Outline - Ghost, Ghoul, Goblin, Witch
Ghost, Ghoul, Goblin, Witch
Book One of the Witch and The Warlock
Part I. Ghost:
Chapter 1 A Peculiar Girl
Introduction to Hecate Benedetto, Cat, and her aunts, Adelaide and Acacia Outterridge.
Chapter 2 Homuncula
[Flaskback] Adelaide and Acacia kidnap Hecate as a baby and replace her with a homunculus. Witches and warlocks cannot have children, so they must kidnap children born to Normals that have the potential to use magic.
Chapter 3 Scarlet Robes and White
Cat at Acacia’s house (a huge rambling Victorian manor house on Primrose Lane) for the Ceremony of Ascension, where young witches are accepted by the coven and the council.
Chapter 4 Lessons for Girls
[Flashback—high and low magic] Cat education with Emeline and Evgenia Bellona and Sophia Agnelli by Acacia. Instruction on the nature of magic, and the basic of how to manipulate reality.
Chapter 5 Black Robes and Blue
At the end of the ceremony Cat confronts the Council about having a child, guessing that it has something to do with the separation of the witches and the warlocks. She is warned never to broach the subject again with any witch, or suffer dire consequences. (Sophia passes Cat a note written in lipstick. Cat is distracted by something and puts the note in her pocket).
Chapter 6 Terrible Lies
[Flashback]. More education. Cat is told that “Aunt” Adelaide and “Aunt” Acacia are not her real family and that she can never have children. Emeline and Evgenia Bellona tease and torment Cat, and they order Sophia around like a lapdog. Sophia never actually talks to anyone but only passes notes written in crayon. When Emeline tries to bully Sophia, Cat sticks up for her and makes the twins back down. Sophia gives Cat a note that says one day she would help her out by pointing her in the right direction.
Chapter 7 Hidden Truths
Later, Cat reads the note that Sophia passed her at the ceremony of Ascension. It basically says to ask Adelaide for the real story behind having children. Cat pulls out her “treasure trove” and finds the old note that Sophia gave her. She realizes that Sophia can see into the future. (actually Sophia can see other people’s futures but not her own.) Cat confronts Adelaide, hectors and harangues and pleads with her until she gives in and tells her there is a spell that “might” let her have a child. Adelaide tells Cat about the spell, and about the three components that she needs: the essence of a ghost (tears), the morsel of a ghoul (finger bone of a virginal widow), and the heart of a goblin (penny).
Chapter 8 An Elementary Lesson
Cat thinks about what is meant by the essence of a ghost, but decides in the end that the best thing to do is to go to Primrose Lane and look in her aunt’s library. She flies in but finds no one around (at first). She goes into the library and starts looking in books about ghosts, but she finds nothing about the “essence” of a ghost. Then she starts to read about Elizabeth Caring.
Chapter 9 Tea and Sundries
Cat flies to Scotland, to the town of Dumfires. She spends the next day wandering the village, reliving in her imagination the murder, the trial, the hanging and the burial. She visits the grave of Jack Becton but eventually rests in a little tea shop and café where she speaks to the owner, a man whose family has long lived in the village and who has knowledge of local history. She leaves the shop, looks up at the sign ‘Becton’s Teas and Sundries.’ As evening falls she makes her way back the cemetery, pulls out a book to read and waits.
Chapter 10 The Transparent Pearl
In cemetery Cat sees Elizabeth Caring slipping soundlessly through the obelisks and statutes, around the stone memorials and marble tombs, a lithe figure clothed in a diaphanous, black mourning dress.
Cat pulled the glass stopper out of the slender neck of the little, crystal bottle. It hummed for an instant, a sweet resonance of the tone of the crystal and the magic infused in the bottle. She held the mouth of the bottle under Elizabeth’s jaw, a little to the right of her chin. A tear dropped. Cat pulled her hand back and replaced the stopper. She looked at the bottle, held it up to the moon. Instead of spreading out, the tear of Elizabeth Caring kept its shape, perfect and round, like a transparent pearl.
