It hadn’t quite hit me, the fact that I hadn’t seen him in person in days, until he was standing right there in front of me in slacks and a button up, smelling of fresh night air. He reached out a hand to me, hesitating, like he wasn’t sure of his welcome.

  I was tired of being strong for everyone else. Yes, I was an adult, and yes, I was the High Witch of the coven, but it had been a truly rotten few days, and the stress of having to make hard decisions while my closest friend was being slowly smothered by some demon’s spell was taking a significant toll on me.

  I took two steps forward and all but threw myself into Lorcan’s arms. Feeling him real and solid, having his arms close around me as I buried my face into the soft cotton of his shirt, it brought an uncomfortable prickling to my eyes. Probably something to do with the fabric softener. You just couldn’t trust the grocery brands.

  I finally leaned back after an endless moment, but I didn’t fully pull away. I gave Lorcan a searching look, checking him over, but nothing was out of place. There was no particular tension around his eyes. He met my gaze squarely, so no real sign of a guilty conscience, or anything I really needed to worry about. The spider demon still had the place of honor on my crap to get done list.

  Lorcan gave me a little squeeze as I looked him over. He must have really run all the way, because he hadn’t even bothered to put on his jacket or anything. I noticed he had remembered to put on the watch he’d gotten from the auction, though.

  I gave him a stern look. “I don’t know what’s up with you recently, but I have this to deal with right now, so I’m not going to get into it with you. But if you think you’re going to disappear after this is done and not talk to me other than through texts and cheesy pictures, you married the wrong witch.”

  Lorcan winced, looking apologetic. I held his gaze for another moment, just to really drive my point home. Also, because being held by him reminded me just how much I’d missed having him to rely on. We had days of backlog to catch up on, and the second the spider demon was taken care of and Poppy was safe, you’d better believe that I was going to be cashing in.

  Taliyah was radiating impatience like a glacier radiated cold, so I peeled myself away from Lorcan, who still hadn’t said a thing, and he better not have been thinking I didn’t notice that little quirk, because it was noted, and I headed over to where she and Maverick were hovering.

  “Wanda.” Taliyah converged on me the instant I moved towards her. “What is going on?”

  I took a deep breath and proceeded to word vomit everything I’d found out or figured out on my own ever since I’d managed to bully Ethan from the auction house into sending me the notes. It wasn’t actually all that much, but it was enough for me to sketch out the plan I’d come up with. Calling it a ‘plan’ was maybe being a little bit generous. It was more of a hail Mary pass, but Poppy wasn’t going to be able to hang on much longer, and I would cheerfully commit felony arson before I let some jumped up arachnid hurt her.

  “So, we’re taking this thing down tonight.” Taliyah’s eyes were cold, and the way the sentence ended flatly turned it from a question to a statement. “No more victims.”

  “That’s the plan.” I turned just a little so that I could call back over my shoulder. “Betanya, you have the silk?”

  She held up the sad little grocery store bag full of scraps. “What’s left of it. It really is mostly threads, with a few smaller patches here and there.”

  I’d thought that might be the case, but that was fine, we’d deal with it. I took the bag from her and stuck my hand into the fragile nest of silk threads, cool and slippery against my skin. If I concentrated and really looked for it, I could still feel the ghost of the protective spells woven right into the fabric, coating every strand.

  Part of me wished I could speak to the witch who had first done the enchanting. It was a master’s work. I’d seen some impressive things done with textiles in my day, a lot of them done by myself, of course. Maverick was incredible when it came to embroidered spells, and that had made the world of difference when it came to the things sold in Wanda’s Witchery. But neither of us could pull off something as complex and truly stunning as the white silk. And to think that they’d done it not only under stress, but with their entire village under attack by a ravenous spider demon. That kind of work should have taken years to make. Every stitch was well thought out and carefully tugged into place.

