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20 years ago, the unidentified Abhorrent "Chupacabra Margo" wreaked havoc on the bayou lands bordering the coven-owned Margo Farms. After leaving five dead in its wake, it disappeared.
In the dying summer days of August 1985, it came back.
~+~
Green witch Odette Cinq-Mars liked the farm life. It was comfortable. It was (usually) safe. Sure, it wasn't anything compared to the possibilities of leaving small town Limbo County and trying her hand at the city-slicking performing arts school she'd just been accepted into, but what would be?
If she left, then her chances at closure would be squashed. She didn't care if it had been 20 years--she needed to know what happened that fateful summer before her fifth birthday. She needed to know why an unidentified Abhorrent was haunting her--and more importantly--protecting her.
With birds showing up dead and flayed beyond recognition, and one of the largest agricultural titans moving in next door, she had every other reason to not leave yet. Despite her grandfather's wishes.
She was going to find out what happened. And keep VIPER off her coven-inherited land. Even if it kills her.
As some of you may know, I have an issue with coming up with too many AUs for my main fic. This is the one that anchored down the hardest (damn you, Tetra).
As some of you may also know, I am planning to turn WSBS into its own original novel series, taking place in a world I've been crafting since I was a wee high schooler. This AU takes place in that very world of mine.
This is simultaneously my self-indulgent means of writing a southern gothic story and a chance for me to work on displacing the Pokemon-born WSBS characters into this original world, while also building said world out. If you're here for an AU rendition of my beloved OCs Odette, Noel, Dorien, Clovis, Odile, Bernard, and co., then this is the place for you. If you're here for original fiction (for some reason or other), this is the place for you. If you are here for Pokemon fic, this is not the place for you.
I am planning to publish this on more original-fiction oriented forums, as well as my Substack blog (will link when it is up and running), but will update it here for those of you interested.
Additionally, I dedicate this to my Lafufu, Odile. Fuck you and your stupid overalls.
As always, thank you so much for reading and for any constructive and polite critique you might offer!
Specific content warnings will be listed at the beginning of every chapter, but in general, this story is flagged for:
CWs: Animal Death, Strong Language, Talk of Occult Processes
The eviscerated starling nailed to the tree was a violent blemish on Margo Farm’s bordering bayou land. The body was the fifth one Odette had found this week.
It was only Wednesday.
Her knuckles bleached white against her grip on her Winchester. “Grandpa,” she called, eyes unmoving off the tiny avian entrails dangling down the trunk; a niggling reminder that, at 25, she should have been desensitized to death by now. On the farm, animals died all the time. Rarely, so did people.
Granted, they were never arranged with their intestines strung up on bark spurs, or had the skin peeled back from their skulls to reveal bloodstained bone and hollow eye sockets. Perhaps that was why she could feel the chill of unease freezing the hairs on her neck upright.
“Come look.”
Grandpa Bernard's footsteps were hasty on approach, gradually slowing to a hesitating crawl before he came to a stop at her side. She felt his stocky hand, calloused and sun-damaged under decades of working the fields, settle on her shoulder and gently pull her backwards. The insinuation of the dead bird’s presence must have stirred the gene-deep overprotectiveness that powered his everyday functions.
“Gods almighty,” he said, his steady exhale catching on the afternoon breeze settling among the thick foliage overhead and the overgrown reeds at their booted feet. He slung his own rifle—his weathered Remington 700; the one he’s sworn by since Odette was in diapers—over his shoulder before stepping closer to get a better look. What he couldn’t see with his perfect vision that she could through her obnoxiously thick glasses, she didn’t know. She didn’t want to know.
“Our bird population’s going to be down before the winter rolls around.”
“What—or whom—do you suppose is doing it? It’s not an animal,” Odette said.
“That’s for damn sure,” Bernard said. He angled his head to squint at the left wing, which was missing most of its feathers. Likely lost in struggle. The longer Odette beheld the ghastly crucifixion, however, the more certain she was that there was no struggle. It was instant. Or rather, for the poor starling’s sake, she hoped it was.
“I want to say this is the work of a disgruntled powrie, but I don’t think any packs live out here.”
“Convenient that this is happening right after the VIPER overlords started moving in.”
As if to underscore her suspicion, the pops of a hammer striking wood soared over the hilly land and through the thick canopy of pine leaves and cypress branches snuffing out the sunlight. Odette couldn’t tell if it was just her slick sense of hearing picking up on it, or if whoever was banging away was really taking their anger out on that wood.
“I’m sure they’re too concerned with their construction to have the time for this. I also don’t know any nāga to leave behind this much flesh after a hunt.”
The fact that his response wasn’t a resounding agreement made her kick the dirt. Bernard was too fixated on the starling to notice.
“Okay. Then it’s another Abhorrent.” She paused, wondering if she should say what else had spilled to the tip of her tongue. “Or Chupacabra coming back out of the woodwork.”
Silence draped over them like a slab of concrete. Although she wasn’t looking at him, she could feel Bernard’s sidelong leer tilling her cheek.
Neither of them wanted to think about the last time there were Abhorrents terrorizing these woods and the bayou they led into. The one in question was never apprehended. Or identified. Even after what it did. The exorcist’s Consortium dubbed it “Chupacabra Margo,” as was standard with unidentifiable and uncapturable Abhorrents, and left it at that. No closure to speak of.
“Well, whatever it is, it’s trying to make a statement,” Bernard said in a huff, trying to hurry the conversation along, and she couldn’t blame him. She knew the proverb well.
Sicut manifestum est, sic erit. So it is manifested, so it shall be.
This wasn’t something he wanted to see come to fruition. She watched him knock on an unsullied tree trunk for good measure.
That was, of course, assuming the threat hadn’t already returned. Disemboweling birds wasn’t Chupacabra Margo’s original MO, but it was adjacent enough. Surely manic entities could switch up their preferred targets in 20 years.
“Pretty cowardly to make statements and not show face,” Odette mumbled.
“A warning, then,” Bernard surmised, stepping back. “Of what, I would need an exorcist to decipher.”
“We don’t affiliate with starlings; we’ve never used the astral arts in a day in our fucking lives. So how is a dead starling a warning to us?”
The strict glare Bernard threw Odette’s way left her clenching her teeth with juvenile indignation. He didn’t need to say it; she’d heard him bark the order enough times that it was practically embroidered on the grooves of her brain. Watch your mouth.
Owls were the standard aves affiliation for witches who leaned on the green arts. Odette generally preferred their wisdom and penchant for total recall to the heightened psychic and empathetic nature of starlings. Their varied sizing among species was also quite convenient.
As if she’d read Odette’s thoughts—not that she could—Solene seemingly manifested from the western depths of the forest, where the solid ground gradually gave way to bug-infested swamp, the Onyx river carved through the land in a wild zig-zagging curve, and the year-round humidity seemed to rise up from the fiery districts of Abaddon itself. Her sleek black body came to a perch atop Odette’s left shoulder, chest rising and falling with quick trepidation.
“I’m sorry!” she chirped. “I flew over as soon as I smelled the—“
Odette didn’t get a chance to warn her. Upturned eyes rounded at the edges when she laid them upon the starling’s remains. Her feathers puffed with an involuntary fear response, and a gasp shrill enough to send a pack of dogs into a tumult broke past her beak.
“Goodness me…I-I didn’t see— I didn’t hear—“
“It’s alright, Solene,” Bernard reassured her. “We just found it. Are you sure you didn’t notice anything out of the ordinary, though?”
“I-I’m certain! I’ve been on high alert since we found the chickadee!” she insisted, flailing her wings so hard that they smacked Odette in the cheek. Not an uncommon occurrence when Solene was panicking. She barely felt it.
“O-oh, goodness me, I’m so sorry…wings to the High Aves, I did not see anything…”
“I believe you. I think if whoever was doing this had wanted you to see them, they would. And you wouldn’t live to warn us,” Odette said.
Not a single deceased bird had been an owl. Just songbirds. Two starlings, a chickadee, and a wren.
That fact wasn’t at all reassuring, but definitely not indicative of a warning directed at the Cinq-Mars coven, or anything Solene would have picked up on.
“Don’t say that! Do you want to speak that into existence?” Solene slammed the bone of her wing into Odette’s forehead for scolding emphasis. It hurt a little when she was being deliberate.
Relenting, Odette reached over to knock on another tree. Better safe than sorry.
