“Would you forget about your stupid letters? No one cares about your letters!” Betanya’s eyes flashed with green flame as she snapped at Olga.

  Olga’s eyes narrowed, one hand slowly curling into a fist in the fabric of her house coat.

  I got between them. We had enough troubles without the two of them getting into the witch equivalent of a slap fight—something that could involve boils, dizziness, and innocent and not so innocent bystanders getting nailed in the cross fire.

  “Okay, that is enough,” I snapped. “What is wrong with you both? As if we don’t have enough going on to worry about?”

  “I think you’re all mad,” Hellcat chimed in, examining his claws.

  Franz actually growled at him.

  “Actually,” Taliyah said, tilting her head to one side as she studied all of us. There was a frown on her face as she looked around the room. “I think there might be something wrong with them.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” I demanded.

  Taliyah glanced at me and shook her head. “You don’t feel it?”

  I almost snapped at her, frustration boiling up the back of my throat to be launched at her in a wave of barbs, but then I paused. And I considered her words and thought about everything that was and had been going on around here. I thought about how all of us had been at each other’s throats—how our tempers had seemingly been sparking extra quickly—how we’d been having way more arguments than we ever had. And I thought about my own temper, which had been on the shortest of leashes and Maverick—it seemed he was a volcano waiting to erupt.

  Hmm... could it be?

  I reached out with the part of me that connected to magic, like an antenna I extended into the room. And then I felt it—there was something just a little bit off inside the coven house. It felt rancid, like someone had left spoiled milk behind the radiator. But the magic was so subtle, I hadn’t even noticed it before. No one had because they would have needed to look for it. And that raised an interesting question—how in the world had the bad juju spell gotten through the wards? I met Taliyah’s eyes and realized she’d picked up on the same thing. Even as I looked at her, I could see her trying to get a read on it, trying to figure out just what it was.

  “You can feel it too?” I asked as she nodded but didn’t respond.

  Betanya, Olga and Imani were all frowning, watching us.

  “For those of us playing at home, you mind explaining what’s going on?” Imani joked, but her joke fell flat in the rising tension.

  Taliyah started pacing the room, circling like a blood hound chasing a scent, and I realized that was almost exactly it. She was rooting out the magic, sniffing it out. Whatever it was and whoever had left it here, it was subtle, difficult to detect, let alone find. It was like a secret, like poison slowly pumping into someone’s vein.

  “Someone has put a hex or a curse on the coven house,” I answered as everyone breathed in a communal, shocked breath.

  Taliyah tilted her head to one side, like she was listening. Then she headed towards the fireplace and started running her hands over the mantle and the brickwork. I followed her and held up my hands, and I could feel the magic thrumming there. She was on the right track.

  “I’m not sure what it is, but I get the distinct impression that it’s fae magic.”

  “Faerie magic?” I blinked. Why in the world would a fae attack the coven? Unless… “Do you think this is Autumn trying to get back at Maverick, for... you know.” Marrying Taliyah and breaking her life long betrothal to Prince Reynard of Autumn, who also was apparently Maverick and Astrid’s uncle... Talk about a situation that could have been on Jerry Springer.

  Taliyah gave me a look that told me in no uncertain terms what she thought of my attempt at diplomacy. “No. I doubt Fox would go after his own nephew. Besides, the feel of this...” She scrunched her nose up as she sighed and shook her head. “It’s not Autumn magic.”

  Interesting. Fae magic was Fae, as far as I was concerned. But it made sense that Taliyah could tell the courts apart, since she was Queen of one of them. Or was supposed to be.

  She reached out to the brick wall, running her hand along the uneven seams of the plaster. Then she paused over one of the bricks and, gripping it, wiggled it until it gave way. Then she made a little triumphant sound in the back of her throat as she worked a small cloth pouch out from behind the brick. Her nose wrinkled up as she sniffed the bag, and sneezed. “This is spring magic, I’m pretty sure.” But she frowned as she sniffed it again. “But it... sort of... feels off, but I’m not sure how.”

