Finally, the design sketch was approved, the fabric and lace selected and the enchantments agreed upon, and everyone seemed happy. Most of all, me.

  Bryony’s mother signed the order and pushed it towards me. By force of will alone, I kept my attempt at a pleasant smile on my face. “Thank you, Mrs… Reid,” I said, glancing down at the signed sheet. “With my current orders, it should take about two weeks to complete.”

  I’d pull Maverick in for it. He owed me after ditching me like he had. He was also better at delicate spell embroidery than I was, again, not that I would ever tell him as much over pain of death.

  “I’ll give you a call as soon as it’s ready,” I promised them, silently willing them to get out of my store as quickly as possible.

  It took another few minutes of excited chattering, but eventually, the crowd milled out the door and down the street. Once they were out of sight, and I was reasonably sure they wouldn’t be coming back, I let myself slump over the counter with a groan. I’d been smiling so long, my face actually hurt. How did Poppy manage it—always being so nice all the time? Were there smile strengthening exercises she did or something? I’d have to ask.

  But for now, I figured I’d better file the paperwork as quickly as possible. And make several duplicates. If anything happened to their order, it might take them an entire day to try and remember what they’d picked out the first time, and that scared me in a way vampires, crazed witches, and vengeful faeries didn’t.

  Reid. The name seemed familiar, somehow. I didn’t keep track of all the various werewolf families in the Hollow (because that would have been its own full-time job), and other than a polite acquaintance with Louisa Rutledge, I didn’t really speak to them much. But the last name still nagged at me, and I wanted to place them.

  Finally, I remembered. The Reid family. They’d been more recent residents to Haven Hollow, who’d bought the old, run down motel at the edge of town and fixed it up. The Blue Moon was still a motel, it was hardly a five-star affair, but at least driving past it these days, I didn’t feel like I’d get fleas just by looking at it. Walking in? Well, that might be a different story.

  The door opened, and I whirled around, terrified that the werewolf posse might have decided to change their order or something, but instead Maverick poked his head inside, giving me a scowl. Then he looked around the store, craning to see over some of the racks in the back.

  “Are they gone?”

  “Yes, you coward.” I crossed my arms over my chest and glared at him. “How could you abandon me like that?”

  He shrugged, completely unashamed, and lifted one of the paper cups he was carrying. “So, does that mean you don’t want the coffee I brought you? If not, I’m happy to drink it—freaking thing cost me almost five bucks.”

  My smile had way too many teeth in it to be considered friendly. “Hand it over, cheapskate, and I might consider not hexing you bald.”

  He rolled his eyes at the threat, but handed over the delicious, steaming cup of heaven. After a few sips, even the giggle-induced migraine pounding in my skull started to ebb away.

  Maverick twitched my sketchpad toward him, looking over the design I’d worked out with the Reids. He grunted and took a drink from his own coffee.

  “Looks simple enough.”

  “The hardest part was figuring out what they wanted.” I slumped back against the counter, trying to manually work the tension out of my back and shoulders. Where was my ridiculously hot vampire husband when I needed a massage, anyway? Honestly.

  “To spell with it. I’m closing for the night,” I announced.

  “More than fine by me,” my useless employee responded.

  I strode over and flipped the sign on the door, locking it with a familiar motion. Maverick, meanwhile, seemed content to continue paging through my sketches, and though my fingers itched to snatch it away from him, I didn’t. We were making progress, but things were still touchy between us sometimes. Being part of a coven, a full member at that, was something Maverick never would have thought could happen for him. Magic tended to favor women, and witches saw the occasional warlock that cropped up as somewhere between unfortunate and dangerous, depending.

