Roy turned to me with a satisfied smile, ignoring the litany of curse words Lorcan aimed in his direction. “Have you made a decision yet?” Concern for me filled Roy’s eyes and I was grateful to him for it. “I’ll call an emergency meeting of the Council if you want. We’ll have a twenty-four-hour watch until the threat is past.”

  “Which is something we ought to have done, anyway,” William said. “This is a Hollow, for Goddess’ sake. We’re supposed to check this kind of nonsense at the door.”

  I ignored William. He and Amos grew tenser with every passing night. Regardless of what they said, I knew they’d be disappointed with me if I turned. It was like spitting on their graves. They’d risked everything to bring Mother’s treachery to light, and I was poised to turn anyway. I’d be willingly sacrificing what had been pried from their cold, dead hands. If I’d been in their position, I’d have resented the hell out of me too.

  “I’m still mulling it over. There’s one thing I have to resolve before I’ll decide.”

  “What’s that?” he asked.

  “I need to find Maverick.”

  “And?” Lorcan asked.

  “And he’s blocking my scrying spell.” I turned to William. “That’s actually why I invited you both here tonight. I really do believe that Astrid has the werewolves well in hand.”

  Amos raised a brow. “You want us to help you find Maverick?”

  “You did it once already,” I said and flipped up a finger. “Two, he was blooded by your sire.” Another finger. “And three, you were also warlocks at one point. If anyone has a tie to him, you both do.”

  William’s eyes narrowed. It was difficult to stare back. The intensity of his anger seared me, but I was a witch and Depraysie witches didn’t back down, even from Depraysie warlocks turned vampires.

  “Fine. Under one condition.”

  Tension stiffened my spine. “What condition?”

  William leaned toward me. There was blood on his breath but I found increasingly that I didn’t mind it. A sign of how far I’d fallen, or loving acceptance of my lover and brothers? You decide.

  “Do not give Rupert the satisfaction,” he said solemnly. “Fight. Or at the very least, don’t give him the spectacle he wants. Die on your own terms. Do what you want with the rest of your life and then go out like the bad bitch you are.”

  A smile curled the edge of my lips. I didn’t even have to think about that one.

  “Deal.”

  ***

  From the time I’d entered Haven Hollow to the present, my life had been saturated with blood.

  Blood bonds, blood magic, blood bolts, blood relatives, and a bloody romance that had culminated in a bloody marriage. I’d even graduated to drinking the bloody stuff. It should have turned my stomach. Instead, it just made me... hungry, which was disturbing all by itself.

  And I needed blood for this ritual, of course.

  “This is rather unorthodox, don’t you think?” William mused, smirking as I shuffled past. “You’re really using Crayola chalk?”

  Thank Hecuba my hair was hiding my face. The amusement in his voice brought a stinking blush to my cheeks. Vampires or not, they were my brothers and had gone through the same training I had. Witches weren’t exactly known for their willingness to deviate from tradition. We learned to cast from experienced witches. We used cauldrons to brew potions, not Dutch ovens. Your potion ingredients went into expensive glassware, not Cool Whip containers. You marked out circles in talc or charcoal, not the pink sidewalk chalk you’d borrowed from a Pre-K werewolf.

  Ordinary spell casting only required a witch to draw energy from herself or from nature. We spent enough time outside to have a reservoir of sorts. And when that reservoir ran dry, there was always a moonlit dance in the woods. Nude was best, but I wasn’t about to strip down on the Half Moon’s patio. Even if my brothers weren’t watching, I wouldn’t have risked it with so many kids around.

  Nudity wasn’t necessary for this spell, anyway. Scrying required focus, precision, and a closed working area. Too much influence from the outside world could shift the outcome of the spell. Ideally, I’d have had Hellcat present to assist, but I doubted he’d approve of this undertaking. He’d made his opinions on Sybil and Maverick clear—he wanted nothing to do with either.

  “It’s what I could find on short notice,” I said, and my words sounded defensive even to my own ears.

  “It’s just… it’s Crayola,” he laughed.

  I frowned. “Would you rather I outline in blood?”

