“Mostly, I remember the shoes,” I continued. “She’d just gotten them, and they were gorgeous. They were so blingy too—with all the gemstones.”

  “Gemstones?” Taliyah asked as she wrote the word down on her pad like it might come in handy later.

  “Right,” I nodded. “If I were the kind of person to swoon, I might have over those shoes. They were the sort of thing that remind people that fashion is art and they were even in my size, size eight.” Then I sighed and shook my head.

  “And then what happened?” Taliyah asked in her overly patient voice.

  I shrugged. “Nothing. Jenny bought the dress I recommended, and she left.”

  Taliyah made a note. “And the dress she bought, was it enchanted?”

  “Yes,” I said slowly, not loving where this line of questions was headed, because I was worried she’d think I’d screwed up the enchantment and that had been the reason for whatever had become of Jenny—information I still didn’t have at my disposal.

  “It was bespelled?” Taliyah double-checked, looking up at me.

  I gave her a cocked brow expression. “Most of my clothing is.”

  “Right. What was the charm on this particular dress?”

  “It wasn’t anything extreme that Jenny wanted in the enchantment department—just a little extra confidence. Something to show her in the best light possible.” Taliyah continued to give me that suspicious expression. “It wasn’t anything that would go and make her do ballet in front of a truck, Taliyah.”

  She shot me a look, whether for the less-than-sympathetic comment I’d just made, or the fact that she’d been one of the people at ground zero when Maverick and I had brought one of my dress mannequins to life, I wasn’t sure. The point was—Taliyah knew my magic and Maverick’s magic was strong stuff. If we’d brought a mannequin to life, the list of other things we could do was lengthy. So telling her the dress was charmed was probably bringing up all sorts of things that I didn’t want brought up.

  Raising the dead was one thing. It was frowned upon, sure. Giving a ghost a new body, that would have the magical community concerned, certainly. But giving life and sentience to something that had never been alive at all? Right—if that information fell into the wrong hands, those with the wrong hands would’ve been hammering at my door, torches and pitch forks in hand. Fortunately, the people I chose to spend time with were very good at keeping secrets.

  I fixed Taliyah with a look of my own. “Now, how about you tell me what happened to Jenny that brought you to my door at this time of night?”

  Taliyah took a slow breath, flipped through her notebook to an earlier entry, and started talking. What I learned was that Jenny Carrel did go on her date. And it sounded like it was nice enough, if terribly boring and mundane, but what could I expect from young humans? That didn’t stop me from asking for more detail, just in case there was a nugget of inspiration in there somewhere. I let it go when Taliyah gave me a warning look from eyes gone suddenly icy blue.

  The point was, the date had been going well, and the two of them had decided to head to Stomper’s Creamery for some late-night ice cream, when all at once, Jenny’s feet had basically taken on a mind of their own and she’d stood up, then started jogging around the store uncontrollably.

  At first, the jogging had been embarrassing. Then it became a bit scary, since not being able to control your limbs was never much fun. But then she’d actually taken off and burst through the store’s door, running wildly, until her feet had carried her right out into Main Street, and directly into traffic.

  “Goddess.” I stared through the windshield, being able to picture it all too well. “And you said she’s okay, though?”

  “I said, she will be,” Taliyah corrected me, her face a little grim. “She’s hurt, and she’s going to be in the hospital a while, but it could have been a whole lot worse.”

  A whole lot worse? “Were the shoes ruined?” I mean—running in heels was never fun—for your feet or for the shoes.

  “The shoes are fine, Wanda,” Taliyah muttered, shaking her head. I released a pent up breath of relief.

  “Well, I’m sure the whole thing must have been terrifying for Jenny.” Especially because she was human, and had no idea what was happening to her. I’d seen a similar curse before. The Spring Fae thought it would be a hilarious prank to curse humans to nonstop dancing. Usually it was just to embarrass them, but some of the darker court members would sometimes push it until the human collapsed from exhaustion, and some even died. Yes, the Fae had a very strange sense of humor.

