And if there weren’t, I’d be sure to remedy that oversight before I banished him there. The obnoxious, pampered, pissy little tomcat could either shape up, or face my wrath. If he was eaten by a cat-sized spider, all the better. I’d finally be able to bond with a new familiar—a thought I’d entertained more times than I could count.

  “What’s gotten into you?” I demanded as the cat attempted to swipe at my foot.

  One of Hellcat’s ears flicked disdainfully, and he narrowed his bright green eyes to evil little slits.

  “Perhaps I am as tired of your antics as you are of mine,” he said, tail cracking this way and that in his agitation.

  “Good, then why don’t you go find another witch to bother?”

  “Would if I could,” he grumbled. “But, as you are well aware, we are stuck with one another.” Then he breathed in deeply and sighed. “Your most recent transgression is just… embarrassing.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I got Louisa’s children out of my shop so Louisa and I could discuss business. Who gives a rat’s tail how I managed it?”

  “I do, in case you are not aware, we are hardly wealthy! Any money you spend is money you can’t spend on the rent. It’s due by the end of the week, you’re aware?”

  “I know and I have it!”

  He glared up at me. “How is it possible you have it?”

  “Because Louisa paid me. So I’ll ask again, what’s gotten into you?”

  “Meh.”

  I seized a black sequin throw pillow from the other end of the couch and lobbed it at my still grousing familiar. Hellcat, who was used to the pattern of our many arguments over the years, simply sunk down to his haunches and allowed the projectile to sail ineffectually over his head. It hit the far wall and rebounded, sliding to a stop before the front door.

  Libby was still pounding away on the door, sometimes jiggling the knob. Every so often she’d kneel down so she could talk through the keyhole, begging me to let her inside. If I didn’t let her in soon, she’d circle the house, looking for a way to climb in through a window.

  The story of my zombie and me was that I’d trod on Elizabeth Blackburn’s grave while dancing under the moon, and I’d stirred her spirit while trying to cast my magic—magic that, owing to my vampire side, was now dark magic, death magic. My death magic had been enough to call Libby from her grave while I’d been in the midst of fighting for my life against my cousin, Maverick. Now Libby was a zombie, and with that unnatural state came an extra level of strength of which mere mortals weren’t graced. That meant Libby could rip the door off its hinges if she wanted to.

  Zombies were the strongest, purest form of the undead, created by a spark of distilled dark energy. Unlike other undead creatures, Libby was perfectly self-sustaining, and designed to be so by the insidious nature of blood magic. The spark of my magic alone would sustain her for the rest of her unlife. She didn’t need to eat, drink, or sleep.

  Libby was an extension of my magic, and she could function in a vein similar to Hellcat. But, unlike Hellcat, who sometimes left me to my own devices, Libby was a stage 500 clinger. She was scared to death of being alone and was more attached to me than my own shadow.

  I’d raised her from the dead with a spark of my magic, and now she couldn’t return to the ground until I did. That knowledge didn’t seem to trouble her unduly, but it sure as spell bothered me. No one should have the power to snare another’s will so entirely, and yet, that’s exactly what had happened. Libby lived to do as I said. We had this weird relationship where she thought of me as her mother—something I figured was fitting considering I did bring her back into the world. But, by Hecuba, was it annoying. In general, I tended to be a woman who kept to herself, but with Hellcat watching my every move and now Libby added to the mix, I never had a spare second of me time.

  Hellcat rolled back to his feet in one sinuous motion and then leapt daintily from the couch to the window seat. A pair of wide casement windows ordinarily overlooked the sprawling graveyard that lay adjacent to the property, but I’d kept the drapes closed almost since the moment of my arrival. See no evil, hear no evil—that sort of thing. I didn’t need more temptation than I already faced, and when you possessed death magic, graveyards could be… tempting.

  “If that silly Rutledge woman wanted peace, she shouldn’t have had a litter of mongrels! Pack structures are so fickle,” Hellcat continued as he shook his head. “At least in a coven, there is always a witch to care for the wayward girls.”