Part II. Ghoul
Chapter 1 The Consequences of Desire
Cat returns from Scotland with the essence of Elizabeth Caring. She barely has time to hide the bottle away, using multiple charms and wards to conceal and protect the precious crystal when a summons arrives from the Council, under Acacia’s sign. Cat must attend a special convene at Mockingbird Lane. Somehow the Council knows what she got from Elizabeth Caring and the news has caused a fury among the warlocks. Cat must explain the reason for what she did, which results in an uproar.
Chapter 2 The Hall of Alchymy
Cat is told that she is to be taken to a parlay in a neutral place, the Hall of the Alchymists. She is blindfolded because only the elders of the Council are allowed to know the location of the hall.
Chapter 3 Parlay
The warlocks enter and the parlay begins, ending with the threat of open war and the warning that the warlocks will be watching the witches carefully. First encounter with the Archon and Taisto Toivonnen.
Chapter 4 What the Heart Desires
Cat returns to Haven with Adelaide. They talk long into the night, Adelaide trying to convince Cat to give up her quest to have a baby. Instead Cat convinces Adelaide that this is the course that her life must follow to achieve happiness. Adelaide felt the same, many years ago, but gave up that dream, convinced by Acacia that it was wrong and that she would not have the power to pull it off anyway.
Adelaide tells Cat what a ghoul is and names Finkus Deadman as the most famous.
Chapter 5 The Crypt of the Ghoul
Cat arrives at the cemetery where Deadman lives. But she senses that something is wrong. She searches for the entrance to the crypt. Just as she finds it and starts to enter, Taisto interrupts her.
Chapter 6 Cruel, Merciless, Hateful
Taisto mocks Cat, invites her to enter the crypt, mocks her as frightened. He admits that he was sent to keep watch on her, to report back to the Arkhon. He refuses to say how the warlocks knew where she would be, and when, but of course it’s a good guess that she would be going after the ‘morsel of a ghoul.’ He as much as tells her that he will do nothing to stop her though. Cat tells Taisto why she is doing what she is doing. He laughs at her.
Chapter 7 Finkus Deadman
Cat and Taisto enters the crypt and eventually find Finkus Deadman in the charnel house.
Chapter 8 Deadman Tells a Tale
Finkus Deadman refuses to help Cat and is unwilling to sell his morsel. Taisto intervenes to help Cat. Cat and Taisto fight Finkus.
Chapter 9 If you Dare
The fight continues. But is not really all that desperate. Finkus has home advantage, and the crypt is full of traps (sticky, paralytic goo, poisonous mushroom spores, etc), and secret passages. But he has little real power to resist both Cat and Finkus. They defeat him (mostly it’s Taisto, however).
Chapter 10 Plans within Plans
After the fight with Finkus is over, Cat interrogates Taisto, realizing that he has been ordered to help. But he will not say why the Warlocks wish to see her succeed.
Part III. Goblin
Chapter 1 Into Hiding
Cat goes into hiding because she knows the witches will be out for her blood. But somehow Taisto and the Archon find her. Rather than attacking, the Arkhon informs her about the goblins and where to find Snoori. But even the Arkhon does not know what the ‘heart of a goblin’ is—aside from the actual heart of the creature. Cat confronts the Arkhon about why he is helping her. He will only say that her goals coincide with his own interests. Of course, he assumes that she actually is trying to cast the spell of [big powerful shit] and he wants this as a provocation to renew the war with the witches.
Chapter 2 The Archon
Cat also confronts the Archon as to the causes of the war between the Witches and Warlocks. The Archon leaves.
Chapter 3 A Spirited Disagreement
Cat confronts Tai about how he has been tracking her. He refuses to answer, of course. Their argument escalates into an outright fight (half-heartedly). He is more powerful than she would have imagined, almost her match.
Chapter 4 A Mercenary Heart
Cat and Tai continue to fight. Eventually they draw, but only because she holds back at the end. He is strong, but his power weakens as he exerts himself, while Cat seems just to continue building strength.
