“Well,” I said, brightly. “That was kind of a mood killer.”

  Lorcan huffed something that was the ghost of his usual laugh. “You could say that.”

  There was tension in the line of his back, his jaw was tight, eyes faraway and unhappy. No way were we getting back to where we’d left off anytime soon.

  I sat back on the couch and patted the cushion next to me. “Come on.”

  “Wanda…” He looked over at me, his mouth pressed into an unhappy line.

  I kicked my shoes off and tucked my legs up underneath me, reaching for the throw draped over the back of the couch. “A system like this, you’ve got to have some kind of movie we can watch.”

  Watching the slow bloom of a smile make its way across Lorcan’s face almost made it worth it. Almost. I shifted in my seat. He, meanwhile, folded himself down onto the couch beside me, still tense and unhappy, with shadows in his eyes.

  I let him sit in silence for a second, before nudging him in the side. “Okay, spill it.”

  Lorcan turned his poker expression towards me, as if I were blind to the stiffness in his muscles. Touching his arm felt like touching a sturdy piece of wood, with almost no give to it besides the brushed cotton of his shirt.

  “Spill?”

  I scowled. “You’re upset. It’s fairly obvious. If you don’t want to talk about it, say so, but don’t sit there and think that I don’t notice something’s up with you.”

  Lorcan stared at me for a long second before releasing a heavy breath. He leaned forward and laid his lips on my forehead.

  “What if it’s Rupert?”

  I froze at the question he whispered against my brow. My throat clicked when I swallowed. “Rupert is dead.”

  Rupert was the vampire in charge of Lorcan’s clan and he’d tried to force our hand on the whole turning me thing. He’d ended up with Sybil who had been pretending to be me, thinking she was being helpful. Instead, she’d ended up in a cage on display to a bunch of fang-brained vampires. We’d come to her rescue, and Maverick had brought down a storm of lightning, the kind that hadn’t been seen in a century or more, and he’d made the vampires regret taking our child, knowingly or not.

  Everyone was calling it a freak natural disaster, and a lot of vampires hadn’t walked away that night. Rupert was one of them. We’d made sure of that.

  Lorcan sighed, a cool gust against my skin. “I know. But his followers are still out there, more than a handful of them. What if one of them has figured out that you haven’t been turned fully? What if this is a warning shot?”

  “Then we’ll deal with it.”

  And we would. I was playacting being a vampire, keeping to night hours even when it was inconvenient, because it kept the big baddies away. But I also wasn’t going to cower if someone wanted to push the issue. My magic was stable. More than. The bond was broken, and other than my teeth being a little sharper, my senses being better, and having a bit of a taste for rare steak these days, I remained a witch.

  Astrid had been hurt, turned against her will by a vampire with a grudge because he’d thought he could get away with it. He’d been shown that he’d thought wrong. The world might be teetering on the edge of another Blood War, but I wasn’t going to give up even one more inch to anyone. Not the covens. Not the vampires. They could try me. I’d show them what a Blood Witch could do.

  “I suppose we will.” With another brush of his lips against my forehead, Lorcan sat back beside me on the couch. “If it isn’t one of Rupert’s people, then we have a different bloody problem, though. I don’t believe for a second it’s one of your brothers’ clan, which means there’s another vampire in town without permission, and they aren’t following the rules of Haven Hollow.”

  That was a problem. Was the vampire in question new and, thus, unaware of the rules? Or were they breaking them deliberately to draw attention? Without any other information, it was hard to say. But once Taliyah had a lead, we might have to get the Council involved. They handled any and all supernatural issues.

  I tugged the blanket around us and leaned my head against Lorcan’s chest. “We can start asking around tomorrow. See if Taliyah will actually share some information.”

  He snorted. “And how likely is that?”

  “Probably next to impossible. I’ll have to annoy it out of Maverick by implying that he doesn’t know anything.”

  Lorcan’s laugh jostled my head, which, rude. But I was feeling too mellow to get worked up about it. Things had been so stressful for so long, and it was nice to just sit and be together. Which was something I thought I’d never think—never in a million years.

