“Finally. Did you get lost?” Maverick demanded.

  I gave him the look the comment deserved. “Aw, what’s the matter, Maverick? Is the big, scary, Blood-Warlock afraid of a few tears?”

  We looked over at the wine-red velvet wingback chair that Olga had poured herself into. She was hunched over her familiar, a racoon named Franz, and snotting into his tiny lederhosen. The racoon’s fur stood up in damp spikes where his witch’s tears had drenched him, mumbling what I assumed was meant to be consoling words in his irritating, high-pitched voice that no one could understand.

  Maverick shuddered. “Just deal with this.”

  “And why exactly did you call me to deal with this?” I demanded. “You know I have the emotional intelligence of a tree root. Why didn’t you call Poppy, for Goddess’s sake?”

  From the look on his face, the answer to that question was a resounding: because he hadn’t thought about it. But instead of answering, he sniffed and looked down his nose. “You’re the High Witch of Scapegrace.”

  Lorcan stayed near the door as I crossed the room. The traitor.

  I took a deep breath, and tipped my chin up. I’d faced down murderous vampires, my own mother gone power mad and literal demons. I could handle one emotional outburst.

  I could.

  But if I wanted to have even a chance of her hearing me, I had to wait for Olga to lift her head and stop making the horrendous sound she still was.

  “Olga!” I said in a sharp tone, because I literally couldn’t take any more of the wail that was coming from her. She could have given a banshee a run for her money.

  White curls quivered around her face as she sucked in a snotty breath and glanced up at me. The second she did, I pounced.

  “Olga, what the spell is going on here? Why are you crying?”

  “Zey–zey–zey’re gone!”

  “What’s gone?” I demanded.

  “Mein letters!” The last word came out as a little hiccupping wail, and I had to grit my teeth against the spike of pain that went through my temples.

  “Breathe before you pass out.” I wanted to rub my head, but it probably wouldn’t be helpful. “Now, focus. What letters?”

  Olga pulled in a shuddery breath, her make up slimed down her face from the tears. Franz patted around in the pockets of his lederhosen and pulled out what looked like a handkerchief. Olga took it with a soft thanks, and then blew her nose with a repulsive, wet honking sound that was almost as terrible as her wailing had been.

  Apparently, it was too much for Betanya because she gave me a consoling expression and then high-tailed it out of there, her skunk familiar right behind her. And I couldn’t blame them either—not one bit.

  Maverick and Taliyah were both still standing in the corner, both of them wincing. I was actually surprised they hadn’t left a long time ago, but maybe Maverick was trying to be a good coven member. Or maybe he was just amused by the fact that I was completely out of my element and the absolute worst person to be handling this. I had a feeling it was the latter.

  “Does anyone know where Poppy is?” I ground out, looking around but no one responded.

  I grimaced. I hoped Lorcan didn’t have any lingering hopes for the night, because after witnessing this, my libido was deader than he was.

  “Mein box of letters ist gone.”

  “Yes, yes, we’ve established that,” I said hurriedly. “What sort of letters?”

  “Love letters.”

  “Oh, God,” Lorcan groaned as, inwardly, I said the same thing.

  “Ya, I kept zem all.” Olga’s lip started to wobble dangerously again.

  I held up my hands like I was trying to keep a wild animal at bay. “Okay, box of love letters. Got it. When and where did you last see them?”

  Chin wobbling, Olga blinked big, teary blue eyes up at me. “Two days ago, under mein bed. I like to take zem out und read zem sometimes.” The tears welled up again, her breath hitching. “But... Now, zey’re gone.”

  Her voice spiraled up into something that, by all rights, should have been able to shatter glass. From somewhere outside, a dog howled.

  I frowned. The dog sounded very close. Like, closer than the neighbor’s house.

  Lorcan caught my look, and he gave a sheepish shrug. “I brought Yule. He wanted to go for a car ride.”

  Of course. Because why not cart around your guardian spirit beast that looked like a beagle? Goddess forbid if this had been a real emergency.

  “What is all of this infernal noise?”

  And just like that, my night got even better.

