Spellbound
Katniss and Primrose Everdeen lead a simple life, sustained by a shop in a small town and a thriving online business that sells herbal remedies they concoct themselves. They share a lovely home in the woods, isolated from others, where they can be safe, only a cat and a cranky ghost living in the shed behind the abandoned house next door as company. Until a young man moves in next door, intending to restore it and live in it. Primrose just wants a friend and her sister’s happiness. Haymitch just wants to live his afterlife in peace. Katniss wants to get rid of the intruder and keep her sister and herself safe from anyone who might fear what they really are. Witches.
RATED E for sexual content, voyeurism, cats behaving badly, mild language, witches & witchcraft, dead characters, ghosts, mild creep factor, mild gore, discussions of attempted suicide, PTSD.
As part of @everlarkprompts Octoberlark Celebration!
You may read on AO3 or below the cut. Happy Halloween!
Part 5
~~ Katniss ~~
I scramble back up my tree and flop inside my bedroom window. I grab the corner of my comforter in my mouth and pull it off the bed and over my body to muffle the sound of my heart pounding and my wheezing breath.
He just...dropped trou! In his backyard! Just like that, shamelessly naked with the sun shining on him and the water that covered him.
I should have left and not watched his bath but my paws were planted in the dirt. He heard my initial reaction and I couldn’t move for fear of discovery. Instead I wound up watching the whole thing!
Shaking my head, I deny the heat coursing through me. Not attracted to him. I can’t be attracted to him. He’s a danger to us.
I can’t set foot in his house until Prim’s spell wears off, but the yard is land and belongs to the earth. I’ve had free reign of the outside and I’ve been able to project some of my powers through the boundaries of Prim’s spell. Perhaps her spell is weaker because I don’t intend bodily harm to him. Everything I’ve thrown at him so far has been an illusion. A mimicry of reality.
Still, projecting all of that past her spell requires a lot of energy. That must explain my reaction to him. I’m just worn out. It’s got nothing to do with his body or my physical reaction to him. Nothing to do with the burn scars on the backs of his legs, curving around his hips, licking up his torso. What happened to him?
With a groan, I consider curling up right here and taking a nap, but I hear sounds from next door and instead, leap back up to the windowsill.
I can’t see him from here, but I can imagine his foot connecting with the wrench I transported earlier and replaced with the conjured mouse.
“Ow!” he shouts. Then there’s a loud racket of clanking sounds. What did he do, throw it? My brain does this weird schism thing picturing him naked and stretching in the sunshine in all his glory while simultaneously picturing him throwing other things around. So much brute strength under tight control. Another flash of heat goes through me and I mewl.
The sound is accompanied by a loud Snap! from next door.
“Oh come on!” he shouts and I’m frozen immobile.
Oh no.
No no no. It has been years since I’ve lost control of my magic. Years. This is not good.
Before I can even think, I spot him walking through his yard to the gate, then headed towards ours, the casserole dish in his hands.
I leap back into my room. Shift. Throw on my clothes and hurry downstairs. I reach the kitchen just as he knocks. I can’t greet him all flustered like this. But my traitorous feet keep me in motion towards the door.
~~~~~~~~~~~~
~~ Peeta ~~
Why am I bothering to knock? No one’s home right now. It’s the middle of the day so Primrose is probably at their store and Katniss is wherever she goes to do whatever it is that she does. The curl of smoke rising up from the chimney is basically a permanent fixture of their home, and I’ve already discovered is no real indication of whether or not they’re home.
It’s such a fire hazard, but the one time I mentioned it to Prim, she waved off my concern and said they have protective measures in place to prevent the fire from spreading but that Katniss needs to keep it burning constantly for her end of their business.
There’s also the flock of ravens that periodically shows up and loiters around their house. I’ve seen them on the roof, in the yard. Perched along the tops of the high hedges out back. I’ve convinced myself that’s what I sometimes see in the tree between our houses when I leave early in the morning. This flock of birds. Today they’ve taken over the porch. They watch me with dark eyes and don’t even budge. What kind of weird birds aren’t disturbed by clomping human feet? I should just leave the dish on their porch with a note for them to find later.
