Chapter and Curse Read online

  I was weirdly glad that at least I had my cat for company. But I had to get out of here. Was there even enough air? It looked like it was vegetable, whatever was surrounding the cottage.

  I calmed myself and then cast a spell to open a locked door. Nothing. I heard a scraping noise and realized it was the thorns scratching the window pane as the foliage wrapped tighter around my cottage. I could think of no spell that would break this curse, and I suspected my magic wasn’t strong enough on its own.

  There was only one person I could think of to call.

  “You’re up bright and early, Quinn,” Kathleen said when she answered the phone. Then, as I babbled, she said, “Slowly, now. What’s wrong?”

  I told her about my problem, and she sounded quite surprised, as well she might. “You say there’re thorns and branches all around your cottage?”

  “I think they’re thorns. It’s hard to tell because I’m seeing them from the inside, and it’s pitch black in here because there’s no light coming in the windows. I can only see from the lights I’m turning on inside the house. They’re moving. I think wrapping the cottage tighter and tighter.”

  “What have you been doing? Has somebody put a curse on you?”

  “The only other witch I know is you. Have you put a curse on me?”

  “Of course, I haven’t.”

  “I’m kind of panicking here. I can’t get out.” And I didn’t want to die by being squeezed to death by tree branches.

  “Hang on a minute. I’ll drive right over.”

  “Hurry.”

  Not knowing what else to do, I put coffee on. Even in this dire situation with my cottage wrapped around with branches and thorns, my body still craved caffeine. Probably even more so. While that was brewing, I ran upstairs to get dressed. Assuming that Kathleen could somehow break through, I didn’t want her to find me in my nightclothes. I put on jeans and a T-shirt. I found a long-sleeved denim shirt. If worse came to worst and I had to hack my way out of here, I wanted to have sturdy clothing on.

  I was drinking my first cup of coffee, staring in absolute bewilderment at the impenetrable greenery, when someone shouted my name. It wasn’t Kathleen; it was a man. “Quinn? Are you all right?”

  “Lochlan.” He must have seen whatever was going on outside from the castle. I shouted that I was okay but that I couldn’t get out.

  “I’m not surprised. Your cottage is wrapped around in thick branches and thorns.”

  “How thick are they?”

  “Hard to tell,” he shouted back.

  Then I spied the yew branch still sitting on the mantel above the fireplace. No! “Lochlan?” I shouted. “Does it look like yew?”

  “Now you mention it, it does.”

  I felt incredibly foolish, but I explained to him how I’d brought a piece of the yew tree home, and I suspected it had magical qualities.

  “That may have been a mistake,” he said. Understatement of the century.

  “I’ve got a friend coming. Why don’t you go on home, and I’ll call you if I need you.”

  “I can get some chainsaws going, hire some people to cut you out of there.”

  I heard the sound of breaking glass. It was coming from upstairs. I screamed.

  “Hold on,” Lochlan said. “I’m coming to get you.”

  Chapter 7

  “Thank you,” I said in a trembling voice. I didn’t want him to leave. I didn’t want to be alone here. “I’m getting a little panicky.”

  He didn’t say anything else, but I heard sounds from outside, though they were muffled by the thick branches and vines and thorns covering my windows. “What’s going on?” I called out.

  “Give me a minute.” It was Lochlan’s voice again, and he sounded out of breath. When had I ever heard him out of breath?

  He was using some kind of tool, and I could tell that he was hacking away at the branches in front of my kitchen door. Oh, thank goodness. I’d always read that vampires had superhuman powers, and it sounded like those rumors were true.

  I heard grunting and then tearing and crashing, and then suddenly my kitchen door flew open and Lochlan came inside. He looked a mess, and his normally meticulous clothes were covered in brambles and burrs. There were scratches on his hands and face. I went toward him. “Are you okay?”