  The seat creaked as I turned to look at Taliyah more closely. Her face was that perfectly neutral police mask she usually wore, but there was a tightness at the corner of her eyes that even her glamour couldn’t seem to hide.

  “Are you worried that it’s like that one summer?” I asked, searching her face, looking for any tell. “This isn’t really Winter’s style, though. They don’t do pranks.” Still more silence. “Are you worried Janara is recruiting from the other courts?”

  We’d certainly had an interesting time at the hands of the Fae lately, with a rogue Spring Fae spoiling milk and tying people’s hair into elf knots. Both had acted as a distraction so Janara, the Usurper, who had killed Taliyah’s birth parents could escape her faerie circle prison. We’d managed to keep Janara locked up for a few more months, but she’d finally managed to slip her prison.

  I understood Taliyah not wanting Janara to take the throne of winter, even though Taliyah didn’t want it either. And even though Taliyah had never even so much as met her birth parents, it didn’t change the fact that Janara had murdered them and would have murdered her, too. Plus, Janara was a backstabbing, murderous bitch, and that wasn’t the kind of person that should be in charge of an absolute monarchy.

  Not to mention the fact that I thought Taliyah might feel a little guilty, a little responsible, for the danger Janara represented to Haven Hollow. Taliyah might have spent almost fifty years as a human, but that didn’t mean she wanted to see the little people of winter suffer under a despot.

  Besides, no matter what Taliyah said, there was no way that Janara would ever allow her to live. Not when she would still pose a threat, with her claim to the throne. Taliyah was and always would be a rallying point, a representative for the people who didn’t like life under Janara’s boot.

  Taliyah’s hands tightened on the steering wheel until the plastic creaked. Faint traces of frost spread over the curve, glittering in the faint light. “I don’t count this as a prank. Jenny could have died.”

  “Well, you’re not wrong.” My words came out a bit breezier than I’d intended, and Taliyah’s jaw went tight. “But unfortunately, it is a prank by Fae standards.” I breathed in deeply and then shook my head. “So, the question really should be: what did little Jenny do to piss off a faerie?”

  “As far as I can tell? Nothing.” Taliyah released the steering wheel to flip a few pages back in her notebook. “From what I’ve gathered, Jenny’s human. Works an office job. The date she was on was the first one she’d had in a while, so it wasn’t a jealousy thing on the guy’s part, most likely.”

  I tapped my finger on my lower lip. “Just keep in mind that the Fae’s definition of ‘a while’ is different from yours or mine.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Jenny could have insulted someone while she was in grade school, and they’ve only just gotten around to settling that score.”

  “Would a faerie really take offense to a child?” Taliyah asked.

  I cocked my head to the side. “Stranger things have happened.”

  She nodded and then breathed in deeply. “Is there anything else you can tell me? Anything useful,” she added hastily when I opened my mouth to respond.

  “Rude,” I sniffed.

  “The question still stands.”

  I gave her a look. “I can’t tell you much. Not without examining Jenny, at any rate.”

  “Examining her?”

  I nodded. “I might be able to pick up who cursed her, and possibly why or what triggered it—if she is, in fact, cursed. I could at least recognize what court the curser came from. Especially if we examined her very soon—the signature of magic does have a way of evaporating over time.”

  “Then time is of the essence?”

  I nodded. “It is.”

  Taliyah sighed and then nodded as she turned her key in the ignition, and we were on our way.

  Chapter Seven

  I hated hospitals.

  There was always a smell to them. And that smell only got stronger once the vampire blood within me started kicking in. It wasn’t just the chemical smell of alcohol, disease, infection or other body grossness, either. Now there were other, deeper scents ground into the spotless linoleum.

  Blood. Pain. Fear. Death.

  I didn’t hold my nose as Taliyah and I strode through the lobby but spell, was it close. Breathing shallowly through my mouth helped, but not much.