“Then maybe it’s trying to make nice. In its own exceedingly roundabout and horrifically incorrect way,” Bernard said.
He’d said it ironically, but Odette couldn’t stop her brain from running off with that possibility. An Abhorrent trying to make friends with a family of green witches by killing birds and putting them on grim displays in the forest felt like the punchline to a bad joke.
She decided to find reprieve in the idea that a bloodthirsty agricultural powerhouse like VIPER was behind it. Brutally murdering defenseless birds matched her image of the tycoon nāga clan coming dangerously close to infringing on the Cinq-Mars’ rightful land. Considering the last time nāgas appearing near Margo Farm marked a period of turmoil for their coven, she felt justified in her wariness.
Okay. Maybe VIPER’s new farm was about half a mile off their property line, so the chances of actual infringement were low. She also knew it was bad karma to let the atrocities of a few nāga Abhorrents from two decades ago negatively affect her view of the entire race. However, wondering what VIPER was doing in small town Limbo County—so close to a coven-owned farm doing well in its own right, no less—in the first place was slowly fraying the edges of her nerves. It bothered her even more that Bernard, ever the skeptic, wasn’t sharing in her chagrin.
“Let’s get it down,” Bernard said. “It doesn’t need to be out like this any longer.”
Before he could move back toward the tree, Odette swung her rifle over her back, Solene hovering to avoid the strap, and tugged the sleeve of his cotton button down—the solid khaki green one that really accentuated how tan he’d gotten in the past month. The Louisiana sun had been particularly brutal in its dying days before the autumn chill was due to move in. “Let me get it, Grandpa,” she said when he arched his greying brow at her. “I’ll give it a proper burial with the rest of them.”
With four other birdy crime scenes preceding this one, she’d gotten the cleanup procedure down to a science. Bernard knew that, but he wavered anyway.
“Alright,” he relented. “But let me dig the hole. And try not to get any blood on you, please.”
They were quick about preparations, from the weaving of a small coffin, to the digging of the grave, to the hunting for a decent headstone. They buried it near the other victims, all marked with their own small boulders, engraved with the dates they were found and warding sigils to sway species of a graverobbing nature away. After meeting such gruesome ends, the least the unfortunate songbirds deserved was peaceful rest.
Unlike the crystals, spellbooks, and curated herbs she’d gathered over the years, the makeshift cemetery was a growing collection Odette was not proud of.
“This is bullshit,” she said under her breath while she and Bernard stood to examine their reluctant handiwork. She braced for the tongue lashing, but only felt Bernard’s hand fall back onto her shoulder. Sometimes he let her expletives slide, during the times when even he couldn’t deny their necessity.
“I know. I’ll call my friend at the Consortium station tonight; see if we can get a survey out here tomorrow. Hopefully that’ll be the last gore scene any of us find.”
Odette had a sinking feeling that was just wishful thinking. She tried her best to cling to Bernard’s optimism, but he didn’t sound too sure, either.
“I would like to hope that will be the case,” Solene muttered from her new spot on a nearby branch. Her wings were clasped in a silent prayer.
“That’s as far as I think we should go today. Back the other way.”
He didn’t need to tell her twice. Odette was at his heels like a duckling tailing its mother all the way back down the vaguely paved trail. Solene wasn’t too far behind.
“I’m going to go do another survey,” she declared. “Certainly I must be missing something.”
“Please be careful, and try not to trouble yourself too deeply about it. This doesn’t feel like anything any of us could have foreseen," Bernard said.
Solene nodded, but Odette could tell by the pained shroud over her black nacreous eyes that she wasn’t taking it to heart.
Odette truly missed the times when these woods didn’t carry the oppressive weight of violent death. Nowadays, Bernard wouldn’t even let her near the tree line without double checking that her rifle was in her hand.
But she had plenty of time to dwell on that. There was a more pressing matter snagging her attention.
“Something about starling blood that isn’t good for witches?”
Bernard didn’t immediately answer. She wouldn’t have thought twice about it were he better at reeling in his uncertainty. It was so palpable, it nearly stuck its foot out and tripped her.
“I’ve been studying magic for 24 years and never saw anything about it being bad to get starling blood on me. How’s it any different than Diomedes horse blood? Or hadhayan blood?”
Animals really did die all the time, whether from age or just through the necessary meat processing. Handling rowdy creatures also came with the territory of their frequent bodily harm. The horses, vicious as they were, enjoyed the occasional herd-sanctioned bloodsport, which Odette had the hapless honor of breaking up more than once. Often, at least one of them trotted away with a substantial injury, only to repeat the cycle again once they recovered.
A little animal blood on her hands was just a fact of life.
Bernard trudged on under his infuriating hush. Her frown pulled her brow down with it, and she snuck a glance at the back of his mint-condition boots, namely the slightly raised heels crunching over the dead leaves and gnarled weeds creeping along the dirt. There was nothing he hated more than having the backs of his shoes kicked or stepped on, and she realized that with a slightly wider stride, she had the perfect leverage to stomp his heel right out.
“I’m gonna step on you if you keep ignoring me, and I know these are new.”
“Because.” He sighed like his age had finally caught up with him. “Our new neighbors invited us over.”
She stopped cold. “You spoke to them already?”
“Not in-depth. Just in passing, on my way back from town yesterday. It was quite pleasant, and I said we’d come by today.”
“And you were going to tell me this when?”
“Preferably in the safety of our living room, but you’re a little too observant for my intentions.”
He quickly realized that she was not following him anymore and cast a prudent look over his shoulder. She still made no move to catch up, hip popping under her shifted weight as she crossed her arms. He stopped to rub his wrinkled temple.
“What does getting blood on me have to do with meeting the Bonhommes? Is there something you’re not telling me?” she retorted.
“No, Odette. Nāgas have a strong sense of smell; this clan for sure. I just don’t want you strolling up there reeking of a bloodbath. You know that’s a scent that lingers.”
“Oh, that’s why you’re so certain they’re not the ones flaying the birds.” Her laugh was sour enough to pucker Bernard’s lips. “You’re already buddy-buddy with them.”
Now he was massaging hard circles into his face. He clearly did not want to be having this conversation. Not like this, anyway. “Mr. Bonhomme and I spoke for all of five minutes. He had a particularly potent energy; much higher than I’ve seen of other nāgas, which tells me they’re nagaraja. I’m just trying to play it polite and safe.”
She didn’t need to tell Bernard that she’d known virtually everything about known the clan, especially their standing in the upper echelons of the nāga power hierarchy, for well over a week. She’d had her best friend, Noel, who was off in New Orleans finishing up his tenure at Byleth School of the Arts, do a quick search on them and subsequently wasted three hours on a gossip-fueled bitch session over the findings. She knew it all like the fading scars on the back of her hand.
“I assume you knew that already,” Bernard said.
She didn’t need to tell Bernard unless he did that.
“Guilty,” she said coyly. “But…you want to play it safe, yet you want to walk into a house full of nagaraja because?”
“Call me petty, but I enjoy scoping out the competition. Even if they are on a completely different level,” he smirked, with a coy, almost childish shrug to pair. “There’s always something new to learn in this business, and it doesn’t hurt to befriend the titans. It also doesn’t hurt,” he sauntered back over to brush one of her black braids, slightly frayed with the grit of her day so far, over her shoulder, “to get a soul read on them.”
With him close enough, she could finally see that skepticism—what she’d been hunting for since they found that damn starling—adding another layer of shadow to his darkened eyes. “Certainly it’s not lost on you how strange it is that the family responsible for a company like VIPER is setting up shop in BFE Limbo County, Louisiana?”
Once in a Blood Moon, Odette wondered how they were related. It was times like this that made her wonder why she kept questioning it.
“Cheap land?” she offered in a weak attempt to exhaust all their options, as she’d been trying to do all day. That’s how he’d taught her to approach everything in life, from hypothetical problems to life-altering decisions.
Bernard nodded thoughtfully. “Could be. But conveniently so close to a coven-owned farm? I have my doubts that it’s that simple.”
He looped his arm in hers. She willingly matched his step as they walked onward.
“I don’t like to judge or assume anything before I see for myself, of course. Hence why I jumped at the opportunity for a visit. You and I will have a chance to get to know our wealthy new neighbors and see what Margo Farms is in for.” He snorted to himself. “And with your grandmother and mother out of town, and thus, not here to tell me it’s a bad idea, I can’t think of a better time.”
