Blood Witch

Blood witches are practitioners who work with blood as their element, a power that makes them consequential to both magical protection and pursuit. The book shows their abilities through the temporary warding of Ava and the tracking threat posed by even a small bloodstain, linking their craft to the Coterie’s coercive control over her.

Identity and Element

Blood witches are distinguished from green witches by their element: blood rather than plants. The distinction is made explicit when Ava recognizes that the witch involved in her Coterie ceremony is a blood witch. The evidence establishes the practitioners’ magical specialization, but does not detail their wider community, origins, or abilities beyond the ritual and tracking shown in the story.

Ritual Work and the Coterie

During Ava’s blood-pact ceremony, a red-robed witch draws markings in oil on Ava’s forehead, palms, and the tops of her feet, then covers her lips with the same substance. She blows ash from a brass bowl onto the markings, which flare into painful, burning magic. Ava recognizes the act as warding and understands that its effects are not permanent. The witch later collects Ava’s blood and ash in a glass vial after Venus cuts her hand; Ava signs the pact with ink made from ash and her blood. The ceremony thus presents the witch’s craft as integral to the pact’s magical enforcement, not merely as an accompaniment to its written form.

Blood as a Means of Tracking

Blood witches can use blood to track people. Ava has been taught that even the smallest drop can provide a trace, including blood from a close relative. After her mother dies, Ava takes care not to leave behind the bloodstained shirt she wore: a blood witch on a Coterie tracking team could use it to find her. The danger turns an ordinary piece of clothing into evidence that could expose her location and makes the practical consequences of blood magic immediate.

Limits and Consequences

Ava considers seeking out a blood witch to undo her pact, but recognizes that asking would put both of them at risk of swift execution. Her fear underscores the imbalance surrounding this magic: blood witches can help enact a binding and may be imagined as possible sources of its reversal, yet attempting that remedy is itself dangerous. Their limited appearances nevertheless connect the Coterie’s ritual authority to the persistent threat of being found.