  It was incredible, how things changed. Two years ago, if someone had as much as implied that I’d be in a committed relationship with a man, much less a vampire, I would have hexed them bald after I finished howling with laughter. And there were still times that it felt odd, like a blouse that didn’t fit properly.

  Sometimes I felt like I was doing something criminal. To have this sort of closeness, while the rest of the world was on the brink of disaster.

  My eyes had just drifted shut, when there was a deafening bang from the front of the house. Someone had hit the door, hard enough that it rattled in its reinforced frame.

  I jolted upright, and Lorcan went still, like a hunting hound on point. Even Yule, who’d been snoring away in his basket in front of the fireplace, raised his head up for a sleepy wuffle.

  “That had better not be Taliyah again,” I grumbled as we headed for the door.

  I actually got to the door before Lorcan did, and I wrenched it open, a hex tingling at the tip of my tongue for whoever had just tried to break the door down.

  But there was no one there. The night was still. Until I glanced down at the dark shape sprawled over the ‘Go Away’ matt that I’d bought as a joke.

  There was a body on the porch.

  Chapter Seven

  I froze, staring down at the woman sprawled across the porch like a puppet with its strings cut.

  Her dark hair lay over her face, hiding it, and she wore a set of pajamas, pale blue with little white flowers. Wound around her throat was a dark red scarf.

  Maybe she was just hurt, I thought, ignoring the stiffness of her limbs and the stillness of her chest. There was no life in her, and I knew that but it was like my brain didn’t want to register it. Everything seemed slow, and far away, like I was lost in a dream that didn’t make any sense to my waking mind. I reached out to smooth her hair back, so I could see her face. For some reason, my hand was shaking.

  Lorcan caught my hand before I could touch her. He turned me to face him, gripping my shoulders. “Breathe, Sweetling.”

  “She’s dead,” I started, shaking my head.

  “No... it’s not a person. It’s a doll.”

  The world lurched back to normal speed, and I shook my head, scrambling to catch up. “What?”

  “It’s not a body. It’s made out of plastic. See?”

  He shoved the hair back, letting me see the mannequin’s painted eyes and fake lashes and the expression of calm contentedness she’d been painted with.

  My legs sagged a little with relief, before my heart started to pound all over again as I tried to understand why the spell someone would leave a mannequin, a fake body, at our doorstep?

  Lorcan nudged me back inside the house, glancing up and down the street as he scooped the mannequin up, somehow managing to keep its limbs from falling off.

  The street was deserted. There wasn’t any movement at all, other than a bird flying from one tree to the other. Whoever had done this would have to have been scarily fast to leave the mannequin and be gone before we’d even reached the door.

  The second Lorcan closed the door behind us, it felt like my brain finally came back online. A chill raced down my spine like ice water as I stared at the mannequin in Lorcan’s arms, specifically the red scarf tied around her neck. An odd choice of attire on a figure dressed in PJs.

  “It’s a threat.” My voice came out flat.

  Lorcan’s face was grim. “It is, at that.”

  “But a threat for whom?”

  That was the problem. There were too many choices. Was it a message to Lorcan, from whatever vampire was in town feeding on the public? It might be a threat to expose him as a vampire to the public eye, going against all the rules that made a Hollow possible.

  It might have been a threat against me, for the same reason. As far as the town’s spookier residents were aware, Lorcan had completed my change, and I was a baby vampire.

  But there was an even worse possibility, I realized with slowly dawning horror. It was the dark hair, the way it fell around the mannequin’s face. It reminded me of Sybil, and in more ways than one.

  No one was supposed to know Sybil’s origin outside of the coven. It was too dangerous for her to be known as anything but a young witch. If the other covens found out that Maverick and my power had come together in a random act of creation, it wouldn’t go well for any of us. If it came out that he was a Blood Warlock, we’d be lucky if any members of Circle Scapegrace avoided the pyre.