  A snort escaped me. “Right, because covens absolutely love to stand by their own! That’s why I’m sitting here, surrounded by my doting family... oh wait! That same family tossed me out on my finely clad posterior, and I was forced to drag you along for the ride.”

  “Stop feeling sorry for yourself.”

  I frowned at him, but took a deep breath. “Regardless, the point is that it was my money to give to Poppy so she’d watch Louisa’s kids. My money, not yours.”

  Hellcat wheeled around, eyes luminous in his narrow, feline face, teeth bared, and tail held high. Every hair on his little body stood on end and crackled with irritation. He couldn’t technically cast magic, he could only channel mine, but here, as in any witch’s dwelling, there was enough magical energy that he could occasionally work up a charge. It was similar to scuffing your feet across the floor to gather static electricity. He couldn’t lob it at me, but the sparks of amber-white light that jumped from whisker to whisker reflected in his eyes and on his very white teeth. They looked rather impressive if you didn’t know better.

  “Fool,” he spat. “You blind, spoiled, selfish little fool! Your mother did not abandon you! She offered you lodging free of charge. You… we could still be living in proximity to your mother and sisters! We’d have a furnished home, and a stipend on which to live out the rest of our days! It was your idea to divorce yourself from the coven and the protections it offered. You defied your mother and locked yourself into a bargain with the creature that tainted you, that awful vampire! And now that you’ve revealed yourself to be a soft-hearted, sentimental sucker to the werewolves, your inability to do business will be public knowledge. Anyone with a sob story will come to you, hoping for a handout!”

  “What part of ‘I have the rent money’ didn’t you understand?”

  “That’s not the point!”

  “Then what is the point?”

  “The point is next time this happens, it could be with someone who won’t pay you! What will you do then, I wonder? Will you cut your losses and close up shop? Doubtful. You’re a prideful little whelp and you always have been.”

  I looked at him and frowned. “Yawn.”

  “You know what I think?”

  “Why should I care, you little maggot?” My voice was so taut with anger, it barely came out as a whisper.

  “I think that you, ungrateful girl that you are, will hurl yourself upon the mercies of your peers in the Hollow before you think to return to your family. I think you’d even prostitute yourself to that odious leech before you’d ask your mother for help.”

  “Lorcan is hardly an odious leech,” I grumbled, even though I was surprised to hear myself say as much because I’d pretty much always considered him an odious leech.

  “You defend him!”

  I shrugged. “I mean… he is our landlord.”

  “Yes, a landlord that will kill you, given the chance, and yet you still allow him to come calling!”

  My mouth opened, and though I tried to form a response, I couldn’t form a single intelligible word. Hellcat was right. If I hadn’t made the money back, I’d have asked Lorcan for an extension, using a date as leverage. But to imply that I’d become some sort of... blood whore was crossing a line.

  The skin of my palms flashed hot, and I curled my hands into fists, bit my lip, and tried to choke out the violent urge to fling a hex across the room at the awful little beast. A tinge of red clouded my vision, my gums itched, and for a few seconds, I just imagined what it might be like to snatch him by the scruff of the neck and launch him as far into the night sky as I could. Or, scratch that, I’d ask Libby to launch him into the night sky. With her strength, Hellcat might end up in Arizona.

  “Your lip!” Hellcat said as his eyes went wide and he pointed at me with his paw.

  It took me a few seconds to realize blood was bubbling over my lower lip and dripping from my chin and into the neck of my sweater.

  “Ah, there we are,” Hellcat sneered. “Better get used to blood dripping down your chin, Wandellmellia. I have heard vampires are quite messy eaters.”

  My vision pulsed red for another instant, and I howled a word. It wasn’t a word in any language I recognized, nor was the accompanying hand gesture familiar. When I cast magic, I beckon the power forward, coax it from the air, and shape it to do my bidding. Instead, my casting hand formed rigid claws, and I raked them at the air, drawing in as much power as I could in an instant, letting the spell coalesce into a tiny, scarlet nova between my crooked fingers. Then I lobbed the entire thing at the hellbeast in my window seat.

