"Where's Titus?" said Bella, her voice shaking without her consent.
"Your friend?" asked Charles.
"Yes, my black-cat friend."
"Oh. He went to tell Daphne how pretty this is."
Titus must have reacted lightning-fast to Charles' first proclamation about the Wights. Even now, footsteps sounded from deeper in the house. Daphne's voice asked something of her grandparents. Bella could make out neither the question nor its answer, but Daphne's thanks was a forced kind of cheerful. She appeared briefly to snatch a bag from the entryway before vanishing into the kitchen. Titus detached from the shadows and joined Bella on the table.
"Are they still approaching?" he asked, out of breath. Not waiting for Bella's reply, he leaned around Charles to see out the window, cursed, and vanished off the table again. Bella dove after him.
"Titus!" she hissed, and managed to stall him midway to the shoe-mat again.
He rejoined her beneath the table. "What?"
"What's the new plan? You need to tell me these things."
"The new plan is we get out of this town as quickly as we can, in the event that those Wights are following us. Daphne is making an excuse for us. She has friends in Solanum."
The same direction as the bog. A teenager traveling alone so close to Wightnight would generally be frowned upon, but Daphne must have a lot of trust from her grandparents, or a few tricks up her sleeve. Not that Solanum was very far. Daphne reemerged from the kitchen, dumped a very full bag in the entryway, and headed for her bedroom next. When she reappeared, she had her loaded potion-bag slung over her shoulder.
"Clothes?" said Titus.
Daphne's face flushed. "Right."
She grabbed the food-pack and a much larger backpack from the entryway, and retreated to her room again. When she emerged this time, she looked much better prepared for a multi-day journey.
"Make sure to bring your winter boots," said Titus, coaching her through a few more preparations he seemed awfully familiar with for a cat so attached to staying indoors. "Is your coat rainproof?"
"Yep," said Daphne. "I waterproofed it myself."
She straightened her shoulders in evident pride, ran into another ceiling herb bundle, and slouched with a wince. It seemed to be her default stance—whether in discomfort at her height or avoidance of resultant obstacles, Bella couldn't tell. As for the waterproofing, that was just as well. In just the day and a half since Bella had caught the young Witch snooping around back of Bryony's house, Daphne had spilled at least two potions over herself, and that was just in Bella's presence. Her coat might have been a single color once, but it bore so many stains now, it might as well have been patterned from the start.
Bella wrenched back into the shadows as Daphne's grandfather poked his head from the kitchen. "You'll be home in time for Wightnight, won't you?" he said.
"Unless Lark throws a better party than you do," said Daphne with a rare grin. She laughed as her grandfather scoffed in mock offense. He emerged from the kitchen to convene with his wife in the entryway for goodbye hugs.
"Well, give young Larkspur our greetings," said Daphne's grandmother. "And send a letter if you do intend to stay for Wightnight."
"I'll plan to be home. But I'll let you know if that changes."
"That's my girl. Do have fun."
"And don't catch a cold if the rain catches up to you!" added Daphne's grandfather.
"Oh, right," said Daphne, and nabbed an umbrella from the corner of the room. She must have waterproofed that one, too. Bella hopped from foot to foot, desperate to get out of here as mental images of approaching Wights overrode her other thoughts one by one. She flinched as Charles landed nearby and came for his own parting. This proved, at least, that he was not a familiar. His vapid words didn't seem to reach Daphne. Bella closed her eyes and prayed to the great bird in the sky that he hadn't dislodged the curtains on his way down.
At last—at long last—Daphne was released from the attentions of her family. This now posed another problem. Her coat remained over the table, and her grandparents hovered in the entryway, giving no space for Bella and Titus to come out of hiding. Daphne, however, proved more adept an actress than her clumsiness would imply. She "forgot" several things in quick succession, causing her grandparents to laugh and leave her to her final preparations without the pressure of further goodbyes. Charles sat on the doormat in front of her, asking enthusiastic—if rather empty-headed—questions about whatever adventure awaited her.
Titus sighed and stepped in. "Charles," he said, "I heard the knitting basket was coming out in the living room this evening. You might want to be there when it does."
"Oh!" The orange cat hopped up. "Thank you!"
He trotted away down the hallway with exactly none of Titus's grace, dignity, or brain cells. For all Titus's skill for annoyance, Bella allowed herself a private thanks that he was the cat she was undertaking this investigation with. At least if the likes of Charles was the alternative.
