Instead, the sight of him entering the work kitchen from the garden, as she’d watched him do a hundred million times before, instantly sucked her back. She was ten years old, diligently cutting herbs at the counter as Willow and Holt entered, bickering. She was a gangly teenager, stirring a cauldron over the fire as Authricia instructed, the sleek black cat nosing its way past the door and trotting through the room with his tail held high. She was an exhausted caregiver, doing her best to concoct something her aunt could keep down, a broth laced with morphine, as Holt paced the length of the room in agitation.
She caught the memories like a blow to the ribs. It was as if the whole of their shared existence in this room was stretched before them, stuck in one of Anzan’s webs. The kitchen seemed to vibrate. Anzan’s voice sounded echoed and far away, somewhere behind her, laced with concern, but she couldn’t focus on anything other than the familiar before her. Holt inhaled deeply, his dark eyelashes fluttering closed. The lights flickered.
“It smells exactly the same.”
He wasn’t wrong. There had been a solace in returning home to this kitchen every day after school, after each disastrous coven meeting, after running the daily gamut of life outside the walls of this house. The herbaceous smell of fresh-chopped herbs mingled with the more pungent ingredients. The earthy scent from the cold stones of the hearth and the flinty smoke from the always-bubbling cauldron, emitting a camphorous steam . . . this kitchen smelled the same at that moment as it had the day she’d come to live here, and Ladybug knew in her bones that if she were able to go back in time thirty years, fifty years, a hundred years, the work kitchen would still have smelled exactly the same — the scent of witches at work.
Holt, too, was caught in the maelstrom of memories, trapped in the web. Ladybug watched as he whirled towards the table, as if he expected to find Willow there, waiting for him. The hand he raised was bone white, fingers capped in the same, black-lacquered claws that had dug into the front door’s frame, marks that were still there.
“She would be sitting right here.”
Ladybug nodded at his back, existing in the same memory.
“Right here, scrying with a bowl of water. And Laurel would be —“
He spun again, and then her composure broke. She felt Anzan move to her back as the sob broke from her throat, noisy and inelegant, choking her for a moment as she met the cat man’s green eyes, glowing with unshed tears.
”— Right there. Just where you are. Doing the same thing.”
So long as there was a Brackenbridge witch in this kitchen, it would smell the same. As long as this house still stood, there would be a witch at work. She would remind Holt of that today, before opening the door for him to leave.
“Don’t ever let this house change.”
Ladybug breathed out, dropping back against the solid chest behind her. Anzan had angled himself behind her, his snack forgotten, and a fast glance around his body showed two of his arachnid legs reared back, ready to propel him forward. It was a subtle repositioning, but one she knew signified that he was prepared to attack if necessary. Locking her hand around the arm that had snaked around her waist, Ladybug counted through several seconds of thudding heartbeats, slowing her breathing and stroking Anzan’s wrist, a silent assurance that she was fine. She hoped the action telegraphed that he didn’t need to pounce on Holt, but she was grateful for his willingness to do so just the same.
“Why are you here?” she croaked out, clearing her throat before continuing. “Why? Why are you back?”
He was on the other side of the room, still lost in the memory of what had been, slowly making his way around the table, his fingertips coming to rest on the back of the chair that had been Willow’s.
“She’s gone,” Ladybug reminded him, her insides bunching in grief. “She’s gone, Holt. There’s nothing here for you.”
At that he looked up. “You’re here, little Ladybug. Why, you ask? Perhaps I’m simply checking in on you, have you considered that? Looking in on your welfare?” His intense eyes had moved beyond her, taking in the Araneaen at her back. “Ensuring you’re making good choices? Ididpromise that I’d look in on you from time to time, to make sure you were faring alright.”
“And you’ve done a fine job of that, right?” Her voice snapped across the kitchen, her vocal cords acting without the input of her conscious mind, with a will of their own. Her fists bunched, and she used Anzan’s broad chest as her springboard, pushing off and propelling herself forward, as ifshewere the allegedly dangerous and deadly Araneaen.
“Have you given yourself a nice pat on the back? After all, you’ve done a bang-up job of making sure I’mfaring alright. I’m sure she’d be thrilled with how you’ve kept your promises.”
Ladybug wasn’t certain when her feet had begun to move. One minute she was standing at the counter with Anzan at her back, and now she was circling the table, having crossed the room in three long strides, her hands clenching around the back of one of the chairs, face-to-face with Holt, with nothing but the aged table between them. He’d straightened up at her words, and she knew she’d struck a nerve.
Stop it! This isn’t you. This isn’t helpful and it’s not going to make you feel any better. Just tell him to leave and put this behind you.Her inner voice was probably right. Wise words, but they were too bitter a draught to swallow. One more thing to put behind her. One more little indignity for her to force down, and she couldn’t do it without choking.No. Not this time.
“Perhaps I’m checking in professionally,” he countered. “You do know I have a shop, don’t you? We’re practically family, darling, we ought to have a partnership.”
“I know all about your dirty business dealings,” Ladybug spat out venomously.We’re practically family. The room blurred and her arms shook from how hard she gripped the chair. She was furious, too furious to swallowthisdown.
She’d spent the past year licking her wounds, vacillating wildly between fixating on the coven that had cast her out — wondering about the sisters who’d turned their backs on her, what they were doing, if a single one of them even noticed her absence — and resolutely putting them out of mind, focusing on growing her own business, putting to use all of the skills she had painstakingly honed over the years, concentrating on her own home and hearth and the love within it. She’d not allowed herself to dwell on the nameless emotion she felt about the particulars of her expulsion from the coven. She did not let her thoughts linger over Holt’s role in the whole ugly farce, not wanting to think about him at all.
She had kept this from Anzan, the night she’d told him about Holt and his history with her aunt. She wasn’t sure why. It hadn’t seemed important to her narrative, maybe, or perhaps she simply didn’t want to think about how close to home her downfall had been. To associate thoughts of the familiar with the agony of last year was to taint memories of happier times, and perhaps her heart simply had not been strong enough to reconcile the two realities.
“I know all about your shop, and all about your black-market business,” she went on doggedly. “How do you sleep at night, Holt? How do you live with yourself knowing what they did?”
He shrugged with such an air of unconcern that she was tempted to heave the bowl of lemons on the table at his head.
“I am a procurer by trade,” he sniffed. “I always have been. If a witch has a need, I can procure the solution. That’s it. I don’t have a hand in how it is used, Elizabeth.”
Ladybug scoffed, shaking her head in aggravated disbelief. Of course he would have an answer for that as well. He’d always had an answer for everything.
The flying ointment had been made since the dark ages, although the particular recipe she had refused had been outlawed for centuries at that point. The High Crone hadn’t cared.Render the fat until liquid. She had no desire to have a baby, but that did not mean she would seek to do one harm.It is intent that guides magic, Ladybug. A witch’s intent is more important than the strength of her spell.
