The morning's sun had clouded over in the time they'd been inside. The air hung cool and damp and heavy over the forest; the rain Bella had predicted this morning was approaching faster than she'd anticipated. Outpacing her companions, Bella landed on the peak of Daphne's house and assessed the clouds until Daphne and Titus arrived. Daphne beckoned them both around the corner.

"It's probably better if my grandma doesn't see you two," she said. "She might start asking questions. I'll distract her while you get to my room; it's the one right here." She tapped the nearest window. "Is that alright?"

"Sounds appropriate to me," said Titus. "Will your door be sufficient to block out our conversation?"

"It will be once my grandpa starts cooking. He might be already. He likes to start a few days before Wightnight, and my grandma always goes to the living room to stay out of the way. If we keep our voices down, we should be okay."

Titus nodded, and they crept back around the corner together. Daphne peeked through the door's high window before waving Titus and Bella inside. Footsteps started almost immediately down the hall.

"Daphne? Is that you, honey?" called an older woman's voice.

"Quick, under here," hissed Daphne, struggling out of her coat. She slung it over a nearby table just in time for Bella and Titus to dive into its shadow. Daphne straightened up, whacked her head on a hanging lantern, and sheepishly greeted her grandmother. They headed for the kitchen together.

"Oo, visitors?" said a cheerful voice behind Bella. "Hello, visitors."

Titus leaped in the air with a startled hiss. He and Bella whirled around to find a chunky orange cat peering around the coat's hem. His tail waved happily. "Oh, you are visitors! Hello. Are you friends of Daphne's?"

"Keep your voice down," whispered Titus, eyes darting around and tail still puffed. "We are, but we'd rather not announce ourselves."

"Oh, you don't need to worry about anyone here. They're all friendly!" The cat pushed past the coat to join them beneath the table, well into Bella's personal space. "Are you hiding? This is fun. It's like a fort. Do you like forts?"

The question was directed at Titus, who replied tersely that yes, he did enjoy forts and also quiet voices, a concept this cat seemed ill-prepared to grasp.

"My name's Charles," he announced proudly, though nobody had asked. "I live here."

Titus's stiff hackles told Bella he was maintaining his patience with an effort. Leaving him to distract the newcomer, she checked if the coast was clear. Daphne and her grandmother seemed to have gotten stuck in the kitchen doorway, chatting with her grandfather. Daphne caught Bella's eye and made a covert signal to wait. Bella sighed and retreated again.

"Even the plants here are very friendly," Charles was saying, with all the blithe confidence of a creature who had never faced an unkind peer, predator, or empty bowl in his life. He prattled on about the house's food smells, the scraps he sometimes got fed, the delight of the living-room yarn basket, the birds he sometimes saw outside, and had just launched into some inane approbation of paper Wightnight streamers when Titus interrupted him.

"May I ask a question?" he said. "It's important to someone we care about."

Charles lit up like a Wightnight lantern. "Oh, you live with someone, too? Do they also feed you scraps?"

"Does anyone in this house ever visit Baneberry Bog?"

Bella and Charles both froze. Charles' eyes had gone comically wide, reflecting the dim light behind the coat.

"Oh," he said, and that seemed all he was capable of for several long seconds. Bella wanted to ask Titus what he thought he was asking, but she couldn't say a word with another cat here. Even if Charles was—by some miracle—a familiar. She doubted it.

"Is that the wet place that smells bad?" said Charles at last.

"Yes," said Titus.

"Oh. My people go there sometimes. My older people. They bring home little bundles of plants, and they always bring me a present—have you ever smelled that plant that smells really good and makes you all happy inside? My people—"

"Excuse me for a moment," said Titus. Before Charles could forge any further into his newest topic, his audience had slipped around the coat's edge and vanished into the shadows. Bella watched tensely until he reappeared beside the house's shoe-mat. He checked the hallway, then lowered his nose. Bella strained to keep him in sight. He really was stealthy, and that glossy black fur didn't help. In three dozen heartbeats, she'd lost him again.

Raucous laughter from the kitchen pulled her attention back. Bella peeked around the coat to find Daphne once more waiting to catch her eye. The signal this time was to make tracks for the indicated bedroom. Bella clicked her beak. She could make the trip, but that meant leaving Titus to whatever he was investigating, and she didn't trust him enough for that.

