Page 17 of Wretched Thorns

“There’s a girl.” Her grandmother went straight to the point. Her voice was steady, but underneath it Tara heard something that made her heart race. “She visits my dreams. I think you know her, chère. She carries you charm. She keeps finding her way to my kitchen.”

Tara sank onto the couch, her legs suddenly unable to hold her. “Serena. You’ve seen Serena?”

“The charm you gave her, the one I made for you, it created a thread between us. She’s been following that thread, though she doesn’t know it.” A pause.

“Is she alive?” Tara’s voice broke into a sob.

“I think so, but she’s in trouble, Tara. Real trouble. Someone no good has her.”

“Marcus.” The name came out like a curse. “Her ex. But that doesn’t—Grandmère, she was living with wolves. The Voss brothers. How would a human get past three werewolves?”

A long silence on the other end. “He’s no human, chère.”

The words hit like ice water. “What?”

“That man. Marcus, you say? He’s something else. Something old,” Grandmère’s voice went hard. “He practices gray arts and takes what no belong to him.”

Tara couldn’t speak. Couldn’t breathe. All this time, she’d thought Serena was running from an abusive ex-boyfriend. A dangerous man, yes, but a man. Human. Limited. Not a monster.

“Come home,” she said. “Now. Tonight. You friend is running out of time, and I need to show you what I’ve seen.”

“I’m leaving as soon as I hang up.”

“Drive safe, but don’t be slow.”

Tara packed a bag and wasted no time getting on the road. She made the drive in a single hard push, pushing the speed limit the whole way. The sky was dark, and the moon was high by the time she turned onto the dirt road that led to Grandmère’s house. Spanish moss hung from the cypress trees like gray-green ghosts, and the air through her open window smelled like mud, moss, jasmine, and childhood.

Grandmère was waiting on the porch. She looked smaller than Tara remembered, but that happened every time she came back. Time was catching up with her grandmother, though her eyes were still sharp as cut glass and her presence still filled the space around her like she was twice her physical size.

“You made good time,” she said as Tara climbed out of the car.

“You scared me.” Tara took the porch steps two at a time. “And the drive down gave me far too much time to just think. Please. I need to know what you know. How do you know Marcus isn’t human?”

“Inside,” she turned toward the door. “I need to show you something first.”

The kitchen was exactly as Tara remembered it. Blue walls faded to winter-sky pale. Herbs hanging from the beams. The old wooden table where she’d learned to filet fish, shell peas, throw bones and read the patterns of fate. Grandmère’s kitchen had always been the center of the world to her, the one place where impossible things made sense.

But something was different today. In the center of the table sat a bowl of water, dark and still. Beside it, a candle burned with a flame that didn’t flicker despite the breeze from the open window. Scattered around both was a pattern of bones she didn’t recognize.

“Sit,” her grandmother said. “And watch.”

Tara sat in her usual chair, the one with her initials scratched into the arm, and watched her grandmother move to the table. She didn’t pour coffee. Didn’t offer food. Just stood over the bowl of water with her eyes half-closed, her lips moving in words Tara couldn’t hear.

The water began to ripple. Not from movement. Not from vibration. It rippled from within, as if something was stirring beneath the surface.

“The charm you gave your friend created a thread between us,” she said, her voice distant. “She’s been following that thread in her dreams, finding her way to my kitchen. At first, just glimpses. A face in the corner of my eye. But then more. And more. Then earlier today, I got a strong enough trace for a scry, but I can ‘t hold it. It comes and goes.”

The water stilled.

“Look, it's here now.”

And on its surface, an image. A room. Dark wood walls, floor to ceiling. No windows. A massive bed scattered with what looked like flower petals — pale in the gloom of the room. A figure huddled on the petals, wrists bound, face hidden by shadows.

Serena.

“She doesn’t know what she is,” Tara’s grandmother murmured. “Doesn’t know what she can do. But she’s finding her way to me anyway.”

“What do you mean, what she is?” Tara’s voice came out hoarse.