  That flummoxed me. Why would the spring court have a beef with Scapegrace? As far as I knew, there was only one spring faerie in town, Bea someone or other, and I’d never said two words to her.

  “What does the bag do?” Imani asked. “Can you tell?”

  For the first time, Taliyah looked unsure. She might have come into her full powers over the holidays when she married my dope of a cousin, but having power and knowing how to use it were two very different things. She’d been practicing, of course, but the only people who might have been able to fully instruct her in Winter magic were the most likely to want to kill her. It made the learning curve a little steep.

  Not to mention that Spring magic was nearly the opposite of Taliyah’s winter power. Still, I’d take whatever I could get at this point. If someone was coming after my coven, then I was going to bring a world of payback down on their heads. But first we had to figure out who was responsible—not an easy task, as it was turning out.

  “I think…” Taliyah turned the little bundle over again, and then lifted it to her nose again and sniffed it before making a face like a cat smelling something sour. “It’s meant to heighten emotions. But only the negative kind.”

  And there it was.

  My hands curled into fists at my sides. “To cause arguments, you mean.”

  “Kind of?” Frustration wrinkled Taliyah’s brow. “I don’t know how to explain it other than it represses more positive emotions and then amplifies anything negative. So, a minor disagreement would turn into a real fight. Unease becomes fear. That sort of thing.”

  That would explain Betanya and Olga being at each other’s throats over a box of moldy letters. And it would explain Maverick feeling like he was one wrong word and a breath away from turning into the mad warlock that was in every version of a witch after school special. And it explained me feeling so paranoid about everything going perfectly. All of our negative feelings had been nudged along and heightened by a toxic little twist of magic.

  What a beautiful little trick. I had to admire the artistry of it, really. How could one person take down an entire coven of powerful witches? The answer was that they couldn’t. But they might be able to make it so that the coven tore itself apart, and they’d watch it all happen from afar. Ingenious, really.

  And I was going to make whoever it was regret that they’d ever set foot in Haven Hollow.

  It was an odd thing, knowing that an external force was fanning my anger to a fever pitch, making my magic roil like a thunderstorm bottled up inside my body. It was odder still to know that and not care. I almost welcomed the anger that was building up within me—because now it had an outlet that was well deserved. And that felt good. So did the white-hot rage. It would feel even better to let it loose. Goddess help whoever was standing in front of me when I did.

  Upstairs, I could hear Maverick knocking on Sybil’s door, louder and more insistent. It echoed the pounding of my pulse in my head.

  “Wanda?”

  I looked up from where dark red power was circling my hands, a blood bolt just aching to be let loose, and saw the others all watching me intently. Even Hellcat was suspiciously quiet. It was Lorcan who had called me, and he was the only one who was moving towards me, slowly, his hands carefully out to the side.

  I blinked at him, confused as to why he’d be approaching like someone trying to confront a wild animal.

  “Sweetling,” he said, his voice careful. “Can you take a deep breath for me?”

  It was only once he said as much—once he drew attention to the fact that I’d been taking short, shallow breaths through my teeth, that I realized something was going on with me. I had to gasp in a lungful of air and, even then, my hands were still trembling, my head throbbing. I didn’t think I’d ever been so angry.

  “Alright, then.” Lorcan moved slowly, his hands coming up to cup my face. “Now, can you unclench your jaw for me?” He gave me the ghost of his usual rakish smile. “I can hear your molars grinding together, and that’s a cruel way to treat some of the prettiest teeth I’ve ever seen.”

  The fury rushed out of me then with a snort, tension draining away. Trust a dentist to find teeth pretty. What a silly man. I reached up and put my hands over his. “Okay. Relax. I’m alright.”

  Lorcan searched my eyes, and he must have seen something in them that reassured him, because his shoulders relaxed and he brushed his cool lips over my brow before stepping back and letting his hands drop to his sides.

  I held out my hand to Taliyah, and she dropped the little bundle of cloth and what felt like twigs and herbs, into my palm. I bounced the spell in my palm, and then spoke a single word aloud.

