Page 6 of Kill the Beast
“I just want to talk,” he said, spreading his arms wide. Petalsdrifted from the flowers in the bouquet, scattering at his feet. “I want to apologize for—”
“I willneveraccept an apology from you,” Lyssa said. “I don’t want to talk to you, I don’t want to see you, I don’t want any more of your fucking letters. Do you understand me? You died the moment you left us at that workhouse, as far as I’m concerned.”
“Lyssa, please. I didn’t know what else to do.” Her father took a step forward, and she cocked her gun.
“Don’t think I won’t put a bullet in your heart,” she warned him, and he froze. “If you ever see me here again, you are to leave without speaking to me. Swear it.”
“I… I swear,” he said, defeated.
“Good.” She turned on her heel, whistling to Brandy, and plunged deeper into the park, where the light of the gas lamps didn’t reach, walking as quickly as she could until she got to the stone wall bordering the far edge. It was almost double her height, and engraved with a complete list of the Beast’s victims. Lyssa leaned her back against it and let out a shaky breath, unnerved by how present her past was today. It felt like a warning, somehow—but she wasn’t about to sit out here in the cold, picking it apart at the seams. She hitched her drawstring bag full of letters and newspapers up higher on her shoulder and secured her pistol in its holster.
“Ready to go home, Brandy?” she asked, and the bullmastiff huffed a heavy sigh in response. A pang of worry squeezed Lyssa’s heart. Every trek back into this world aged her beloved friend, and he was already older than any normal dog his size should be, as Dickie had pointed out. She knew she should stop bringing him along, but he hated to be left behind, and her resolve to do the right thing for him always crumbled at his first anxious whine.
Looking over her shoulder to make sure her father hadn’t followed her, she reached into one of the pouches on her belt and pulled out a stick of white chalk. She drew three lines on the stone wall, forming the rough shape of a door, followed by a knob. Thenshe tucked the chalk back into her pouch and knocked. The lines she had drawn began to glow, and the Door swung open.
Lyssa stepped over the threshold, into the forest on the other side.
CHAPTER
THREE
IT WAS GOLDENand warm in the Witch’s Wood, a sleepy summer’s day entirely at odds with the cruel winter still clinging to Warham. Dust motes drifted lazily in the air, and a curious bee bumbled around Lyssa’s head as she stepped through the stone archway that acted as a gate between this place and the world she had just left behind.
Brandy barked happily and bounded ahead, the magic already beginning to leech away the ache of old age from his bones. Lyssa breathed in the heady floral aroma of the woods, sun-drenched and green, and felt her own pains begin to subside—the soreness in her muscles from weeks of tracking and eventually killing the river troll; the ache in her heart that visiting her brother always brought on, the old wound made worse by the confrontation with her father.
By the time she got to the clearing where the witch Ragnhild had built her home, Lyssa felt stronger. Steadier.Shove your pain down deep, where no one can see it, and keep going.
Ragnhild’s cottage was a quaint, thatch-roofed thing, with a deep covered porch and diamond-paned windows propped open to let in the breeze. Behind it, just before the tree line resumed, was the smithy where Lyssa worked and slept whenever she wasn’t out on a job. In the mortal world, she would rather sleep on a city street than next to a forest, but Ragnhild had long ago killed the faeries hiding in the Witch’s Wood—she and Lyssa were of a mind when it came to that—and had deemed it safe.
Lyssa climbed the porch steps, careful not to knock over any of the little ceramic herb pots crowding them, and let herself intothe cottage. Brandy had already made himself comfortable in his straw-stuffed bed by the hearth, and was working on the beef-hide chew he had left behind.
There was a foul odor clinging to the air in the kitchen, sour and bitter and burnt. Ragnhild’s apprentice, Nadia, was crouched on one of the rickety wooden chairs around the table, knees pulled up to her chest, her long black hair hanging around her face as she tied knots in a silk cord for one spell or another. Her face was screwed up in concentration, dark eyes darting between the cord and the open book lying on the table. The pages were covered in scrawled symbols and cramped handwriting in a language Lyssa didn’t know.
“You smell,” Nadia said without looking up.
“So do you.” Lyssa dug into the pocket of her coat and pulled out the chicken bones she had saved, slapping them down on the table.
“What are those?”
“Bones.”
“I knowthat,” Nadia said, with the perfect eye-roll that every teenage girl seemed to master instinctively when they hit puberty. “Why are you giving them to me?”
“To practice with.” Lyssa hefted her drawstring bag up higher on her shoulder.
Nadia looked at her with disgust. “I can’t practice on yourleftovers,” she sneered. “Carving bones is a sacred art form. Your saliva will desecrate it.”
Ragnhild trundled into the room, stray leaves sticking out of the steel-gray thicket of her hair, the soles of her bare feet dark with dirt. The witch’s wizened face split into a smile when she saw Lyssa. “The brute has returned, which means she has coin in her pockets! Ooo! Chicken bones!” She swiped them from the table and held them up, squinting at them. “These will be perfect for Nadia to practice on!”
Lyssa grinned at the apprentice, who glared at her in response.
“How much did you bring me?” Rags asked as she stowed thechicken bones in a jar by the sink, to be cleaned and dried before they went into the cupboard where the rest of the witches’ supplies were kept.
Lyssa pulled out the pouch of coins and tossed it to her. Ragnhild tested its weight in her palm as if she could count the number of coins by clink and heft alone.
“Is that all?” she asked with a frown.
“Minus expenses.”
