I was on my way to Imani’s salon, but I didn’t want to risk blowing my entire vampire cover if I didn’t have to. Lorcan had me spooked with his theory that whoever had dumped the mannequin on his porch had figured me out already, and I wasn’t going to cement that realization if I didn’t have to. Hence, the hearse.

  Lorcan didn’t always like staying in one place every day. He always said, why make the hunter’s job any easier? And after surviving a few centuries, it made sense to have some contingency plans in place. One of his tricks was the hearse. He’d get in the coffin in the back, and he’d hire Marty to drive him around during the day.

  Marty was an okay person, I figured. A graphic designer who moonlighted as a ghost buster in his free time. He was a bit too much like a golden retriever trapped in a man’s body for my tastes, but it wasn’t like I could be forced to make chit chat from the coffin, so it wasn’t too grating a ride. And I couldn’t have hexed him quiet, because Marty was a Null, completely immune to magic.

  He and Poppy used to have a thing, but she’d ended it with him back around the holidays. He’d been moping, dragging himself around the town ever since, while Poppy was practically wearing a hair shirt made of guilt. It was nauseating to see them together. I was allergic to teenage angst and figured I shouldn’t have to witness it in people in their forties.

  I spent the ride wondering what it was Imani needed to speak to me about. She wasn’t having second thoughts, was she? She’d already settled in so nicely to Haven Hollow. Her salon was doing amazingly well, and she even seemed to get along with the other members of Circle Scapegrace, which was almost an act of sorcery all on its own. If Imani backed out now, it would be even harder to recruit new members. They’d all be wondering just what had scared her off.

  I wiped my hands on the coffin’s lining, refusing to admit, even to myself, that I was sweating.

  When we arrived, Marty gave me a warning knock on the coffin lid, and I made sure to cover every bit of me in the blackout curtain I’d brought along for the trip.

  It was a bit of an awkward scramble, getting out of the coffin without exposing any of myself to the daylight, but I managed without making too big a fool of myself. I’d texted ahead to Imani, so she had the door to her salon unlocked and open for when I barreled inside and into the safety of the shop’s interior.

  I whipped the curtain off, smoothing my hair back as I let my eyes adjust to the daylight. Imani had all the shop lights off for some reason, even though she should have opened over an hour ago. When I finally blinked all the little shadows from my eyes, I froze. Because it wasn’t that Imani had decided to keep the lights off. It was that all the overhead lights were smashed, leaving a glittering carpet of broken glass on the ground.

  And the destruction didn’t stop there. The beautiful mirrors were all smashed, not a piece left that was bigger than my palm. All the brushes had been thrown on the floor and stepped on, and from the looks of it, ground into the mess. The chairs were slashed, stuffing spilling all over the floor. If there was something that could have been destroyed, it was.

  My heart was pounding, blood roaring in my ears. Who could have done something like this? Who would have done it? I’d never seen so much destruction, like someone had picked up the salon like a snow globe, and then just shaken the whole thing until it cracked.

  My stomach dropped, and I whirled towards the back of the store, but to my shaky relief, from the glimpse I caught through the door, Imani’s alter to the Loa was untouched. Someone hadn’t wanted to cross over into sacrilege, maybe. Or it was just the dozens of wards that Imani had set up to protect her alter, so many that the air shimmered to the naked eye.

  But there weren’t any wards on the salon yet, I thought with a chill like lead in my veins. Until she joined the coven officially, Imani wasn’t able to put wards on her building, so she couldn’t keep out a person with bad intentions. Only two more days, and this entire disaster could have been averted.

  I forced myself to meet Imani’s eyes. She stood by the door, just looking at me as I took everything in. There was a tense line to her shoulders, and her arms were wrapped around herself, hugging tight. I couldn’t imagine what she was feeling, to have her business, her space, attacked like this.

  “Imani,” I breathed, still rocked by the extent of the damage. “What the spell happened here?”