  “Stop teasing her, Will,” Amos said, barely glancing up from his copy of Crime and Punishment. He was seated on one of the patio chairs, having already completed his task. He’d anointed the yellow knob candle with the appropriate potions. The rest was up to William and me.

  “I tease because I care,” William answered, folding his hands over his heart with a puckish smile. “It’s my prerogative as your brother. I have oh... a hundred and thirty years to make up for?”

  “Oh please, Goddess, no,” I groaned. “You can abdicate that responsibility. I promise I won’t be offended.”

  William’s chuckle was a soft, beckoning thing in the darkness. The allure of a vampire, or just his natural charm? I would never know. Mother had robbed us of the opportunity to know each other.

  “C’mon sister. Let’s find our layabout cousin and drag him home.”

  The patio was filled with wire-mesh tables. We’d swapped the citronella candle and flowers in the centerpiece for our knob candle and assorted paraphernalia. A bowl to anoint the candle or failing that, to scry in liquid, a few runes to focus the spell in lieu of my familiar, and a silver athame for the final ingredient.

  William seized the latter, jabbing the tip into the fleshy pad of his thumb. Blood dewed on his fingertip, trembling in place when he turned the digit toward the flame. The droplets fell then, splashing onto the yellow knob candle in a burst of crimson. Several more followed, running alongside the wax and onto the dish. The color was bright, almost too lurid to be real.

  “Your turn,” he said, breaking me from my reverie.

  Right. I’d been the one to suggest this, after all. So, why did I want to watch the blood form abstract patterns in the melting wax? I closed my eyes, blotting out the mesmerizing image, and focused my will on my target.

  “Give me eyes to see, fingers to touch, ears to hear. Blood to blood, show me my cousin most dear… so mote it be.”

  Well, ‘most dear’ was a bit of an exaggeration. ‘Tolerated’ was closer to the mark, but it was terribly difficult to find an acceptable way to rhyme ‘my ever-present pain in the ass.’ And it seemed a little disrespectful to spew unmitigated profanity while calling on the Goddess for help.

  At first, nothing happened.

  When the sounds, smells, and images did come, they were jumbled and difficult to make sense of. It took me a second to realize I was witnessing the scene from just over Maverick’s shoulder. There were hundreds or even thousands of dark lumps on the ground at my feet. They shifted beneath his shoes when he walked, spewing like dirt clods when his feet kicked out. I could make out a hanging chain, and the outline of something tall and serpentine out of the corner of my eye.

  Most unhelpfully, I saw the night sky. The stars were muted, which probably meant Maverick was somewhere inside city limits. Which city was still up for debate. Unfortunately, the vision didn’t include any maps or road signs and, thus, didn’t really rule anything out or in. Riverport, Portland, and Seattle were all within driving distance. Maverick had had several days to travel, which meant he could have run even further. Spokane, Olympia, Vancouver, or even up into Canada.

  The scent of a fir tree wafted to us on a breeze. If I took an optimistic approach, that could mean Maverick was still in the state. The Douglas Fir was the state tree, and one of the most commonly found in this section of Oregon. The far-off screech of a barn owl startled me out of the vision. I settled back in my wire seat, breathing the faint scent of someone’s barbeque instead of the sharp waft of evergreen.

  I opened my eyes, cursing myself.

  That barn owl had probably been Isis in the process of alerting her master to our prying eyes. He’d have her monitoring for tracing spells just like this one, which meant he could be on the move even now. Blast!

  “Was that particularly illuminating to either of you?” I asked sourly. “Because I’ve got nothing.”

  “Sorry, no,” William said. “I’m as confounded as you.”

  Amos didn’t even bother to reply. He picked up his book and continued where he’d left off. Given his general deficiency in the social department, I decided to interpret his actions as a retreat. He was clearly heartbroken over the failure. Riiight.

  The band that had settled around my chest days ago tightened, making it hard to breathe. The anxiety was going to kill me before Rupert had a chance to finish the job. If someone had told me this time last year that I’d be desperately seeking my cousin, I would have hexed them. Now we had a child. I had a date with death, and I’d be damned if I left her an orphan.