  Chapter Six

  Hellcat had a fraction of a second to realize what I’d done and react accordingly. Luckily for him, he was quick. The little pest leaped from the window seat with a shocked mew, diving for cover beneath a silk-upholstered Bergere chair only seconds before the spell impacted.

  And when that happened, stuffing exploded from the window seat and flew in every direction. Smoke plumed, and the batting spiraled to the ground a few seconds later, coating the hardwood like fat globules of snow. When the smoke finally cleared, a scorch mark ran from the seat up to the window sill.

  I could feel my pulse thudding hard in my neck, and I could hear nothing above the roar in my ears. When I could finally breathe past the fury, an odd sort of hush fell over the interior of the duplex. Libby’s pounding grew even more frantic, but it was a distant, almost nonsensical sound as I stared at the damage I’d done to the wall.

  “A blood bolt,” I breathed as I shook my head and tried to calm the shock already flowing through me. “Oh, Goddess, I...”

  My knees went wiggly and I all but collapsed onto the velvet couch.

  Blood bolts were supposed to be advanced dark magic, an art so arcane and deadly, it had taken one of the most knowledgeable Blood Witches in the last century five years to manifest the ability to experiment with them. I’d been a Blood Witch for barely six months. This couldn’t be happening. There was no way I should have been metamorphosing this quickly!

  “Now look what you’ve done,” Hellcat whispered. His voice lacked its usual venom. He sounded... scared.

  “I didn’t mean to... I just...” I stared at the charred section of the window seat in mounting horror.

  I’d entertained idle fantasies about getting rid of Hellcat over the years, but I’d never actually acted on the urge. He was like a reviled younger sibling. We heaped abuses on each other, but at the end of the day, neither one of us wanted the other to perish.

  Now that I could think rationally again, I imagined that was exactly what the noxious beast had been trying to get at. Hellcat didn’t want me to die, but with Lorcan coming around, there was every chance that my next foray out of the house could end with a severed artery.

  Fickle tears gathered in the corners of my eyes. “I didn’t mean...”

  “Stop weeping and look, girl! On the floor!” Hellcat hissed, and this time there was a hint of his usual, unctuous self in his tone.

  I glanced down and almost screamed.

  There was something undulating across the wide-planked ebony floor like a sickly wave. A thick, rotting miasma rolling over my floor. Anywhere the stinking cloud touched down, the floor warped and buckled. Furry mold growths popped along the ruined surface like a bad case of acne, and quickly formed a matted carpet of greens, blues, whites, grays, and yellows. The growths began to bubble, growing larger and, as I watched, they popped and fizzled, foaming and doubling in size.

  “What is it?” Hellcat asked, mouth dropping open.

  “I don’t know,” I answered, not able to remove my gaze from the bubbling growths which were now climbing up the walls and reaching the ceiling. As I watched, the foaming bubbles began to take the shape of something different—on the twenty or so most prominent bubbles that arched over the mess of fur and fuzz, three holes began to take shape within them, reminiscent of eye sockets and mouths. It was perhaps a few seconds later that noises started to pour from them. At first it sounded like static, but the static began to form into voices of all different tones, some high pitched and some low. They spoke in unison.

  “Murder! Murder! Murder!”

  I reached down, grabbed Hellcat, then my purse and keys as I then bolted for the back door as fast as my legs would carry me, vaulting over a pile of Hellcat’s toys in an effort to remain ahead of the reeking wave. I burst out into the clear, sweet evening air with only seconds to spare, sprawling in the snowy ground as I missed my last step, raising my chin in time to see the mold burst like a sickly rainbow across the back door.

  “Murder!” the staticky voices continued, but soon the word began to morph. It took another few seconds before I understood.

  “Hidden betrayal, buried…”

  “Look at what you’ve done!” Hellcat said, accusation now in his tone. He edged his head out from beneath my hand so he could peer at the ruined door.

  Staring at the fuzzy, pulsating growths on the backdoor, I didn’t know what to think. Clearly, this was another example of my unpredictable magic at work. But, I’d never read about anything like this in Betanya Tayir’s journals. So far as I knew, rotting floors hadn’t been an ability she’d possessed. But then again... she’d never summoned snakes from the aether to strangle her vampire stalker, and it had taken her years to summon even a weak blood bolt.