  She gave a jerky shrug. “I don’t know. I came in this morning and found it like this. It must have happened sometime after close, but, ah.” Imani paused to take in a shaky breath. “I did find one thing, while I was trying to take stock of the damage before I called you.”

  She jerked her chin over towards the reception desk, and, still stunned, I turned to see what she was talking about.

  There was a feather laying on the counter. Creamy white, faintly barred in bronze and brown, it was as long as my forearm. I reached for it, but pulled back and let my hand drop instead.

  The problem was, I recognized that feather. It was from an owl. More specifically, it was from Maverick’s familiar, Isis. No natural owl came quite that large.

  But what in the world was one of Isis’s feathers doing in Imani’s shop? There was no way Maverick would have had anything to do with this. He actually seemed to enjoy Imani’s company. They called each other ‘frenemies’ and whenever I saw them together, they were always joking around.

  Imani rubbed her nose with the back of her wrist. “I already called Mav. He’s on his way. Surprised he isn’t here already, honestly.”

  I just nodded, feeling like I’d taken a good solid hit to the head. Nothing was making sense, I had no idea what was going on, and I didn’t understand why it was now of all times that everything seemed to be falling apart.

  Only a few minutes later, Maverick and Taliyah arrived. Maverick came in first, a scowl on his face.

  “What is it this time? Honestly, this is just getting embarrass–” His voice trailed off as the sheer destruction inside became obvious. Maverick turned in a slow circle, getting angrier with each step, until the tendon in his jaw was jumping from how hard he was grinding his teeth.

  “Who did this?” he hissed, red light flickering around his clenched fists.

  Taliyah was right on his heels, her face grim as she took in the scene.

  Imani shrugged again, though she was starting to just look tired instead of on edge. “It was like this when I got in. The only thing they left behind was this.”

  She strode to the desk and lifted the owl feather into the air.

  Maverick recognized it instantly, his face going tight and furious. Behind him, Taliyah inhaled sharply.

  “Is that–?”

  The laugh Maverick let out was short and ugly, full of bitterness. “I see. So, of course, you think it was me? It must have been the warlock. There’s no other explanation.” He turned to face me. “Is this your attempt to have me thrown out of the coven?”

  The scarlet light blazed brighter, and I wondered if I was going to have to do something quickly. if Maverick actually lost control, the amount of damage he could do would make the trashed salon look like a kid’s piñata.

  Taliyah hovered behind my cousin, one hand on his shoulder, the other close to her service weapon, like she wasn’t sure which one she’d need first.

  Maverick threw his hands into the air, his hair swinging around his face. “Well, there’s no need for any questions, is there? Never mind the fact that I have an alibi—Taliyah and I were working on a case all night!”

  Imani crossed her arms and canted her hip to one side, the owl feather sticking up into the air like an exclamation. “Maverick Depraysie, do you think I just fell off a turnip truck yesterday? This is obviously a setup, and a pretty clumsy one at that. I know you wouldn’t do this, you big idiot, and if you did, you wouldn’t have left a big sloppy clue behind.”

  I didn’t think I’d ever seen Maverick so taken aback in my entire life. He stood there for a full ten seconds, his jaw slack, mouth hanging open. Honestly, if I wasn’t feeling like I might throw up on my own shoes any second, I probably would have laughed at him.

  “So, the question is,” Imani continued, twirling the owl feather in the air like a conductor’s baton. “Who would want to frame you?”

  Maverick just blinked at her, looking abashed. I wondered if anyone had ever given him the benefit of the doubt before? Especially a witch? I shook off that line of thought because it was making uncomfortable feelings bubble up in my shriveled black heart.

  “I’m not sure that it’s an attack on just Maverick,” I said brusquely, trying to shrug off the unfamiliar and unwelcome feeling of guilt.

  Imani turned to me, but she held out Isis’s feather to Maverick. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, this, combined with Olga’s missing letters, it all seems to me that someone is targeting the coven as a whole.”

  Taliyah’s face sharpened, and while she hadn’t bothered to put on her glamour, she was suddenly every inch the Police Chief of Haven Hollow. “You think someone is sowing discord among the members, trying to break the coven apart.”

