Rachel Deering - Hex Life

TABLE OF CONTENTS

ALSO AVAILABLE FROM TITAN BOOKS

Dark Cities: All-New Masterpieces of Urban Terror

Dead Letters: An Anthology of the Undelivered,

the Missing, the Returned

Exit Wounds

Invisible Blood

New Fears

New Fears 2

Phantoms: Haunting Tales from the

Masters of the Genre

Rogues

Wastelands: Stories of the Apocalypse

Wastelands 2: More Stories of the Apocalypse

Wastelands: The New Apocalypse

WICKED NEW TALES
OF WITCHERY

EDITED BY CHRISTOPHER GOLDEN
AND RACHEL AUTUMN DEERING

TITAN BOOKS

Hex Life

Hardback edition ISBN: 9781789090345

Electronic edition ISBN: 9781789090352

Published by Titan Books

A division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd

144 Southwark Street, London SE1 0UP

www.titanbooks.com

First hardback edition: October 2019

2 4 6 8 10 9 7 5 3 1

This is a work of fiction. Names, places and incidents are either products of the authors imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead (except for satirical purposes), is entirely coincidental.

An Invitation to a Burning 2019 Kat Howard

Widows Walk 2019 Angela Slatter

Black Magic Momma: An Otherworld Story 2019 Kelley Armstrong

The Night Nurse 2019 Sarah Langan

The Memories of Trees 2019 Mary SanGiovanni

Home: A Morganville Vampires Story 2019 Rachel Caine

The Deer Wife 2019 Jennifer McMahon

The Dancer 2019 Kristin Dearborn

Bless Your Heart 2019 Hillary Monahan

The Debt 2019 Ania Ahlborn

Toil & Trouble: A Dark-Hunter Hellchaser Story 2019 Sherrilyn Kenyon & Madaug Kenyon

Last Stop on Route Nine 2019 Tananarive Due

Where Relics Go to Dream and Die 2019 Rachel Autumn Deering

This Skin 2019 Amber Benson

Haint Me Too 2019 Chesya Burke

The Nekrolog 2019 Helen Marshall

Gold Among the Black 2019 Alma Katsu

How to Become a Witch-Queen 2019 Theodora Goss

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

AN INVITATION TO A BURNING

Kat Howard

Merrinvale was a town that needed witches. Most places dowitches, after all, are the ones who make sure the small and large magics work. Things like the rising of bread and the turning of the seasons and safe passage through birth and death, all the work of witches. Some places accept this, and so they welcome their witches the same as they welcome any others and life moves in harmony.

Merrinvale was not one such place.

Merrinvale burned its witches, when it found them.

Most people, if asked, would swear that a witch burning hadnt happened in years, if it ever had at all; that it was only a story told to frighten people into proper behavior. But when the fog came in, evening thick, it smelled of burning wood and worse things besides. The Merrinvale hills echoed with screams. And they called the fog the Witches Breath.

The fact that Merrinvale did not want its witches, much less accept them, did nothing to change the need of the place for them. And there were, as there always are, those who made sure the necessary things were done. But magic, when ignored, when forbidden, twists upon itself and becomes strange. Witches, when forbidden, seek this strangeness, and wrap themselves in its transformations.

* * *

They burn witches, you know. Ronald spat at the ground near where Sage sat.

So Ive heard, she said, not looking up from the rabbit she was untangling from a poorly cast trap of knotted twine. Her hands did not shake as she did so, and her face didnt tense in fear, and Sage was proud of both things. Ronald was large, and Ronald was always angry, and Sage was not the first woman he had taken against. At least one of the others, Lilah, quiet and lovely, had disappeared, never to be seen again. Its a good thing Im not one, then.

You could be, Ronald said. And if you did burn, thats what everyone would think. Just another witch, gone and good riddance.

Sage lifted her hands from the ground, and watched as the rabbit, now free, hopped away and out of sight. She curved her fingers into claws. And if I were a witch, and here you were alone with me, with no matches in sight, what do you think would happen then?

Ronald spat again, his eyes pinched and mean. But he said nothing else and he stepped back, away from the path where Sage walked.

She kept her back straight and her head up, but the taste of fear, bile and slime, coated her mouth.

* * *

Sage found the note on her front porch. Black letters on a thick white cardone she nearly didnt see, as a pile of maple leaves, rust-edged red, had heaped itself against her door overnight. But the corner of the paper showed through, and she set the information written on it to memory.

It was an invitation to a burning.

* * *

Sage arrived at the indicated address at precisely the correct time. She couldnt remember ever seeing the house before, which would not have been strange had she not lived in Merrinvale her entire life. Even now, the place looked abandoned, the windows all dark. Her hand went to her pocket, to remind herself that she had brought what was required.

The door whispered open. Sage stepped inside.

The cool violet air of the evening followed her into the house. Inside, the house no longer looked decrepit and empty. Soft candles lit floors of elegantly worn wood. The air smelled of the warm sweetness of beeswax and the sharp green of herbs. And something else, underneath. Something that flared her nostrils and raced her heart.

Smoke.

Nothing stopped her, and so Sage walked farther in.

At the first branch of the hall, a woman draped in veils sat on a stormcloud-grey velvet chair. She held her hands out, gloved palms up, and Sage set hers on top of them. The acrid scent of eucalyptus sliced through the warmth of the air, and Sage gasped, yanking her hands up and away.

The woman in the chair did not speak or move. Sage squared her shoulders, and set her hands upon the womans again. The hands beneath hers were cold, the deep cold of iron in winter, and her joints ached from the contact. The ache passed into burning. The woman tightened her hands around Sages and pulled her down, so close her veils whispered against Sages skin.

Remember what it is the fire burns. Remember why youve come. Remember what it is to have power.

Her voice was familiar. Not so much that Sage could put a name to it, but enough to know they had said their hellos in passing on the sidewalk, or while picking groceries. It could have been a shock, but it was instead a comfort: here was another, like her, quiet and unseen and powerful all the same.

The other woman let go of Sages hands, and raised a gloved finger to her lips, silencing any questions. Sage waited a moment, but the woman was so still it was as if she stood next to a statue. Sage continued on.