Page 21 of A Lady’s Guide to Witchcraft

Chapter Nine

Unsurprisingly, Ethan’s familiar was a dragon.

More surprisingly, when he curled around the crow’s nest, glowing darkly, he appeared to be sulking. It was embarrassing.

And all because Briar was walking away from the ship.

Limping.

Ethan wasn’t sure if he was growling or if it was his dragon, flicking his tail like a giant whip made of knives. “Get yourself together,” he muttered.

The dragon’s glare was baleful and vengeful in response.

Erasmus took a healthy step away from the mast, frowning at the dragon. The witch glass clinked together, as much part of the song of the sea as the steady waves and the creaking wood. Spells had a way of waking up when you least wanted them to. There were a dozen on his cross-belt alone, never mind the rest of the crew. Or the many hexes and curses and evil eyes flung their way courtesy of Keepers, warlocks, other Iron Crows. Pirates, highwaymen, spellsingers, cursebreakers, Fae kings, shifters. Once, notably, a vampire.

Iron Crows might be necessary, but no one much liked that fact.

They liked the Sea Dragons even less.

Ethan didn’t care if he was liked. He cared that Briar Foxglove was limping home alone.

He sighed and flicked a glance at his dragon, who immediately unfurled his scaled wings and flew off after the green witch. Ethan was protecting his investment, that was all. His way off this damned island. He had cargo waiting in the hull, filled with spell ingredients for a warlock. There was a new bounty on his head that he had to go discourage. Violently. And a hundred more reasons to want to be anywhere but here.

“Do you trust her?” Anais asked, climbing the steps to the quarterdeck. Her familiar, a white ferret, sat on her shoulder.

“Hell no.” Except that he did, which made no sense at all. Briar Foxglove was a green witch who was clearly keeping secrets, not to mention the twin sister to the bloody witch who had trapped them here.

And she had stabbed him.

After needling him so very gently to abduct her.

She was a mystery. With pockets full of flowers.

Fucking Haven.

He hadn’t met a single person in his life who wore flowers like daggers. Not his mother before she died, his father before he left. And Granny Gallows was as gentle as her name suggested. He’d been all of ten years old, working as a cabin boy on a ship whose captain had even fewer scruples than the average Iron Crow. He had grabbed a weather witch out of Padstow, right off the beach where she sold the winds knotted into cords to sailors. One knot for a breeze, two for a storm, three for a gale. There were only a few people still alive to tell tales about the fourth knot.

The captain had decided he was tired of buying knot charms and it would be much easier to steal an old woman along with heirlooms and gold from the locals.

No one came for Granny Gallows. She had one eye, a hagstone around her neck, and a single iron fingernail on her left hand no one dared ask about. When she wasn’t giving people the evil eye, she was knitting and drinking tea dark as bracken.

But she’d taken a shine to young Ethan, the only one brave enough to bring her salt cod and black tea where she hunched on the deck, spitting at the other sailors. He could only imagine what she would have made of Briar, soft-hipped, with flowers in her hair, thorn-tangle scars on her fingers, and a fierce stubbornness under the sugar frosting of her. Granny Gallows would have adored her recalcitrant swan, if nothing else. Her own familiar was a gull who perched on the railing behind her and screeched until the captain downed a bottle of rum, his ears spotted with blood, and promised to return her to the next port.

But then Granny Gallows decided to stay.

She kept a sharp eye on Ethan and an even sharper eye on anyone who might give him trouble. When the captain whipped Ethan for an infraction he could not even recall, she had called up a gale so fierce the ship tilted on its side and Ethan scooped salt water into his palms to cool the searing pain of his witch knot. The captain had used an iron-tipped cat-o’-nine-tails smeared with rowanberry juice. Granny Gallows threatened to capsize them all and drown every person on board (except for Ethan and the chickens the cook kept, because they amused her and it was hardly their fault they were on board) if the captain so much as touched Ethan again.

No one even looked at Ethan crossly after that.

A captain was never gainsaid on his own ship. But you angered a weather witch at your peril. They could drown you with a mouthful of water. Ethan learned that fear, wielded properly, did most of the work for you. As did rumors, and half-whispered horror stories.

If he had killed even half of the men he’d been accused of murdering, he would have been a monster.

Well, more of a monster. He had no illusions.

Even if Briar Foxglove made him wish he had.

“So what now?” Anais asked.