  She said it like a statement, not a question, but I nodded anyway. “There is no way in this world or any other that Betanya would care about Olga’s love letters. And she’s hardly one for practical jokes. I would have believed it was one of the familiars making a nest before I’d buy that. Someone deliberately moved them to Betanya’s closet, because Olga and Betanya are our most experienced members. And if Olga weren’t so emotional over her ill-conceived romances, she would have seen that off the bat, too—eventually she did see it.”

  “Combine that with this.” Taliyah made a gesture that somehow encompassed the entire salon and its destruction, as well as Maverick and Imani. “Imani isn’t a full member of the coven yet. So, whoever did this, did so to drive her off, to make her angry enough to not to want anything to do with Maverick or Circle Scapegrace.”

  “And they were counting on Imani playing off a witch’s inherent distrust of warlocks,” I added.

  “Oh, I’m plenty angry,” Imani cut in, flinging one arm in the air. “But if they think this’ll keep me from being at the ceremony, they’re in for a rude surprise.”

  It wasn’t exactly the right time for it, but Imani’s reassurance that she wasn’t quitting on us, that she was still going to join the coven, it gave me a little breath of relief.

  Taliyah braced her hands on her hips, pushing her jacket out of the way with the motion. “Then the first question would be, who has a grudge against the coven?”

  And that, unfortunately, gave me pause. “Honestly? It might be faster to list the people who don’t have a problem with us. There’s Rupert’s vampires, of course. They aren’t thrilled that their boss didn’t survive our last dust up. There are mother’s sympathizers. They might not be as large a number as they once were, but still. There’s probably half of Crescent Circle who doesn’t like us.”

  “Tabitha?” Taliyah asked.

  I shook my head at the same time Maverick did. “She’s in support of us, not against us,” I offered.

  Maverick snorted and muttered something under his breath. I chose to ignore him.

  “After Astrid’s experiences at Blood Rose…” I had to pause and swallow back the lump that threatened to close off my throat. “After that, everything has been balanced on the edge of a knife. That fae are on edge, we might be on the brink of a new Blood War, and then you throw in that Scapegrace is a new coven... well, not just that—that we’re a revolutionary coven. And that rarely makes people happy, or comfortable.”

  There was silence for a long moment after I stopped speaking, with only the soft crush of broken glass under our shoes as someone shifted slightly. Taliyah was staring at me.

  “You asked,” I snapped.

  Imani shook her head, giving a low, throaty laugh. “And I thought New Orleans was exciting. Well, at least I’ll never have to worry about being bored out here in the Hollow.”

  Taliyah pinched the bridge of her nose, and let out a breath. “Alright. I’m going to start looking into this. I’ll see if anyone’s heard something about any newcomers. They should have registered with the Council before showing up, but we can’t bank on that if they’re just here for revenge and mayhem.”

  While I wouldn’t turn away Taliyah’s help, I’d be looking into things myself. This was my coven, and someone was taking shots at it. I wasn’t about to sit back and let someone else defend us. I was High Witch, no matter what the world thought, and I would defend my people, and my circle. We weren’t going to lose anyone else.

  For the moment, though, I turned to Imani. “We’ll help you clean things up here, the coven, I mean. We can probably fix just about everything, and with most of us pitching in, it shouldn’t take long.”

  The look Imani shot me was full of gratitude. “Thanks, Wanda. I wasn’t looking forward to having to close for a few days to get it all sorted out.”

  “I’ll make some calls. I’m stuck here until sunset at this point. I don’t want to risk another jaunt in the daylight. So, I might as well make myself useful.”

  It was still ridiculously bright outside, and I kept well back from the windows to scowl my displeasure up at the blue sky. In the tree out front on the boulevard, a bird scowled back at me. It flicked its wings, and I caught flashes of black and white feathers, with a flicker of metallic blue. A magpie. Again. Hmm.