When it is over, Tai looked at her, strangely, the icy blue of his eyes seemed different, warmer. “Do you truly seek to have a child?”
“Yes.”
Tai nodded but says nothing for a while. (He finally tells her about the gold dust that the High Alchemist put on her.)
“If Acacia discovers this she will make the alchymists pay. He plays a dangerous game.”
“Indeed, but he possesses a mercenary heart,” Taisto adds with a shrug.
Chapter 5 Look Within
Cat finds Sophia. Sophia finally speaks direclty to Cat, telling her to look to her own heart and to listen to what it tells her. She gives Cat a note but tells her that it won’t help her if she looks at it.
Chapter 6 Snoori Grimalkin
Cat and Tai confront Snoori. Cat figures out what the heart is. Sophia’s note is empty, symbolizing the emptiness of the goblin’s heart. The void inside is filled with money.
Chapter 7 Moral Dilemma
Tai wants to fight the goblin for his heart but Cat refuses. She feels bad about forcing Finkus Deadman to give up his bone. She is not willing, any more, to bring harm to anyone else just to achieve what she wants. Tai, however, is not quite so kind hearted or charitable.
Snoori forces the matter by having his goblins attack. Cat and Tai defeat the goblins.
Chapter 8 Two Against Many
More goblins attack. Cat and Tai manage to defeat them all.
Chapter 9 Goblin Magic
Cat and Tai fight Snoori.
Chapter 10 First And Last
Cat and Tai kill Snoori and take his penny.
Part IV. Witch
Chapter 1 Confession
Cat prepares to cast the spell to allow her to have a child. Tai tells her the truth behind the Archon’s plan. He knows that they will be hunted by warlocks. Taisto and Cat go on the run together.
“Wait,” he demands, but with his eyes he pleads.
“What? Why, what is it?”
“I want to tell you the truth . . .”
“The truth?” Cat asks hesitantly.
Tai nods. “About me.” He pauses, but Cat waits for him to begin. “I was sent to spy on you, but you already knew that. I was also sent to make sure that you succeeded. Archon had little faith in you,” he smiles momentarily, but then he swallows hard. “But the entire truth is, is that I was sent to kill you once you try the high magic. That is, if the attempt does not kill you first.”
Chapter 2 The Springing Of The Trap
Cat casts the spell. She is weakened. Warlocks find them. The Archon sends a message to Tai. Cat accuses Tai of leading them to her. Tai defends her against the warlocks.
Chapter 3 Aftermath
Cat and Tai fight, verbally not magically. He is mad at her for accusing him, and for not believing in him. In the end they begin to make up (but it is a little ambiguous at this point—it will be concluded in chapter 9).
Chapter 4 Too Far, By Far
Witches find Taisto and Cat but they manage to escape. Cat realizes that they will never have peace so long as Acacia hunts them. She decides that she must confront Acacia. But first she goes to see Adelaide, to say goodbye, and to tell her the truth about Tai. She makes Tai stay behind, convinced that she can talk sense into the Council.
Chapter 5 Unreality
Cat and Adelaide speak about what she is doing, what it will mean, and Cat tells Adelaide about the warlocks.
Chapter 6 A Failure Of Imagination
Cat leaves, alone, to see Acacia and she finds her at Mockingbird Lane. Adelaide, Emeline and Evgenia are waiting there. Acacia has anticipated that Cat will return to confront her, that all she had to do was to keep the pressure on Cat. Emeline and Evgenia attack Cat.
Chapter 7 A Man In The House
Adelaide helps Cat defeat Emeline and Evgenia. Taisto shows up at Mockingbird Lane (by tracking Eleanor).
Chapter 8 A Terrible Price
Taisto and Acacia kill each other.
Chapter 9 A First Love
[Flashback] Back to when Taisto and Cat were on the run, after their fight (IV-3, pick up half way), they admit their love for each other, and then they make love.
Chapter 10 Her Name Is Eleanor
Some months later Cat has her baby at the Haven and names her Eleanor.