  Where the hell are you? I raged at Maverick. The images hadn’t been enough to go on. Lumps, chains, and a looming structure. That could be anything, anywhere. At this rate, I wouldn’t find him in time, if at all.

  I left my brothers sitting on the patio. Good manners demanded I clean up my mess before coming inside, but I really couldn’t be asked to do much. I wanted a drink. A real one, not a blood shot. If I was going to die, I wanted to get good and soused on real liquor, not a blood cocktail.

  But when I cleared the doorway, I found Sybil waiting on the other side, hand in hand with Zane Rutledge. At least, I assumed it was Sybil. She’d shrunk since the last time I’d seen her, shedding Roy’s muscles and height like an ill-fitting winter coat. She was now a girl again, small and dainty, wearing a pleated pink dress. She’d arranged her dark hair into annoying pigtails, and piled baby fat onto her cheeks. She looked around ten years old. And exactly like Astrid at that age, minus the hair.

  She yawned widely. “I’m tired, mommy. Can we go home?”

  I swallowed thickly. It hurt. When I finally found my voice I whispered, “Yes, Sybil. Let’s go home. I’m going to find your father tomorrow.”

  Or die trying.

  Chapter Fifteen

  “I do have a job you know,” Taliyah said mildly, steering her cruiser into a gradual turn.

  The road out of Haven Hollow wound like a gray ribbon through the countryside. Aspens flanked the road, blurs of green and gold in our periphery. The Hollow looked deceptively generic from an outsider’s perspective. It was a quaint, kitschy little town in the middle of nowhere, a gap in what used to be unfettered wilderness. The trees encroached every year, eager to swallow the town up again. And nature in all her magnificent terror couldn’t compare to what lay inside the harmless-looking town.

  “I know,” I said. “But you also have two other officers to watch speed traps and respond to noise complaints. You’re the only one I can depend on to catch a warlock. Besides, if you don’t help me find him now, it’s likely you’ll have a lot more work to do by the end of the month.”

  “More work as in?”

  I frowned right back at her. “You’ll have to manufacture a crisis on which to pin all our deaths. The Feds might even get involved. And I don’t need to tell you how much of a mess that would be.”

  She pulled a face. “You really think these vampires will go that far? Isn’t there a charm or something to keep them out of Haven Hollow?”

  “If they were monster hunters, the answer would be ‘yes’. The Hollow’s magic will only allow a hunter in if there’s a valid reason, like that business with the wendigo a while ago.”

  Taliyah jerked in surprise. “The whatigo?”

  “The wendigo,” I repeated. “Her name was Barbara. She killed a leprechaun who was a citizen of Haven Hollow. It was handled in-house, but that’s one example of a permissible kill.” Then I breathed in a quick breath. “It was before your time here—even before mine.”

  “Did Cain handle that one?”

  I shrugged. “As I understand it—he handled it as best he could… until Ophelia tried to kill him.”

  Taliyah’s hands tightened around the wheel. She looked like she might shout, or maybe throw up. “Tried to kill him?” she asked in a thin voice. “You know, versus the demon that did kill him? God, sometimes I hate this place.”

  Hard to argue with that. Haven Hollow hadn’t been what I’d expected either. My sojourn here was meant to be temporary, a way to get out from under Mother’s witchy thumb long enough to come to terms with my new Blood Witch state. I couldn’t have imagined I’d find myself riding shotgun in a police cruiser with the faerie princess of Winter, trying to track down my warlock cousin so he could take care of our unhappy accident.

  “But to your earlier question, no the Hollow won’t keep Rupert and his vampires out. It’s built for non-humans like me and, unfortunately, Rupert.”

  “So, why not just recalibrate it to keep them out?” she asked with a shrug, like the answer was obvious.

  “‘Recalibrating’ it to reject vampires would take time we don’t have and it would also oust our allies.”

  “So, what’s our best recourse?”

  I shrugged. “To use the rules against them, but they’ve already proven they don’t care about those either.”

