Hemlock and Hedge: 15 Questions and Answers

1. Why does Hazel Salem return to Wormwood, and what conditions bind her inheritance?

Hazel returns following her mother Freya’s death, inheriting the house and the unprofitable Salem Apothecary. Guilt-ridden for not knowing her mother was ill, she signed the will without hesitation—only later realising the binding conditions: she must keep the shop open, pursue studies of witchcraft, and join the Wormwood Coven. These three obligations shape every subsequent decision Hazel makes, propelling her from reluctant returnee into an investigator of her mother’s hidden past and, eventually, into confrontation with the town’s magical establishment.

In “X Marks the Spot,” the narrative emphasises how Hazel’s career as a struggling writer left her just as broke as her mother, making the apothecary a practical burden rather than a windfall. The coven requirement directly sets up the trap she walks into during “Avenging Angel,” while the witchcraft-studies clause ironically prepares her to decode the symbolic meaning of wormwood as an aphrodisiac in “The Way the Cards Fell.” The conditions are not decorative; they are the engine of the plot.

Explore more about Hazel’s journey as she reinvents herself in Wormwood.

2. What does Hazel discover inside the hollow oak tree in Wormwood Forest?

Inside a lightning-scarred oak at the spot marked “X” on her mother’s hand-drawn map, Hazel finds a yellowed envelope pinned out of sight. The contents include a bundle of protective witch herbs, a recipe for wormwood-laced lemon cake dated 16 May 1990, a Tarot card depicting The Lovers, and a handwritten note from Freya reading “He’s the father!” Together, these five items form a blackmail dossier that has waited twenty-seven years to be discovered.

The envelope’s placement—hidden but not destroyed—reveals Freya’s dual intent, explored across “X Marks the Spot” and “Good Omens.” The herbs match the Salem Apothecary’s “Negative Energy Stay Away” protection bags, linking the evidence directly to Freya’s practice. The cake recipe and date anchor the mystery to a real event: the poisoning of Mayor Richard Starbright at a 1990 competition. Each object is a deliberate clue, not a random keepsake.

3. Why is the wormwood-laced lemon cake significant beyond being a poisoning attempt?

Wormwood is both a convulsant (containing thujone) and a powerful aphrodisiac capable of being used in a love spell. In “The Way the Cards Fell,” Hazel realises she has been fixating on the physical effects of the herb while ignoring its symbolic meaning. The cake baker did not intend to poison the judge at all; the goal was to make him fall in love with the baker—a plan that went disastrously wrong when the wrong man ate a slice.

This double nature of wormwood mirrors the central tension between mundane and magical explanations that runs through the entire book. The evidence chapter shows Hazel researching online and connecting the aphrodisiac property to The Lovers tarot card found in the envelope, transforming her understanding from “attempted murder” to “misdirected love spell.” It also explains why the mayor suffered hallucinations: an accidental overdose of thujone, not deliberate harm.

4. How does The Lovers tarot card function as both a clue and a tool of blackmail?

The Lovers card is the piece of evidence that was removed from a specific fortuneteller’s deck—creating a gap that proves ownership. In “The Way the Cards Fell,” Hazel realises that tarot packs vary wildly and that the card in the envelope must belong to the baker’s own deck. When her kitten Aziraphale scatters Olivia Ghoul’s dusty cards, the missing Lovers confirms Olivia baked the cake. Freya kept the card as insurance, making it the linchpin of a twenty-seven-year blackmail arrangement.

The clue unfolds in two stages. First, the bakery’s tarot-themed artwork prompts Hazel to connect the card to a specific deck. Second, the physical absence from Olivia’s pack provides irrefutable proof. Freya’s choice to preserve rather than destroy the card demonstrates that this was never about guilt—it was leverage, exactly as Hazel deduces in “Good Omens” when rejecting the idea that her remorse-averse mother would hide evidence out of conscience.

5. Why does Olivia Ghoul’s reaction confirm Natalia’s true paternity?

When Hazel directly asks Olivia whether Richard Starbright is Natalia’s father, Olivia turns white, her eyes flash with fury, and she calls Hazel a snake “just like your mother” before ordering her out. No denial is offered—only rage at being exposed. The unguarded reaction in “The Way the Cards Fell” tells Hazel everything: the former mayor, not the magician Elliot Hex, fathered Natalia after eating the wormwood-laced cake intended for Hex.

Olivia’s fury is layered. She is not only angry at Hazel for uncovering the secret but also at the echo of Freya Salem, who had held this same leverage for decades. The evidence shows that Olivia had crafted a public identity around Natalia’s supposed powerful-magician father, a boast Natalia herself repeated at school. The collapse of that fiction in a single confrontation reveals how brittle the Ghoul family’s social standing truly is.

