... and Caitlyn was forced to eat her words.
Every inch of the house was spotless.
The horrors displayed beneath their glass domes gleamed in the candlelight, fangs and claws polished to a museum sheen. The eyes of every painting—once dulled by grime—now shone with an oily, watchful gaze. Even the chandeliers glittered like icicles, swaying faintly overhead and casting fractured light across freshly polished floors.
I wasn’t entirely sure whether spotlessly clean was more or less unsettling than the abandoned state it had been in before.
Still, we stepped inside.
The sharp scent of bleach filled my nostrils, giving the place the air of a covered-up murder scene rather than somethinglovingly scrubbed clean. But beneath it lingered the comforting aroma of cocoa, and both Caitlyn and I instinctively turned toward the kitchen.
As we followed the promise of something sweet, I found myself relaxing with every step. With the grime gone, the house revealed an almost overwhelming collection of trinkets and memories Creep had gathered over the centuries.
Blackthorn walking sticks rested against the wall, the polish on their handles dulled with use, as if their owner had only stepped into the next room for a moment.
The once algae-slick doors leading into the greenhouse practically glittered, their glass polished clear enough to reveal a riot of shifting greens and bursts of impossible color beyond.
Spotting Caitlyn, Mordi descended slowly from its perch in the rafters, its bulbous form gently pulsing as it still digested the leg she’d thrown it yesterday. Its vines drooped lazily, heavy with a food-coma haze, one tendril lifting in a sleepy little wave.
Caitlyn waved back before blowing it a motherly kiss.
Beneath the stairs, little shoes sat neatly lined up beneath centuries-old woolen coats hanging from hooks beside the basement door.
Before I could steel myself against it, an image flooded my mind.
A pair of witchlings, no more than a year apart. One with Caitlyn’s feral taste in clothes and my blond hair. The other with Caitlyn’s brilliant hazel eyes and Ambrose’s dark locs. Me bouncing them on my knees, winding them up before bed while Ambrose sat nearby, arms folded, mouth set tight—though the softened corners of his eyes betrayed him. And Caitlyn, standing between us, torn between joining the mischief and knowing she’d be the one cursing us all later when it came time to tuck them in.
Snap.
Pain flared through my already tender wrist.
Fantastic. Not only was I fantasizing about sleeping with my mate and my best friend at the same time—apparently I’d skipped straight to domestic bliss and children.
Stellar job working through it, Blaise.
Maybe walking into the greenhouse and letting the carnivorous plant swallow me whole wasn’t such a terrible idea after all.
“You okay, Blaise?” Caitlyn asked, a deep furrow of concern between her brows.
“Hm? Oh, yeah. Just wondering what it would be like to be eaten alive by Mordi,” I said.
“Awful,” she replied, far too airily. “It has these little thorn-like teeth that hold you in place while it digests you from the outside in, usually over the course of a few days. And if it’s not hungry right away, its saliva suspends you in a catatonic, sleep-like state until it’s ready to eat you.” She glanced up at the plant with a proud, parental grin, completely missing the look of horror on my face. “I use its saliva in my Freezing Fudge.”
“And how exactly did you make the leap fromcarnivorous plant salivatomagic candy?”
Caitlyn shrugged as she headed toward the kitchen. “It sort of... came to me,” she said. “I was trying to research how to care for Mordi, but all the books did was list the dangers and explain how to destroy it.” She paused, thoughtful. “The moment I read that its saliva induces a catatonic sleep, everything just clicked. It was like the ingredients lined themselves up in my head, and I could see how their properties would play off one another.” She glanced back at me with a small, almost sheepish smile. “It took a few tries to get the balance right, but I managed to make a fudge topping that freezes you in place for a minute or two... then lets you go, none the worse for wear.”
I couldn’t help but admire just how much Caitlyn seemed to know.
She had mentioned that her coven had originally been made up of a ragtag group of witches, coming from the many different types of magic that encompassed the figurative witch umbrella. But it didn’t explain how Caitlyn was so adept at two different branches of witch magic.
“How do you know so much about botanyandalchemy?” I asked.
Caitlyn scrunched her brows. “I’m not really sure,” she admitted. “I don’t know much about the coven my family belonged to before Briar Coven.” She hesitated, then continued, “It’s strange, really. We’re basically carbon copies of our female ancestors—incubi don’t have DNA, so we don’t get much variation from our dads—but somehow, for my family line, we all ended up with completely different specialties. My mom’s obsessed with DIY projects,” she said. “Give her an idea and it’s like the thing just... builds itself around her. Her sister—the one who passed away—had an incredible instinct for books. People would walk into her shop and she’d hand them exactly what they needed without them ever saying a word.” She smiled faintly. “And my cousin—the one in prison—she just had this way with words.Writtenwords, that is—she still gets word vomit like all the Myers. It was indescribable. She used to spend weekends writing stories for me and my friend Lex, and they were always...” She lifted a hand, miming her mind being blown.
Caitlyn shrugged. “So even though we’remeantto be almost the same, we all turned out completely different. I guess I don’t really know what magic we inherited from that first coven.”
“Maybe it’s passion that you all inherited,” I suggested. “It just shows up differently for each of you.”