  There was absolutely no way we were going to be able to recreate the original trap. I was fantastic with clothes. Making them, altering them, enchanting them, I was your girl. But I also started with fabric, even when I sewed one-of-a-kind commissions. I’d never woven a darn thing in my life. I didn’t even know how to use a loom. Did people still even use looms? I had no clue.

  And Maverick was incredible with an embroidery needle, but without fabric to anchor it, there wasn’t much point. The fact was, we were going to have to improvise, and just hope for the best. In my defense, it was a tried-and-true Haven Hollow method for most of our problems.

  I turned back to face the room, and I was a little taken aback by the intensity I was met with. Every eye was on me, other than Poppy’s, who was still staring into the middle distance, her eyes only half-open. But every witch was tense and waiting, their faces set into grim lines. They reminded me a little of hunting dogs just itching to be let off their chains.

  Say what you would about the covens, and I certainly had. They could be back-biting, spiteful, controlling in their conformity, and we often made enemies as easily as someone made a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. But everyone in the supernatural community knew one very important fact.

  If you came for one member of a coven, you’d have to face all of them.

  As nasty and catty as we could be to each other, no witch would sit back and let an outsider go after one of her sisters. We were a united front against the world, our magic twined together for the benefit and protection of all.

  Poppy might not have been a witch, but she was a member of Circle Scapegrace, and no one in that room was happy that some creepy crawler decided that she was an available meal.

  The Tsuchigumo had made a big mistake coming after one of us. Because now the fury of an entire coven, the scrappiest, most defiant coven I’d ever heard of, was going to come full force right down on its head.

  No one messed with my people. It was time to make that very clear.

  “Alright everyone,” I said to the room. My smile was nothing more than a flash of bared teeth. “Here’s the plan.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  We ended up moving things to the backyard.

  For one thing, it was much easier to set up the circle out there. For another, the grounds were warded, but not to the same extent that the house was. Protecting Poppy was the main goal, but I still needed the Tsuchigumo to be able to reach us, or the whole plan was a wash.

  Staying in the house meant one of two options; either the spider demon couldn’t reach us at all, and the plan failed. Or it could reach us, but only by doing significant damage to the house, protections, or both, and I didn’t want to have to clean any of that up.

  Okay, third option, it got inside with absolutely no issue, but I wasn’t sure I was mentally prepared for that kind of situation.

  We did the whole shebang. Normally, this kind of effort was kept for Yule, or Samhain. Regular coven meetings, we didn’t tend to go for the full formal circle, but I wasn’t taking any chances. Not with Poppy’s life on the line.

  There was a terrible tension twisting in my belly, and fear nipped at my heels. It was taking too much time, time we didn’t have, and I found myself kneeling down to check on Poppy’s breathing and pulse more than once while we were preparing.

  Olga brought me some potions for protection and healing, with which to anoint Poppy. What I wouldn’t have given for one of her zest potions, or, as Finn called them, turbo coffee. A drop applied beneath her nose, and Poppy might have been up and running marathons.

  Lorcan went out into the trees and dragged back a bunch of pine boughs that everyone laid out around the edge of the circle, and everyone added their own piece. A bit of essential oil, a lock of hair, icicles that didn’t melt, no matter how warm the fire was. An owl feather, a bit of thread, and from me, three drops of my own blood.

  That wasn’t normal. I’d never done it before. But for better or for worse, I was a Blood Witch, and this circle was mine. And there was nothing more powerful about me than my blood.

  The few remaining scraps of silk were passed out between everyone. I was banking on the lingering protection magic to help keep the coven safe. It wouldn’t do any good to save Poppy, only to have the Tsuchigumo curse or make off with someone else. Once a trap is sprung, critters get wary of stepping into another. And I wasn’t letting this thing run loose in Haven Hollow for even one second longer than I had to.

  The familiars were hidden in the trees or under the back porch of the house. They could help boost their witch partners, but no one wanted to risk any of them getting injured, not even the still weirdly silent Hellcat.

