Payback's a Witch (The Witches of Thistle Grove #1)

by Lana Harper

The night air gusted against my face, smelling like an absolute of fall; woodsmoke and dying leaves and the faintest bracing hint of future snow. And right below that was the scent of Thistle Grove magic, which I’ve never come across anywhere else. Spicy and earthy, as if the lingering ghost of all the incense burned by three hundred years of witches had never quite blown away. A perpetual Halloween smell, the kind that gave you the good-creepy sort of tingles.

“Let it be known that if I hadn’t already decided that the Prince of Bastards should suffer a thousand hells,” she said, with a surprising gentleness at odds with the biting words, “this would have been the exact moment I knew I wanted him to burn.”

“Sparklepony?” I asked, barely managing not to laugh. “Like a unicorn, but worse,” Talia replied with an exaggerated shudder. “Unwilling to impale even the deserving with one’s head.”

Talia’s gray eyes narrowed, gaze intensifying until I could almost feel its weight alighting on me like some tangible, predatory force. Something with talons, and a very wide wingspan.

“You know what, fuck it.” I slammed my hands flat on the table, my fingers flexing. “I’m in, witches. Let’s run amok.”

She looked like a daughter of Lilith, the kind of succubus you’d want creeping into your bedroom at the dark of the moon. And she smiled at me like a secret, the slightest curve to the corners of her mouth.

“Next time, I’ll have to show you the Wormwood Suite. It is, I assure you, peak Avramov.” “Who says there’ll be a next time?” “Your cheeks do, Harlow.” She slid her fingers down the shorter side of my bob before tucking it behind my ear. “And so do I.”

There was something uniquely magical about sleeping cozied up with a best friend, a primal sense of safety and contentment that couldn’t really be explained.

“No, no, the ghosts live in the trees,” she said, waving my concern away. “Talia. In no way is that better.” “Maybe not, but it’s true,” she said, with a little shrug. “They slip through the tears in the veil, and then they affix to the brightest life they can find—which, here, happens to be the wood itself. Sometimes they stay for a long time, even centuries. Long enough for their inhabitation to distort the tree’s shape.”

Cool :o

And then you stone-cold made out with her, in Ye Woods of Gloom and Devastation, in front of all the ghoulies and everything?” Linden marveled, looking awestruck. “Girl, that’s metal.”

toes. It had been so foolish of me, so short-sighted and selfish and borderline cruel, to think that just because I’d excised this town from my heart, I could live without her, too. How could I have thought that, when Linden Thorn was such an essential part of me, the two of us braided into each other like trees grafted together when they were only saplings?

“You know what Yoda said about trying,” she said, muffled. “It’s for fucking losers.”

“Farewell for now, my beastly girl,” she said, breaking into a smile that was suddenly crowded with too many sharp teeth. “And do be sure to bring those Blackmoore bastards merry hell.”

“Emmy,” she repeated, shifting a little in her seat, gaze never leaving mine. “You look beautiful by moonlight, Emmy Harlow.”

“You, Emmeline Harlow,” she said, eyes locked on mine, “are so extremely fucking beautiful it hurts my soul.”

“Emmy Harlow,” she whispered against my lips. “I want to do everything to you.”

“Sorry, Dread Lady,” I mumbled under my breath, as I pressed my fingers to the mirror’s cool surface. “Please let’s not be too literal about this being your eye.” For a second, there was no give to the glass, no yield at all—then it parted coldly under my skin, like some cross between mercury and frosty Jell-O. And as I reached for one of the remaining tokens, I felt the unmistakable brush of chilly fingers over mine, like a sly little hello or even well done from beyond the veil. Yelping, I drew my hand back as if I’d been stung, the garnet’s light dissolving into my palm. A ghost of laughter echoed in my ears, and I thought I heard an amused whisper of “such beastly girls . . .” trail off at the very edges of my hearing.

I love the dread lady

So if a Harlow heir were to leave, before the communion was passed down . . .” “Then they never got to have it,” I said flatly. “Wow. What an utter crock.” “My sentiments exactly,” my mother murmured into her cup, speaking up for the first time. “What, James? It’s the very worst sort of archaic nonsense to keep it under wraps, and it always has been. And you know it, too.” “It’s tradition,” my father argued. “It’s patriarchal codswallop,” she countered, eyebrows raised over the rim of her mug as she took an emphatic sip. “And it’s as though he didn’t even consider the consequences for his family’s standing. This town, as it is now, wouldn’t even exist without the Harlows—and it would do certain other families a great deal of good to recognize as much.”

She was masked, loosely, as a marigold, in a radiant gold-shot dress with a crown of flowers on her head, her eyes hidden behind a gauzy yellow mask. It was a stunning look against the deep brown of her skin; she looked less like a flower and more like a sun.

She looked like a dark angel, like something that had been born in some shadow paradise.