  “If someone is determined to break the law, they’ll do it, by God,” Taliyah said tersely with a clipped nod. Her bleak winter-sky eyes swept the road ahead, as though she was looking for enemies to pop up right from underneath us. It was still an hour or two away from sundown. We had plenty of time before I had to report to Rupert.

  It was quiet in the car, but for the crackle of her police scanner and the low drone of the classic rock station underneath it all. We were on our way to Portland, in the vain hope that my scrying spell might catch Maverick there. It was a long-shot, and if it failed, there was a stunning black formal waiting for me in the trunk of the cruiser. It seemed fitting. If I were attending my own funeral, I ought to wear something black.

  “Does this situation bother you?” I asked.

  Taliyah snorted. “Lots of things bother me, Wanda. You’re going to have to be more specific. Does the Hollow bother me? Oh, hell yeah. I’m used to being the expert on things. I was a detective. I headed a task force. This… this monster stuff freaks me out because I don’t have a handle on it, which just pisses me off. I hate being behind the eight ball. I’m supposed to be the one in charge, not the one always rushing to keep up with all the crazy shit that happens here seemingly every freaking day.”

  I opened my mouth, but she sucked in a deep breath and continued before I could reply. “If you wanna know the truth, it bothers me that I moved here. I wish I hadn’t. If I’d known I was putting my boys in danger, I wouldn’t have brought them here. At the time, well, I thought it would be a good change of pace. They were in the foster system for so long, so they haven’t had much stability. I figured a small town would do them good. It might even do me some good.” Then she laughed. “I thought maybe I could lessen my workload and spend my time off sniping at my ex over custody of our dog.” Then she sighed. “And I hoped that maybe I’d understand my brother a little better by taking up his post.”

  “I’m sorry,” I offered.

  A small, hysterical laugh bubbled from her throat. “So am I. Moving here only made things worse. Now I find out I’m some long, lost, freaking faerie princess. I’m supposed to marry some asshole prince I barely remember, and I don’t have a say in any of it. I have subjects. Enemies. A wicked aunt who tried to kill me when I was a baby. I’m just supposed to be the adopted sister with anger issues, not this.”

  Taliyah was breathing hard by the time she finished her little rant. I waited a beat to be sure she’d gotten it out of her system before saying, “I was talking about Sybil, actually. Does she bother you?”

  Taliyah blinked in surprise, and a light flush crept into her cheeks as she realized just how much she’d overshared. I was sure Poppy and the rest would have been happy to hear her out during a meeting of the Black Cat Cocktail Club. Hell, I’d have been willing to let her rant if I had a drink in my hand. Unfortunately, it was looking more and more likely that my cocktails would be spiked with O negative from here on out.

  “Oh. Sybil? Should she bother me? I mean she’s odd, and that statue thing she does gives me the creeps. When she does it lying down, she looks like a corpse. I’ve seen too many bodies during my time on the force not to be unnerved when I see what looks like a dead kid.”

  “It’s not that,” I said with a sigh. “I was talking about how she came into existence. She’s Maverick’s… kid. I was wondering if that bothered you.”

  She looked at me and frowned. “Why would that bother me?”

  I shrugged. “I don’t know. It just seemed like there was… tension or interest or something between the two of you, but maybe I was wrong.”

  The blush was pronounced now, though she tried to hide it. If she’d been human, it might have worked. She’d looked like your average white woman when we’d first met. Uneven skin with a peachy undertone, some faint scars, and a general air that made her pretty but humanly forgettable. Her ordinariness had been a product of the spells laid on her no doubt and had probably made her a shoo-in for undercover work. Even the trained supernatural eye had slid past her. Now that the spell was all but gone, her skin was as smooth and unblemished as fresh snow. The bloom of red in her cheeks was as noticeable as a bloodstain against her pallor.

  “Um, no, you saw wrong. There’s nothing between Maverick and me.”

  “No?”

  She sighed and then looked over at me with a guilty expression on her face. “He bought me a drink once, but that was it.”

  “Oh,” I said, surprised. “I didn’t realize you guys had even really met before the other day.”