  Hellcat, my odious little familiar, slunk into the room. His ears were flat to his skull, his tail lashing the air, and he jumped up onto an ottoman to glare at Olga and me.

  Olga looked over at him and immediately resumed her wailing.

  Hellcat turned his fiery eyes at me and hissed. “Make her stop at once, you useless wench! I will not be subjected to this… this… audio assault! It is driving me to utter insanity!”

  “Just go back outside! What are you doing here, anyway?”

  “I wanted to be fed,” he answered. “And you were busy at your store, so I came here to find someone to feed me.”

  “Well, go catch a mouse or something, because clearly we’ve got other things going on that are more important than your dinner!” Actually, Olga’s meltdown was probably on par with Hellcat’s Fancy Feast in terms of order of importance.

  Hellcat made a sound of disgust. Or he was trying to work up a hairball to mark his displeasure. It was hard to tell.

  I turned back to Olga, trying not to let my impatience show on my face. I couldn’t believe I’d closed the shop early and missed out on sexy times with my vampire beau for this show of histrionics.

  “Alright, Olga. So, you saw the box two days ago, and now you can’t find it?”

  I took her snivel as agreement.

  “And you keep it under your bed?”

  A little choked sob was her response.

  I was not getting paid enough to deal with this.

  Desperately wishing there were spells that could conjure patience, I took a breath. Actually, scratch that—where were the spells to conjure up lost love letters? “Is there any chance it just fell behind something? Could Franz get under your bed and take a look?”

  “Nein! I already looked! Ve pulled out everyzing!” Her voice choked, fat tears rolling over full cheeks. “It ist gone! Now I shall never again read about mein boyfriend’s large cucumber or zee way he called me ‘little booby-booby’.”

  “Oh, God!” Lorcan called from the other side of the room and immediately clutched his palms over his ears.

  “The suffering!” Hellcat wailed.

  “I’m going to start calling you ‘little booby-booby’,” Maverick said to Taliyah in a whispered tone that was meant for just the two of them, but owing to my vampire hearing I’d, unfortunately, heard it too.

  “If you value your life, you will never repeat that word to me again,” she responded.

  Hellcat’s ears flattened, his lips peeling back from his teeth. “I shall not be able to wipe away this indignity from my mind any time soon!” He shot me an evil look. “Deal with this!”

  “You. Go. Now.” And I pointed at the back door.

  Olga’s cries racketed up another decibel and Hellcat cringed, his ears clamping to his skull in a way that made him look like he was trying to retract them into his body. And honestly, I probably would have too, if I could have. I didn’t know how Lorcan wasn’t stuffing his head into the couch cushions. Just a sliver of vampire hearing was making me seriously consider hexing myself deaf.

  “Oh, for Hecuba’s sake, if it’s what’s needed to shut her up, why not track the blasted things?” Hellcat shot Lorcan a narrow-eyed look. “Surely the beast you keep around is good for something.”

  Lorcan blinked, his face a little pinched from the continuous high-pitched assault on his senses. I wasn’t sure what was the worst—the high-pitched wailing, thoughts of Olga’s beau’s ‘large cucumber’ or the nickname he’d given her.

  “I’d love to assist, Sweetling, but I’m not exactly a bloodhound, am I?”

  He was right. Vampire’s senses were very acute, but they still had to filter through the vampire’s brain. Lorcan could smell blood at a frankly scary distance, catch hints of my perfume, and he could smell tooth decay without ever picking up an instrument. But those were all things he went out of his way to notice. I was sure Olga’s holdover scrapbooking attempt wasn’t something he could sniff out.

  Hellcat sneered. “While I’m mollified to know you realize you’re a beast, I was referring to the useless, slobbering, good for nothing creature you insist on keeping around.”

  “Roy Osbourne?” Lorcan asked the cat who then hissed at him.

  “He means Yule,” I translated, trying my best to keep a laugh under wraps.

  “Ah.” Lorcan winced at another particularly grating cry from Olga. “Well, I suppose I shall go and ask Yule for his assistance then.”

  Lorcan’s smooth steps were too carefully measured to really be considered fleeing the scene, but there was a tension in his back and his legs, like he was trying to get out of here before someone called him back and insisted we all hug it out or something.