He did know his wife and daughter remarkably well. Nana would definitely be up his ass, and Maman would either agree, or want to know if the Bonhomme patriarch was single.
“I respect the approach,” she said. “But my question remains as is.”
Bernard’s chuckle was far more lighthearted than she was comfortable with hearing. “As powerful as I fear they are, I can’t imagine they’d have the gall to cross a coven of witches and wizards.”
“Right, because nāgas are very well-known for their astonishing lack of gall.”
“Hun, c’mon,” he chastised. “I have my reservations too, but—“
Something on the other side of the path wrenched both his attention and the rest of his scolding words away from him. He tugged Odette to a halt, allowing her to follow his widened gaze to a partially raised mound mere feet from where they stood. It was visible under a dense puddle of dead leaves and the dehydrated remains of fallen branches and bushes lost to time.
Bernard released a groan stockpiled with layers upon layers of his aggravation. He leaned down and plucked a long yet hardy-looking branch from the ground before approaching the mound like he’d rehearsed the steps. With a thrust of the branch, the rusted remains of an anti-heal bear trap clamped down on it, sending the leaves flying and making Odette start involuntarily at the sound of the cruel metallic snap.
“Gods,” Bernard seethed under his breath while he examined the old trap. He might as well have been looking at an invasive pest with the way he glared at it. In a sense, that’s exactly what it was. “When I get that survey out here, I’m going to have them sweep for these again. No damn reason we should still be finding them.”
Odette vaguely remembered that young exorcist cadet who’d assured her and her coven that all of the traps, initially put out to aid in catching Chupacabra Margo, had all been collected once the team realized they were more of a liability than an asset. The fact that her coven had collectively pulled up seven—eight now—since then meant either someone royally fucked up, or the Consortium really needed to reevaluate their bear trap collection practices. It was a wonder nobody had stepped on one yet.
“Might be a blessing in disguise if our bird serial killer is actually Chupacabra,” Odette muttered. It wasn’t low enough to make it past Bernard’s ears. He narrowed his eyes at her in a way that ensured she heard the “Quiet!” without him ever having to open his mouth.
“I’m calling this walk a wash. I’ve had enough of these woods today,” he said. She had a hard time disagreeing.
The sight of their two-story coven house peeking up over the fields of radishes and peas was a calming one. She felt the effects of the windchime-laden wraparound porch long before she could see it, the army of chimes swishing away the negativity she always lugged out of the woods nowadays. The perimeter of home signified that a safe space was close; that only her blessings existed beneath those black eaves and behind those sun-bleached grey slatted walls. The purple front door was a beacon in the neutral greens, greys, browns, and beiges of the surrounding world, always there to welcome her back behind its protection at the end of any day.
With blessings in mind, she noticed that fluffy cat sithe they left curled up on the porch swing, unmoved in the hour and a half they were gone. Until she heard them approaching.
Enora was a barn cat sithe in name only, and that was still a very generous title. She was enlisted to help keep the property clear of pests, both of this Earth and not, but she proved rather quickly that she was better suited to be a pretty house ornament. The dirt of the barns—and the roads, the fields, the equipment, and essentially everything in between—did not mix well with her immaculate white fur. The only color Enora ever wanted to see on her body was her flaming orange tips, and gods help anybody in her vicinity should anything else mar her appearance.
Despite her overall high maintenance, nobody on the farm could deny her affectionate nature. She was leaping off the swing before Odette and Bernard were past the gate to the front fields. A welcoming, rumbling “mrrorw,” vibrated within her as she leapt down the porch steps to meet Bernard first. She politely brushed against his legs, accepting the light scratches he gave to her left ear with a purr almost loud enough to trigger an earthquake.
“Thanks for waiting up for us, pretty girl,” he chuckled. He didn’t get very long with her before she rushed toward her real target. Affectionate as she was, she did have a clear favorite.
When Odette scooped her up, any remaining residuals of the wood’s overpowering energy faded away. There was no such thing as the past, or VIPER, or even mutilated songbirds when she was holding Enora.
“Was your walk alright?” Enora projected, falling into a fluffy limp in Odette’s arms. “You feel distressed.”
“I’m fine now,” Odette said.
“You head down to the barn and feed the chickens and turn out the horses, then come on back, wash up, and we’ll head out,” Bernard called between his stomps up the porch steps. He stopped just to offer Odette another leery look.
“And please try to be mindful of what I said without being petty.”
Odette tried to puff her chest with blatant umbrage. It was blocked entirely by a plume of fur.
“Fine. But is it okay if I smell like cat sithe?” she asked, taking a hard whiff of Enora’s belly for good measure. She smelled like a heavenly mix of Nana’s favorite fabric softener and sunshine. Maybe she wasn’t the right subject for this taunt.
“Considering that cat sithe would bathe in your mother’s perfume collection if she’d let her, by all means,” Bernard chuckled. Enora regained eager tension in her lithe body at the mention of a bath, and Odette couldn’t stop herself from affixing more kisses to the side of her perfectly groomed head.
“I make no promises. If the horses fuck…mess,” she corrected when Bernard scowled at her, “with me today, it’s fair game.”
He left her with a shrug, trudging past the bushes of rosemary, planted like club bouncers on either side of the entrance, and slipping inside. Odette's eyes lingered on the door for a few seconds before streaking across the black-salted protective sigils meticulously lined over the frame.
Nana truly took her place as the family artist, and thus, the family sigil inscriber, seriously. Never had Odette seen such immaculately painted symbols on the outside of a house before. Whereas the sigils on Noel’s were cracking and chipping with the effects of time and the Louisiana elements, hers looked as fresh as they were the day Nana finished repainting them over a decade ago. They were due for an update soon, but there was no doubt in Odette’s mind that no matter the shape, they would always look perfect by Nana’s hand.
A needle of envy poked a hole in her chest. What she wouldn’t give to be able to hone her own artistic gifts so flawlessly. Her songbook had long shifted from a bound trove of hope to an unremitting reminder of her own inability to release the past.
“Not today,” she snapped to herself. Enora flicked her head up, ears pinned back with some of that innate predatory zeal she still had. Odette shook her head.
“Don’t worry about it. I’m fine.”
She rerouted her thoughts toward the rest of her chores. Dealing with the Diomedes horses would require every last bit of her attention and willpower. Her nagging discontent about the birds and the Bonhommes would need to wait if she wanted to turn them out without one of them taking a bite out of her or trampling her flat.
That would get me out of meeting them…
She genuinely considered the options before deciding it would be more pain—and danger—than the outcome was worth. Running into those snakes was essentially guaranteed, whether she was nursing a destroyed limb or not.
“You wanna come with me to the barn?” she asked between kisses on Enora’s head. “We can see if Isaur finally got Loïc.”
Enora’s blue eyes drooped at her. Not with contentment, but with a firm doubt. It gave Odette pause until she broke into an abrupt laughing spell.
“Yeah, I know,” she snickered, trudging toward the golf cart parked in its typical spot on the left side of the house. It was the only vehicle occupying the dead space between that and the standalone garage aside from Bernard’s heffer of a pickup truck. “She’s never going to catch that rat.”
The cart ride to the livestock compound was as uneventful as Odette hoped it would be. The winding road around the perimeter of the corn fields was rocky as normal, and the roar of the combine harvester was a welcome, familiar one. She took her eyes off the road just to see if she could catch who was driving it. Of the six non-related workers Margo Farms had employed—all close friends of Bernard’s and Nana’s—she knew only Axel, Davy, and Manon were out in the fields today, while Ida, Willow, and Tino were in town, running their stall at the market. With the summer season wrapping up, the harvesting load was light in anticipation for the new crops that would be promptly planted the morning following the Harvest Moon.
Autumn was always the busiest season, and Odette’s personal favorite. Nothing beat an overcast fall day, when the leaves were browning and the breeze was prickling with the far off call of frost.
The pale waving hand that signaled back to her made her grin. Manon seemed to always see Odette before Odette saw her. Poor eyesight, even with glasses as big as Odette’s, could be such a nuisance.
“Enjoy your walk?” Manon screamed.
“Could have been better,” Odette yelled back, making Enora flinch. Manon rolled too far out of her earshot for Odette to hear the response.
The telltale cacophony of the horse’s impatient kicking and whinnying reached her before she turned into the livestock roundabout. That either meant they were going to be agreeable, eager to get out into the pastures, or they were itching for a fight. She wouldn’t know until she walked into the stables. Before she did that, she needed to make sure Isaur hadn’t inadvertently set anything on fire.