  Of course, the other reason I couldn’t stand hospitals was that every time I found myself in one, that usually meant someone who mattered had gotten hurt. And as I walked through the halls now, I was reminded of a time when Roscoe had torn into Poppy. I could still see the blood-soaked carpet, and at the time, I’d been sure my best friend was dead. Even rushing her to the hospital, kneeling in the back of Lorcan’s car and weaving desperate spells to heal her, to keep her with us, and then sitting beside her bed… it had still felt like she could slip away at any moment.

  And that was a sense of helplessness I didn’t do well with. And one I never wanted to repeat.

  So, no, I didn’t like hospitals. Maybe because they reminded me that I was only as useful as my abilities. And really—what good was having amazing, goddess like powers, if I couldn’t do anything when it mattered? I’d had to hand Poppy’s pale, silent body to mortal doctors, and all I’d been able to do was hope they knew what they were doing—that they could save her.

  Luckily, they had.

  Another thing I hated about hospitals—they were too loud and too quiet. I wasn’t the kind of person for introspection, in general. I was more along the beliefs of ‘done was done, so deal with it and move on’. Sitting around and moping didn’t fix anything, and guilt was a useless emotion. Very true sentiments, yet… yet those sorts of thoughts didn’t yield themselves to the pain you felt when someone you cared about was on the verge of… moving on forever. And it was that silence that I remembered now—the sort of haunting quiet that stays with you.

  Will you stop it, Wanda? I asked myself as I forcefully pushed the macabre thoughts from my head.

  It was verging on way-too-late, and visiting hours were long over, but Taliyah flashed her badge, and no one bothered us as we made our way through the barren hallways. The fluorescent lights buzzed overhead, a non-stop drone that felt like fingernails on a chalkboard. They didn’t seem to bother Taliyah. Or maybe she was just too focused on her investigation to notice them.

  Seriously, how were people supposed to rest and heal when it sounded like a thousand wasp’s nests in the hallway?

  Jenny Shoe girl’s room was at the far end of the hall, past the nurse’s station, and for a second, I worried that she was already asleep. Yes, I wanted an excuse to evacuate the coven house, but even I felt a smidge bad for waking up someone who’d been injured earlier that night. But, as luck would or wouldn’t have it, the light was still on in the room, and when Taliyah knocked lightly on the open door, a quiet voice told us to enter.

  Jenny Carrel didn’t look half as nice as she had when she’d walked into my shop. For one thing, hospital gowns looked dreadful on anyone—really, I should have made it my personal mission to create something a little more… attractive, for lack of a better word. It was like the gowns had been specially designed to wash people out and make them look small, sickly and frail. For another thing, it looked like Jenny had lost a fist fight with a brick wall. The entire left side of her face was bruised, the skin around her eye swollen and puffy.

  The cast that was encasing her leg almost to her hip didn’t help things either. The girl had obviously been put through the ringer and I was surprised to see she’d survived her ordeal. I mean, she was human, after all.

  “Police Chief Morgan,” she said with some surprise. Her eyes darted towards me, and I could see the confusion as she tried to place who I was. “I’ve seen you before.”

  I nodded. “I’m Wanda… from Wanda’s Witchery.” It seemed the best and easiest explanation.

  Her frown furrowed more noticeably. “What are you doing here?”

  A good question, considering she thought I was simply the town seamstress and not a witch with power. When I didn’t have an answer for her right away, she looked over at Taliyah.

  “We just wanted to ask you a few more questions about your accident,” Taliyah explained in her professional voice. She’d added a bit of softness to it, like she was talking to a frightened child. Which, fair.

  “Is she a psychic or something?” Jenny asked, clearly still trying to figure out what I was doing on a police investigation, even if she kept the question aimed at Taliyah.

  “Right, something like that,” Taliyah answered as I shot her a look and she gave me a little shrug. “Can you tell me again what happened?” Taliyah continued, facing Jenny once more.

  Jenny’s face fell, and she gripped her thin blanket over her lap, twisting the material. “I know it sounds crazy, which is probably why you keep wanting me to repeat it, but my story hasn’t changed.”