I’ve just about given up when the door flies open and Katniss steps through, almost immediately shutting the door behind her and leaning back against it. She stares at me, wide eyed. There’s a pretty flush on her cheeks and a few wisps of her dark hair escape her braid, but the strongest impression that hits me in the moment is that of a cornered animal.
“I just wanted to return this to you,” I say and offer the clean dish to her.
“Thank you,” she says and grabs the dish. She holds it close to her body, crossing her arms over it. Yeah, that’s a definite Fuck off vibe.
“Sorry to...interrupt,” I say and turn to leave.
“Interrupt what? You didn’t interrupt anything,” she says in a rush and I pause to examine her more closely.
Still wild eyed and breathing hard.
“Are you okay?”
“I’m fine. Nothing the matter with me. Just...long trek back into the woods.”
“Okay,” I say and then an idea occurs to me. My timing is probably terrible but if what I’ve heard about her is true, Katniss might actually be able to help me. The real question is if she’s willing to help. She seems friendly enough when she comes into the bakery. It’s only here at her house that she turns cold towards me. I decide to take the risk anyways. “Hey, uh I wanted to ask...about my back garden--”
“What about it?” she cuts me off. I’m a little taken aback by her desperate tone and if possible, her cheeks have grown darker.
Now I’m blushing as I wonder if she’s seen one of my baths, but no. I can’t see any windows on their house from the water pump out back. There’s no way she’s accidentally seen me.
“I’m planning on starting some landscaping work soon, and I noticed some wild berry bushes back there. Just wondering if that’s something I should try to maintain, maybe use the berries in the bakery or if they’re poisonous. I didn’t recognize them and Primrose mentioned you take care of that huge garden you’ve got out back and now you say you trek through the woods so I thought you might be able to tell me what they are.”
“Oh!” she says and then runs a hand over her forehead as her lips break into a smile. A real, genuine smile with a breathy laugh.
Someone may as well kick me in the chest for the way it makes me feel.
“I’d have to see them. Maybe get a cutting for me to look at?”
“Or you could just come over,” I offer. “Maybe you know a trick for keeping a door on its hinges too because I seem to be having problems with that.”
~~~~~~~~~~~~
~~ Haymitch ~~
Soft laughter reaches me and I grumble at the disturbance. Rest. I just want rest.
As soon as I discern what disturbed me, I swear. The girl’s eyes flick over towards my shed but the boy remains unaffected. He’ll be unable to either see or hear me. The curse of the dead. To be invisible and mute to the mortal living.
“So these are the berry bushes,” the boy tells her, and she bends over to examine them. Like she’s never seen them before and I snort.
“These are nightlock,” she informs him. “They’re extremely poisonous.”
“Good to know. So I should probably tear them out.”
“Not necessarily. They’ll keep a fair number of wild animals away if you’re planning on planting a vegetable garden or something. And while the berries are poisonous, the nutrients they take and give to the soil are complementary to squash plants.”
“Huh, thanks.” She’s actually helping him. Interesting.
“And the flowers in early spring are gorgeous. Huge purple things with faint blue veins all throughout. Might be a little exotic for what you had in mind...”
The boy motions to the side of the back yard and shrugs. “I’m not sure exactly what I want back here yet. I know I don’t want it to be overly cultivated. I’m not looking to have square corners or a box hedge maze. Maybe something a little wild, but at the very least natural. Besides, I get the feeling this place isn’t something anyone can force into submission.”
They turn to face another part of the yard as he spreads his hands and speaks while she nods, cuts in with suggestions every now and then. Her fingers toy with her braid at one point, he leans close to her to say something I can’t pick up.
She laughs. Honestly laughs.
Very interesting.
“Thought you were trying to get rid of him, Sweetheart. Flirting with him like that’s just gonna make him stick around longer.”
