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'That boy isn’t yours’ The words echoed in her mind, and Agatha resisted the urge to twist them, to make them sound more tender than they had been intended.
Agatha stalked back to the rest of her ramshackle coven, trying to keep the stomp out of her step. How had Rio drawn her back in so easily again? She had spent a century putting herself back together, had stitched herself up piece by piece. She had never intended to see Rio again, she had found the Dark Hold to ensure that she was always two steps ahead.
She’s my scar.
Agatha scoffed. The nerve Rio had to say that aloud. She found herself wishing for Ms Hart even though she had spent the last 24 hours cursing her presence. What she wouldn’t give to trade the harmless lady out for the deathly shadow that stalked behind her, keeping what an irritatingly considerate distance. Agatha hoped that she could feel the anger emanating from her.
Her coven, as she begrudgingly thought of them, was waiting for her back further down the road. They appeared aimless, this at least made Agatha feel a little bit better. Naturally, they would have no idea what to do without her there. Teen turned to her as soon as her footsteps reached them. Sound seemed to move slower on the Road – each noise fighting through thick honey to reach them. Easier for things to creep up without warning. Agatha’s necked prickled at the unwelcome thought.
“You should all get some rest,” She said sharply, trying not to relish too much how the other witches jumped. All except Teen, his blue eyes fixed on hers filled with questions she couldn’t answer even if she wanted to. “The wood...” she paused, part for effect, part to listen to the woods around them, “has had enough of us today.”
“How are we supposed to sleep here?” Alice grumbled kicking at the road beneath her feet.
“Sleep?” Jennifer echoed in disbelief.
“You probably should, with those circles under your eyes.” Agatha said feeling snarky as she sauntered towards the edge of the road.
Teen leapt to her side. He reminded her of a spaniel, the same unwavering eagerness to assist.
“Careful – the road ends-” he pointed to where her toes brushed the unearthly grass that lay outside of the Road she had told them all to stick to.
“Calm down,” she tutted waving a hand as she stepped lightly away from safety. Agatha was slightly miffed when he didn’t leap off the path to follow.
She approached the nearest tree, feeling five pairs of eyes boring into her back.
The tree’s trunk was dark and ashy and unusually cold to the touch. She reached for the branch that hung lowest. The wood was icy under her hands.
“Sorry,” she whispered quiet enough that she knew no one would hear her. From her side she withdrew an iron knife. No witch walked the road without iron, she was just smart enough to have brought hers in a sharp form.
She raised the blade to the branch and watched as it severed the wood from the tree like butter. Agatha collected a few pieces, only one from per tree, not wanting to risk their wrath by taking more. She returned to the coven and tried not to betray her relief at stepping onto solid ground again. Agatha assembled the wood she had collected in a haphazard triangle.
“It doesn’t look like it’ll burn,” Jennifer said doubtfully, crouching beside Agatha’s creation and peering at the unnatural wood.
Agatha gave Alice a look and raised a brow.
With an irritated twist of her mouth at being told what to do, Alice flicked her hand and sent red sparks flying at the wood. Wish a woosh that nearly singed off Jennifer’s eyebrows the wood caught, a bright green flame licking at the branches.
“That’s not natural,” Lillia said quietly. With every time she spoke the older witch was becoming progressively creepy. Agatha’s last psychic had gone a bit like that towards the end too. But it certainly hadn’t happened this quickly.
“Of course it’s not natural,” Agatha said casually – if she pretended that it wasn’t frightening then it wouldn’t be – “this is the Road.”
“How does it burning?” Teen asked, and Agatha nodded appreciatively at the sensible question.
“Road wood,” Rio said silkily. The witches around her stilled and turned, some instinct warning them to not leave their backs exposed. Rio stalked up to the green flames. “It won’t warm us but a hearth will keep other things at bay.”
Rio whispered the last words and looked at the witches one by one. Agatha was sure that Alice shivered beside her.
“And importantly,” Agatha said to break the spell of Rio’s haunting gaze “it never burns out.”
Agatha walked away from the rest of the witches and chose a spot at a bend in the Road where she could more or less see in both directions. She swished her feet around, dry leaves whispering underfoot. Agatha did her best to hide her movements lest she face the humiliation of the others seeing just how hopeless she was without her powers. Right foot, clockwise twice, left food counter clockwise, once. Set your intentions: safety ideally, maybe some sleep if she wanted to push her luck. An old wives trick but Agatha knew there was plenty of truth to the old ways.