  He’d hissed at me when I told him to stay out of the way, his tail lashing angrily as he slunk away into the shadows under the porch, deliberately tilting his chin away so he wasn’t looking at Lorcan.

  That was… strange. They’d never had a particularly good relationship, but that had seemed like a weirdly pointed snub.

  That was tomorrow’s problem. I’d add it to the growing list.

  Between Maverick, Lorcan, Taliyah and me, we managed to carry Poppy on a blanket out the door and into the center of the circle. I wanted her close enough to the fire that the warmth might help her, but not so close that I had to constantly worry that her hair might go up.

  She was very still, and very pale lying there. Her eyes were closed, the skin of her eyelids looking so thin and fragile that I could see a hint of blue behind them. Panic sank its claws into my chest, and I took the two long strides needed to get to her side and dropped down to one knee.

  “Is everyone ready?” My voice came out harsh, the tension in my body carrying over into my tone.

  No one seemed to care, and I got a chorus of determined agreement. Everyone knew their part; everyone knew what to do. Now it was down to kicking the hornet’s nest and seeing how long the plan held together.

  The curse threads looked dry and papery where they clung to Poppy’s skin, like old and rotted cobwebs. They were almost the same color as her skin where she lay, way too still and too pale, on the ground. The fire did what it could to bring some color to her face, but it was like its light and warmth couldn’t quite reach her.

  I’d been very carefully avoiding touching the gross little threads, but now I reached for them deliberately. They were sticky and unpleasant, grasping like mouths, always in search of a new meal. I fought not to gag as I slipped one manicured fingernail underneath one strand and plucked it like I was strumming a guitar.

  I wasn’t any kind of biologist, but even I knew that spiders hunted through vibration.

  The strands started trying to detach, reaching for the warm meal my presence presented. I kept out of reach, pulling back, and then ducking back in to pluck another strand. I was hoping the odd behavior would trigger a response, and if the way the curse spell was reacting was any indication, more than half of the threads waving in the air like the arms of a furious sea creature, then the Tsuchigumo wouldn’t be able to ignore me for long.

  The first indication I had that it was working was just a faint rustling of leaves.

  Isis cried out a soft warning from her hiding spot, and the shadows beneath the trees grew darker. They went from ink to pitch. The shade cast onto the ground from the occasional branch or trunk, stretched out further, growing long and thin, until they looked like the edge of a spider web.

  Maverick gave a short whistle, and I caught a flash of Isis’s pale cream and gold body as she winged out of the woods and up onto the roof of the coven house, tucking herself up close behind the chimney.

  My breathing sped up, and the hair at the back of my neck prickled in warning.

  The rest of the coven was turned out to face any oncoming threat, with Lorcan and Taliyah standing ready, just in case a more physical deterrent was necessary.

  Tension hummed in the air as the shadows moved across the ground. It wasn’t the wind; the air had gone eerily still around us. Even the fire was burning straight up with no guttering, though after a moment, the flames shrank down until they were barely more than glowing coals.

  Not the best sign.

  The night grew closer, and I struggled to see. My body curved forward, shielding Poppy as much as I could as my eyes scanned the area, looking for any sign of movement, or a glimpse of something that might be a horrible monster from three hundred years ago and half a world away. There was nothing, though. Just the stillness in the air, the silence of the forest, and the slow drift of the shadows around us.

  I glanced down just in time to see another long, slender shadow on the ground slide towards the circle, and my heart shot up into my throat. Because that wasn’t a shadow, not really. Shadows had something that cast them, a source that blocked the light.

  The things picking their careful way across the dirt towards the circle, they weren’t just shadows.

  They were legs.

  Eight thin, stretched out legs made of darkness and night air, rose up over me, and I had to crane my neck back to see the misty impression of a head and abdomen, and the dull gleam of eight shining hellfire ember eyes peering down at me.