  I felt so grateful that he’d torn through some magical force to get to me. I felt like sleeping beauty. If he kissed me, what would happen? But instead of a delicate, young maiden and a handsome prince, we were a middle-aged witch and a vampire. I suspected the fairy tale would have a very different ending.

  Anyway, I didn’t think either of us had kissing on our minds. “Let’s get you out of here,” he said. I heartily agreed, but when we turned back, the door was once again shut and stuck fast.

  Lochlan threw his weight against it, but it didn’t budge. “I can’t believe this. What happened? That is some powerful magic.”

  Tell me about it. I shook my head, as puzzled as he was. “I am not this powerful.”

  I went into the front room and retrieved the yew branch. “There were tree surgeons pruning the big tree behind the graveyard. I brought a branch home.”

  He looked at me, astonished. “You mean the great magic yew that has trapped evil for centuries?”

  How many ancient yews were there in the town that had magical powers? “Yes. That yew.”

  “Are you crazy, woman?”

  “You’re stuck in here with me. I don’t think I’m the only crazy one.”

  Our argument might have escalated, but Cerridwen was so excited to see Lochlan that he had to bend and pick her up. Already I noticed his scratches and wounds were healing. If it weren’t for the mess all over his clothes, you’d never know he’d torn through an impenetrable forest to get to me.

  I didn’t know what to do with a vampire trapped in my cottage. “Do you want some coffee?”

  He looked at me and shook his head. No doubt coffee was not his beverage of choice. I couldn’t offer him anything he wanted. And I very much hoped he’d eaten before he arrived here.

  My phone rang again. It was Kathleen. “I’ve never seen anything like it,” she said when I answered. “I’ve snapped a photograph for you. It’s as though a tree has grown up all around your cottage. You wouldn’t know there was a cottage there.”

  I told her about the yew tree. “I’m stumped. Absolutely stumped.” Then she laughed, weakly. “Stumped. I made a pun.” Not exactly the time for jokes. “Can you find a strong spell? Is there some way you can get me out?”

  “I’ve called Pendress Kennedy. If anyone has the power to reverse this spell, it’s her.”

  I didn’t love the idea of Pendress Kennedy being called in to save me. She was the head of my coven, very powerful, and I didn’t think she liked me. I hadn’t warmed to her either. Still, at this point, I would welcome my worst enemy if they could get me out of here.

  I’d never been claustrophobic, but feeling that I was in the middle of a tree trunk was giving me anxiety, especially as the branches were still scraping as they wrapped the cottage tighter and tighter.

  Cerridwen was equally unhappy. She kept glaring at me from Lochlan’s shoulder.

  “Quinn?” The voice sounded far away, but I suspected it was just outside the back door.

  “Kathleen?”

  “I’ve got Pendress with me.” And then, “What?” she said in a softer voice, as though her head were turned away from me. “Oh, right. Pendress says we should call you. Hang on.”

  I picked up my cell phone, and it rang. It was Kathleen. “Pendress wants to know exactly what you were doing when you cast the spell.”

  “It was an accident. I brought home a branch of the yew tree by the graveyard. Everything was fine when I went to bed. This morning, I woke up feeling like I was inside the world’s most terrifying treehouse.”

  I heard a scuffle and then the clear tones of Pendress’s voice on the phone. “Quinn, you must be very precise.”

  “I am.
It’s exactly like I told Kathleen. I went to bed, and I woke up like this. It must be because I brought home a piece of that yew.”

  “Foolish thing to have done,” she commented. “But that shouldn’t have been enough. This is a challenge, even for me.”

  I didn’t like her very much, but I really believed she could help me. “Can you get me out?”

  “No. I’ll try to find my way in. We might have better luck working at this from the inside out.”

  “But—” She was already gone.

  Lochlan was standing, stroking Cerridwen under the chin, and she finally looked like she was relaxing. Unlike me. He looked at me. “Was that Pendress Kennedy?”

  I nodded. “Do you think she can get us out of here?”

  “She has great power.”