  “What I want to know,” Maverick said slowly, running his fingers gently along the shaft of the feather in his hands. “Is how they actually got one of Isis’s feathers.”

  That part did stump me for a minute, before I remembered. “Didn’t you say Isis got into a fight with some starlings or something? And that they yanked out one of her feathers? Maybe whoever did this just picked it up off the ground?”

  “And that means that they might have been following you,” Taliyah pointed out grimly.

  And wasn’t that a delightful little thought? All of this crap felt real, then. Someone was targeting us, targeting the coven. But for whatever reason, they didn’t seem willing to attempt a direct assault. Were they trying to harm us, or just discredit us? There was still too much I didn’t know.

  Chapter Ten

  “No one should go anywhere alone.” Taliyah looked around, making direct eye contact with each one of us. “Stick to groups or pairs and don’t take any chances where your safety is concerned.”

  I didn’t exactly love being told what to do, even with the best of intentions, but I stomped down on the urge to tilt my nose up in the air. “I’ll stay here with Imani to help tidy up the place. And I’ll call the others in the coven to make sure they stay there.”

  “Sybil shouldn’t go to school until this is settled,” Maverick said, his voice terse. “We can’t protect her if she isn’t with us. She won’t be happy about not seeing her friends, but she can regraft them to herself after we take care of this threat.”

  Education was important, but I couldn’t fault Maverick’s reasoning. Especially so close on the heels of the Blood Rose situation. He hadn’t wanted Astrid to go to Blood Rose Academy. He’d pitched a fit about it, and even refused to see her off when she left. Considering that was the last time he’d ever seen her alive... it must have eaten at him.

  I knew it ate at me. That I’d sent her there, that I’d encouraged her to go. I’d wanted her to have a normal witch experience—to attend a magic school just like all witches did. And look where she’d ended up.

  “Fine.” I nodded. “You and Sybil should stick close to Taliyah. Speaking of, anyone who’s close to us might be a target, too, if the mannequin dumped on Lorcan’s porch was actually a threat against Lorcan.”

  Taliyah scowled, her delicate features falling into harsh lines. “I don’t need a babysitter, thanks.”

  “But what if Sybil and I need a big strong Police Chief to protect us?” Maverick gave her a look that was probably supposed to be a mock pout, but it ended up more of a leer.

  Bizarrely, Taliyah actually blushed at that.

  Oh, ick, I didn’t need to know any of the personal details of their relationship, or whatever was going on with regard to the two of them. I mean, yes, it was nice that Maverick was no longer trying to get into my designer pants, but still...

  “Great,” I said, a little too loudly. “Go on then, get Sybil and don’t get killed. Off you go.”

  Maverick gave me a dirty look, but honestly, there was only so much a witch could take in one day.

  After they were gone, Imani relocked the door, and I rolled up the sleeves of my downy soft gray sweater. I had a few phone calls to make.

  And then it was time to get to work.

  ***

  That night, once the sun went down and Imani and I had mostly managed to get her salon back together, we returned to the coven house. We’d thrown away all the broken bits, and figured out what could still be salvaged. I’d coaxed the fabric of the stylist chairs back together, enchanting the threads back into place. I wanted Betanya to take a look at the mirrors, though. She probably had the deftest hand of all of us, and with my magic still a little volatile from the vampire blood, I didn’t want to Frankenstein the mirrors back together. Because there was probably a good chance I’d actually create a Frankenstein and that was the last thing I needed.

  Imani drove us both back to the Tudor Revival House perched on its little hill. I remembered how I’d felt when we’d first set the coven house up, how excited I’d been to have a real, proper coven house again, even if it was the kind that my previous circle would have turned their nose up at. But that didn’t matter to me because it was mine, and it was wonderful, and now someone was trying to tear it all down around us.

  My hands slowly clenched into fists in my lap, magic humming dangerously through my veins. Strong emotions tended to make my power buck under my control like a fractious horse. It was during these times when I pulled off some of the more bizarre magical things I’d ever done, things that would earn me a banishment from the greater witch community, if not a pyre.