She scowls over at me for just a second before continuing their conversation. I recline back in my chair and eye the chess game, the pieces left untouched since my body ceased to function. Listen to them converse. Mainly because I know my eavesdropping will piss her off.
“This is great, thanks Katniss. I really wasn’t sure where to even start with this part of the restoration.”
“Oh it’s fine. I’ve always been fascinated with plants. My Dad and I actually started a book about local plant life. It’s still rough. Handwritten and has no pictures in it. Mainly I use it to keep the herbs and plants straight in my mind when I’m working. There’s so many of them and one wrong misstep turns a cream meant to heal into one that harms.”
“That’s really cool. Any chance I could take a peek at this book? Get some ideas for back here?”
“Um, I guess so.”
“We could maybe keep talking about this over dinner?”
“Aw that’s cute. He wants to take you on a date. Don’t wear fur or black and leave the broom at home. Too obvious,” I say. The chair flips out from beneath me and I chuckle. She’s getting good. Stronger with each passing day.
“What was that?” the boy asks as I move back towards the window, curious to see how sweetheart will explain the noise of the toppled chair.
“Oh that’s the distillery,” she says meaningfully. He smiles and looks back around at her.
“Is that the source of all the haunted house stories?”
“Which ones have you heard?”
“Most common one is that the owner of this house back in the twenties ran moonshine for a living. Went mad one night. Killed his girl then himself in grief.”
“Legend says he tried to hang himself in that shed,” the girl tells him.
Without meaning to, my eyes lift up to the rafters. To the dust covered, decaying bit of rope still knotted around a solid beam.
My desire for entertainment has soured.
“Huh. What do you two kids know? He’ll have you burning at the stake in two seconds flat if you ever told him the truth,” I growl and retreat to the comfort of my shadows.
~~~~~~~~~~~~
~~ Katniss ~~
“Shit! What the fuck?!” He jumps and leaps back out of the small bathroom. I watch gleefully as Horace slithers across the floor, hissing and upset at the disruption to his nap.
Peeta turns and grasps Horace round the middle, holding the snake away from his body. This is not what I was expecting him to do. I crouch, ready to attack and protect the vulnerable reptile.
“Six years of Boy Scouts says to leave you alone, but dude...behind the toilet? There are better places for you to nap,” he says and shuffles down the stairs as Horace writhes and wraps around his wrist.
I follow on silent feet and watch as Peeta hurries out back and shakes his arm, frantically trying to dislodge the snake.
“Please don’t make me throw you,” he says and Horace finally falls to the ground with a hiss and gentle thud. The snake slithers off to lurk in the bushes, unharmed, and undoubtedly he’ll make his way back beneath the front porch again when he feels it’s safe.
I catch a quick glimpse of Horace and his flicking tongue, his beady eyes warn me not to move him like that again. I would remind the snake that this human is likely to call an exterminator and have Horace killed when he realizes that the snake lives beneath his porch, but Peeta’s calm handling of the snake suggests otherwise.
For now, Peeta wipes his hands on his jeans and returns to work. I grumble in frustration. He’s persistent, I’ll give him that. Granted, I’ve only had free reign of his house for about a week.
I’ve planted spider nests, broken hinges, burst pipes to spray him in the face, planted fake dead rodents, written eery words on his windows, vanished tools and moved them elsewhere in the house, spent nights scratching around his attic to disrupt his sleep. For nothing!
He’s started working on the roof and basic repairs to the exterior. Nothing I do seems to frighten him away.
To make matters worse, he’s nice. He’s kind to everyone he interacts with at the bakery. I’ve been frequenting the place more often for lunch, searching for a weakness that I can’t seem to find. He waits expectantly for my verdict on the food and spends far too much time chatting with me about his ideas for landscaping and gardening.
I hate myself for answering him. For helping him and hurting my chances for getting rid of him. I hate him for being so...amiable when I turned down his offer of a dinner date. He seems just as content to be a friend as he would anything else and I hate him even more for making me think of him while I’m dreaming at night.