  “I believe you,” I said quickly, which made Jenny look up at me with more surprise. Then I faced Taliyah. “That’s what my psychic abilities are telling me anyway.”

  That statement was followed by a very pronounced frown from Taliyah.

  “I swear,” Jenny continued, as she turned her gaze back to Taliyah. “I’m telling you the truth. I just… couldn’t control my feet. It was like they just took off running without any input from my brain and then… what was even weirder—I randomly started dancing and I couldn’t stop. It was like I couldn’t control my feet at all.” She shook her head as she looked down at her open and splayed fingers, as if they had an answer for her. “I don’t understand what happened.”

  So, dancing was involved. Hmm, interesting. Dancing curses were definitely the actions of the Fae.

  “Do you… have any idea what happened to me?” The thread of fear in Jenny’s voice caused even my shriveled heart to twinge, and that was really saying something. If there was one thing I didn’t love about my move to Haven Hollow, it was that I’d most definitely gone soft.

  While Taliyah asked a few more gentle questions, I drifted around the side of Jenny’s bed, trying to be unobtrusive while I looked her over. The part of me that was magic, that brushed up against the Goddess and nature, well that part of me had been changed by being blooded by a vampire. That meant things weren’t the same anymore and didn’t work the same anymore. I’d had to come to terms with that. My magic had swung hard in the direction of death, and sometimes that irritated the spell out of me. But sometimes, it was useful. Especially when detecting the darker sides of magic—like curses, hexes, or things that withered and caused harm.

  So, I was stumped when I looked Jenny Carrel over and didn’t see so much as a shadow of dark magic on her. No hexes. No curses. No signature of magic, even. Nothing. She was mundane, through and through. Not a whiff of power, hers or anyone else’s, to stain her.

  Hmm.

  The dancing curse was so obvious, though. It was a textbook Fae prank. No one else used it, if they even could. No one did nasty enchantment like the Fae, after all.

  But no—there was nothing on her. No taint. No spells. Nothing. Had I just failed to pick up on it? I leaned forward, pretending to brush the front of my blouse like there was dust on it so I could get a little closer to her.

  At last, there was something there. Something so minute, it was more like the hint of a shadow. Something small, light and pale clinging to the small toes sticking up from the hot pink fiberglass of the cast. But the feeling was so slight, I didn’t imagine that small amount of magic could make her trip, much less run and dance against her will.

  “Wanda…” Jenny said my name as she looked up at me. “From the dress store, right?”

  Apparently, she hadn’t remembered the name of my store. Well, no doubt she was still plenty confused by my being here. I smiled, trying to look like someone who came along on police investigations all the time. “That’s me.”

  “And you’re psychic?”

  “Right.”

  For a second, I thought about making a joke that the stitching surgeon was out to lunch so I was here to oversee the stitching up of any wounds, but I didn’t think Taliyah would appreciate that sort of humor, so I kept my mouth shut.

  “Then you know what happened to me?” she continued, looking beyond hopeful.

  “Well, not exactly,” I started.

  Jenny just blinked at me for a few seconds, glancing between Taliyah and me. “Then why are you—”

  “My visions don’t work like that,” I interrupted. “They’re more like puzzle pieces that might hint at the bigger picture of the whole puzzle when it’s finished.”

  “Oh,” Jenny said and seemed appeased with that explanation. Taliyah appeared pleasantly surprised, so I figured I’d come up with a decent explanation for why I was here.

  “Once you’re healed, we’ll have to get you fixed up with another outfit,” I continued, figuring I might as well try to get some extra business out of the deal. “Maybe for date number two?”

  Jenny laughed, the sound quiet and forced. “I don’t think there’s going to be another date. Not after this.”

  This was starting to get into the territory of failed romances and that was a place I wanted nothing to do with—especially after all the romance talk I’d had to suffer through at the coven house. “Well, plenty of fish in the sea, right?” She nodded. “Tell me, the shoes you brought into my store. What happened to them?”