  The cloth immediately burst into flames, and I threw the bundle into the fireplace where we all stood watching as the fire ate it, turning the whole thing into a small pile of gray ash.

  I felt it, the second the spell went away. I think we all did. It was like someone peeling a layer of grease off my skin—a layer I hadn’t even realized was there until it was gone. It made me angry all over again, but at least this fury was mine, and I could decide what to do with it.

  Now, I just needed to figure out how the spell someone had gotten that insidious bit of spell work into the coven house without any of us noticing, or the wards catching them. Fae magic didn’t hit my senses the same way witch magic did, but we should have felt someone breaking in. That was the whole point of warding the place!

  Why would a faerie attack us? Especially a spring faerie? Was it about Maverick and Astrid’s new-found parentage? Maybe this was some political nonsense, someone trying to separate Maverick from his coven? Well, good luck if that was their plan. There was no way Maverick would leave any coven that considered him a full and equal member. It was everything he’d wanted for far too long for him to walk away because of faerie political nonsense.

  And there was still our mysterious vampire attacking tourists. If they weren’t one of Rupert’s dogs here to sniff me out, then who were they? Why come to Haven Hollow in the first place if it wasn’t for the safety a Hollow provided? Was it just a coincidence that both the vampire and the faerie were here, causing trouble? Or were they working together? And if so, why?

  Something nagged at the back of my head, a thought coming together. But the knocking upstairs was replaced by Maverick thundering down the stairs, his hair a wild tangle around his face, and the thoughts I’d been pulling together slipped out of my mental fingers.

  “What?” Taliyah’s hand fell instinctively to her service weapon. “What is it? What’s wrong?”

  “It’s Sybil,” Maverick said, his teeth clenched together so tightly I was surprised he could get the words out at all. “She’s gone.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  The bottom dropped out of my stomach. “Gone? What do you mean, gone?”

  “How many definitions are there for the word?” Maverick snarled, rounding on me. “She’s gone! Not in her room! And not anywhere in the house that I can find. Gone!”

  I took a firm hold of my own temper, but it was a struggle. “Where could she have gone?”

  “I don’t know!” The volume of his own voice seemed to register to Maverick, because he took a breath and spoke in a more normal range. “I don’t know. I was knocking, and she wasn’t answering, and I thought she was just upset. But when I realized how quiet it was, I opened the door, only to find she wasn’t there. The window was open, though.”

  “But why would she leave?” It wouldn’t be hard for Sybil to go out her window. She was capable of looking like any woman she chose to, after all. If she shape-shifted into someone tall enough, with her arms fully extended, the drop from the second story wouldn’t be a long one.

  “I don’t know, Wanda!” Maverick raked his hand back through his hair, making him look wild and a little unhinged. “Are there any other questions you’d like to ask, or can we get down to the business of actually finding her?”

  I was so ready to snap back at him. To lash out with a hex or a spell. But one thing held me back, well, two really. One, it wouldn’t be helpful and would just waste valuable Sybil finding time. And two, I could tell it wasn’t actually anger that was causing Maverick to snarl at me. It was fear. His daughter was missing, and on the heels of what had happened to his sister, that was true torture.

  “I need to go.” Maverick started for the door, long legs devouring the distance. “She can’t have gotten far. I still might be able to catch up with her.”

  “Maverick, try to calm down,” I said, but he was already walking away from me. “Don’t just go running off! Let’s think about this.” I didn’t think reason would work, but I at least had to try.

  “Come on, Mav,” Imani tried. “Just wait a second.”

  It was Taliyah stepping in front of him that actually made him stop.

  Maverick’s hands clenched into fists, but he didn’t bowl her over or try to push past her. And if he had tried, she would have just frozen him in place, I was fairly sure. Talk about a cool super power.

  “Taliyah,” he said, warningly through clenched teeth.