  Maverick was in something of a precarious position. Not only was he a warlock, but he had more power than most witches, which was almost unheard of. Add in the fact that he’d been blooded by a vampire war criminal on orders of my mother (who had wanted him turned to strip him of his magic and remove the stain of his birth from our former coven), and his power had become a dark, dangerous thing. He’d become a Blood Warlock and though there were ways of changing him back to the warlock he’d been previously, he had no interest in attempting it. I thought he actually embraced this new side of him, because it made him more an outsider than he already was. If he was discovered, no witch would rest until he was fully turned. Or burned at the stake. Maybe Maverick took some sort of perverse pride in that? I wasn’t sure. But, whatever his reason, he didn’t want to be returned to the way he used to be.

  No one in the Scapegrace coven of Haven Hollow would ever rat him out, of course. But it felt like he thought his place in the coven might be yanked away from him at any second. So, baby steps.

  “Do you have plans tonight?” I asked as I made my way back to the counter, tidying a shelf and straightening a hanger as I passed them.

  “Why, are you trying to ask me out?”

  I frowned at him. “You know I would never ask you out. I was just asking... well, to ask.”

  Maverick looked up, blinking, as though the attempt at small talk had confused him. His dark hair swung loose just below his shoulders, finally growing back out after he’d first had it cut in the attack that turned him into a Blood Warlock, and then again to infiltrate a group of vampires.

  “Well,” he said, slowly, pausing to take a sip of his coffee. Maverick was trying, too, it seemed. “I thought I’d go back to the coven house to tuck Sybil in. Then, I’ll probably wait around for the inevitable call from Taliyah to help her out with a bunch of drunk werewolves.” He jerked his chin towards the door. “I heard the group talking about a bachelor party going on tonight at the Half-Moon.”

  “Fun.” I was a little surprised about the bedtime comment. Maverick had never struck me as the paternal type. When Sybil had first been ‘born’, he’d seemed entirely disinterested in her and had basically vanished into the horizon in a truly epic sulk.

  But, once he’d figured out that I wasn’t planning to lay claim to the girl and keep her from him, he’d done an almost entire about face. Since we couldn’t exactly announce to the world that Sybil was the result of my and Maverick’s blood magic reacting in an explosive event, and since Sybil was a shapeshifter who could appear as any woman she liked, but had chosen the form of a young witch of fourteen or fifteen, people would add the years and realize that I couldn’t be her mother. The Crescent Circle coven had been a viper’s den, but someone would have noticed if I’d gotten pregnant and given birth while there.

  So, the official story was that Sybil was the result of a one night stand that Maverick had had years ago, and he’d only just found out about her. Truly, he’d embraced the role of Sybil’s father with an eagerness that I hadn’t really expected. He’d never talked about kids much before and I’d figured that, like me, he couldn’t be bothered with them.

  Or maybe fatherhood was just one more thing that Maverick assumed he’d never get to be or have, and so he’d latched onto it with the desperation of a man in the desert being offered a glass of water.

  “Well, have fun wrangling the drunken werewolves,” I told him, tugging my sketchbook back towards me. “Tomorrow, you can help me start thinking up fertility charms.”

  “Joy,” he said, voice dry as he tossed his empty cup into the trash and breathed out a hearty sigh.

  Chapter Two

  In a town other than Haven Hollow, being forced to live by vampire hours would be tedious at best, and terrible at worst.

  Fortunately for me, since its population was at least half made up of supernatural creatures of various flavors, Haven Hollow didn’t suffer from the same restrictions as other small towns might, where the sidewalks rolled up the second the sun went down.

  I wouldn’t call the night life in the Hollow thriving by any stretch of the imagination—not like say, Las Vegas or New York, but there were certainly enough stores and attractions opened that I wasn’t likely to wreak havoc out of sheer boredom. Lucky for them.

  After closing up my shop and at least doing a token amount of tidying so that Maverick didn’t revolt in the morning, I headed to the Royal Theater, where Lorcan had invited me for date night to watch a late movie.

  Just two blocks from Main Street, the Royal was like a place out of time. It reminded me of years gone by before movies had sound or color—it reminded me of the good ol’ days. And at 142 years, I definitely had lived through many good ol’ days. Everything at the theater was a little glitzy, and a little old fashioned, without crossing the line into tacky territory, and with that much gilt and red velvet, that was darn near a magic trick on its own.