Learn more about Olivia Ghoul’s role in the story.

6. What really happens at the Wormwood coven meeting Hazel attends?

Thirteen witches—led by Natalia—mock, silence, and magically paralyse Hazel while chanting around a cauldron in the Ghoul residence. In “Avenging Angel,” Hazel finds herself unable to speak or move as the room turns icy cold despite a fire, a violation that falls somewhere between psychological manipulation and genuine witchcraft. The invitation was a trap designed to humiliate the Salem heir and demonstrate her powerlessness. Only the sudden intervention of the kitten Aziraphale—who claws through the witches’ ankles—breaks the spell and allows Hazel to flee.

The scene establishes Natalia as an active antagonist, not merely a schoolyard bully. The chant of “Shhh!” that silences Hazel and the collective mockery from the coven’s members leave her convinced she has made enemies of every witch in Wormwood. This hostility directly motivates Hemlock’s thirst for revenge and explains why Hazel’s subsequent magazine venture operates outside—and in quiet defiance of—the coven’s social order.

7. How does Hemlock reveal his true nature, and why is his name significant?

After Hazel flees the coven with the kitten she calls Aziraphale, the animal speaks, scolding her for the “ridiculous name” and announcing his true identity as Hemlock—a witch’s familiar bound to her. He explains in “Avenging Angel” that he pushed his way to her door and entered her life specifically to activate their magical bond, which required him to save her from danger. His name, a poisonous plant, connects him to the botanical-crime motif of the wider series while foreshadowing his declared mission: revenge on the coven.

The naming layers are deliberate. Hazel initially calls the kittens Crowley and Aziraphale after Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman characters, a literary joke that underscores her sceptical, outsider perspective. Hemlock’s rejection of that name and his embrace of a deadly-plant identity signals his serious, magical nature. His origin in a feral colony in Wormwood Forest also ties him to the wild, untamed magic beyond the coven’s control.

Explore Hemlock’s character and his role as Hazel’s familiar.

8. Why does Hazel publish the lemon cake recipe without the wormwood ingredient?

Hazel publishes the recipe in the first issue of Tales from Wormwood as a deliberate coded message to Olivia Ghoul. In “Lovers and Lemon Cake,” she admits the omission was “not without spite”—by sharing the cake that started everything but stripping out the spell ingredient, Hazel signals that she knows the secret but is choosing not to expose it. The recipe becomes a public reminder of private leverage, transforming a blackmail threat into a quieter arrangement of mutual obligation.

The decision also serves Hazel’s self-reinvention. The magazine she invented as a cover story for her investigation becomes a real enterprise, and the lemon cake—moist, dense, and beloved by locals—gives her an entry point into Wormwood’s community. She turns Freya’s weapon into a culinary olive branch, one that tastes pleasant while carrying a bitter undercurrent only Olivia can detect.

Read about Hazel’s self-reinvention and search for belonging.

9. What does Natalia’s purchase of lemon balm and dried wormwood signify?

When Natalia arrives at the apothecary to buy those specific herbs “at her mother’s request,” Hazel immediately understands: Olivia has read the magazine, recognised the lemon cake recipe as a message, and is publicly acknowledging that their silent arrangement will continue. By sending her daughter—who remains ignorant of her true parentage—to shop at the Salem Apothecary, Olivia signals to the whole town that the Ghouls endorse Hazel’s business, fulfilling her end of a bargain Hazel never explicitly proposed.

The transaction in “Lovers and Lemon Cake” is thick with unspoken tension. Natalia delivers the order grudgingly, unaware she is a chess piece in a deal between her mother and her old school rival. For Hazel, the coins sliding across the counter represent not just payment but a hard-won stability: coven hostility is neutralised, the shop gains foot traffic, and the secret she holds remains safely buried—for now.

See how Natalia fits into the Ghoul family secret.

10. Why didn’t Freya Salem destroy the evidence instead of hiding it?

Freya preserved the envelope and its contents as a blackmail insurance policy, not a guilty confession. Across “X Marks the Spot” and “Good Omens,” Hazel explicitly rejects the idea that her mother felt remorse: Freya was a woman who believed herself a witch and was not someone you crossed without facing consequences. The map and hidden envelope ensured that even after her death, the secret could resurface—binding her daughter to the same leverage game and forcing Hazel to engage with the family legacy of manipulation.

The method of concealment is itself revealing. The hand-drawn map on a dusty apothecary shelf was never part of Freya’s will; it was abandoned, awaiting discovery. This passivity suggests Freya was willing for the truth to emerge on its own timeline, perhaps as a final lesson to Hazel about the power dynamics of Wormwood. By leaving the choice to her daughter, Freya extended her influence from beyond the grave.

Learn about Freya Salem’s legacy of secrets.