Book One of the Witch and The Warlock
Part I. Ghost:
Chapter 1 A Peculiar Girl
Introduction to Hecate Benedetto, Cat, and her aunts, Adelaide and Acacia Outterridge.
Chapter 2 Homuncula
[Flaskback] Adelaide and Acacia kidnap Hecate as a baby and replace her with a homunculus. Witches and warlocks cannot have children, so they must kidnap children born to Normals that have the potential to use magic.
Chapter 3 Scarlet Robes and White
Cat at Acacia’s house (a huge rambling Victorian manor house on Primrose Lane) for the Ceremony of Ascension, where young witches are accepted by the coven and the council.
Chapter 4 Lessons for Girls
[Flashback—high and low magic] Cat education with Emeline and Evgenia Bellona and Sophia Agnelli by Acacia. Instruction on the nature of magic, and the basic of how to manipulate reality.
Chapter 5 Black Robes and Blue
At the end of the ceremony Cat confronts the Council about having a child, guessing that it has something to do with the separation of the witches and the warlocks. She is warned never to broach the subject again with any witch, or suffer dire consequences. (Sophia passes Cat a note written in lipstick. Cat is distracted by something and puts the note in her pocket).
Chapter 6 Terrible Lies
[Flashback]. More education. Cat is told that “Aunt” Adelaide and “Aunt” Acacia are not her real family and that she can never have children. Emeline and Evgenia Bellona tease and torment Cat, and they order Sophia around like a lapdog. Sophia never actually talks to anyone but only passes notes written in crayon. When Emeline tries to bully Sophia, Cat sticks up for her and makes the twins back down. Sophia gives Cat a note that says one day she would help her out by pointing her in the right direction.
Chapter 7 Hidden Truths
Later, Cat reads the note that Sophia passed her at the ceremony of Ascension. It basically says to ask Adelaide for the real story behind having children. Cat pulls out her “treasure trove” and finds the old note that Sophia gave her. She realizes that Sophia can see into the future. (actually Sophia can see other people’s futures but not her own.) Cat confronts Adelaide, hectors and harangues and pleads with her until she gives in and tells her there is a spell that “might” let her have a child. Adelaide tells Cat about the spell, and about the three components that she needs: the essence of a ghost (tears), the morsel of a ghoul (finger bone of a virginal widow), and the heart of a goblin (penny).
Chapter 8 An Elementary Lesson
Cat thinks about what is meant by the essence of a ghost, but decides in the end that the best thing to do is to go to Primrose Lane and look in her aunt’s library. She flies in but finds no one around (at first). She goes into the library and starts looking in books about ghosts, but she finds nothing about the “essence” of a ghost. Then she starts to read about Elizabeth Caring.
Chapter 9 Tea and Sundries
Cat flies to Scotland, to the town of Dumfires. She spends the next day wandering the village, reliving in her imagination the murder, the trial, the hanging and the burial. She visits the grave of Jack Becton but eventually rests in a little tea shop and café where she speaks to the owner, a man whose family has long lived in the village and who has knowledge of local history. She leaves the shop, looks up at the sign ‘Becton’s Teas and Sundries.’ As evening falls she makes her way back the cemetery, pulls out a book to read and waits.
Chapter 10 The Transparent Pearl
In cemetery Cat sees Elizabeth Caring slipping soundlessly through the obelisks and statutes, around the stone memorials and marble tombs, a lithe figure clothed in a diaphanous, black mourning dress.
Cat pulled the glass stopper out of the slender neck of the little, crystal bottle. It hummed for an instant, a sweet resonance of the tone of the crystal and the magic infused in the bottle. She held the mouth of the bottle under Elizabeth’s jaw, a little to the right of her chin. A tear dropped. Cat pulled her hand back and replaced the stopper. She looked at the bottle, held it up to the moon. Instead of spreading out, the tear of Elizabeth Caring kept its shape, perfect and round, like a transparent pearl.