  There were statues out front, reclining on either side of the entrance doors. They looked like a cross between golden lions and Foo dogs from outside a temple. Raised up on stone platforms, they faced forward, heads alert even as they were lying down. As I passed them, I ran my fingers over the curls of one of their manes and felt a deep-down spark of old magic.

  That made me pause a step.

  Whatever enchantment was there, and there certainly was one, owing to that little zap I’d just received, it was old and faded. I wasn’t even sure it would work anymore. But someone had clearly designed the statues for a purpose, even if I couldn’t tell what that purpose was any longer.

  I gave the guardian one last pat and stepped through the huge glass doors into the theater lobby. My heels sank into the plush carpet as I walked past the ticket booth towards the overstuffed couches over to one side of the lobby. The smell of fresh, buttery popcorn had my stomach growling and my mouth watering, and just listening to the soft paf of it sizzling away in the old-fashioned popper behind the snack counter made me smile. One good thing about dating a vampire was that I never had to share my food.

  It was late for a normal theater to still be open, but at the Royal, they still had at least two showings before they closed around three or four in the morning. Assuming they sold any tickets, of course. There were only a few people in the building that didn’t work there as far as I could see; two couples at the snack counter, picking out their treats. It meant that I got one of the plush couches in the lobby to myself, and I settled in to wait for Lorcan.

  I was a little surprised he wasn’t already here waiting for me, to be honest. Of the two of us, Lorcan certainly had mastered the whole being on time business better than I had (but, hey, it took time to look this good). I figured it was his late night at the office. Lorcan owned and operated Haven Hollow’s only dental office, and he claimed he offered later hours for the convenience of his clients, but really it was the fact that he’d turn into a charcoal briquette if he set foot outside during the day. Not a good look.

  I checked my phone, but I didn’t have any texts or messages waiting, so I settled back into the plush cradle of the velvet couch, and busied myself with thinking about just how I was going to enchant Bryony Reid’s nightgown.

  That was, after all, what set Wanda’s Witchery apart from other clothing stores. I didn’t just design the clothing and make it, I wove spells into the fabric, painted them with potions and enchantments until it was soaked into the very fibers. If someone wanted a cocktail dress that would not only make them look amazing, but would actually make them look more graceful and confident, they came to me. Or maybe someone wanted to get into better shape—then they could get athletic wear that would make them feel energized and motivated to go to the gym until they formed the habit for themselves. Or maybe they were after lingerie that showcased their best features and softened their flaws, turning them into a sensual goddess—in all cases, they came to me and my store.

  Bryony would need something that would make her feel beautiful on her wedding night, confident. And, of course, there were also the fertility charms her family wanted worked into the fabric. Something subtle, but something that was powerful enough to ensure she got the cubs she wanted.

  Or did she want them? I had to admit, Bryony Reid was the most laid back, disinterested bride to have ever crossed my threshold. I’d dealt with a multitude of women getting married. Some had been excited, but pleasant. Others had been total nightmares, including one that had almost destroyed my business. But I’d never met one so uninterested in what was supposed to be the happiest day of her life (another facet to weddings that, in my mind, was just ridiculous).

  Well, it wasn’t any of my business. Werewolves were odd creatures, and they didn’t tend to get along well with witches. But, then again, not many other supernatural creatures did. But, going back to my point, werewolf men thought women should be soft spoken caregivers, eager to raise the next generation of pups and nothing else—so no wonder they didn’t approve of a witch’s matriarchal society. More power to the women who enjoyed that, but it felt like indoctrination and brainwashing from a young age to me.

  My backside was getting stiff, and I shifted a bit and glanced at my phone, shocked at how late it was getting. There still wasn’t any word from Lorcan, even though he was significantly late by this point. And that wasn’t like him. Unless perhaps he’d forgotten about our movie date?