  I heard a sound like what I’d experienced driving on the narrowest of Irish roads when the bushes hit the car from either side. And then a thump. It came from the living room. I rushed in, Lochlan right behind me. Pendress was standing there, her hand on Kathleen’s wrist. There’s an English expression that says she looked like she’d gone through a hedge backward. I now had a perfect visual of what that looked like. Burrs and thorns and bits of greenery covered them both. Pendress’s beautiful, flowing hair looked like a bird’s nest. And like a perfect little bird’s egg, there was a red yew berry hanging precariously. Kathleen was no better. Her glasses hung askew, and her polyester skirt was so badly snagged, I doubted she’d ever be able to wear it again. Not that that was our biggest problem right now.

  Pendress let go of Kathleen and said, “Right.” Then she noticed Lochlan. “And what’s he doing here?”

  “He was trying to help,” I told them. And before they got any ideas about why a gorgeous dude was in my house so early in the morning, I pointed out the greenery all over his clothes. “He just got here too.”

  Pendress looked at Lochlan, and her expression was wary, not threatened so much as competitive. Did these two have some rivalry about who was the more powerful of the two? Well, if they worked together and got us out of here, that would be grand, as the Irish liked to say.

  Pendress straightened up and ran her hands through her tangled hair. The berry tumbled to the ground. “Right. Now, let’s walk you through exactly what you did before you manifested this yew jungle around your cottage.”

  I didn’t think I’d manifested anything. I explained one more time that I’d picked up the yew branch and brought it home, thinking I might fashion a divining rod out of it.

  “While I appreciate your attempt to use natural objects and bend them to your will,” she said somewhat sarcastically, “perhaps pilfering from one of the most magical trees in Ireland wasn’t your best decision.” She glared at me. “But I think we can all agree it wasn’t your worst.”

  Ouch. Would I ever live down the way I’d interfered with death? And now that I glanced around with every window and covering thick and black, I felt as though I were personally inside a grave. Worse, I seemed to have brought three magical creatures and a magical cat into my cavern of doom.

  Pendress shook herself and mumbled something, and before my eyes she transformed back into her Glinda the Good Witch persona. She didn’t bother with poor Kathleen, however, who still looked like she’d lost an argument with a hedge trimmer.

  “All right. Walk me through everything you did before this happened.”

  I wouldn’t repeat how I’d gone to bed and woken up in utter darkness. I had made that point. I had to go back. I glanced around the living room and gasped. “Oh.”

  Everyone followed my startled gaze, and there was that book of shadows sitting in the middle of the table where I’d left it.

  Pendress reached it first. She picked it up and opened it. “Where did you get this?” she asked me sharply.

  “It was in Billy O’Donnell’s books. His daughter, Brenda, dropped them off for me to sell at the shop. It’s so old, I thought it must be valuable. So I went to return the book and…” Right. They didn’t know about Brenda.

  I took a deep breath and quickly told them about Brenda’s death last night. “I brought the old grimoire and a few valuable books home with me for safekeeping.”

  “So you brought the book of spells here?”

  Again with the tone. How was I supposed to know it would cause disaster? “Yes. I brought it here. I didn’t know what else to do with it. Lochlan has a friend who’s an antiquarian book expert. I was going to ask him if he could value it and then wait until we found out who Brenda O’Donnell’s heir is. Or, if it had no value, I would probably just have kept it. It’s a beautiful thing. Quite the curiosity.”

  Pendress was scanning it. “Good goddess. It’s more than that. Did you recite any of these spells?”

  Kathleen jumped, surprisingly, to my defense. “She couldn’t have. Quinn doesn’t have the Gaelic.”

  Pendress kept flipping, and I felt guilty and wretched. And worst of all foolish. In a small voice, I admitted that I had found one spell in middle English. “I only sounded out the words. It didn’t occur to me I was casting a spell.”

  And then they all gave me that look that I dreaded. The one that needs no interpretation. The one that shouts loud and clear, “How could you be so stupid?”