  It almost made me laugh.

  Almost.

  Chapter Five

  Yule was, of course, thrilled for a chance to help out.

  In my experiences with him, Yule was normally thrilled about pretty much everything. I wasn’t sure if it was a dog thing, or a guardian spirit thing, or just a Yule thing but as guardian spirits went, he was a helpful one.

  He happily snuffled around, and even let Olga cry into his fur for a bit, which made him braver than I was.

  I pinched the bridge of my nose, wanting all of this to be over like yesterday. “Okay. So, ink, paper, what’s he looking for?”

  “Vell,” Olga sniffed, dabbing at her eyes. It was a lost cause, as far as I could tell. “Some of mein letters are parchment. Some vill smell like men’s perfume, since I asked mein boyfriends for a spritz. And some vill smell like mein lipstick because I vould give mein letters some kissy-kissies. Und one has a lock of mein boyfriend’s hair und another has his Unterwäsche.”

  “His what?” I demanded, frowning because I was actually afraid of whatever the spell that word meant.

  “His underwear!” Hellcat yelled at me, while gagging.

  “Ah, his tighty-whities,” Lorcan added, very unhelpfully.

  I so did not want to hear a detailed account of why Olga was kissing her love letters or why she had her boyfriend’s underwear. There was only so much of this I could stomach, after all. “Okay, sure. You got that, Yule?”

  He gave a little wiggle that I took as assent. Then he dutifully sniffed at Olga once more, clearly picking up her scent, before dropping back down to the floor and putting his nose to the ground.

  We all followed the spirit dog up the stairs, looking like the world’s stupidest parade. Yule’s tail beat the air as he followed whatever trail it was that he’d picked up. As we all tromped down the hall towards Olga’s room, a tiny, furry head poked out from behind a fussy little bit of wainscotting.

  “What the heck are you doing?” the rat squeaked at me.

  Yew had been a bit of a surprise—one that Astrid had brought with her on her brief layover in Haven Hollow before she jetted off to her new temporary home with her Faerie King of an uncle. She’d found Yew living in a horrid basement while she was at Blood Rose Academy and had felt sorry for him. Yew was a familiar without a home after his witch killed herself to avoid becoming a vampire hostage. Not many would be eager to bond with a familiar who had such a tragic past.

  But Circle Scapegrace had a habit of taking in the undesirables, and I figured that description wasn’t just relegated to witches. So, Astrid had brought Yew home to us, to see if he might be a good fit for someone.

  He kept to himself and didn’t chew on the walls or the wires, so I didn’t have a problem with him. And Hellcat had zero interest in hunting anything, so Yew was basically safe.

  “We’re tracking down missing love letters with the help of a guardian spirit shaped like a dog,” I told him.

  “Don’t forget the missing underwear,” Lorcan added, again most unhelpfully.

  Eventually you had to embrace the absurd I decided then and there, or you’d end up tearing out all your hair. And I’d worked hard for my hip length dark waves.

  Yew gave me a suspicious look from one of his little black button eyes, like he wasn’t sure if I was pulling his tail.

  “Whatever that means,” he muttered, settling in to wash his pink front paws. Yes, he was a nice enough familiar, but he wasn’t very helpful.

  Yule led us to Olga’s room, and the sheer amount of lace and dusky rose wallpaper just about made my eyes water. How many pillows did one person need? Because apparently, I was short by more than a dozen. I could barely even see the stomach-churningly pink comforter from under the frothy, tasselled, ruffled pile of pillows.

  Yule commando crawled under the bed, snuffling around for an awkward minute, before emerging with dust on his snout. He sneezed twice before dropping his nose to the floor again and doing his best to inhale all the fibers of the carpet.

  I watched him sniff around before leaning towards Lorcan, murmuring quietly enough that only he could hear me. “Has he ever actually found something?”

  Lorcan looked at me, a twinkle in his eyes, while obviously fighting back a smile. “Let the dog work.”

  Well, if that wasn’t an obvious deflection, I’d eat a broom.