  I crossed my legs, one foot bobbing furiously in the air as the minutes crept by. The movie we were supposed to watch had already started, and unless Lorcan showed up soon, we were going to miss the last showing of the night. The smell of popcorn and salt hovered in the air, taunting me.

  Where the spell was he? No word, no call? He thought he could just leave me sitting there, like a fool? I didn’t care if he’d accidentally forgotten! No one stood up Wanda Depraysie!

  He had no excuse... unless there was some kind of emergency.

  That made me pause, my foot in mid bob. What if there had been an emergency? What if something had happened to him? But then, as soon as that thought crossed my mind, I pretty much rejected it. Lorcan was a vampire, and not a particularly young one. He’d survived for centuries already, and that meant he was powerful. Very powerful. Not to mention the fact that the Hollow was supposed to be a safe, supernatural friendly zone. That was the point of them, after all, a place for paranormals to be able to live in peace next to their human neighbors. But in recent months, the Hollow had felt anything but safe.

  The point was, Lorcan was incredibly difficult to harm, and even harder to kill. But that didn’t mean either was impossible.

  What if something had happened to him? If he’d gone and gotten himself killed, I’d murder him. Twice.

  I’d sent him a couple of texts by this point, and even called once, but the call had gone directly to voicemail. I’d worked myself up to an uncomfortable pitch between anger and worry, and I’d started debating whether I should stay right where I was—just in case he showed up. Or was it better to head home and see if he was there? I was spared the need to decide, when I finally, finally got a response.

  Sorry, Sweetling, the text read. Something urgent came up. I can’t make it tonight.

  Well, at least he wasn’t dead. Or at least, not any more dead than when he’d left the house that evening. I should have been absolutely furious, and I was, but mostly I was baffled. Men did not leave me cooling my heels for an hour, and especially not Lorcan. He’d been chasing after me since the day we’d met, and suddenly I was getting stood up with a lame text explanation? Was Lorcan’s desire for me finally cooling? Had we been together long enough now that he was less enthralled with me? Was this what women meant when they said something about the uselessness of marrying a cow if you could get milk from the grocery store?

  I wasn’t sure, but I was damned annoyed, all the same.

  I, being extremely magnanimous, decided I’d wait until I saw him and heard his excuse before I hexed him with boils, or perhaps I’d cause all his teeth to fall out. Maybe he’d had to run into a burning building to save some orphans, or something. Though, he could have called once he beat the flames out, so, even then, it wasn’t a perfect excuse.

  I certainly didn’t have any interest in watching a movie on my own, and I’d sat there alone long enough that I didn’t want to be there any longer, so I grabbed my purse (a Louis Vuitton because... of course) and headed for the door, my head high and my spine as straight as a broomstick. Just let any of those little high school workers try and judge me. And thank the goddess that little rat Hellcat hadn’t been anywhere near to witness my shame. I’d never hear the end of it.

  I headed back to Lorcan’s place, where I spent most of my nights when I wasn’t at the coven house. I hadn’t set foot in the little duplex across the graveyard from Poppy’s place that had been my first home in Haven Hollow in months. I figured I should probably make a stop in at some point, just to make sure Libby the zombie was still up and lurching around.

  I’d accidentally raised Libby from the dead when I’d first come to the Hollow and hadn’t really had any idea how to control my Blood magic. New in town, and suddenly responsible for a housewife from the nineteen fifties who was a tried-and-true home maker, and fairly aggressive about it at that, life hadn’t been exactly easy. At least with Poppy’s help, I’d managed to keep Libby from rotting. Libby pretty much kept to herself these days, and I did feel a little bit sad at the fact that since Darla had moved into Cain Morgan’s house, Libby was probably feeling a bit lonely lately.

  Darla, the flapper ghost I’d managed to accidentally bring back to life, had also been my problem early on. But now she was working as a medium these days, and was currently on long term assignment channeling the late Police Chief Cain Morgan for his sister, the current Police Chief, Taliyah Morgan, so I figured that made her Taliyah’s responsibility. And thank Hecuba for that.