  They didn’t have to say it aloud, because I was asking it of myself.

  “Show me exactly which spell it was.” Pendress’s silver bracelets tinkled together as she pushed the book at me. “Quickly. The spell is only winding tighter and tighter. If we’re ever to get out of here, we must act quickly.” As though to underline the urgency, another window broke upstairs.

  And that was really helping me focus and find the right page. My hands were trembling so much that finally Lochlan took the book and held it for me. This meant that Cerridwen had to crawl up his chest and hang herself around the back of his neck. Even she, from that position, could glare at me like, if she ever got out of here, she would find a new witch. A familiar was associated with the craft of her witch. If I let her down, I was sure she’d have plenty of better offers.

  I didn’t want to lose Cerridwen. I didn’t want to lose this little cottage. I didn’t want to lose this budding new life that I’d just begun to enjoy. I didn’t want to die by tree strangulation. I took a deep breath in and forced myself to calm down. And then I tried to block out all the blame coming at me and my natural nervousness of being trapped in this tiny cottage. And then I found it. Almost as though the book had obligingly opened for me to the page I wanted. I passed it to Pendress. Kathleen leaned over her shoulder and read the page too.

  Pendress sighed when she finished reading the spell. “Really, Quinn. You should have known better.”

  I thought that had been made abundantly clear. And underlined.

  “Can you reverse it?” Lochlan asked the obvious question.

  “We can but try.”

  Now Pendress was all business. “Quinn, bring out your candles. I will cast a circle.” And then we did something I’d never done before. She told me to read the spell over again out loud. My shock must have shown. I didn’t say, “Are you crazy?” But I felt it all the same.

  “Just do as I tell you,” she snapped. “I’ll explain later.”

  I looked at the window, even blacker if possible than the last time I’d looked. The yew was wrapping itself tighter and tighter around the cottage. The air smelled like a forest and damp earth. Every minute counted. I nodded. Kathleen arranged and lit candles, Pendress cast the circle, and at her signal, I began to read the words of the spell. Honestly, I felt like I was reading my death sentence. My voice was low, and I stumbled over the unfamiliar words.

  I barely got to the end of the first line when Pendress spoke over me. I tried to ignore her musical voice so I could concentrate on the words I was reading, but she was doing something I’d never seen done before. She was reversing the spell while I was reading it. I got through, and I had the sense that maybe the atmosphere was lightening. But I didn’t dare even look u
p from the page. “Again,” Pendress directed. I doggedly read on. And Pendress’s voice continued. I thought she was speaking in Gaelic.

  I got to the end, and then she took the book from my hands and put it in the middle of the circle, and we three witches held hands.

  Already daylight was coming through the remaining branches. And they were falling away with every second. We stood there, hands clasped. Pendress said,

  Here we stand, we magic three

  From this circle of safety we ask of thee

  To free us from this cursed tree

  As we will, so mote it be

  The candles flickered, and sunlight began to enter the room as the branches fell until the windows were clear, and then Pendress nodded. We broke contact, and with a flick of her wrist, she blew out the candles and closed the circle.

  Lochlan hadn’t been part of the circle, obviously, but he’d observed. “That was quite impressive,” he said.

  Pendress gave a superior smirk. I wondered how much extra pizzazz and showmanship she’d added to the ritual for his benefit.

  I didn’t care. She’d managed it; that was all that mattered. I was puzzled though. As I’d recited the words again, I’d made some sense of them. “That wasn’t a curse aimed at wrapping a house in foliage,” I said. “It sounded to me like a spell for bringing a loved one closer.”

  “Between having a piece of that yew inside your cottage and reading anything in that book of shadows, you opened the way for that old witch’s energy to enter this house.”

  “So I could have read anything in there and the effect would have been the same?”

  “Even opening the covers was dangerous. Like the lid of Pandora’s box.”

  I eyed the ancient book the way I’d watch a venomous snake that had me in its sights. “What do I do with the book?”