creepy hollow 05.5 - scarlett (8 page)

“Here it is,” Tilda announced, returning with a bundle of black smoke in her arms. “Try it on.”

Beth didn’t need to be told twice. She stood behind the wardrobe door and stripped her warm winter clothing off. After stepping into the dress and pulling it up, she looked into the mirror and—“Okay, why is mine so much more revealing than yours?” she demanded. “This neckline is far too low.”

“Because, dear Scarlett, you are stunning and you should show off your magnificent beauty.”

Beth snorted. “I’d hardly call it magnificent. And since when did ‘beauty’ become a synonym for ‘cleavage?’”

“Scarlett,” Tilda admonished. “I don’t know what you see when you look in the mirror, but I doubt you see yourself the way the rest of us do.”

Beth huffed out a sigh. “Well, we can blame siren magic for that.”

“You say that as if it’s a bad thing.”

“Isn’t it?”

“Of course not. Do you need help with the laces?”

“Laces?” Beth felt the back of the dress with one gloved hand. “Oh, terrific. There are laces. This is basically a corset.”

“It’s basically stunning, is what it is.” Tilda stepped around the wardrobe door and reached for the laces. When she’d finished tugging them tight—tighter than Beth felt necessary—she stepped back and said, “What do you think?”

Beth surveyed herself in the mirror. The gloves looked silly; they ended at her wrists and were too puffy to be considered elegant. For a strapless dress like this, she needed slim gloves that reached above her elbows. Satin, or perhaps lace, if she could find lace thick enough to keep her skin from coming into contact with anyone else’s. The dress itself, though … Well, Tilda was right. It was stunning. But it pulled in her waist and pushed up her chest in a way that reminded her of the red dress. The one she’d worn for Jack. In a quiet voice, she said, “I can’t wear this.”

“Why not?”

Because only Jack should see me like this
. Jack, whom she thought of less and less as each day passed. The realization filled her with immense guilt, and this dress only magnified that distressing emotion. “It just … isn’t me.”

Tilda raised an eyebrow. “You’re a siren. You were born for a dress like this.” When Beth didn’t reply, she said, “Don’t you feel beautiful? Don’t you feel like you could conquer the world in this dress?”

Slowly, Beth placed one hand on her hip and tilted her head. She swayed her hips so that the smokey skirt swished around her legs. She turned a little to the side and looked across her shoulder at herself. The thing was … she almost did feel like she could conquer the world in this dress—and she wasn’t sure that was a good thing.

“That’s right, Scar,” Tilda said. “It’s all about confidence. Find it and hold onto it and never let it go.”

“How?” Beth murmured. She’d been searching for confidence her whole life, and it finally felt as though it might be within her grasp.

Tilda’s reflection looked back at her. “I am independent. I am strong. I am
powerful
. Tell yourself that enough times, and you won’t ever believe anything else.”

“Is that how you were brought up? Being told to believe that about yourself?”

“It’s how all witches are brought up.”

Beth met her own gaze in the mirror as Tilda sashayed around the room. “I am independent,” she whispered to herself. “I am strong. I am powerful.”

“Scarlett?”

Beth looked up and found Thoren peering around her bedroom door. Well, it was technically his bedroom door. She still felt bad about forcing him into a storeroom. “Hi,” she said, suddenly wishing she had a shawl to wrap around her shoulders.
No
, she reminded herself. Strong, independent, powerful. She didn’t need to cover herself up.

“Uh …” Thoren stared, apparently having lost his voice or his train of thought—or perhaps both. Beth stared back with as much poise and self-assurance as she could manage.

Across the room, Tilda started giggling. “What happened to your protective charm, little nephew? I thought you were supposed to be immune to Scarlett’s siren ways.”

Clearing his throat, Thoren lifted his arm to show that the charm was still there. “I may be immune to the siren part, but I’m not immune to a lady’s natural beauty.” Tilda laughed even harder at that, doubling over while Scarlett felt her cheeks flush. She couldn’t keep her own grin from pulling at her lips, though.

“I’m, uh, doing deliveries today,” Thoren said, “and I wanted to ask if you’d like to join me, but, uh, I’ll wait outside while you change.” He ducked out and pulled the door shut.

“Oh, yes please!” Beth called after him.

“Who said she’s changing?” Tilda shouted.