“Wait we’re actually supposed to sleep?” Teen asked incredulously, watching as the other witches began to settle, keeping as close to the green light of the fire as possible.
When no one responded to him he sighed and sat cross legged, his head slumping to rest on one hand.
“The road doesn’t want you here and it will do everything in its power to lure you off the path.” She spoke mostly for Teen’s sake, a nagging worry in her mind of waking to find him gone. “So get some sleep, but don’t rest.”
“I’ll keep watch,” Rio said in a sing song voice that implied she would gladly watch the Road swallow the rest of them whole.
Despite the thick carpet of leaves, the Road was anything but comfortable. As much as Agatha looked back on her time in Wanda’s Westview with disdain, a mark of failure on her near immaculate record of success, she did miss the comfort of a house. Even though it had all been false she had made the space her own in a way that carried a permanence she hadn’t wanted enjoyed for a very long time.
Agatha rolled onto her side, her back to the witches around the fire, her eyes fixed on the dark trees ahead. She shivered and tucked her arms around her stomach, closing her eyes against the shapes that danced in the trees. Her eyes could only be playing tricks. She wasn’t going to trust anyone walking the road with her or without, and she wasn’t going to trust the games the wood around them played on her.
Agatha definitely wasn’t going to trust the green witch whose eyes she could still feel at her back. So much for keeping watch. She brought her shoulders up to her ears as she let the tiredness in her bones take her, even if just for a few hours.
***
Rio sat with her back to the nearest tree, her knife in one hand and a piece of wood in the other. She had gradually been shaping it into something that resembled a fox.
The others had been sleeping for an hour maybe two, and she was quickly tiring of her task of ‘keeping watch’.
Rio didn’t often sit still; her particular talents didn’t lend much spare time. Maybe that was why she hadn’t quite mastered whittling. The carving was looking less like a fox and more like a Labrador by the minute.
Maybe she’d make an owl next, carve each of the Salem Seven and leave a trail along the road for the vengeful witches to follow them. That would be a real... hoot. She cracked a smile at the terrible joke and put her blade down to sweep the wood shavings from her lap. She set the fox-dog down beside her and clover bloomed supernaturally fast around it in approval.
It seemed the road didn’t mind her presence. Perhaps it even remembered her.
Rio tilted her head back against the trunk behind her and shut her eyes. She wouldn’t sleep, didn’t really need it beyond enjoying moments of peace and quiet. But she would close her eyes and keep her ears pricked. They would be safe here for a bit, the magic of the Road gathering itself to put them through another three rounds of its games. She would smell the seven before they made themselves known. Their magics had once each been unique, shades of blue, green, yellow, pink coloured by the scent of jasmine and honeysuckle, of thyme and barley. But centuries of decomposing in the wet earth had its impact and there was no perfume strong enough that could mask them now.
She breathed in deep but the only damp she smelt was that of the comforting earth beneath her.
But there was something else there beside the cloying smell of the leaves the littered the Road. There was something sweet and warm, something that smelt like lilac and rich, ripe plumb.
Rio’s eyes snapped open and she snatched up her knife from beside her. Her eyes flickered over their makeshift camp. She’d chosen the tree for the view of the Road it lended her, looking in both directions. She could split her gaze between the coven on one side and Agatha on her own, far from the green flames.
Rio couldn’t see that anything was amiss, and yet that sweet smell remained. Before she could second guess it she climbed to her feet and crept towards Agatha’s curled form.
Rio crouched beside her, the leaves rustling around her bare feet. She placed a hand possessively on Agatha’s shoulder and squeezed but the other woman didn’t so much as stir. Scanning the Road ahead and the trees beyond she ignored the playful shadows that whispered between trunks, eyes peeled for a real threat.
Rio’s attention was drawn back to Agatha by the briefest flash of purple from her outstretched hand.
Rio pressed Agatha’s shoulder harder and gave a little shake.
“Agatha,” she said quietly, trying to keep a hand on the panic in her tone. She brushed Agatha’s hair away from where it had fallen in front of her eyes and noted the crease between her brow and the tension that lived in her jaw, but which seemed more pronounced at that moment.
“Wake up,” Rio hissed, wondering if this was a joke and Agatha was getting back at her for all she had said that evening.