"Thank you," whispered Daphne. She cracked the door, checked outside, then waved Bella and Titus both through. They reconvened in the front garden. The sky was a truly grim shade now, but Bella still wished she'd taken flight immediately as Titus intercepted her beneath a bush.
"A question," he said, in a tone that never meant good things.
"With or without our companion?" said Bella, with a pointed nod towards the door.
"Without. I wanted to ask about another potential option for Bryony's involvement with Baneberry Bog. I suspect you know what I mean."
Oh, she was not in the mood for this right now. "She is not dabbling in Wight magic," Bella snapped with more force than intended. Titus didn't flinch. "The investigation turned up nothing because there was nothing. The city Covens are simply intent on wasting Bryony's time with worthless suspicions because they don't like the fact that she beats them all handily in any honest competition of skill. If that's what you're here to ask about, I am not entertaining this conversation."
"It's not," said Titus without batting an eye. "I'm here to ask about the other incident."
Any further vitriol abandoned Bella's tongue, leaving an ashen taste behind. Titus did not elaborate on which incident he was referring to. He didn't need to.
"Did you end up investigating?" asked Titus. "Given that I was unable to at the time."
"I did. I found nothing, and the family agreed with me. It was just an accident, like I suspected."
There was a long pause.
"Interesting," said Titus.
He said nothing more. Daphne emerged a minute later, equipped with coat, pack, potion-bag, and umbrella, which she promptly deployed. As if on cue, the first fat, cold drop splattered across a stepping-stone a wing-length from Bella.
"Come on," said Daphne, making for the road. Bella immediately lost sight of Titus among the garden's shrubs. She scowled and hopped to a covert place to take off. The moment they were out of sight of the house, Daphne patted her shoulder. Bella swooped gratefully down to land. The umbrella over her head pattered with the early rain.
"Might I avail myself of such a ride?" said Titus, appearing from the roadside bushes.
Daphne laughed. "If you can stay on. Do you want me to—"
"Just stand still for a moment."
Daphne did, and Bella gasped as Titus reached the Witch's shoulder in a spring-footed bound. She'd never known how he reached Bryony's ivy-pot—he took great smugness in not telling her—but this solved that mystery. Wights only knew where he'd gained the skill. He perched on Daphne's shoulder for a moment to recalibrate, then settled down like a strangely shaped bird.
"Where to now?" he asked. "It's a long day's walk to the bog, and I am assuming we will not be putting boots to ground through the night."
"I do want to stop by my friend's place in Solanum," said Daphne. "Even just to let her know my grandparents think we will spend the day together, and might ask if we had fun. She can keep a secret if I ask her to cover for me. After that, there's a rest-house a few hours up the road. It's a shorter day of walking, but if the rain gets worse, we might want that anyway."
"That would be my suspicion."
"We can also ask if anyone at the rest-house saw Bryony go by. Unless she stayed in the forest the whole way to Baneberry Bog, she probably just took a shortcut to the next forest road. That's where the rest-house is."
"But why?" said Bella.
"To cover her trail," said Titus. "And scare off any would-be pursuers."
"Except us, clearly."
"Well, we do have an idea of where she might be going," said Daphne. "So we don't need to track her all the way like other people might. If we don't find her at the bog, we might need to try tracking anyway, though... but the rain will probably wipe the trail."
"Your potions can't account for that?" said Bella. "I thought tracking was Alchemist territory."
"It is. But it still needs a leftover trace of the thing you want to track. And I can't make the stronger potions yet. Ones that would work even after rain. They're usually poisonous to plants anyway."
Bella huffed. "Is that tracker you used earlier liable to leave dead spots in Bryony's garden, then?"
"No. Well, I hope it doesn't."
There was no better demonstration, really, of why Witchcraft streams were separated beyond Daphne's grade level. The three disciplines didn't mix, and the people they attracted didn't tend to, either. An average Herbalist showed far more thought for living things than any Alchemist Bella had ever met—Alchemists simply didn't consider something as mundane as plants before sprinkling potions everywhere. Only the Theriologists were worse. Mercifully rare thanks to the unsavory nature of their recipes, they were known for seeing animals as little more than an assortment of potion ingredients. To nobody's surprise, very few had familiars.
"We can reach this other road without traversing the forest ourselves, correct?" said Titus.
"Yup," said Daphne. "It's a bit of a longer walk, but the road forks up ahead. We should be there before evening."
A/N: This week's ONC recommendation!
Blood Ties by AdrielleReina
Lorelai, a young woman with a hidden past, finds out a vampire is her soulmate. Too bad he wants to kill her.