . . . which you’vedrywalledover?“ He spun, sputtering in outrage. He glared at her, lip curling, and Harper was tempted to renew her resolve to stab him in the eyeball. “Why would you do such a thing?!”
“I just moved in!” she yelped, brandishing the steak knife again in warning, huffing when he rolled his eyes. “I didn’t even know there was a cellar! Do you think the books are still there?”
She wasn’t sure when she’d grown so recklessly stupid.Why are you asking his opinion?! He’s probably a scam artist. He read your mail and looked you up online, that’s how he knows about Aunt Pernella. He’s probably three minutes away from pulling out one of your frying pans to bash your skull in.
“Oh, they’re still here,” Holt breezed confidently, breathing deeply. “The whole place still smells exactly the same. It means they’re being kept safe, in any case. If you ever want to remodel, please let me know before you get rid of anything, I’ll take the whole lot off your hands for a very good price.”
As if to punctuate his words, he taped his long, black lacquered claws against the countertop, and Harper frowned. Sheknewthose claws, but couldn’t place how.
“Why don’t you want to be reassigned? Are you tired of working with witches? Are you collecting imp unemployment or something?”Do you want to be my familiar and teach me how to witch? It comes with the bonus of terrorizing Ilea.
“I’m waiting for someone,” he admitted slowly, not deigning to answer the entire question. His head snapped to the right, as if something had caught his attention, and Harper wondered if she had a mouse problem. “Someone in particular. She doesn’t think she wants a familiar.”
“Maybe she’s not a cat person. Is that, like, extremely insulting?”
“It’s not,” he laughed. “She does not have need of me right now . . . but she will. Someday soon, she will need me. She will need all the help I can give her. And I do not wish to be bound to another when that day comes.”
Silence hung between them for a moment, weighted by their individual thoughts. “Do you miss her?” The words seemed to leave her in an unconscious blurt, and her face heated again. “I-I mean your witch. The one who died.”
Another long, heavy pause. Harper didn’t know why, but she felt possessed by the desire to tell this strange man her entire life story, tell him every excruciating detail of the last two years, how broken and worthless she felt, how empty she felt inside. She wanted to tell him that somewhere on the street behind her cottage, one of the neighbors burned a fire almost nightly. Smoke drifted on the balmy late-summer air, and the breeze carried the smell of it to her open windows, wrapping her in a haze of familiarity as she drifted to sleep, the only time she was able to sleep restfully, even though she slept all the time.
“My sort isn’t meant to be distracted by human concepts like time,” he said at last. “The time you spend on this place of existence is negligible, I’m afraid to say. What is the life of one witch to the root of the sisterhood itself? We’re not meant to count days and weeks and years as your kind does. A day in the life of a witch is barely a minute to the familiar at her side. A week is barely an hour. A year, no more than a day.”
Harper swallowed down everything she’d wanted to blurt. She had no kinship with this strange, enigmatic cat-man, no more than she had ever had with the familiar who dwelled beneath her mother’s roof, who would have gladly suffocated her in her cradle if they’d ever had half the chance. She was bobbing on a solitary sea, and there was no one who understood. She wanted him to leave, she decided, her throat feeling thick. She wanted to be left alone with her grief, as she always was.
Holt spun, his unnatural green eyes glossy and vibrant. “But not a day passes when I do not think of her. She was an exceptional,singularwitch, and more than that, she was the most giving person I’ve ever known. She overflowed with kindness, kindness and sacrifice. I will mourn her loss long after there is anyone else left alive who will remember her name. There are some things that transcend what we are, child. We all walk beneath the same moon, and grief is eternal. So yes, I miss her a great deal.”
She turned away and hunched again, squeezing her eyes against the pain. There was a sob brewing in her throat, and if she tried to speak, she would not be able to hold it in.If grief is eternal, why does it seem like I’m the only one suffering it?
“Grief is the wound love leaves on our heart,” he continued, again as if he could audibly hear her thoughts, and at that, she could not hold in the tears for another second.
Her sob came out in a strangled wheeze, but unlike everyone else in her life who acted as if her emotions were some hideous, embarrassing thing that she should feel shame over, Holt seemed unbothered.
“When does it stop hurting?” She was barely able to get the words out as her shoulders hitched, and that, too, didn’t seem to bother the familiar.
“It doesn’t.”
He shrugged again, the very first time someone had told her there would be no end to the empty, ocean-like chasm within her. Every single person she had encountered over the last year and half had told the same pretty lie — that time would ease the ache inside her until it had vanished. This — this felt like the truth, at last.
“The strength of that ache is the tenacity of love, and it never fades.” His voice, so full of vehemence just a short while ago, was now somber, gentled, but no less full of conviction. “Whatdoeshappen, is that your heart will heal around it. Yes? It’s not something that ever goes away, and like any bruise, to poke it will ache. But your heart will grow around it, protecting it, and it simply becomes a part of you. Don’t ever expect that ache to go away, little one. But stop considering it a negative thing. Grief is a gift. Do you understand?”
It took her a long moment to answer, and she truly didn’t know if she understood . . . but she wanted to try.Grief is a gift. If nothing else, it made more sense to her thantime heals all wounds. “Yes . . . maybe.”
“Maybe is good enough. Maybe is all we ever have. The truth of unknowable things is that they are forever unknowable. All we can do is study and take our strength where we can.Thatis the power of a witch.”
It was the first time she could remember crying in front of another person without having someone hovering, attempting to quiet her. He seemed unperturbed as her shoulders shook, and if he’d been in his other form, she wouldn’t have been surprised if he began grooming himself, heedless of her tears. She probably should have been embarrassed, she thought once she managed to get control of her emotions, but when she turned, Holt was across the room, rooting through her books.
“I wish I could have known her,” she managed at last. “Your witch, I mean.”
“Oh, you will.” His voice was casual, and he took his time replacing the book he’d been holding on the shelf, his attention once more caught by something in the corner. He stared for a long moment, before turning to her at last. “You must learn what the darkness discovers, Harper Hollingsworth. You walk to the noose with your head held high, because you walk withallof your sisters beside you.Thatis the power of a witch.”
When she walked him to what was apparently her back door, the object of his original quest was standing right there.
Harper took in Ilea as if for the first time. The form they took was just as haughty as they were in their feline skin — country club fashion, immaculate hair, and a disdainful air. Their lip curled back at the sight of Holt, but Harper thought she recognized a flash of panic.
“Ah, just the rat catcher I was looking for.”
If what she had seen was indeed panic, they recovered quickly enough at Holt’s words.