She rolled the woman onto her back and pressed her head to Agatha’s chest. Her heart was thundering and her breaths were racing out in small gasps. Something was wrong. Rio peeled one of Agatha’s eyelids back to see her eyes, they rolled back, pupils pinpricks against steely grey. It would seem even sleeping on the Road held its risks.
Rio gritted her teeth and cursed the witch mother. “I’m really not trying to make you hate me any more than you already do,” Rio muttered as she brushed dirt from her hands and reached for Agatha’s forehead. “I promise I wouldn’t be doing this if I didn’t really think it was necessary.”
Without hesitating further, she pressed her finger tips to Agatha’s warm brow. The touch was electric, and Rio barely had to brush the reserves of her power before she felt herself slipping into Agatha’s mind. Their magics had always complimented each other that way, as much as Agatha was loath to admit it.
Rio’s stomach lurched at the feeling of falling, but before she could smack her forehead against Agatha’s the world went lavender and when it returned she was blinking into warm sunlight.
Her head spun as she realised that she was horizontal and a heavy duvet was pressing down on her chest. When Rio did sleep she despised being so traped. She threw the covers off and slid swiftly to her feet. She started at the creak that hadn’t come from the hardwood floors at her feet. Rio’s eyes snapped around the room and to the eggshell blue door, the source of the creak as it opened. A small boy stood at the door, hanging off the doorknob with a grin on his face that spelt trouble.
Rio tilted her head curiously and took a step forward. The boy let out a squeal of laughter and turned tail, his toddler feet making what Rio had to admit was an adorable noise as he pattered down the corridor outside the bedroom.
Rio didn’t hesitate as she stalked after the child. She knew where this was going and wondered whether Agatha really hadn’t been able to wake up, or if the foolish witch had let herself be trapped in this dreamscape of her own creation.
When Rio stepped out into the hallway she staggered to a halt and looked down at herself and the clothes that had materialised over the travelling clothes she had carefully selected when the Road had called her down. She was back in the suit that she had worn in Westview. She smirked; it was good to know that Agatha had enjoyed her chosen outfit enough to conjure it her. Though it seemed out of place in the cosy home.
The air was sugary and warm with the scent of pancakes. Underneath it all Rio still smelt that familiar lilac and plum, how she had sensed Agatha’s magic in reality she couldn’t be sure.
A mystery for waking hours, first, the child.
He moved miraculously fast for such a short human. Rio thundered after him, her heart seizing with every wobble of his chubby legs. He giggled a ridiculous laugh that Rio turned her nose up to in an effort to avoid acknowledging its cuteness.
He reached the kitchen before she could.
“There you are,” Agatha cooed picking up her son. The boy looked at Rio over Agatha’s shoulder and gave her an impish grin, he opened and closed his fist in a rudimentary wave.
“I was wondering where you were,” Agatha said as she rounded the kitchen counter, the child balanced on her hip, “didn’t want you to be late for work so I sent Nicky to wake you up.”
Rio didn’t respond. She edged towards the wooden counter uncertainly and took one of the three wicker chairs that lined it. Agatha whirled around the kitchen as she plated up breakfast, she flicked her hand this way and that and whirls of purple danced around the kitchen, scrambling eggs and juicing oranges.
“Did you sleep okay?” Agatha asked over her shoulder.
“Uh,” Rio stuttered, watching the pan of scrambled eggs fly over Agatha’s head, “I guess so. Did you?”
“This one has been up since five so I got a head start on work so I can finish earlier this afternoon. Do you think you can leave early today? I was thinking we could take Nicky to the pumpkin patch - I want to take him and I figure it’ll be so busy next week for Halloween,” Agatha continued talking through their weekend plans as she finished preparing breakfast and set it in front of Rio.
Rio didn’t touch her food, instead watching the boy who had been placed beside her eating with his hands. Nicholas turned and gave her a toothy grin, scrambled eggs crumbling in his fist as he reached for her. Rio tried her best to locate any feeling of disgust somewhere within her. She didn’t normally like children. Children were difficult in her line of work.
Rio wondered how to go about rousing Agatha this time. She was sure that, like with sleepwalking, you weren’t supposed to wake someone too violently. But back on the Road they needed to make a move before the Road decided to force them.
Rio must have zoned out as she thought through her options, or perhaps Agatha’s dream had simply skipped ahead as dreams did. They were now stood at the kitchen island and Nicky was nowhere to be found. Agatha was pouring coffee into a purple keep cup.