Margo’s other employed cat sithe, the cobby grey spitfire that was Isaur, was a little more committed to her role as a pest guard. She was by no means bad at her job—she had the heft to prove it—but she’d have had a lot more success were she not so dedicated to catching the single rat that had managed to evade her. She’d also avoid a lot less accidents. Davy was still patching a hole in one of the silos from the last big chase she instigated.
Odette didn’t need to search long to find that shorthaired tail, twitching about like an armed turret while its front end stuck her nose into a small crevice between two cockeyed stable slats. She exchanged a weary look with Enora before stepping off the cart onto the gravel.
“Isaur!” she cooed, patting her jean-covered thigh. “Come say hello. I haven’t seen you all day.”
“In a minute,” Isaur projected back, unmoving. Bright orange eyes were trained on the darkness on the other side of those burgundy wood pieces. “I can smell him. I know he’s in here.”
“If you want to catch him that badly, let Solene help you.” Wherever she’d flown off to.
“No! I don’t need help from that pretentious ninny bird,” Isaur hissed.
“I happen to like that pretentious ninny bird. She’s good company,” Enora purred.
“Takes one to know one."
She was barely done growling through her quiet insult when the rat in question, simultaneously the most limber and most pudgy rodent Odette had ever had the pleasure of witnessing, scurried out from behind one of the worn columns holding up the stable overhang. She never looked twice at him at first, but once it became clear that he was destined to live his life giving Isaur a run for her tuna, Odette affectionately named him Loïc. He accepted with no protest; the only thing needed for a creature to officially be acknowledged as a witch’s familiar.
That didn’t stop Isaur from trying to eat him, nor did it stop Loïc from doing whatever he could to ruin her day. Odette tried time and time again to facilitate mediations, and after the third attempt ended in her bedroom nearly being torn apart by another one of their chases, she realized that was the universe’s chosen dynamic for them; a tale as old as time itself. It was also a sign that she had no business, or patience, trying to change it.
Knowing better than to infringe on their literal game of Cat and Mouse, Odette watched Loïc cautiously approach Isaur’s backside, stepping on the tips of his claws. She silently willed Isaur to stop tunnel-visioning on the damn slats, because surely she’d be able to sense him if she were paying a lick of attention to her surroundings.
That was not in Isaur’s nature. Loïc sinking his teeth into her left hind leg solidified it.
Isaur didn’t waste any time anguishing over the tiny wounds. She was fast on her turn. Loïc was just a hair faster. She remained right on the tip of his tail as they looped under the cart, around the columns, and toward the chicken coop. Between them squeezing through the fence around the coop and bolting inside, Isaur ran straight through a feed bag, unwittingly spreading the kernels all over the grassy perimeter. Streaking through the coop spooked the chickens enough that they were sent flying outside, but their fears were quashed immediately upon seeing the buffet laid out for them. Cat sithe and rat ran on without another interruption, soon disappearing back toward the fields.
Odette sucked her teeth, lazily waving away the cloud of gravel dust they kicked up in their chaotic wake. “Thanks for knocking that one out for me, you pinnacles of fucking goblinism.”
“I don’t know why she tries. Her energy could be better spent working on her manners,” Enora chuffed. She curled back up on the golf cart seat and began to groom her paws.
The horses were definitely in a mood to fight. Their kicking picked up intensity as soon as Odette pulled open the door to the corridor. Iron bars flinched through incessant bucking and gnashing teeth, and Odette swore she could see the whole building rocking due to the collective commotion.
“Alright. Alright,” she spat. Immediately, the noise dialed back to a murmur. What was an equine madhouse had shifted to a still, almost anticipatory atmosphere, with every pair of those saucer-like eyes gazing at her from between the stall bars.
There was something rewarding about listening to a herd of carnivorous horses fall nearly silent at her command. It was difficult enough to get one Diomedes horse to present you with that kind of respect, let alone 13. They could try to get on her nerves all they wanted, but at the end of the day, she held the reins. Deep down, the whole herd knew it, even if it wasn’t in their nature to always act like it.
“No games,” she demanded. “I want to turn you all out as much as you all want to be turned out, so if we can get through it without one of you trying to snack on me, that would be great. I’m not in the mood for any of your shit today.”
There was little pushback while she made her way down the list. Diarmait, Salomea, and Peli were due to go into the south pasture. Coson and Fadila were going into the east—alone today, because the last time they went out with Eschive, Reigen, and Tassilo, they tried to kill those three for interrupting their moment of intimacy. Eschive, Reigen, and Tassilo would instead be going into the southern pasture with Inoe and Garsende, and they’d all just have to deal with it. Caretena, Gofraid, Tove, and Dulce would go into the east pasture, no issue.
That just left Ange, doomed to quarantine pasture.
The ghostly black Diomedes stallion in question was the only one who wasn’t up stomping around. He was instead curled up in a depressed heap on the floor of his stall, like he was sick with a bad case of colic. In reality, all he was plagued with was a well-aimed kick to the eye from Gofraid, thanks to a small tussle they’d gotten into on Sunday. It wasn’t a major injury; just bad enough that he needed to be separated until it healed; a fact he was not pleased with.
“Aw, Ange.” She folded her arms across the top of the stall gate. “Why the long face?”
She snickered to herself. When he didn’t get up to snap at her ear, or even give her that post-shitty-joke leer, she scoffed. Her humor was wasted on this homestead.
“Has anybody ever told you that you’re a drama king?”
His snort struck her like a taut rubber band. He didn’t want to hear it. She didn’t care.
“You know, maybe this wouldn’t happen if you stopped snapping at Gofraid’s balls. Not only is it really bad manners, it’s kinda weird and says a lot about your tastes. Pun intended.”
As anticipated, that got him to stir. He raised his battered umbral head off the wood shavings, turning to fire a guttural snarl at her.
“Why are you growling at me? I’m right.”
Ange snorted once more, short and curt, and slammed himself back into the shavings. She didn’t want to pull out the big guns so soon, but it looked like she didn’t have a choice.
Diomedes horses were carnivorous, yet as most horses did, they found their weakness at the bottom of a box of sugar cubes. The mere sight of just one could send all 13 into a bucking frenzy, and Ange was no exception. She pulled open the cabinet where she kept the fresh box, wrestling with some cobwebs to get to it, perched on the third shelf. It was brand new, so finding it nearly empty made Odette pause to question her own sanity. And her perception of reality. The rodent teeth marks, forming a haphazard frame around the large hole in the bottom right corner, was the only answer she needed.
“You know what, Loïc,” she muttered, shaking four of the remaining cubes into her cupped palm. “I hope Isaur does catch you today.” She slammed the cabinet shut with a little more vigor than needed. “”Cause if she doesn’t, I will.”
Ange must have heard her shaking the box. By the time she turned to face his stall again, he was up, snout pressed to the metal bars expectantly. His swollen eye didn’t detract from the hungry way he stared at her.
She had to laugh. “You’re so easy.”
It was easy to get the lead over his head with him smacking away at the treat. He trotted along beside her as she led him out toward his pasture, like he wasn’t having a mini tantrum just minutes before. That lasted approximately 30 seconds, ruined by the chorus of mocking whinnies coming from the east pasture. All four occupants were right at the gate, harmonizing in their jeers toward Ange, who’d suddenly regained his ability to growl. He shuffled his feet in anticipation to pitch up onto his hind legs, forcing Odette to jerk the lead to pull him back to reality.
“Hey!” she barked. “I just gave you sugar cubes; you’re supposed to be in a good mood now.”
His responding neigh was rebellious. Juvenile. They started it! it said. Tell them to shut up!
With a sharp exhale, she aimed a shrill whistle toward the east gate. “That’s enough from the peanut gallery! Go frolic before I haul you all back inside.”
Gofraid shot his shot and released a shrill neigh that was highly reminiscent of a scathing laugh. She slit her eyes at him alone.
“One more time?”
She was pleasantly surprised at how quickly they split after that.
“Goblinism,” Odette grumbled, watching their tail ends disappear over a hill. “All of you. I swear to gods.”
Ange snorted; something along the lines of a good riddance or a go fuck yourselves. Now that they were out of eye and earshot, his muscles visibly relaxed and he fell back into a trotting step with her. Obnoxious as the exchange was, that being the worst thing happening on this turn out was a win in her book.