  As far as anyone outside the coven was concerned, Sybil was Maverick’s daughter from a one-night stand a long time ago—a daughter he’d only recently become aware of, and it was going to stay that way. Even Imani didn’t know the truth, for the safety of us all.

  But if someone had found out—if they were threatening to expose her—I didn’t know what we’d do.

  My heart slammed against the inside of my ribcage, beating my lungs flat until I couldn’t seem to draw a full breath. I had to brace my hand against the wall, or risk falling as black spots danced across my vision.

  I’d kill them. Goddess help me, I’d kill them. All of them. Whoever they were. After Astrid, after everything we’d been through, I wouldn’t stand for anyone thinking they could come and try and take a bite out of us. No one threatened my people, my coven. I’d make them pay for it, if it was the last thing I did.

  Lorcan braced me with a hand on my back, his eyes wide in alarm. “Breathe, sweetheart. Try to breathe.”

  The breath I managed to drag in hurt, and I coughed. “Sybil. Oh, Goddess, what if someone knows about Sybil?”

  Still rubbing my back, Lorcan looked troubled. “Have you considered that this is a threat against you, my love? What if someone’s realized you’re not actually a vampire?”

  That hadn’t occurred to me, and it actually made me feel a little bit better. I didn’t care about being a target. I was more than capable of holding my own. Anyone who tried to cross this witch would regret it.

  But I couldn’t shake the worry that Sybil was in danger. If something happened to her, I didn’t know what Maverick would do. But if my Blood Warlock cousin went off the deep end, I wasn’t sure there’d be a Haven Hollow left.

  I looked at Lorcan, and he must have read something on my face, because he nodded.

  “Let’s go.”

  ***

  While Maverick still maintained his sad little bachelor apartment, he did have a room at the coven house. So did Sybil, and she stayed in it ninety-nine percent of the time. Maverick’s apartment didn’t really have space for a child, and someone was at the coven house at all times, so all the better to keep an eye on our little resident shapeshifter. So that was where we headed, driving way too fast for even this late time of night. With any luck, Taliyah’s people would be too busy with their assault case to be out looking for tickets to write.

  I barely waited for Lorcan to put the Porsche in park before I had the door open and was flying up the driveway. My power crackled around me, anxiety riding the air ahead of me like the threat of a thunderstorm, and the front door opened before I even touched it, the house responding to me without my conscious thought.

  Betanya was sitting in the main room, a large book spread across her lap. She looked up sharply when I came running in like a crazy woman.

  “Wanda, what on earth–”

  I didn’t slow down, just hurried up the stairs, leaving Lorcan and a confused Betanya to trail in my wake. I only managed to rein myself in as I closed in on Sybil’s door. I didn’t want to go bursting in, only to scare the hell out of her if she was sleeping.

  Two deep breaths to calm my racing heart, and then I cracked the door open to peer into the room.

  The soft golden glow of her nightlight spilled stardust around Sybil’s room. She hadn’t wanted to sleep in complete darkness ever since her time in Rupert’s tender mercies. The warm light lit up the room just enough that I could see her sleeping face, where she lay snug in her bed, with her comforter pulled up around her.

  I eased the door closed again, and then rested my head against it, trying to coax my cardiovascular system to go back to even a remotely human rhythm. She was fine. Nothing had happened to her. Nothing would happen to her—not if I could help it. And it wasn’t just me—no one in this house would let anyone touch Sybil. She was ours.

  A door down the hall opened, and a mussed Olga poked her head out into the hall. “Vhat ist going on?”

  Lorcan and Betanya had caught up to me by then, and I held up a hand to forestall any more questions. We didn’t need to be discussing things right outside Sybil’s door, that was for sure. So, I beckoned them all to follow me back down to the house’s main room.

  Once everyone was settled, I told them what had gone on that night. Well, most of it. I kept it G rated. There might not be any taboos about sex among witches, but that didn’t mean I wanted to give a play-by-play account to everyone.

