I spun just in time to see her staring down at the piles of remains in horror. She stepped over the gore from the one I’d torn in half, and I couldn’t decide if she was approaching me or moving away—putting distance between us.
The last werewolf had a knife in its chest, but it pushed to its feet and lunged for Willow, anyway. I closed the distance between us quickly, grabbing it out of midair by its throat and tearing it out. Willow’s arms were covered in even more blood by the time I dropped it to the ground. I lifted a hand to wipe the creature’s blood from the side of my face.
“Gray,” she murmured as I narrowed my rage-filled stare on her. I adjusted my suit, taking another step toward her as she backed away slowly.
“What. Were. You. Thinking?” I asked, enunciating the words slowly. I extended a hand, touching the wounds on her cheek.
“I…” She trailed off, and for once, she seemed to not have any words.
She pulled out of my grip slowly, dropping to her knees and collecting a handful of dirt. She pressed it into the slash marks, letting her magic heal her. I watched as the skin knit itself back together.
Something about her choice to use dirt rather than my blood set me on edge.
“You could have been killed,” I growled, reaching down to take her hand. Guiding her back toward the school, I watched from the corner of my eye as Willow glanced behind her and to the boundary with Salem.
“How many of those things are there?” she asked, looking over her shoulder. Searching for more of them, I realized. A bit of the tension consuming my chest eased.
“I haven’t exactly taken a census,” I said, tucking her into my side. Her steps were slow and measured, as if walking took all the energy from her.
“What are they?” she asked.
I sighed as I scooped her into my arms. She wrapped her arms around my neck, but the movement and contact were far more hesitant. As if she wasn’t sure how to touch me, when she’d never hesitated to put her hands on me in the past.
To torment and tease.
I’d saved her fucking life, and she acted like I was the monster.
“The Cursed,” I said, turning my stare down to those odd, mismatched eyes. She was such a unique conundrum, my witch of two bloodlines.
Someone I had spent a very, very long time waiting for.
“Who cursed them?” Willow asked, swallowing as she held my stare. I leaned forward, running my nose against the side of hers in an effort to soothe her. She was jumpy, jolting back from the contact instead of allowing me to offer her comfort.
“Charlotte Hecate,” I answered, glaring at what remained of the monsters she’d created in her first moments of power. “When she first made her deal with Him, she had no ability to control the magic she suddenly had. There were men from Salem village chasing her through the woods, trying to hunt her down so they could imprison and ultimately hang her. The original Cursed were those men, and I imagine they can sense her blood in you.”
“I never understood how the witch trials even began before Charlotte’s deal,” Willow said, gazing out at the woods as I carried her back to Hollow’s Grove. I hadn’t even arrived in town when Kairos called to inform me that he’d seen Willow race into the woods as if her life depended on it.
“The fear of ignorant men is a powerful thing. Charlotte decided if they were going to kill her for practicing witchcraft even though she was innocent, then she was going to do the very thing they accused her of,” I answered, staring off into the woods as I thought of the way Charlotte had recalled her life experiences. “She made them eat their words and their convictions.”
Willow opened her mouth, preparing to ask the next question that she hoped would distract me. “I—”
“How long do you intend to avoid answering my questions? What were you doing in the woods in the first place, Willow?” I asked, watching as she pinched her eyes closed.
Silence.
“Susannah cornered me in the gardens. She knows what I am, Gray,” she said finally, and everything in me stilled.
Well, that changed things significantly. I didn’t respond to her as we approached the front doors of Hollow’s Grove. I’d ask more when my witchling was safely tucked into my office, with no plants to answer her call.
36
WILLOW
I stepped out of Gray’s bedroom after showering, dressed in the clothes he had fetched from my room for me. I tried not to think about the way he’d found homes for the spare sets in his drawers and his closet, hinting at the number of nights he expected me to spend here.