“Hush, hush,” Ian said. He started shouting for the others, but they couldn’t come to him. How could the air help her? Or a flame, or the earth? Cleo started to chuckle.
“I am so tired,” she told him. Ian’s shouts grew more frantic, and more distant. Dimly she was aware she had been wrong, he wasn’t calling for the others. She cupped his face, leaving a bloody handprint on his cheek. He had been calling for her woods to help. He was so sweet. Dumb about his words, but sweet.
“Worth it,” she said. Her hand fell back to her chest and landed on something. Cleo froze in terror, then realized what her hand landed on was soft. Soft, like moss.
Her woods had answered Ian. The moss crept over her, filling Cleo’s wounds. Red gushed through in beat with the rhythm of the woods, but the moss kept steady pressure. Pressure, and energy. The sweet, clean energy of the green space pulsed into her wounds and Cleo gasped. Ian kept trying to gently brush it off. Cleo didn’t have the strength to tell him to trust it, trust her woods, to knock it off. He was so afraid, and Cleo couldn’t help him.
Ian hunched over her, growling at something approaching them from behind. His growl is a constant, subsonic alarm Cleo heard only because she was pressed so tightly to his chest. She almost missed the whisper, a woman’s voice.
“You must let her go,” the woman said. It echoed weirdly under the song of the woods. “The Wood will help her.”
“Who the fuck are you,” Ian demanded.
Cleo heard the smile in the woman’s voice. “Her sister.” Then the voice was gone, along with the pressure of Ian’s arms.
He laid her gently on the ground, and the moss rushed in, covering her. It stroked the planes of her face, and gently petted her arms and legs with a silky slide of green. Cleo opened her mouth, and the green space rushed in, filling her lungs. Ian kept one hot hand on her, finding the places between the wounds. He kept her tethered when she would’ve floated away.
She slept then, covered in green, surrounded by her green space. Ian would keep watch. She was safe.
Before she drifted away, a thought escaped her. “I think I kind of love you,” she told Ian.
He gave a short bark of surprised laughter. “Get us out of here first, and I’ll tell you that I definitely love you.”
She slept wrapped in the warmth of her wood and Ian’s words.
Chapter 27: Epilogue
Six months later…
The moon streamed over Cleo and her coven. Cleo stood in front of the cauldron, hesitating. Opal had given them a steady stream of cursed objects from her store, and this time it was a stupid mug. She’d wrapped it in silk, and contemplated just how bad it would be to throw it in the flames instead of the cauldron.
“Can we just get this over with?” Sophie asked. She hadn’t liked this object either.
Mari flicked her fingers, and the flames leapt a few inches higher. She smirked, pleased with herself. Cleo caught Mari’s eye and raised a questioning eyebrow. Mari shrugged and flicked her fingers again, laughing this time.
Cleo unwrapped the mug from the silk. It was a tacky souvenir mug of a pale woman’s torso, the breasts pointed, the nipples a shocking shade of red. The handle was a spindly arm on a curved hip, the fingernails the same color of the nipples. It was the dumbest mug Cleo had ever seen.
The curse was equally dumb, although Cleo had to give the caster points for creativity. When men drank from the mug, it caused their pubic hair to fall off in clumps. Cleo wasn’t sure how Opal knew the effects, and hadn’t inquired too closely.
She’d just dumped the mug into the cauldron when the buzzing of the saw ripped through the air. Ian had known about their meeting tonight. Anger flared in Cleo. She closed her eyes and breathed out heavily from her nose. When she opened her eyes, she saw Grant smiling at her.
“Get that man to shut up, would you?” Sophie asked. “I want to kill this thing and start game night.” Curse-free, Cleo had found out that she loved strategy games. Hugely complicated strategy games with stupidly long rule books. Mari had a friend of a friend who produced games, and they’d started playing regularly at Mari’s apartment. Games were good, they distracted Cleo from the novelty of being normal.
“I’ll get that man to shut up,” Cleo muttered, “and I’ll get him to shut up forever.” Grant sat on a log, settling in to wait. Sophie sighed and sat next to Grant. They started to chat in low voices about a new cooking blogger they had very strong opinions about.
Ian was in his workshop, ear phones tucked into his ears. He was frowning at an enormous plank of wood that laid on top of one of his workshop tables. The air was thick with the scent of freshly cut wood.
Cleo didn’t bother knocking, and Ian ignored her as she moved into his line of vision. There would be none of that. She was almost in arms reach when his thick arm shot out and snagged her across the waist. He dragged her to his side, shifter-quick, and ran his nose up the side of her neck.
Cleo tried to hold on to her anger, but it dissipated as desire rolled through her. “Did I interrupt you?” Ian asked, the innocence in his voice betrayed by the laughter in his eyes. “Did I drag you away from your friends and your Very Important Curse Breaking?”
“Evil boob mugs need to be banished to multiple pits of hell,” she gasped out as his thumb moved across her nipple. She felt him smile against her throat.
“For the good of humanity,” Ian said solemnly, then licked a line to her ear. Cleo shuddered in response and gripped his shoulders. He’d been working