“I’m definitely changing,” Beth said, reaching for the laces with her magic and coaxing them undone. “No way am I leaving the mountain in this dress.”

“But it’s a waste of a good dress if no one else ever sees it.” Tilda dropped onto Beth’s bed with a morose expression.

“We can think about letting the dress out of the mountain another time, okay?”

“Mm hmm.”

“Hey, aren’t you supposed to be at your assessment now?” Beth asked as she stepped out of the dress and picked up her warmer clothes.

“Soon.”

“Will you be gone long?”

“Only a few hours. There isn’t much left for me to be tested on. I should be ready for the next Change Ceremony.”

“Oh, should I rather stay here and wait for you if you won’t be gone long?”

“No, go with Thoren. It’ll be fun for you to see some other parts of this world. Besides, Malena and Sorena are cooking up something super smelly in the workshop, so you probably don’t want to be anywhere around here for the next few hours.”

“I thought I smelled something unpleasant after breakfast.” Beth pulled on her boots, wrapped a scarf around her neck, and closed the wardrobe door. “Okay, I’m ready to go.”

She opened the bedroom door and found Malena storming toward her. No, storming toward Tilda, she realized in relief. “The High Tester just contacted me,” Malena said to Tilda. “You’re late.”

“But I’m only supposed to be there in ten minutes.”

“No, Tilda,” Malena exclaimed, before launching into a string of words Beth couldn’t understand.

Thoren stepped closer to her and said, “Ready to go?”

“Definitely.” Malena was intimidating enough on a normal day. With fury rippling through her, she was positively terrifying.

The words echoed along the tunnels as Thoren headed for Malena’s workshop. “Your language is so beautiful,” Beth said, “even when spoken in anger. I wish I could speak it.”

“I may not be able to grant you that wish,” he said as they entered the workshop, “but I can help you understand the language.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. There’s a charm spell for that.”

“Of course there is. There’s a spell for pretty much everything, isn’t there?”

Thoren shrugged and smiled. “Almost. I’ll show you.” He walked to the shelves above Malena’s desk and pulled a box down. He reached inside, then held up a simple leather bracelet almost exactly like the one he wore to protect himself from her influence. Instead of a piece of wood, an off-white shape was attached to the leather. Bone or ivory, perhaps.

“Is this the way all your spells work?”

“All the charm spells, yes.” He frowned. “Didn’t Tilda tell you about them?”

“No.”

“It needs to be something that can hold onto magical energy. Wood, ivory, a stone, a tooth. Something like that. This is a piece of pixie bone. The charm needs to be dipped into a specific potion—my mother has a whole box of pre-dipped items so she doesn’t have to make a new one every time—and then you simply transfer energy into the item while saying the words of whatever spell you want to use.” He wrapped his hand around the bone and spoke three words. The air seemed to ripple around his closed fist for a moment, and Beth assumed that was to do with the release of energy. “Here,” he said, handing it to her.

“Thanks.” The words to the spell had sounded simple enough, so she repeated them as she pushed the leather bracelet onto her wrist.

Thoren, who had just returned the box to the shelf, looked back at her in surprise. “That sounded correct, actually.”

“Would I be able to do this spell? Is it as simple as you made it seem?”

“Yes. You’ve got to make sure you have an excess of energy, though. Wouldn’t want to run out of your own while doing spells.”

“Oh, right.” As he examined the dozens of vials and bottles lined up in rows on Malena’s desk, she added, “So where do I get extra energy from?”

“Uh, other magical beings.” He began packing the bottles into a wooden box so small she doubted it would hold even ten bottles. “I don’t know the rituals because I’m not a witch. You’d have to ask my mother about that. Anyway, can you understand me?” he asked.

“Yes, because you’re—Oh.” Abruptly, she realized he’d been speaking a different language, and yet somehow, as impossible as it seemed, she could understand it. “Yes,” she said with a laugh as she moved to stand beside him. “That’s amazing. Why didn’t Tilda give me a charm like this? It would be so much easier than all of you having to speak English around me.”

“We don’t mind speaking English. We use it for most business dealings.”

“Wait, are you putting
all
these bottles inside that box? How are they … Of course,” she said, knowing the answer before she’d even finished her question. “Magic. It somehow makes extra space inside the box.”

“Something like that.”