Part II. Ghoul
Chapter 1 The Consequences of Desire
Cat returns from Scotland with the essence of Elizabeth Caring. She barely has time to hide the bottle away, using multiple charms and wards to conceal and protect the precious crystal when a summons arrives from the Council, under Acacia’s sign. Cat must attend a special convene at Mockingbird Lane. Somehow the Council knows what she got from Elizabeth Caring and the news has caused a fury among the warlocks. Cat must explain the reason for what she did, which results in an uproar.
Chapter 2 The Hall of Alchymy
Cat is told that she is to be taken to a parlay in a neutral place, the Hall of the Alchymists. She is blindfolded because only the elders of the Council are allowed to know the location of the hall.
Chapter 3 Parlay
The warlocks enter and the parlay begins, ending with the threat of open war and the warning that the warlocks will be watching the witches carefully. First encounter with the Archon and Taisto Toivonnen.
Chapter 4 What the Heart Desires
Cat returns to Haven with Adelaide. They talk long into the night, Adelaide trying to convince Cat to give up her quest to have a baby. Instead Cat convinces Adelaide that this is the course that her life must follow to achieve happiness. Adelaide felt the same, many years ago, but gave up that dream, convinced by Acacia that it was wrong and that she would not have the power to pull it off anyway.
Adelaide tells Cat what a ghoul is and names Finkus Deadman as the most famous.
Chapter 5 The Crypt of the Ghoul
Cat arrives at the cemetery where Deadman lives. But she senses that something is wrong. She searches for the entrance to the crypt. Just as she finds it and starts to enter, Taisto interrupts her.
Chapter 6 Cruel, Merciless, Hateful
Taisto mocks Cat, invites her to enter the crypt, mocks her as frightened. He admits that he was sent to keep watch on her, to report back to the Arkhon. He refuses to say how the warlocks knew where she would be, and when, but of course it’s a good guess that she would be going after the ‘morsel of a ghoul.’ He as much as tells her that he will do nothing to stop her though. Cat tells Taisto why she is doing what she is doing. He laughs at her.
Chapter 7 Finkus Deadman
Cat and Taisto enters the crypt and eventually find Finkus Deadman in the charnel house.
Chapter 8 Deadman Tells a Tale
Finkus Deadman refuses to help Cat and is unwilling to sell his morsel. Taisto intervenes to help Cat. Cat and Taisto fight Finkus.
Chapter 9 If you Dare
The fight continues. But is not really all that desperate. Finkus has home advantage, and the crypt is full of traps (sticky, paralytic goo, poisonous mushroom spores, etc), and secret passages. But he has little real power to resist both Cat and Finkus. They defeat him (mostly it’s Taisto, however).
Chapter 10 Plans within Plans
After the fight with Finkus is over, Cat interrogates Taisto, realizing that he has been ordered to help. But he will not say why the Warlocks wish to see her succeed.
Part III. Goblin
Chapter 1 Into Hiding
Cat goes into hiding because she knows the witches will be out for her blood. But somehow Taisto and the Archon find her. Rather than attacking, the Arkhon informs her about the goblins and where to find Snoori. But even the Arkhon does not know what the ‘heart of a goblin’ is—aside from the actual heart of the creature. Cat confronts the Arkhon about why he is helping her. He will only say that her goals coincide with his own interests. Of course, he assumes that she actually is trying to cast the spell of [big powerful shit] and he wants this as a provocation to renew the war with the witches.
Chapter 2 The Archon
Cat also confronts the Archon as to the causes of the war between the Witches and Warlocks. The Archon leaves.
Chapter 3 A Spirited Disagreement
Cat confronts Tai about how he has been tracking her. He refuses to answer, of course. Their argument escalates into an outright fight (half-heartedly). He is more powerful than she would have imagined, almost her match.
Chapter 4 A Mercenary Heart
Cat and Tai continue to fight. Eventually they draw, but only because she holds back at the end. He is strong, but his power weakens as he exerts himself, while Cat seems just to continue building strength.
