Page 76 of How to Woo the Undead

“Smith says the tree is probably acting out just as Sabine is acting out. The storm, the locusts, the random plant monsters that pop up? All of that is Sabine interacting with the environment around us. He thought maybe the tree might be the key, but no one can get near it. Lord Blightwood tried to approach it, and a swarm of mutated wasps sprang out. A councilman was sent to the healing bay and is still in critical care. His druid, the one who helped heal me? Serias tried to approach it and the tree rejected her. Started spraying blood everywhere.”

“Oh that’s not good,” Hyacinth muttered as she scooped up Snuffles into her arms.

Austin studied her for a long time, her gaze far away. Lost to him and the world of the living, he couldn’t imagine what she was thinking.Or feeling.He threw an arm around her shoulders, and she sank into his torso, even while she stared through the table. While he worried about her, the warmth that blossomed in his chest by the little gesture was enough to balance things.

I love you. He reminded himself. They’d said it last night. She loved him. Even if she was made to make him happy, she wasn’t made to say those words. She felt them all on her own. Hyacinth fell in love with him all on her own.I love you.

He pressed a kiss to the top of her head. “It’s going to be okay. We’ll figure it out.”

“I need to see the tree,” she confessed, stopping time itself as she peaked up at him. “This? All of this, the haunting, the storms, the tree…none of it is going to stop until I get rid of her soul. Permanently.”

“And howexactlyare we planning to do that?” Melody interjected, waggling a warning at the tentacles slithering out of the mouth of Snuffles. She narrowed her eyes into slits. Snuffles’ tentacles retreated into his mouth. Melody popped the rest of her steak into her mouth quickly.

“Lord Rosemont would know,” Austin sighed, shaking his head. “I’ve never had to exorcise a soul from a body. By the time we reanimate anything, the soul has always moved on.”

“Every time?” Hyacinth and Melody asked at the same time.

“Souls don’t stick around, even those attached to their skin. When we reanimate, what awakes in a body is always a new soul. Or else we would have awoken Sabine, not Hyacinth. They’re completely different people.” He peeked at Hyacinth who sat back in her chair, slowly stroking Snuffles in silent contemplation.

“But people still get possessed and stuff,” Melody licked her fingers clean before stacking the plates.

“Oh, yeah! All the time, but that’s usually because of summoning, or using haunted tomes, deals with devils, things like that. But I don’t think Hyacinth’s possessed.” Austin stroked the side of her arm affectionately.My flower.“I think Sabine is stuck like a parasite.”

Melody grimaced then exhaled heavily. “Alright, well, there’s got to be someone else we can ask cause Dahlia and Sebastian are down for the count after saving you two from yourselves.”

Hyacinth and Austin both shrank in their seats a little, sharing an ‘oops’ purse of their lips.We’ve got to do this fast, before things get worse.This time, however, they weren’t going to waltz into a trap. Austin couldn’t let that happen again. No, they were going to think it through. They were going to be careful and know everything.I’m going to pull a Smith! I’m going to know all there is to know about this stuff.

“Austin?Austin! Auuuuuustin! Help me! The goat is inside the library!”

“Stewy!” Austin gasped, launching up onto his feet. He whirled around Hyacinth, racing toward the sound if Greggory’s wail. “What is he doing in the house!”

Chapter Thirty-Eight:

Hyacinth

Hyacinthwaddledthroughtherain, holding onto the front left horn of an ornery billy goat. Austin had the other. He tried to block the sideways rain but there was nothing to stop it. Their umbrella turned inside out the second they stepped outside. Melody was forced to stay at the front door and batten down the hatches as the wind grew to window-shattering speeds. Hyacinth could feel her wings catching with each gust. There was a funnel spinning on both the left and right sides of the house.

“Boy, we really pissed Sabine offthistime!” Austin laughed over the roar of wind.

Hyacinth opened her mouth and promptly forgot what she was about to say as she was violently gargle-rinsed with rainwater. She choked on it and spat it out only to have more flood her throat. Coughing until it hurt didn’t help, but they made it to the safety of the barn swiftly after. The doors were flapping open in the wind, but a protective bubble covered the inside of the barn. Rain splashed against the invisible shield, leaving the inside dry and warm.Crowded, but hospitable.Austin and her barely made it through the door and pushed the goat into the stall with his name on it.

Austin slapped his palm against her back, dislodging the rain from her lungs. “Don’t drink the storm. It doesn’t taste good.”

Hyacinth wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. Her voice was hoarse and she was forced to yell to be heard over the menacing wind. “Why does he have a stall? He’s not a horse.”

“Oh, because sometimes when he’s naughty, the only creatures not afraid of him are the horses. So Stewy got a stall to go into time out.” Austin explained as he locked the wooden door behind him. “Kevin must have forgotten to lock him up. Not sure why or how he got intothe library,but I’ll ask Greggory.”

Hyacinth glanced around at all the farm animals hunkered down for a storm. All shivering and letting out low sounds. Austin walked around the best he could. Squeezing between pens and bodies to calm them down. She watched him every step of the way. Crouching low to stroke the little calf’s head, then talk with the large cattle. He even stopped to smile and greet each horse.

He’s so good with everyone. He’s easy to love.That was it, wasn’t it? Austin was probably the easiest person to love because he was a gentle giant. Kind, thoughtful, easy to excite, happy to just be there, Austin was the sunlight to her storm. Her turbulent, howling winds and bitter, cutting rain.I am too literal. And yet too curious. I want to know everything and be friends with everyone and desperately wish I was as easy to connect with as Austin.But she wasn’t Austin. She was Hyacinth…an undead grove witch.

“I’m a grove witch,” she murmured, glancing back out into the rain.

Sabine is a grove witch, and while her body was dead…the tree was still there.“Austin! That story you told me. The one Greggory told you? That the first Grove Witch, he burned her and her tree.”

“Yeah, what is with clerics and burning stuff? I mean, there are other ways to rid the world of evil. Can’t we try just beheading people for a change—oh, wait, you weren’t asking because ofthat, were you?” He peeked up from the little piglets snorting at his hands to the dead woman at the front of the barn.

She grinned at him, “No, I wasn’t, but I’ll let you know if it works.”