“So where are we going for these deliveries?”

“Uh, let’s see.” He closed the lid and wiped his hand across the top. Silvery words rose from the depths of the woods and glowed upon the surface. Places, potion names, numbers. “We’re stopping at two stores near the Pearl Strait, then we have a large delivery for the head healer at the Unseelie Court, then we’ll stop at a store operating in the non-magic realm in Grimstad, Norway, and last on the list is Creepy Hollow, where we have one personal delivery and one store delivery.”

“Ooh, the Unseelie Court? How exciting. Creepy Hollow sounds ominous, though.”

“It can be.” Thoren placed the box into a leather satchel, then opened one of the desk drawers and removed a black candle. “You might wind up with your heart ripped out by some terrifying magical beast.” Beth blinked, unsure whether to believe Thoren. He lit the candle with a snap of his fingers. The resulting flame was a brilliant white. He looked at her over the top of the flame. “Just kidding. I’ll be there to rescue you if something like that happens.”

“How comforting,” Beth said, wondering if she ought to stay at the mountain after all. She didn’t get the chance to change her mind, though, because Thoren took her hand, held the candle up between the two of them, and with a blinding white flash, everything vanished.

CHAPTER TEN

Traveling by candle was a stranger feeling than traveling with the enchanted ring Beth’s mother had given her. Her skin burned as she fell through bright white nothingness, as if the flame itself wrapped around her. The moment she felt ground beneath her feet once more, the discomfort vanished. The periphery of her vision filled with orange-pink sunset skies on her right and a rock face rising steeply on her left. She blinked at the black candle Thoren still held up between them, now an inch or so shorter than it had been. “Wow. That was … different.”

Thoren let go of her hand and put the candle away. “Sorry, it’s difficult to be exact when traveling long distances. We’ll need to walk a half mile or so to get to our first stop.”

Beth stared up at the pearlescent rocks shimmering in the afternoon light, then out to the narrow stretch of sea on her right and the cliffs on the other side of the water. “That’s okay,” she murmured. “I don’t mind walking past this.”

They ended up on a pier beside a bay where a large community of fae lived on boats. The first delivery went to one of the makeshift stalls set up on the pier itself, and the second to an unfriendly old woman on a dilapidated boat who seemed eager to conduct business as quickly as possible before disappearing below deck.

Beth was excited for the third delivery, hoping she’d get to catch a glimpse of the Unseelie Court. She remembered her mother’s tales of the court’s lavish beauty and the vibrant color of the faeries that filled its halls. How thrilling it would be if she could see it all for herself. Sadly, she and Thoren ended up meeting the head healer at a dingy tavern somewhere, which wasn’t nearly as interesting.

The hour or so they spent in Grimstad was odd. Beth felt the difference in the air around her, so dead, so still, so utterly lacking in magic. She thought of Jack and Zoe, and even of her father. She didn’t care that she’d left the man who never loved her, but guilt gnawed at her insides whenever she pictured the two people she’d been closest to for years. The two people she’d simply abandoned. But she wasn’t ready to see them again. She wouldn’t be ready until she knew she’d never hurt them. So she put the thought of them from her mind as white heat blazed around her once more and she and Thoren arrived at their final destination: Creepy Hollow.

Gnarled trees and tangled branches surrounded them as they walked toward a clearing bustling with activity. After pushing their way past leaves that cycled through rainbow colors and climbing over giant mushrooms, they finally joined the crowd of faeries, elves, dwarves and other magical beings going about their daily business. There were open stalls, shop fronts built into trees, and archways that led inside the trees themselves. “I feel like I’m on the set of a movie,” Beth said. “This is just unreal.”

“This is your world now,” Thoren said. “Time to get used to it.”

“So where are these dangerous beasts you were referring to?” Beth asked. “Should I expect one to jump out at me at any minute?”

“They tend to stay away from the clearing. Wander off on your own, though,” he added in a low voice, “and you’re bound to come across something that thinks of you as a tasty treat.”

She shook her head and laughed. There was probably some truth to his words, but she knew he was only trying to scare her. Thoren headed for one of the archways and walked beneath it into the tree. With no idea what to expect, Beth followed—and froze in the doorway with her mouth hanging open. There was a restaurant—an entire restaurant—contained within the circumference of this single tree. Did magic have no limits?