"She went to the bog."

Bella leaped in her skin. Titus had reappeared behind her, silent as a moonshadow. His eyes glowed with a new intent that Bella didn't like at all.

"Who did?" she said.

"Bryony. The only boots here with bog-smell are winter ones; it's what other people wear to visit Baneberry. If Bryony took her winter boots and enough food for several days, the bog is the only wet area she could reach in that time."

"She never goes to the bog."

"Even for ingredients?"

Bella straightened, ruffling her feathers. "Bryony hates Baneberry Bog."

"Why?"

Silence fell between them. The intensity in Titus's gaze had not lessened in the slightest.

Bella sniffed. "For obvious reasons."

"Is that so?"

Bryony must not have told him. That didn't surprise Bella, given their respective levels of trust with their keeper. But Titus might suspect the answer anyway. Bella hoped not. This was Bryony's secret, and Titus didn't deserve to be prying into it if he couldn't even be bothered to take her disappearance seriously.

Bryony had lost her mother to the Wights of Baneberry Bog when she was still a teen. That was all she could assume, that is: with the forest devoid of larger predators, there were few reasons a person might venture into that landscape and simply fail to return. A search party had found her footprints days later. They followed the trail until the peat moss resisted further imprints, and drowned out further smell. Bryony's mother was declared dead by Wight-lure and bog-drowning, and the case was closed. Bryony's family postponed the funeral for a year, hoping for a better outcome. But no further trace of her mother ever came.

There was no way to find a body that had fallen into Baneberry Bog. The bog was ancient, deep and soft with untold fathoms of peat moss. No probe had ever found its bottom. Its lush surface concealed pockets that could swallow a person without a trace, sinking them too deep to claw their way to the surface again, drowning them in the dark, acidic water. With these pockets always shifting, the moss grew in around a body within years. Perhaps cutting into this peat might locate it again, but the Wights strongly opposed such activity. Those who attempted it often died by Enigma-Wight electrocution.

Bella thought Bryony had made peace with her mother's disappearance years ago. Bryony certainly made no habit of visiting the bog; in the decade that she'd lived in its proximity, Bella had never once known her to make a visit. If that had changed now, then why?

Bella ticked through the years in her head, searching for an answer. This year was no special anniversary of Bryony's mother's death, but Bryony was not given to such significance anyway. Perhaps she'd just gone to pay her respects, and wished to do so in privacy. Bella shook her head to dispel the sting of the possibility. If true, it meant Bryony had not told her the truth, robbing her of any opportunity to offer comfort or support.

The timing of the visit was also unusual. Bryony's mother had died in spring. Wightnight was also the most dangerous time to be in the forest, let alone near Baneberry Bog. Each autumn equinox, the Wights gathered there in such great numbers, even the non-electric types could bring an unprotected person down, sucked dry by a thousand vampiric sips of energy.

If Bryony wasn't paying her respects, perhaps she'd gone to find her mother's body. The potion hidden in her back wall might be the key to this theory. Bryony might have made a tracker capable of finding bodies beneath the thick mats of sphagnum. Maybe one that worked best during Wightnight's high ambient magic levels. That would be a tall order; bogs were so soaked in Wight magic, they swallowed most Witch potions at the best of times. But Bryony was the best of the best. If anyone could do it, she could.

"Oh, that's pretty," said a voice in Bella's peripheral consciousness. She returned to Daphne's house with an effort, to find herself alone. The voice belonged to Charles, but he was nowhere in sight.

"I've never seen anything so pretty," he said, somewhere on the tabletop above. "Look at all the sparkles."

The hallway was empty. Bella fluttered up to join the cat, to find a cat-shaped bulge behind drawn curtains. Resigning herself to indignity, she ducked under the fabric beside Charles. Her blood ran cold. From Bryony's cottage, a trail of Wights now leaked up the road, sparkling in numbers normally unseen here. Even as Bella watched, the ones in the lead drifted closer. They weren't just spreading. This was targeted. They were following Daphne, Titus, and her. 

A/N: This week's ONC recommendation!

The Summer I Really Didn't Kidnap Lance Hardwood by BrianMullin0

A Disney Star pretends to be kidnapped, just to have some fun. Crazed fans, mad chases and mayhem ensue.