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The name felt wrong in the air, as though it belonged somewhere dark and buried and had no business being spoken in a warm kitchen beside a fire.
I watched Branwen drink her tea. I got the feeling she was a woman who had spent her life very aware of things in the room that no one else could see.
“But what is he?”
“He’s older than the religion you grew up with and older than the religion my grandmother grew up with. He’s even older than the tradition that the men who recorded him in the grimoire belonged to,” she said.
A knocking noise came from the back of the house. Damian was busy repairing the screen door.
Branwen refilled our cups from a large teapot and continued. “He was written into the grimoire in England in the sixteen-fifties. But there were already old rites for him in the Mediterranean. In the Near East.”
“So he’s some kind of…demon?”
“No,” Branwen said. “He’s not a demon, and he’s not a god, even if the coven treats him as such. He is a force. He’s taken what he’s been fed, and over time, he’s gained quite an appetite for it.”
I tightened my grip around the mug. “And he has an appetite for women?”
“Yes. But that’s not how it started. In the oldest accounts, women sought him.”
I frowned. “Sought him?”
Branwen nodded. “They left offerings. Rings. Flowers. Locks of hair. They prayed for love. For children. For safe births. For husbands who would come home.”
“Did he answer?”
Her expression darkened.
“Something did,” she said. “The records become confused after that. Dreams. Visions. Brides wandering into caves. Women hearing voices from wells and shorelines.”
A chill slid through me.
“And then?”
“And then the coven found him.” She stared into her tea. “Or perhaps he found them.”
We listened to the fire for a moment. Damian raked through a toolbox somewhere at the back of the house.
Branwen glanced at the necklace around my neck. “And now his appetite is stronger than ever. He leaves a husk behind. A husk with enough life left in it to prove what he’s taken.”
The fire gave a low crack. The earthy sweetness of the tea sat on my tongue.
“How has this gone on so long?”
Branwen’s expression hardened. “Because every generation settles for survival.”
I blinked. “What does that mean?”
“It means women escape him.”
The fire spat sparks into the chimney. Outside, dusk had darkened to charcoal.
“They break their oaths. They run. They hide. They rebuild their lives. But very few turn around and hunt the thing that hurt them.” She paused, running her thumb along the edge of the table. “The coven counts on that.”
She looked at me then. “Damian has already helped you purge him. He’s helped you break the bond. But your friends are in danger, Marlowe. And my grandson will never be free as long as the coven exists. Not unless something is done.”
I sipped my tea with the premonition that I was about to be asked to do something that would cost me.
“Yes, that’s true,” I said.