  “Breathe.” Taliyah didn’t try to touch him. She just met his gaze squarely. “She was upset. She might have just gone somewhere that she feels safe. And that’s where you can help her.”

  “How?”

  “Think. Where would she go, Maverick?”

  “I don’t–” He stopped, sighed, and tried again. “To one of her friends, I suppose. I’m surprised she manages to tear herself away from them to sleep most of the time.”

  “Okay. Then we’ll call them and see if any of them have seen her.” Taliyah’s calm, no nonsense tone was slowly draining the tension out of the room. I wasn’t sure if that was a Chief of Police thing, or just a Taliyah thing, but I had a feeling it was the latter. “It’s going to be okay.”

  Maverick took another deep breath before fumbling his phone out of his pocket. “I got her to give me their numbers, in case I needed to reach her. I’ll call–”

  “I’ll call,” I said, plucking his phone out of his hands. All we needed was Maverick terrorizing a bunch of young teens in his quest for answers. The last thing I wanted to deal with was a bunch of ticked off parents. “You sit down and try not to burn the house down.”

  It wasn’t entirely a facetious comment. I could hear thunder rumbling in the sky above, even though the weather forecast had called for a clear night.

  It was lucky that Maverick had thought to get the girls’ numbers, otherwise I would have had to look up their families through the Council records. Would that be a gross misuse of my power as a member of Haven Hollow’s Council? Yes. Did I care in that instant? No.

  I picked the little werewolf girl, Juney, first, figuring she’d be the easiest one to pressure into squealing. I might have hated the way that werewolves tried to grind their females down into meek little housewife types, but I had to admit that brainwashing would come in handy if I could bully her into telling me where Sybil was. Or maybe I wouldn’t have to intimidate her at all and she’d just come out with the truth. Witches did have a way about us—most other creatures wanted to avoid us and for good reason.

  It only took one and a half rings before someone answered. “H-hello?”

  “Juney?” I didn’t wait for her to confirm. “This is Wanda Depraysie, Sybil’s... aunt,” I continued, reminding myself that as far as anyone knew, Sybil was Maverick’s illegitimate daughter, not mine. “Is she with you? Have you seen her tonight?”

  “Ah…” I heard her fumble around, and then a soft click like she’d turned a light on. “No, ma’am. Not since school, anyway. Her dad came and picked her up early, and I haven’t talked to her since.”

  “Are you sure?” I put a bit of steel into my voice. “This is important.”

  “I swear! I haven’t seen her or talked to her.” She made a distressed little whine in her throat. “I have to go now—I’m not supposed to be on my phone on a school night.”

  The line went dead, and I cursed in frustration. Then I thumbed through the contacts for the next option, which Maverick had saved only as ‘Sybil friend Summer fae’, which, thanks for that. I remembered catching sight of red-gold curls and a fast-moving girl when they’d all come into the shop. I knew Sybil had said the girl’s name, and I wracked my memory for it as I hit dial. It was also the name of a tree, I was pretty sure. Maple? Aspen? Eucalyptus? I frowned at that one. Sequoia? Really, Wanda?

  No, it was Cedar.

  The phone rang three times and just as I was wondering if I should bother leaving a message, the line picked up, and a breathless, “Hello?”, reached my ear.

  “Hello, Cedar?”

  There was a pause, and then a suspiciously drawn out, “yes?”

  Maverick was scowling, his toes drumming against the ground in his need to move, but we at least needed a direction to look in. I turned my back towards him and focused on the young voice on the line.

  “This is Wanda, Sybil’s Aunt. Have you seen her or spoken to her tonight?”

  “Hmm.” There was an obnoxious slurping sound, like she was drinking something through a straw while talking to me. “Doesn’t she like, live with you part time? Wouldn’t you know where she was?”

  I gripped the phone tighter, until the plastic creaked. “Do you or don’t you know where she is?”

  “If I did know where she was, I wouldn’t just give out her location to just, like, some rando on the phone who says she’s Sybil’s aunt. But how do I know that’s for sure true? You can’t be too careful, you know?”