  I hadn’t felt it. Not a tingle, not a ripple in the backyard’s wards. I should have had some sign, a magical heads up, but nothing. The Tsuchigumo was barely tethered to our world at all, slipping through the protections like early morning mist. But it was present enough that it had killed two people and made a really excellent attempt at at least four more.

  I didn’t know what I’d been expecting. I knew it was a spider demon. Somehow, having to look up into the ghostly mandibles of an arachnid that was bigger than a grizzly bear had never crossed my mind.

  “Wanda.”

  Taliyah’s voice was strained, her face pale. She had her service weapon in her hand, but pointed down at the ground. It must have been as obvious to her as it was to me that physical weapons would be less than useless against an enemy that wasn’t even halfway into the world. She would have had more of a chance of hitting one of us when the bullet passed straight through it.

  I didn’t answer her. I wasn’t sure I could have forced any words out without choking. Instead, I looked up into the spider demon’s eyes, reached out, and deliberately plucked one of the curse strands.

  Was it stupid? No, of course not. Wanda Depraysie was not stupid. She was a brilliant, driven witch who had founded her own coven, and who occasionally made calculated risks when it came to defending her friends and family from serious threats.

  She also apparently thought about herself in the third person, from time to time.

  But that little act of bold defiance seemed to have done the trick, because one of those massive, spindly legs lifted silently off the ground, and stepped over the line of tree boughs that made up the edge of the circle.

  I held my breath. It was going to be closer than I’d planned. I hadn’t expected the thing to be so stupidly huge. Some of those websites I’d visited needed a serious rewrite.

  It was watching me. There wasn’t a demon that existed that wouldn’t take a witch as a credible threat. But I wasn’t the focus of its attention, oh no. Most of those hideous, glowing eyes were directed firmly towards Poppy. She was feeding the demon well, and it was enthralled.

  Protective fury flared up in my chest, burning away my fear. This thing had come to my town, had hunted and killed, and now it thought it could take my best friend? Clearly, it hadn’t learned its lesson with the last witch it tangled with.

  I kept my hands on Poppy. It was going to be tighter than I’d like, and I was going to have to be ready to move if I needed. No way was that thing getting one shadowy finger on her.

  Another step forward, and the embers of the fire seemed to give the Tsuchigumo more definition, made the edges of its body sharper. It also glinted off what I seriously hoped was not saliva dripping off its mandibles.

  Poppy made a small sound, too weak to even be called a whimper, and the Tsuchigumo moved forward again. Its last leg moved past the line of pine boughs that made up the edge of the circle.

  I slammed my hand down on the dirt and sent my magic snaking through the circle. It lit up with scarlet light, looking like fire as it blazed. Carefully hidden between the evergreen branches, the last remnants of the Tsuchigumo’s silk prison, gleamed silver. They looked like threads of phosphorus, burning with an intense radiance, and the spider demon reeled back, sensing the trap too late.

  It lashed out at me with one nasty, barbed leg, but Lorcan was there in an instant, his fangs barred as he batted the limb to the side. I couldn’t hold in my nasty little grin anymore. The circle was a trap for the Tsuchigumo only. The rest of us could move in and out all we wanted.

  I hooked my arms into Poppy’s armpits and dragged her further away from the monster that was trying to drain her of everything that made her Poppy, and the Tsuchigumo tried to chase after, but Lorcan was always in the way, keeping it back.

  The spider demon stretched up to its full height, which, spell, was actually very large. It tried to just walk over Lorcan to get past him, since circles didn’t tend to have a roof on them, but a blast of furious cold slapped it across its face, and it recoiled with a shrill sound. It skittered back, blind, trying to knock the ice away from its eyes, and Taliyah readied another clumsy burst.

  She must have realized that the mundane weapon was too big a risk to us and the neighborhood both and she’d gone with something she was a little less comfortable with, personally. I thought it was the better choice. Spiders weren’t cold weather creatures, after all.