“Now, Grandpa and I are going out for a bit. Gods willing, I won’t be gone for long, but it’ll probably be a bit before I come back to check on you either way. If I catch you trying to piss off the others, I’m not going to–”
She didn’t think anything she was saying was out of line or petty; no angry tone or sense of sarcasm to speak of. The abrupt squeal that burst out of Ange felt entirely uncalled for as a result. Him kicking back onto his back legs, yanking her up off the ground with him, felt like a severe escalation, even for his standards. Her wrangler side launched into gear, and she drove herself back into the gravel, giving him a wide enough berth to avoid being kicked, but not wide enough to where she couldn’t keep hold of the lead.
“What the hell!” Her own yelp got lost in another shrill cry. He was now fighting against her, scampering backwards like he was trying to get away. This wasn’t the first time she’d had to play tug-of-war with a member of this herd, but it was the first time the game had occurred so abruptly. Usually there was a buildup of goading and clear disobedience.
Between her struggling to keep her footing, trying to keep him down, and trying to avoid having her ribs minced by frantic hooves, she got a full frontal view of him. Muscles locked up, fur rippling, ears pinned to the back of his head, his one healthy eye constricted down to a thin, horrified line.
This wasn’t anger. This was fear.
No sooner had the realization hit did she feel it spread to her. An eerie numbness drilled into her head, anchored itself in her chest, and dropped straight through her core like a falling anvil, driving every single little hair on her body stock straight and releasing shivers to wreak havoc on her nerves. The sensation settled in her heels, triggering her urge to run, and run fast. Surely wild rabbits suffered the same affliction when they realized they were being eyed by a starving wolf.
“Ange!” she cried, reaching a hand toward him. “Calm down, it’s okay!”
She didn’t know why she was saying that. The words might have been more for her than him. But Diomedes horses were apex predators; to see one be reverted to a prey state of mind was plenty of reason to assume things were not okay.
She finally got him to settle enough to huddle close to him, her ears catching on the rapid rise and fall of his dense breaths. He was scared just as shitless as she was, but he was still a large, predatory creature; easily her best defensive bet with her rifle sitting stupidly in the trunk of the golf cart. He was itching to bolt before, but with her now clinging to him, he seemed to get a hold of himself.
Her eyes cut across the compound, down the paths, and toward the surrounding tree line. There was nothing noteworthy; no stirring or unordinary shapes. Just a smothering fog of dread, driving her closer and closer to the ground while whatever was left of her lunch was forced in the other direction.
Then, the rotten, wretched stink of sulfur. If there was anything she remembered from her two decades of magic schooling in this moment of hopeless blanking, it was that sulfur usually didn’t precede anything benevolent.
“Odette! Odette!”
There was not much an owl like Solene could do in a situation like this, but her arrival with a trickle of warmth in the ice that had crystallized around Odette’s guts.
“I’m here!” Solene screeched, landing in a puffed ball on Odette’s shoulder. “I don’t know what it is, but I’m here!”
It was at least minutely comforting to know that Odette and Ange weren’t just picking the same moment to lose their minds.
She chanced another helpless glance toward the trees. It couldn’t be anything on the homestead. They didn’t keep any other livestock aside from the horses that were capable of instilling such a horrid sense of unease in her, and that had faded ages ago. There was nothing…
Nothing aside from whatever was probably killing the birds.
She’d manifested the source of her anxiety out in the woods, before the sanctum of her own home, and now in the presence of an invisible evil.
Sicut manifestum est, sic erit.
And so it became.
Odette couldn’t miss the silhouette. She constantly berated herself for her poor eyesight, but this entity presented itself as clearly to her now as it had then. Not close enough to see details, or get a close look at its anatomy, or face. Just close enough to see the stature that mimicked her own. The hairstyle that mimicked her own. The skin that mimicked her own.
Chupacabra Margo had grown since the last time she showed herself. Just like Odette had. She’d also learned to speak.
I think I am legally obligated to review this given I inadvertantly made you do it
Also WOW this is such an in-depth and really interesting AU. It's lowkey exactly what kind of vibes I think of when I picture an originalized AU of poke fic, or at least of WSBS. All the familiar bits are there but its reinterpreted into its entirely own unique setting. There's a lot of really interesting teases and solid quality exposition delivered in a a fairly short time frame. Vibes go hard, too.
It's probably one of the trickiest hurdles to figure out how to establish a setting without pulling the "as you know" card. While I wasn't reading with a super critical eye it all ready effectively to me and was pretty captivating.
The only bit that felt a bit slow for me was the interactions with the diomedes horses, but thats because I somehow got in my head we'd somehow be putting the 'dinner with Nagas' in this chapter? That was my assumption though, and obviously wrong. Useful to use the horses bit to instead establish the creepy scene with the Odette doppleganger as a hook. I did read one half or so then break for a few weeks and read the second half, so make of that what you want though.
Speaking of, apex carnivorous horses is SO EDGY. Having a whole herd is very hardcore. (I admit I zoned out on all their names except Gofraid (bc it sounds like Go Afraid lol) and Ange. I also really enjoyed the different ways you interpreted Odette's team into the setting. Owl Solene and cat sithe Enora and Isaur and literal rat Loic lol. Also Ange is a horse now. Odette lowkey a horse girl.
It sounds like Abhorrents is the cover all name for supernatural entities that are rogue/causing problems. And Odette is a coven witch in this, a familial thing. I am extremely intrigued to know how her family ties and magic and how all the supernatural stuff here works. The world has a great sense of feeling very real and like there's proper systems and structure beneath the surface. The amount of thought put into this is apparent. In a good way, it almost feels like this is fanfic of something because the way its treats the reader is like these systems and organizations are fully known.
Honestly it was all very good, the prose read smooth and it balanced exposition and characterization, I got a good taste of the world and teases for plot hooks to expect. While there's admittedly bias of knowing the MC, i think she's still really well done here and engaging.
I'm sure Odile will cause a ruckus and a half so I'm quite interested how she'll fit into this setting and how her deal with Odette will work. I think this story passes the chapter test in that if I were looking for gothic southern farm horror, I'd keep reading.
“So it spoke to you?” Noel gasped over the landline. Odette dipped her head out of the crack in her bedroom door to double check if she could still hear the rickety farmhouse pipes clamoring with the running shower in the master bathroom. As long as Bernard was preoccupied, she was able to talk freely.
“Kind of? It was more like a projection, like when Isaur or Enora talk to me,” she explained, sliding her back down her papered wall to sit on the hard wood floor. She began to wind the coiling phone cord, barely straining under the distance she’d put between herself and the base, around her free finger just to keep her hand occupied. “Asked me about singing to it again.”
“You’ve sung for it before?”
“No.” Her gaze darted to the leatherbound book on her bedside table; the source of her simultaneous gratification and contention. She felt the stiffness drain from her shoulders. “I guess I used to hum in the woods a little when we played out there…”
“Amazing. Even this Abhorrent knows you’re destined for singing and not farm work.”
Bernard had said the same thing, yet that hadn’t stopped her for the past two decades. She still hadn’t opened her acceptance letter from Byleth School of the Arts. She now had infinitely more reasons not to.
“Don’t make light of this,” she whined, slamming the back of her head against the wall. She winced at how bad it hurt, rubbing the forming lump with regret doused in self-reproach. “Does the implication of that not freak you out? Does this whole thing not freak you out?”
“Oh, believe me. Consider me adequately concerned for your safety and well-being. If I were a different person, I’d tell you you need to call the Consortium, like, now,” Noel said.
“But?”
“But I’m me, and I know that calling them would guarantee she doesn’t come out again, which defeats the purpose of your little vendetta.”
“It’s not a vendetta,” Odette sighed. “It’s a…curiosity.”
“Well, curiosity killed the cat sithe.”
“And Chupacabra Margo killed that nāga clan that plotted to slaughter me.”
The weight of Noel’s silence transcended the phone lines between Limbo County and New Orleans and settled right on top of her.
“Solene wants me to,” she murmured. They argued about it all the way back to the house after the looming entity disappeared and Ange had to be talked down from chasing after it. For most Diomedes horses, especially Ange, self-preservation went out the window when they felt slighted. The presence of Chupacabra Margo had definitely slighted him.
“Well, you and I both know Solene has always been high strung.”
“But she’s not wrong. Five dead birds aren’t going to sit well with her, and I don’t blame her. I want to figure this out without any more unnecessary aves deaths and without the Consortium showing up to complicate things.”
As if it were possible to make this any more complicated.