11. How does Hazel’s scepticism clash with the magical events she witnesses?

Hazel spends most of the book insisting that Wormwood’s supernatural culture is folklore and psychology, even as events defy rational explanation. She rationalises the coven’s paralysing chant as mass psychology and the icy room as a stuck air conditioner in “Avenging Angel.” But when Hemlock speaks and claims to be her familiar, her first thought is that she is having a psychological break—a reaction that shows her scepticism is now a defence mechanism against the mounting evidence that magic is real.

This tension plays out across multiple chapters. In “X Marks the Spot,” she treats witchcraft as a “historical assignment” and “keeping of old traditions.” By “The Way the Cards Fell,” she is willing to entertain magical symbolism when it helps her solve the mystery, but still frames her conclusions in psychological terms. Hemlock’s revelation in “Avenging Angel” does not instantly convert her; instead, it produces a characteristically sardonic response: “I’m not sure that there was a psychiatrist on earth who would know what to make of this one.”

12. Why does Hazel name the kittens after Good Omens characters, and what does it foreshadow?

Hazel names the noisy black kitten Aziraphale and the silent one Crowley in “Good Omens,” a nod to her literary identity and an ironic comment on their personalities. The joke reverses expectations—the disruptive kitten gets the angel’s name while the quiet one receives the demon’s. When Aziraphale later rejects the name and reveals himself as Hemlock, the literary reference collapses, signalling that this is not a cosy fantasy but a genuine magical bond with serious stakes.

The naming also marks a turning point in Hazel’s relationship with Wormwood. By reaching for a bookish, outsider-reference joke, she demonstrates her distance from the town’s own supernatural vocabulary. Hemlock’s forceful rejection of the name in “Avenging Angel” is a rejection of that distance: he insists she accept the reality of witches and familiars on Wormwood’s terms, not hers. The other kitten, Hedge, never speaks—making Hemlock’s verbal, opinionated presence all the more startling.

13. Why was Elliot Hex the likely intended target of the love spell, not Richard Starbright?

Elliot Hex was the original scheduled judge of the 1990 cake competition but cancelled at the last moment, as Hazel learns in “Good Omens” when she interviews him. Richard Starbright stepped in as replacement and ate the wormwood-laced cake by accident. Olivia Ghoul baked the cake for Hex, the “dashing magician” she eventually married and had another daughter with—Aurelia, whose sharp features and blue eyes resemble Hex, not Starbright. The spell’s misdirection produced two decades of hidden paternity.

The substitution explains why Olivia kept the secret: she could never admit to hexing the wrong man or acknowledge that her eldest daughter’s father was the former mayor, not the powerful magician she eventually won. Hazel pieces this together in “The Way the Cards Fell” by comparing Aurelia’s features to Hex’s and realising that Olivia’s romantic trajectory only makes sense if the cake was meant for someone else. The love spell worked—just on the wrong target.

14. How does Hazel’s Tales from Wormwood magazine parallel her mother’s manipulation of secrets?

Both mother and daughter use information as currency. Freya hoarded the lemon cake evidence to blackmail Olivia Ghoul for twenty-seven years. Hazel invents Tales from Wormwood as a cover story for her investigation, then transforms it into a real magazine that earns her community goodwill and, crucially, a public platform from which she can signal to Olivia. In “Lovers and Lemon Cake,” the published recipe becomes her version of her mother’s envelope: a quiet assertion of knowledge that extracts compliance without open confrontation.

The parallel is not lost on Hazel. She reflects that she is “following in my mother’s footsteps when it came to the business of blackmail.” Yet her approach differs in tone: Freya operated through silence and fear, while Hazel operates through publication and apparent openness. The magazine’s warm reception and the customers it brings to the apothecary suggest Hazel has found a more sustainable—and less lonely—way to wield secrets than her mother ever did.

15. Why does the ending blend contentment with chaos, and what does Hemlock’s agenda foreshadow?

The final chapter, “Lovers and Lemon Cake,” closes with Hazel experiencing genuine happiness in Wormwood for the first time, her apothecary revived and her magazine succeeding. Immediately, Hemlock undercuts the moment by revealing he has used a wardrobe as a litter tray and reiterating his demand for revenge on the coven. This tonal whiplash is deliberate: Hazel has found belonging, but the forces that nearly cursed her bald are still active, and her familiar’s vendetta remains unresolved.

Hemlock’s repeated cry of “Revenge! We must seek revenge!” in “Avenging Angel” has not faded; it has simply waited. The chaos he introduces—destroying her aloe vera plant, creating messes, making demands—mirrors the unpredictable magic Hazel has only begun to accept. The ending suggests that stability in Wormwood is always provisional, and that the prequel’s resolution is really a setup for the conflicts that will unfold across the full series.

See how the ending sets up future books in the series.