While he’s initially startled by what I’ve done to “haunt” his house, he shakes it all off and keeps going. Dismisses them all as annoyances, pranks, figments of his imagination. The level of denial is astonishing.
I catch movement and glance up to scowl at Buttercup. He’s been following me for the past week, too. I’m sure he’s telling Prim everything that I do to Peeta, but I can’t bring myself to care. Instead, I slink off to Haymitch’s shack, the one place I know Buttercup won’t follow me. The presence of a ghost assures that.
Wriggling into the dress on the floor, I shift back to human form and smooth the fabric down over my body. I glare into the shadows as I hear Haymitch’s slow clapping.
“Excellent job, Sweetheart. You’ve really shown that mortal a terrifying time.”
“Well what do you suggest I do? You’re the real ghost!”
He guffaws and then reveals himself to me. Right in front of my face. I jump back and he only laughs louder.
“You’re holding back. Can’t figure why when you were so adamant about getting rid of him in the first place.”
“Okay, well what do you--” I stop myself as something occurs to me. He’s right. I have been holding back. I could do so much more to scare Peeta away from the house. Why am I holding back? I need to get rid of him.
But no sooner do I think it than I recall the way he treats everyone with kindness and patience. It doesn’t seem to matter how much I disturb his sleep or try to frighten how, no matter how frustrated he gets with the problems I create in the house, he remains unfailingly kind to everyone he comes across. Cordelia Ripper, Delly Cartwright and her overwhelming stream of endless chatter, every child who steps foot in the bakery. Even Glimmer Reed has received gentle rejections from him. Prim and myself have certainly already benefited from his kindness. He’s polite and quiet and that cherry pie was practically orgasmic. Not that his baking abilities mean anything about what kind of person he is. His treatment of people does. He’s friendly and open but has backed off every time I throw a wall up to prevent myself from actually liking him.
But still, that kindness freely given is directed at people he believes are just like him, not witches. He could just as quickly turn on us as soon as he learns the truth. The longer he stays, the more likely it becomes he’ll see something. Which means he has to go.
~~~~~~~~~~~~
~~ Primrose ~~
“Two more stages and it’s done,” I tell Buttercup and pet him under his chin.
An excellent batch, Mistress. Perhaps your best yet.
“It’ll be ready just in time for the summer solstice. I’m just glad we might finally get to use it!”
Katniss enters the kitchen then, grumbling under her breath. I stifle a smile as she mutters to herself and keeps walking into the library. I hear the sounds of books moving around.
“No...No...No good,” she says, her voice increasingly strained as she discards one spell book after another. I tilt my head towards the library and Buttercup slinks after her. A minute later, the sounds of a search stop. “Yes!”
She rushes back through with a book under her arm and Buttercup returns to me. Katniss pauses in the doorway leading to the back stairs and turns back around.
“What are you working on?”
“Why?” I ask innocently.
“It’s not a potion I recognize. It smells like yeast or...soap?” she wrinkles her nose and shakes her head. “I’m spending too much time as a cat. It’s affecting me.”
As she runs out of the room, I glance down at Buttercup and can’t stop the grin spreading across my face.
“It doesn’t smell awful to her!”
That only means her defenses are weakening.
“But it’s the first step. Finally!”
Do not get too excited yet, Mistress. It appears that the game is escalating.
“Oh no. What book did she get?”
Accessing Beyond the Veil
“She can’t seriously plan to call up more ghosts to that house. It’s already got one. Oh Haymitch is not going to like this.”
Perhaps we should escalate our efforts as well, Mistress.
“I can’t stop her, Buttercup. She’s already too powerful. She even managed to get past my threshold protection spell to some degree. All I can do is try to disrupt her power and buy us time.” He blinks at me and I tilt my head at him with a smile. I pause in my stirring to pet him and he arches into my touch with a happy purr. “You’ve got an idea, don’t you?”
With your permission, I have a few.