  Just as I was despairing that the rest of my night would be taken up with watching a not-quite dog hoover the house carpets, Yule moved out of the room and down the hall. He paused more than once, fascinated by whatever it was he was scenting. And in a house full of witches, it could have been anything from high-end perfume, to eye of newt.

  When he dipped into Betanya’s room, I figured he was just working his way through the entire upstairs. Betanya sighed, but didn’t argue about her space being invaded by our letter seeking conga line. Willie-Ray muttered something that sounded a lot like “Summa bitch,” but I put a lot of effort into not actually listening to him, or Franz, or my own familiar, for that matter. So, I tuned him out and followed the crowd. Olga followed us all, still weeping softly into her handkerchief.

  “Ah mein bubby-bubby, vhere are you?”

  At Olga’s use of the most wretched nickname I’d ever heard in my life, everyone covered their ears and made a face like they’d smelled something foul.

  At least Betanya’s room didn’t make me want to throw up from a sugar overload. Her space was mostly dark wood and subdued colors, the most noticeable feature her bookshelves lined with dark leather books on every aspect of witchcraft and spells. It was a little cluttered, like she wasn’t good at putting things back once she’d used them, but at least she had a reasonable number of pillows on her bed, and I didn’t have to worry about her dying in a feather avalanche in the night.

  Yule dutifully sniffed around the room, and I wondered if anyone would notice if I pulled out my phone to look over my schedule and do a little multitasking. But then I figured it was too risky. I didn’t want to chance Olga seeing me and doing an encore performance of an ambulance siren.

  Yule made his slow, circular way over to the heavy armoire in the corner of the room, jammed his nose against the crack in the door and inhaled loudly enough that I thought he’d get splinters.

  The spirit dog whined, pawing at the doors.

  Lorcan glanced at me, frowning, before turning to Betanya. “He wants someone to open it. Is that alright?”

  Betanya shrugged, readjusting her shawl. “There’s just clothing in there, so he must have picked up the wrong scent.”

  Lorcan stepped forward, easing the double doors open, and Yule dove forward, snuffling about in the long skirts and dresses hanging there. The spirit guardian dog grabbed hold of something, and pulled.

  A pink cardboard box, tied up with a ribbon, pulled free from behind Betanya’s clothing.

  “Mein letters!” Olga gasped as she dove forward, ignoring Yule’s pleased wiggles as she untied the ribbon with shaking fingers to open the box. It was stuffed with envelopes and folded papers, some yellowed and creased with age and I was fairly sure I saw part of a pair of men’s briefs. Egad.

  “Oh, shit,” Maverick said from where he and Taliyah were hovering in the hallway.

  “Good puppy dog, ya,” Olga said before it suddenly dawned on her just who had taken her letters. She turned wounded, teary eyes on Betanya. “Vhy vould you take zem from me? I zought ve vere friends!”

  Betanya looked as shocked as I’d ever seen her. The woman had been turned into a Blood Witch, stalked by a mad vampire bent on turning her completely, moved to Haven Hollow, and ultimately escaped into a pocket dimension hidden by a veil in order to save herself, and I had never seen her so thrown as she was now.

  “I didn’t,” Betanya stammered with a shrug. “I didn’t take them, Olga!”

  “But zey are in your vardrobe!” Olga insisted, her mouth dropping open as a new wave of tears took hold of her—these no doubt reserved for betrayal.

  Betanya shook her head. “Why would I take your letters, Olga?” Olga shook her head as Betanya looked from her to me. “I have no interest in love letters!”

  Olga stood, clutching the box to her chest and anger was written all over her wet features. “Zen how vould zey get zere?” She paused a moment. “You are jealous zat you’ve never found your own bubby-bubby! So you stole mine!”

  Betanya made a half surprised, half disgusted sound in her nose. “I don’t know how they go there, but as to your second comment: you must be joking! I’ve had enough unwanted male attention to last me the rest of my life. Just because you have an unnatural need for it doesn’t mean the rest of us do!”

  Olga gasped, eyes wide as her free hand fluttered up to her chest. “Unnatural? How could you zay zis?”

  “Because it’s true!” Betanya insisted.