The Vine Witch - Luanne G. Smith Page 0,6

brains that convinced them their schemes were paramount to everyone else’s?

She shouldn’t have yelled those insults at him before storming out perhaps, but without the house, the fields, the harvest, how would she ever start over? She’d been pledged to the Renard vineyard since she was five years old. She was Château Renard’s vine witch. The terroir and she were one. If she no longer had that to depend on, how would she ever reclaim the life Bastien had stolen from her?

Elena stared up at the house in tears. She couldn’t tolerate the thought of that imbecile man buying the vineyard and allowing wine to age in spoiled barrels. Couldn’t he taste the moldering mushrooms in every sip of that swill he’d made? Grand-Mère might have lost her touch, but it was hard to understand how things had gotten so bad. Even if he didn’t know how to sterilize a barrel properly with burning sulfur, Grand-Mère did. No, something more was at work. It wasn’t just the barrels. The grapes themselves were tainted too. She could still taste the corruption on her tongue.

But the problems of the vineyard weren’t hers to worry about anymore.

Unable to stare at the void of her uncertain future any longer, Elena instead did what she always did. She leaned into her intuition. Walking a little farther down the vine row, she placed her hand on one of the oldest canes, one planted by Grand-Père when he was still a young man with a new wife. The vine, black and gnarled with age, had already hardened off in anticipation of winter, but she knew the vitality that ran dormant in its veins. She closed her eyes and held on, concentrating as she tapped into the life source inside the vine and inside herself.

Though her magic wavered at first, their energy mingled deep in the vascular system flowing under the hardwood. After a few slow breaths, she located the plant’s pulse. The vine was worn out, no question. Not from neglect or deficiency, but . . . something else. She leaned in, barely breathing, her senses heightening as she slipped into the shadow world. Following her third-eye vision, she detected a black thread of energy running from root to cane. Lifting her gaze, she spied a pattern of spells and hexes interwoven over the vines. Yet none of them were strong enough to account for the melancholia she sensed deep in the roots. This was a profound grievance, a lament that echoed within a hollow space inside her. She yearned to understand its pain, but the feeling pulled back, vanishing under her touch. She let go, and her energy disconnected from the vine.

She was still recovering from the experience when Grand-Mère approached from the house, carrying a woolen shawl. “I always wished I’d been born with shadow sight. Such a remarkable talent.”

And a vulnerability, Elena thought, remembering too well how she’d been ambushed while in her trance state. After her return home, she couldn’t help feeling she’d been blindsided yet again.

Grand-Mère offered the shawl, then rubbed her thumb and fingers together, reading the air. “It’s bad, isn’t it, the spellwork? I can feel the electrical charge from the magic every time I step outside. I tried countering a few jinxes, but nothing I did ever seemed to make any difference.”

Elena wrapped the shawl around her shoulders. “It isn’t just one. There’s an entire network of spells over the vineyard. But I don’t think the usual charms would work to stop them anyway. There’s a black aura running through the center. A reverse curse to thwart any attempt to fix it.”

“Ingenious. Bastien warned me there’d be repercussions for not selling.”

“It’s why we fought,” she said as her eyes scanned the vineyard for further evidence of spells. “He wanted me to sabotage his neighbors’ vineyards. And not just the usual mischief everyone does. He wanted hexes. Vicious magic that would do real damage. He had this grand plan to squeeze the weaker vignerons out so he could buy their land and double his holdings. I defied him by refusing. Threatened to expose his intentions. But apparently he found someone else to do it for him.”

“Ah.” Grand-Mère absorbed the confession and glanced up at the snowflakes swirling above their heads. “I should warn you he’s come up in the world since you’ve been gone. His plan seems to have worked. He owns more property than anyone else in the valley now. He even brought on a bierhexe to oversee his