Noel clicked his tongue a few times. “You’ve only been finding songbirds, right? Maybe that’s the warning, somehow.”
Her eyes rounded at nothing. She hadn’t considered the connection and it struck her like a ricocheting bullet out of her rifle.
Could it be that she was somehow the reason for the brutal deaths of those birds?
“What does me singing for it have to do with anything? It hasn’t showed itself in 20 fucking years, and now it’s suddenly angry I haven’t sung a bogus tune out in the woods in a while? After all this time, that’s all it took to get it back out again?”
Had she known that 10 years earlier, it would have saved her a lot of time. A lot of heartache. A lot of lectures from Bernard about “paving her own path.” She could have long gotten into and enjoyed a full tenure at Byleth without a second thought. She could have been in New Orleans with Noel right now.
Granted, it was only that acceptance letter that made her clam up in the first place. It had only been a few weeks since it showed up in the mail. That meant Chupacabra Margo was lingering around long enough to notice the extensive lull caused by her own anxiety, a thought that pulled her stomach to her knees.
“Would have saved us a lot of time,” Noel said. There was a reason why he had been her best friend since they were in elementary school. Why he was the only other witch she would dare fill in about her unhealthy desire to make contact with the Abhorrent even the Consortium couldn’t track down. “We’d be in the same class, like we should have been.”
It was their shared small town dream. Get accepted into Byleth, graduate together, then run off to New York to make it big on Broadway. As five year olds, it seemed so simple to them. There were no rogue Abhorrents or dead nāga clans to throw monkey wrenches into plans when you were five. The cruel world hadn’t had you long enough to choke you with a foul dose of reality yet.
She slumped against the wall, her chin coming close to meeting her chest. “Well, at least they still want me. But now that this happened, I–”
“I know.”
“I mean, am I crazy?”
“Extremely.”
She frowned into the transmitter. Noel laughed as if he’d seen it happen.
”But that’s why we’re friends. I can’t say I wouldn’t do the same thing.”
“If a murderous Abhorrent saved your life and spared it on the same day, of course you’d want to know why.”
“Thank you for making my point, Dee.”
Odette flared her nostrils on exhale, with Noel not hesitating to mimic the noise she made. They sat in a digitized silence, allowing her another moment to listen for the pipes. She froze when she thought she couldn’t hear anything, but a distant trickling followed by a creak lulling off into a low whir leveled her rising heartbeat.
“Look, this is what you have the gut feeling to do right now. You’ll find the answers you want to find, and you’ll get here when you’re supposed to get here,” Noel soon continued.
“What if that’s never?”
“Not possible,” he declared. She could hear his hair, likely blown out and perfect as ever, brushing against his phone with the shakes of his head. “You have too much talent in that tiny body and too much brain in that big head for it to be never.”
She didn’t wish for the presence of a grin, but it had a mind of its own.
“Speaking of big heads,” she said, pushing herself to sit up. She snaked her arm around the side of her faded white bookshelf, the only surviving relic of her pre-pubescent bedroom, to the near overdue library book out of the second compartment. “What else have you got for me in regard to the Bonhommes?”
She flipped to the page where she’d left her ribbon bookmark, again greeted by the half-smiling faces of the Bonhomme clan. Blaise, the broad-shouldered patriarch, Nadia, the petite matriarch, and their three dark-haired, infuriatingly handsome sons, Alain, Fabien, and Dorien, ages 20, 18, and 14 respectively at the time of the book’s publication nearly a decade ago. Odette had scoured the shelves for something newer, but it was apparent the Bonhommes were sporadic in their willing appearances in publications about the larger farming companies.
It left her wondering how those boys, brighter-eyed spitting images of their steel-jawed father, were looking now. What they were up to. The youngest, Dorien, was about her age. Where was he in life compared to her?
“Mmm, nothing we haven’t already gone over.” Dim clicks sounded over the line. “Aside from a few acquisitions which seemed to happen under relatively normal circumstances, they’re coming up squeaky clean.”
“You sure that fancy new computer of yours can’t help you find more info?”
“For the millionth time, Odette, that’s not how computers work. They’re pretty much for programming and record keeping…and, of course, the time sink that’s Space Invaders,” he mumbled. “Now if it was an Abaddonian computer, it’d be a different story.”
Here we go, she thought. Bring up any technology around Noel Massé, especially in an incorrect way, and you were always doomed for a lecture.
“Demon tech is literally on another plane. But those have way too many zeros on the back end of the price tag for my wallet to keep up. Plus, they don’t last nearly as long outside of that realm, so it’s usually not worth it…”
“Then just conjure one up.”
“Yeah, okay. After that I’ll bestow another moon upon Earth just because,” he mocked. “I can’t just make one appear if I don’t know how the tech works. And stealing one is just a one-way ticket to a curse. You know demons don’t play with that shit, not even for a wizard."
With the graspable straws quickly diminishing, there wasn’t much else for her to pull from.
“So at this point, any other dirt I want, I’ll need to dig up on my own?” she huffed.
“You’re a farm girl; you’ve trained your whole life for this,” Noel snickered.
She was glad he found it so amusing. That made just one of them.
The walls around her snapped to attention with the sound and force of the water shutting off. Odette stiffened, a sharp inhale catching in her throat as she scrambled to her feet.
“Gotta go, I’ll call you later.” The first note of Noel’s reply was cut off by her slamming the receiver back onto its base. It wasn’t long before Bernard came strolling back down the hall from his and Nana’s bedroom, dressed in a pair of his nicer pants, ones he hadn’t yet put holes in, and a freshly-ironed button down. His towel was still draped around his neck.
His brows jumped close to his hairline—still strong and pronounced even at his age—upon seeing her sitting on her bed. “You haven’t showered yet?”
Shit, she thought. This is the kind of thing that happened when obsession transcended forethought.
“Oh, I was on the phone with Noel; he wanted me to ship him some corn cobs. Something about a ‘taste of home.’”
He nodded slowly; once, twice, a third time, while a contemplative frown pulled at the curve of his jaw. Contemplation gave way to a fleeting understanding that was momentarily hardened by sympathy. A knit in his brow, that obnoxiously worrisome tug in the left third of his lip.
It was that look that said you should be in New Orleans with him.
“Well, we can certainly do that. In the meantime, go get yourself ready. I’d like to be out of here in half an hour or less.”
Asking Odette to take a shower and make herself presentable in under a half an hour was like asking Maman to stop hitting on men twice her age. The likelihood of it happening was slim to none, but she’d try her best just this once, for Bernard’s sake.
She tried to not put so much effort into making herself look presentable. These VIPER tycoons didn’t deserve to see her looking her best, but, likewise, she also wasn’t stupid enough to cut off her nose to spite her face. She still tied her hair up into her signature neat dual braids, she still put a little curl in her lashes, and she still pulled on something that accentuated her endowed figure—not too much, but just enough to prove that, even as a born and bred country farm girl, she still knew how to dress herself. Perhaps it would surprise those silk-stocking snakes.
The ride down to VIPER’s property—a solid seven minutes past Bernard’s insistent 30-minute cutoff, just out of a last show of pettiness—was characterized by a languorous silence. Odette tried to pass the five minute drive by watching the expansive bayou landscape blur by in her window. She half expected to catch Chupacabra Margo emerging from behind a passing cypress. Instead, all she saw was Solene, cutting through the air with just enough ease to keep pace with the car. Instead of looking ahead of her, however, her gaze was locked on the very window that held all of Odette’s attention.
Even from afar, she could see those black eyes were alight with urgency. You need to tell him, they said.
Odette decided, just that one time, to practice willful ignorance.
The VIPER compound was precisely what she envisioned while still managing to take her by surprise. She’d always thought her family home was rather oversized, but the Bonhomme’s freshly-built home—no, mansion—was easily quadruple the square-footage. There were still some construction workers scurrying about the balconies and scaling ladders to finish up some final details, but it couldn’t have looked more finished to her. The fields that stretched out in every conceivable direction didn’t seem much bigger than those at Margo Farms, but it was hard to tell from simply standing in the driveway.
“Ah, Bernard!”
Atop the fifth step of the wraparound porch and descending with the grace of one who functioned on self-importance was who Odette immediately assumed was the Bonhomme patriarch. His entire person was quaffed, from his thick tawny head of hair to his starched pants, hemmed perfectly above the tongue of his boating shoes. She had a feeling he spent more time cultivating his appearance than his fields.