When it is over, Tai looked at her, strangely, the icy blue of his eyes seemed different, warmer. “Do you truly seek to have a child?”
“Yes.”
Tai nodded but says nothing for a while. (He finally tells her about the gold dust that the High Alchemist put on her.)
“If Acacia discovers this she will make the alchymists pay. He plays a dangerous game.”
“Indeed, but he possesses a mercenary heart,” Taisto adds with a shrug.
Chapter 5 Look Within
Cat finds Sophia. Sophia finally speaks direclty to Cat, telling her to look to her own heart and to listen to what it tells her. She gives Cat a note but tells her that it won’t help her if she looks at it.
Chapter 6 Snoori Grimalkin
Cat and Tai confront Snoori. Cat figures out what the heart is. Sophia’s note is empty, symbolizing the emptiness of the goblin’s heart. The void inside is filled with money.
Chapter 7 Moral Dilemma
Tai wants to fight the goblin for his heart but Cat refuses. She feels bad about forcing Finkus Deadman to give up his bone. She is not willing, any more, to bring harm to anyone else just to achieve what she wants. Tai, however, is not quite so kind hearted or charitable.
Snoori forces the matter by having his goblins attack. Cat and Tai defeat the goblins.
Chapter 8 Two Against Many
More goblins attack. Cat and Tai manage to defeat them all.
Chapter 9 Goblin Magic
Cat and Tai fight Snoori.
Chapter 10 First And Last
Cat and Tai kill Snoori and take his penny.
Part IV. Witch
Chapter 1 Confession
Cat prepares to cast the spell to allow her to have a child. Tai tells her the truth behind the Archon’s plan. He knows that they will be hunted by warlocks. Taisto and Cat go on the run together.
“Wait,” he demands, but with his eyes he pleads.
“What? Why, what is it?”
“I want to tell you the truth . . .”
“The truth?” Cat asks hesitantly.
Tai nods. “About me.” He pauses, but Cat waits for him to begin. “I was sent to spy on you, but you already knew that. I was also sent to make sure that you succeeded. Archon had little faith in you,” he smiles momentarily, but then he swallows hard. “But the entire truth is, is that I was sent to kill you once you try the high magic. That is, if the attempt does not kill you first.”
Chapter 2 The Springing Of The Trap
Cat casts the spell. She is weakened. Warlocks find them. The Archon sends a message to Tai. Cat accuses Tai of leading them to her. Tai defends her against the warlocks.
Chapter 3 Aftermath
Cat and Tai fight, verbally not magically. He is mad at her for accusing him, and for not believing in him. In the end they begin to make up (but it is a little ambiguous at this point—it will be concluded in chapter 9).
Chapter 4 Too Far, By Far
Witches find Taisto and Cat but they manage to escape. Cat realizes that they will never have peace so long as Acacia hunts them. She decides that she must confront Acacia. But first she goes to see Adelaide, to say goodbye, and to tell her the truth about Tai. She makes Tai stay behind, convinced that she can talk sense into the Council.
Chapter 5 Unreality
Cat and Adelaide speak about what she is doing, what it will mean, and Cat tells Adelaide about the warlocks.
Chapter 6 A Failure Of Imagination
Cat leaves, alone, to see Acacia and she finds her at Mockingbird Lane. Adelaide, Emeline and Evgenia are waiting there. Acacia has anticipated that Cat will return to confront her, that all she had to do was to keep the pressure on Cat. Emeline and Evgenia attack Cat.
Chapter 7 A Man In The House
Adelaide helps Cat defeat Emeline and Evgenia. Taisto shows up at Mockingbird Lane (by tracking Eleanor).
Chapter 8 A Terrible Price
Taisto and Acacia kill each other.
Chapter 9 A First Love
[Flashback] Back to when Taisto and Cat were on the run, after their fight (IV-3, pick up half way), they admit their love for each other, and then they make love.
Chapter 10 Her Name Is Eleanor
Some months later Cat has her baby at the Haven and names her Eleanor.
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