“Black,” she said pouring to the brim, “for my heart.”
Rio couldn’t resist the grin that tugged at the edges of her mouth.
It would so easy to allow herself to be pulled into Agatha’s dream. What would happen if she stayed, let Agatha explore this life that she clearly wanted, and the role that had so easily been carved out for her. Rio tried not to think about what it meant for Agatha to still, even subconsciously, be wanted in her life.
Rio would never be allowed to escape the fates so easily.
She needed to get Agatha out, and now. The longer they were away the more vulnerable the rest of the coven became.
Rio reached for Agatha’s hand and took it, squeezing tightly.
“I love you,” Rio said firmly.
“I love you too,” Agatha said cheerily, and Rio leant back when the witch started leaning in for a kiss. It was the second time she had done so in one evening and not something Rio wished to make a habit of.
“No,” Rio said firmly, holding Agatha’s shoulders to hold her in place. “I love you,” she said again, “I love you and I have since we left the Road the first time, since before then even... probably.” She swallowed her babbling and forced herself the meet Agatha’s now uncertain eyes. “I should never have left you, I should have found some way around taking Nicky. I would give it all up, every bit of power if it meant I could go back fix things.”
It was the most unbelievable thing Rio could conjure to say in the moment. She didn’t have to look to know that it had worked. All at once, like a light had turned off in the world, the warmth drained from the colours around her. Agatha’s eyes had lost the slightly glazed look they’d had moments earlier and her smile dropped.
With a sickening lurch Rio sunk back into her body. She staggered breathlessly to her feet, her knees aching from however long she had spent crouched at Agatha’s side.
“What were you two doing?” Lilia snapped from where she stood by the hearth. “We should get moving, I have a bad feeling.”
“You and me both,” Alica grumbled as she shouldered her way back into her jacket. They were right. An eerie wind had picked up and it whistled about Rio’s ears whispering to run.
Agatha was already up, her back to Rio as she picked silvery leaves from her hair and brushed dirty from her coat.
“We need to move,” Agatha said a tightness to her voice that was barely there.
Rio fell in behind the group, their pace quick but not quite running. She ground her teeth in frustration when Agatha fell in step behind her.
“So,” Agatha murmured when Rio refused to speak first. She kept her eyes stubbornly on the Road ahead over the heads of the rest of the coven.
Agatha huffed a laugh of frustration. “You can’t refuse to talk after you’ve been so vocal tonight.”
“I’m not refusing to talk,” Rio shrugged.
“Thank you for pulling me out, I don’t know if I would have left on my own,” Agatha admitted begrudgingly.
“I’ll always have your back.” Rio shrugged.
“Bad things happen when you have my back.” It was matter of fact but it still heart to hear.
They walked in silence for a bit and Rio noted gratefully that the wind’s urgency had died down since they had begun moving.
“Why did you tell me all that... in the dream?” Agatha asked casually.
Rio chewed her lip before answering and tried to ignore Agatha’s prying look on her. Didn’t most people forget their dreams? That would make this so much easier.
“I needed to shock you into realising your dream wasn’t real.” Rio said. “So I invented something mad enough I thought it would do the job.”
Agatha hummed thoughtfully and shoved her hands into the pockets of her navy coat. She took a step closer to Rio so their arms were just brushing. “Then that’s all it was.”
“Yup,” Rio nodded folding her arms across her chest to stop her hands reaching anywhere they weren’t supposed to.
“You’ve never lied to me, don’t start now.”
Rio snapped her head towards the other witch in a panic her feet rooted to the ground suddenly.
“Calm down sweetheart,” Agatha trilled with a wink that made Rio’s black heart stutter, “I of all people, know you didn’t mean it.” She cackled, her laughter as charming as witch bells as she left Rio behind.
She waited there for a while, Rio’s mind needing some distance, lest she act in ways she
would surely come to regret.
Maybe answering the Road’s call had been foolish. At the time she had relished the thought of taunting Agatha just a little more before the Seven caught up with her. But it was Agatha who had carried Rio out of the Road those centuries ago. Rio maybe was damned by her fate now but she’d at least make sure Agatha wasn’t.
She shook her head to clear her disastrous thoughts and hurried after her coven and was surprised to find herself hoping they didn’t end up like the last one. If only there was more she could do to prepare for what was ahead.