“Blaise,” Bernard replied, tone amicable, with a smile just trained enough to not cross the line into something belauding. “The place definitely looks much bigger up close.”
“Didn’t I tell you?” Blaise chuckled. His hand clasped with Bernard’s in a firm handshake before those handsome slitted eyes, green as the flora that surrounded them, turned on her.
“You must be Odette.”
She put a large chunk of her energy into not making a face as she subjected herself to a handshake as well. Firm and tight, to the point it was almost painful. Her fingers tightened around his knuckles with matching ardor.
“It’s a pleasure to meet your acquaintance,” he said with a nod. If he was impressed by her grip, he wasn’t obvious about it, much to her chagrin.
“I must say that you are a picture. I almost don’t believe you’re the field body your grandfather claims you are.”
The heat on the tip of her nose betrayed her distaste for the comment. At least it seemed her outfit choice worked on a surface level.
“A little sun and elbow grease does a physical form good, as us greenies like to say,” she replied. “Besides, someone has to wrangle our horses.”
“He tells me you’re handy with those Diomedes brutes.”
Gods, how much had they spoken about over the course of five minutes? She was so prepared to interrogate the Bonhommes on their livelihoods that she was ill prepared to discuss her own.
“They’ve stopped trying to take bites out of me, so that’s definitely what we’ll conclude.”
“Well, I was telling your grandfather that I have a son who is about your age. Perhaps you’d be keen to share some of your experiences with him.”
I know. And don’t count on it, she thought. “I’ll do my best.”
Wheels crunching over stone alerted her just slightly in the opposite direction of where they had parked. A golf cart, clearly years newer than the dirt-covered, cobweb hoarding buggy she had back home, came to a stop in front of Bernard’s truck, allowing its driver to step out.
“Oh, so I’m not too late.”
Instead of the angular 14-year-old she beheld in her book, she was greeted by a piece of gods-given perfection.
From the complexion of his immaculate skin to the emerald hue of his snake-like irises to the flawless line of his gallant smile, every part of his face was a finely-crafted detail of a work of art, begging to be ruminated upon.
Her lungs seized when he held his manicured hand out to her. Her own hands, although small and what some would call “dainty," were riddled with pulled hangnails, scratches fresh and old, fading scars, and a few small yet still unsightly callouses that certainly had no business coming into contact with unworked skin like his.
Her palm met his in a soft clap, and she braced for the recoil. Instead, his fingers, cool to the touch, enclosed around her knuckles and sent shockwaves of contrasting warmth up through her arm and down the center of her nervous system. The Louisiana sun had nothing on the heat this Bonhomme instilled in her.
“It’s a pleasure to meet your acquaintance. My father told me you would be coming by, although he failed to mention our new neighbors had a daughter,” he greeted, further drawing her in with a French lilt that was much like her own. “I’m Dorien. And you are?”
“G-granddaughter, actually,” she corrected. Her tongue felt fat in her mouth, and her mere existence felt like a burden. “I’m Odette.”
His widening grin damn near stopped her heart. “Odette,” he repeated rosily. His thumb brushed over a barely-there scratch on her middle knuckle. “Beautiful name for a beautiful girl.”
He kissed her hand. It was a gentle maneuver, intended to be more courteous than romantic. The capillaries in her face didn’t know the difference, and she felt them loosen, emptying every last drop of blood they had across her nose and cheeks.
“M-merci,” she coughed. She didn’t mean to withdraw so quickly, but she was on track to dissolve into nothing if she remained in his grasp much longer. The look she fired over her shoulder was met with a gently flummoxed nod from Bernard, which matched perfectly with the cautious smirk he was trying on.
“I figured my son wouldn’t mind showing your granddaughter the grounds while we had some more time to chat. Of course, if that’s alright with you and her,” Blaise offered.
Bernard lowered his head toward her. The kink in his brow was his silent assurance that she was free to refuse, in spite of his insistence she play nice.
She spoke before her brain could catch up. “Uh, yeah. That’s okay. I’d love to have a look around.”
Bernard clapped his hands together, satisfied with the answer. “Then it’s alright with me too.”
Her decision didn’t truly settle with her until she was sitting on the passenger side seat of the VIPER golf cart, peeling off down the paved road while Bernard’s gentle expression became smaller and smaller with the growing distance.
Shit.
Is that all it took? A good looking boy with nice teeth? She’d momentarily forgotten why she was so angry to begin with. Now all she could feel were the butterflies breaking free of her stomach and fluttering down into her thighs, somehow looking fatter than normal in her fog of diffidence.
“My apologies.” Dorien spoke when they were well out of eyeshot of the porch. “Something tells me you weren’t exactly planning for this.”
A white-hot burn smeared over the apples of her cheeks. “I—well…no. I hope I’m not intruding.”
“My father has a knack for telling me things at the absolute last minute as well. But not an intrusion whatsoever.” He flashed her another winning smile, his pointed canines catching some stray mid-afternoon sunbeams. “I’ve yet to meet anybody my age around here, so I’d sooner call it welcome.”
His reassurance sounded sincere enough to settle her stomach. Though, with a smile like his, he could have insulted her and she probably would have felt better. Knowing that startled her.
Less than an hour ago, she was complaining of VIPER’s mere existence to Noel, and now she was a puddle of herself on Dorien Bonhomme’s golf cart? It was bad enough Chupacabra had reared again, but now Odette was losing herself? A sick day indeed.
“So…” Her tongue felt like sandpaper. All of the smoothly defined questions she’d come up with on the drive over were gone the moment she heard her own wavering voice. “How long have you been in town?”
Great fucking start, Odette.
Dorien, fortunately, considered the question with genuine thought. “Not long, actually. Construction on our home just finished, so Father called for my brothers and I last week. We only just got here on Monday.”
Her brow curved into a dubious arch. “Construction just finished?”
“Well, the construction that makes it all livable. Father is still meticulous about the details,” he chuckled. The sound was slick with honey. It trailed over her in a thick drop, effectively warming her from the outside in.
As expected, their property was expansive. The roof of the mansion had shrunk to a pinpoint by the time Odette concluded that it was at least double, likely triple the size of Margo. Fields stretched on for short eternities, and their block of livestock buildings was enough to stir an overwhelming feeling of envy in her. Four barns total, plus a stable and coop, all easily dwarfing the size of her own facilities; freshly built without a slat out of place. Just like their silos. And their greenhouses. And their home…
She had to remind herself that VIPER was functioning on a different scope. They were a much larger agricultural business, and needed the facilities to live up to those means. That didn’t make them any better than her perfectly functioning family farm.
“Like what you see so far?” Dorien queried. She tried to find a hint of condescension in his words, but she came up short.
“It’s not every day I see a farm in such a mint state.”
“I’m glad you think so. Of the ten we own in the states, this is definitely the nicest one so far.”
Ten, she thought with a breath snagging on her trachea. Just in the states.
“So you get around.” She decided that was the perfect opening to press a little.
Dorien shrugged halfheartedly. “Expansion’s the name of the game, as I’m sure you know.”
“But what brings you here? Surely there were more desirable, busier farm towns to set up such fancy greenhouses in.”
Dorien rolled the cart to a stop near, ironically, one of said fancy greenhouses. Odette hated how her interest piqued as she took in the crescent-shaped glass monster, nestled nicely just off the property’s main road and marking the entrance to a freshly tilled field.
“Likely the same reason your coven settled here,” he replied, pulling the keys from the ignition and listening to the engine fade into the surrounding cicada song. “Cheap land.”
The answer was so predictable that it caught her off guard.
He slipped off the cart, toeing around the front just in time to catch Odette’s hand as she also stood to get off. She mentally fumbled for that defensively terse outlook she’d been sinking in earlier in the day. Fortunately, Dorien was more focused on letting her into the greenhouse than her visible internal strife.
The inside, naturally, was infinitely more impressive. Flora she only dreamed of cultivating lined the shelves stacked along the glass windows and stands lined meticulously down the center, creating five sets of parallel paths connecting the opposite solid walls. The amalgamated aroma of a hundred otherworldly blooms, ranging from the staple fae stormflowers to the rather rare demonic gloom lotuses, was a welcome intrusion on her nose, drawing the strain from her muscles and easing a content sigh out of her.
“I assumed this would be something you’d want to see,” Dorien grinned.