  “I need you to keep an eye out for anyone sneaking around,” I told them. Olga and Betanya were our more senior members. Betanya, as a red-headed witch, had a reputation for outside the box thinking and experimentation, and that was before she’d been blooded and had to find a way to keep herself from being turned into a vampire. And Olga, when she wasn’t acting like a lovesick teenage girl, had forgotten more about potion making than most witches ever knew.

  “The bonding ceremony has to go off without a hitch,” I stressed. “We can’t let anything mess things up, not now. We need more members. The coven needs more power. Once we’re a bit more stable, no one will even try to pull these petty games with us, much less attack a member and think they won’t pay for it with their lives.”

  I didn’t realize that my hand was clenched into a fist until Betanya reached out to pat it. I relaxed my hand and hissed as blood rushed back into my battered fingers.

  “We will be vigilant, Wanda.” Betanya gave me a solemn nod. “They won’t get past us.”

  “Ya.” Olga smiled. The curve of her mouth had a vicious edge. “Leave zis to us.”

  I looked at the two of them. “Then you both have made nice?”

  Olga nodded.

  “We talked it through,” Betanya said with a quick smile.

  Thank Goddess for that because it was one less thing I had to worry about.

  ***

  The next evening, I dragged myself out of bed after a mostly sleepless day, and headed over to Imani’s salon to check on my newest coven member to be.

  Just off Main Street, the salon was a welcome addition to Haven Hollow. Sure, there were places to get a hair cut, but Imani’s place was a cut above, no pun intended. Not only was the place higher end, with Imani capable of pulling things off that you usually only saw at salons in the big cities, but she also brought her own special brand of magic to the table.

  Originally from New Orleans, Imani had brought more than just scissors and hair clips along with her. She had specials on offer for the people who wanted them. Charms and prayers she would work right into their hair, for luck, and confidence, and prosperity. She could make just about anyone look like a million bucks, with a cut that flattered them, and a charm to highlight all their best features.

  She also had a waiting list about three weeks long, from what I heard.

  A bell chimed as I walked in the door, and the light smell of lavender reached my nose. Inhaling, I was pretty sure that was Poppy’s Relaxation Oil in a diffuser, because the stress was melting out of my shoulders and neck. Parts I hadn’t even realized were tense until they started to ease up.

  There was soft music playing in the background, something upbeat but slow enough that it didn’t get your toes tapping. The whole place was geared to be a relaxing, enjoyable experience.

  Imani was with a client when I arrived, though she looked like she was just about done, running a wide toothed pink comb through the woman’s brown hair. I took a seat in one of the padded chairs by the reception desk, a white box held carefully on my lap.

  The door to the back room was open just enough that I could see the corner of Imani’s alter set up, with thick beeswax candles and bits of dried herbs and flowers, and a veve that seemed to include a twining serpent, its scales in a brilliant rainbow of colors.

  Contrary to what most humans believe, being a witch has nothing to do with religion. True, a good many of us follow the Goddess, as our mothers did before us, but our power comes from ourselves. That’s not to say that our own personal beliefs didn’t influence our power, or how we used it.

  Imani was a practitioner of New Orleans Hoodoo-Voodoo, and she’d brought her beliefs with her when she’d come to Haven Hollow. And if I closed my eyes and listened closely, I could hear her whispering prayers to Erzulie Freda as she braided a lock of the woman’s hair with pink and gold silk threads. A blessing for love, then.

  I turned away, looking at the spread of glossy magazines spread over the low table. It was never a good idea to eavesdrop on someone else’s prayers, so I did my best to tune them out.

  It wasn’t much longer before Imani finished up, and a pleased, blushing woman with beautifully done hair and a rosy glow about her, bustled out of the salon.

  Imani grinned at me then, pushing the dark fall of her perfectly done coils back over her shoulder. “Hey, Wanda. What’s up? Are you here to get something done?”

  “Not this time.” I stood, the box in my hands. My stomach fluttered, and I stomped down on the sensation. I couldn’t be nervous, for spell’s sake. I never got nervous. What a waste of time. “I’m not interrupting, am I?”