  “Just... shut your mouth,” I muttered, climbing shakily to my feet.

  I started around the side of the house, steps crunching through the light layer of snow on the ground. The voices continued to call out about murder, betrayal and burial. Of course, I had no idea what they were going on about and I also didn’t care to find out. My feet were freezing, and I belatedly realized I hadn’t bothered to put on shoes. I was walking through the snow in stockinged feet.

  “Oh, the horrors!” Hellcat started.

  “Just shut up, will you? I need to think.”

  “Think? There’s nothing to think about! We must call your mother at once. This situation has gotten out of hand. You simply cannot live in this blasted town any longer!”

  Libby’s face lit up when I rounded the duplex and came into view of the front porch. The front door was now covered in a rainbow of fuzzy growths, but they hadn’t deterred my zombie. She’d hammered one section of the front door free of the spores. It was then that I remembered Fifi was living on the other side of the duplex, but luckily for her, she was working the late shift at the Half-Moon bar. I pulled my phone out of my purse and texted Fifi about the situation, telling her it probably wasn’t a good idea to go inside the house. Not until we got a mold specialist out. I could only wonder if said mold specialist had ‘necrophilic bubbling spores’ on his resume.

  “Wanda,” Libby breathed, and her blue-gray eyes brimmed over with sudden tears. “Oh, thank you for coming out. I thought you were hurt!”

  Libby’s mouth twisted up into a perfect, plastic, Stepford smile. It was creepy as spell. Libby was dressed in a deep emerald swing dress, and her mousy brown hair was arranged into ringlet curls. She wasn’t tall, but she wasn’t petite either. She wasn’t thin, but neither was she overweight. She wasn’t a great beauty, but it couldn’t be said she was plain, either. She was... mediocre in all aspects. And she looked like she’d been ripped from an episode of Mad Men for a reason. She’d been killed in 1958 and thus, she’d come back to life in the current century with the same habits, dress and beliefs she had as a 1958 housewife.

  Habits weren’t as easy to shed as grave dirt, it seemed.

  Luckily, with some help from Poppy and her potions, Libby had stopped rotting. Poppy had even been able to reverse all the damage Libby had sustained for being dead for so long, so now Libby mostly just looked like a normal person. Well, a normal person in costume. And she was still getting used to walking and moving, in general, so sometimes her movement patterns were reminiscent of Frankenstein.

  “Libby,” I greeted her carefully. “Could you do me a favor?”

  She beamed. “Oh, I’d just love to! What can I help you with?”

  I thrust the grumbling cat toward her. “Could you go to Poppy’s house and tell her there’s been an… incident here? I’m going to go see… the landlord about it…”

  “You mean Lorcan?”

  I gritted my teeth. “Yes.” I took a deep breath. “And then I’ll be back to Poppy’s to get you and Hellcat. Okay?”

  Libby’s enthusiasm dimmed a few watts, but she continued smiling and nodding.

  Creepy. As. Spell.

  “I can do that.”

  “Don’t you dare leave me with this revenant and that gypsy!” Hellcat snapped. “Take me with you!”

  I ignored him, fishing for my keys in my purse. Listening to Hellcat was what had caused this fracas to begin with. I wasn’t about to coat the interior of my crappy Chevy Vega in mold if I could help it.

  “Promise you’ll come back for us?” Libby asked. Not only was she a stage 500 clinger, but she was also as anxiously attached to me as anxiously attached came.

  “I swear.”

  I climbed into the Vega and slammed the door shut, pulling out of the drive in a spray of gravel. I coaxed the old jalopy to its top speed when I reached the highway and didn’t slow until I neared the edge of town.

  ***

  Lorcan Rowe’s dental practice was arranged at the top of a gently sloping hill that overlooked the east side of town. The converted mid-century modern ranch house didn’t loom batlike over its neighbors, or cast an imposing shadow in the last slanting rays of the sun. With its soft, wheat-colored stone exterior, finely cultivated lawn, large picture windows, and oak-paneled front door, it looked almost... harmless. Pretty, even.