“I’m okay to give you that win,” Odette said, meeting his gaze with a partial smile of her own. She didn’t indulge him in that eye contact for long before she took off down the nearest walkway, keeping an idle pace so she could closely examine the plants that greeted her. Out of habit, she found herself counting their buds, checking their leaves, and even stopping to smell.
She couldn’t bear to look back at Dorien. There had to be some part of his perfect presence that was appearing smug about reducing her to this state.
Through idle conversation about the workings of the greenhouse, Odette stopped dead as she came upon a row of perennials that were so wilted, she almost didn’t recognize them. Closer examination of the leaves made her realize she was staring down caprilias, a personal favorite of hers. Her intrigued grin was immediately replaced by a stark frown while she thumbed a leaf, curling with malaise. She didn’t bother to hide her disdain, even at the sound of Dorien approaching her.
“Mm, yeah. As you can see, we’re having some trouble with the caprilias. They’re still not quite happy about being shipped out of Washington.”
She couldn’t find it in herself to let that relight her oppositional flame. There wasn’t much even the most experienced farmer could do about that without more advanced assistance. These flowers made their native home in the rainy corners of Washington, where they always knew what weather to expect, and being moved to a whole new climate, so far away, no less, was bound to get them riled up.
She didn’t know what came over her. Maybe it was something fueled by her unprecedented crush, or a need to somehow prove herself to these farming overlords after surveying their far more updated property, but her mind went to work filing through all of the plant care spells she knew. She also tapped into her knowledge of the biological, spiritual, and most of all, temperamental makeup of caprilias.
She could tell at first glance that they were angry off nothing more than classic caprilia-brand pettiness. They weren’t afraid to show their disdain, no matter how small it was. Capricious defiance was built into them; the source of their namesake, the whole reason why they were so fickle to keep and maintain.
These flora, really, weren’t much different from her herd of brash carnivorous horses. Knowing that made it easy to settle on an approach.
She flicked her wrist toward the first two rows she stood near, aiming for the bulbs of the browning blooms and watching them all ignite with the evergreen glow of her friendly enticement. Not a wilt-reversal spell, but a mood stability spell. She could have used a wilt-reversal spell, but it would take much more magical energy on her part, and they likely wouldn’t react as well to it. Persnickety plants usually needed to be handled through their spirits; their sentience. Not their physical forms.
Each bush rose slowly at first, like they were reluctant to perk up again. Odette concentrated just a hair harder, focusing in on the negatives residing in their souls. We're so pissed off, they said. We didn't want to move, and now we're here in this stinky greenhouse, they whined. Louisiana SUCKS.
That's the wrong way to look at it, her magic replied. Aren't you tired of just seeing rain? Louisiana gets rain, but it also gets sunshine. And snow. And changing leaves. You'll always have a show.
We suppose it is boring, they agreed. But we weren't ready.
Change is hard, but this place was made for you. Try to see it as turning over a new leaf.
They laughed at the humor in her magic. They appreciated her perspective. They regained their normal, elegant posture in the span of a blink.
Odette felt proud of herself as she surveyed the revived bushes, enjoying the sight of the spiky petals sporting their true, lively rainbows of deep blues and blood reds. They even felt more spirited than before. They just needed a gentle, assisted reminder that not all was bad in Louisiana.
“They’ll need some additional coaxing in the coming days. I would suggest some fertilizer; they tend to respond better to synthetic stuff. But they should be more cooperative now. Just don’t use any more spells for a while, or they’ll get defiant again.” Even plants could grow tired of being directly subjected to magic after a while.
Dorien surveyed the revitalized bushes with lips pursed and brows raised. Those glorious eyes of his sparkled with awe.
“What magic table do you practice?” he asked, scratching his temple.
“Just the standard green witch track; Flora, Earth, Light, Water...some of the weather-based elements. The most effective for these kinds of things, in my opinion.”
“Even better than what's on the Fairy table? I’d heard somewhere that witchkind simply copied that and refined it. Is that true?”
“What goblin told you that?”
“My connection with the foremost intel on witches, obviously.”
His eagerness to jest with her made her more susceptible to humoring him. Was that a bad thing?
“We had our element table well and truly practiced long before we even know faekind existed. Our species meeting made both tables better. I just happen to prefer the table native to my heritage, but it wouldn’t be uncommon to find another green witch who felt the opposite. Although they usually just end up converting to warlocks in those cases.”
“Well.” She didn’t know when he got so close. There was barely an inch between his arm, probing one of the freshly revived leaves, and hers, allowing his cologne—an intoxicating mix of coriander and sandalwood—to flit by her nose. She should be overwhelmed with the desire to step away. But she wasn’t. “We’ve employed some green witches in the past that have soothed our more finicky flora. I never bothered to inquire about their preferences because I’d never seen one do it so quickly. And with so many subjects at once.”
A wash of diffidence returned the pep to her step. She paced onward. “It’s just practice. And great teachers.”
“You shouldn’t sell yourself short. It’s talent.” His voice wasn’t too far behind her.
“Now you’re just trying to flatter me.”
“And what’s wrong with that?”
She didn’t know what she was running from. Perhaps it was the compliment itself. She never knew what to do with those. Or maybe it was the mere idea of her melting into Dorien’s minor adulation. In her conscious, intelligent mind, she knew she wasn’t supposed to be liking the attention as much as she was. However, her involuntary body responses weren’t exactly operating on intelligence.
“Come on,” he teased. “You drilled me a little already. Don’t I deserve the opportunity to return the favor?”
“Flattery isn’t drilling; it’s just filler small talk,” she responded with calm, cool, and collected ease, despite feeling anything but.
“So you want something a little deeper to discuss, hm?”
She curved into the next row, now gazing over some assorted stalks that served as a buffer between them. “Sure. Give me something to actually think about.”
“Alright. What’s someone like you doing out here?”
“Someone like me?” she repeated as her eyes rounded. Meanwhile, Dorien’s squinted under a coquettish grin.
“A very, very pretty witch whose power is clearly being wasted in a little town like this.”
His gaze, along with the purr in his voice, were making a meal out of her, and all she could do was stand there and take it. It was those damn gastrointestinal butterflies that made her remember she had the free will to escape.
“I-I don’t think of it as a waste,” she stuttered, turning to scamper away. She didn’t make it very far down the row before a root snagged around her ankle, throwing her off balance and nearly tossing her forward onto her face. She was certain her best trait was her balance, as she caught herself just before catastrophe struck. At the expense of a portion of her pride.
“I think of it as beneficial to my coven’s livelihood.”
“But what would your ideal livelihood be?” If he noticed her faux pas, he did well to not indicate it. “If you could do anything? I feel like you must have other dreams that aren’t farm aligned.”
Discomfort skittered up her spine, compelling her to roll her shoulders. She hadn’t had the chance to feign ignorance over everything she already knew about him, and he was trying to sink his pearly fangs into her deepest insecurity? She needed to yank the reins.
“Now we’re getting too deep, Dorien. Tread lightly.”
“Okay. Would that be a question better asked over dinner?” he offered.
“As in…with you and your father this evening?” she said, puzzled.
His honeyed laugh returned with a little less force, easing the lump that balled up in her chest. “I was thinking of something more along the lines of a date.”
His flirting should have been enough of a clue of what was coming, yet she still felt her knees deconstructing into goo. Her brain’s failsafe switched into autopilot, spewing out the most cohesive response it could string together.
“A-and…what are you hoping to get out of a date?”
“Exactly what you’d expect,” he said with a lazy shrug. He pushed off the shelf he was leaning on, approaching her in time with the tempo of his words. “Learning the lay of the land, seeing the hotspots, getting to know my new neighbor, whom I would very much like to partake in more deep conversation with. If she’d let me.”
He was in front of her now, leaving the full range of his sincerity—from the soft tilt on his lips to the openness of his demeanor—on full display. Sparks flew inside her brain, though it was hard to tell if it was from short circuiting or a side effect of the primordial excitement kicking her heart into a gallop.
“Would I be in charge of picking the restaurant?”
“You presumably know the better spots.”
“I do,” she replied, a single nod sending her bangs into a brief flurry. “I just don’t know if they’re exactly your scene.”
“Then we can find out this Friday at, say…8:00?”
He presented her with a circular pink bloom, plucked straight from a ludus belle bush; known for kicking up an audible fuss when they were picked as a show of affection for an incompatible match. She hadn’t seen him do it, and her surprise saturated her face. As she took it from his hand, enjoying the serene silence that encircled them, she decided that she was too enamored to try and hide it.
