The Half-Moon Bar and Grill was pretty quiet as I sat there, waiting in the corner booth that gave me a good view of the door. It was a weird time of day, too late for lunch, too early for dinner, and Tuesdays were usually slow, since Roy, the owner, didn’t tend to book shows or bands then. It made it a pretty good public meeting space, assuming I could keep the scowl off my face long enough not to scare off the person I was waiting for.

  The coffee was good, too. Was it weird that I half wished it wasn’t? With the way I was feeling, I almost wanted the coffee to be bitter, and scorched, like coffee at the precinct usually was—we all choked it down, trying not to grimace. At least then it would have matched my mood.

  It was stupid to dread a season, I knew that. Apparently, that didn’t make even one ounce of difference though, because every time I thought about the first snowfall of the year, I got this sickening sensation. It was a mix of eager excitement and gut-clenching anxiety—truly, the whole situation was just pissing me off.

  I’d never had these kinds of problems before I’d moved to Haven Hollow. Seasons were just based on the rotation of the earth around the sun, not based on faeries and ghosties and magical nonsense. I never thought I’d look back with envy to the days when my biggest problems were trying to solve homicide cases or the sinking feeling that my husband was sneaking around behind my back, again. But there it was.

  Even with all the magic crap, there was no way I’d ever want to go back to those days. My scummy ex-husband aside, back then, I hadn’t had my boys.

  And my two sons were the best thing to ever happen to me. They’d come into my life at a point when I’d thought my whole world was collapsing. I was in the middle of trying to divorce my lying, cheating ex, when the boys crossed my path, desperately in need of a stable, loving home. I hadn’t adopted them on a whim. I’d thought about it, long and hard, to be sure. But it hadn’t been a hard decision, truly. Furthermore, I couldn’t have imagined what my life might have looked like if my own parents hadn’t adopted me, so I’d done the same for my boys. And I’d never regretted it, not for a second.

  One thing I was still deciding if I regretted, though? Moving to Haven Hollow. After my brother, Cain’s, murder, I’d uprooted my boys and myself to move to the Hollow in order to try and figure out exactly what had happened to Cain. And maybe that had been a mistake. Of course, if I hadn’t come to the Hollow, I’d still be in the dark about the hidden world of the shadows. And then the events of last December would have punched me in the teeth, seeing as how I would’ve been totally unprepared for them.

  So maybe my move to Haven Hollow had been my destiny—required, yes, but enjoyable? No. Well, mostly ‘no’. There were a few caveats to that ‘no’ though, and the biggest one went by the name of ‘Maverick’.

  My brother, Cain, had been convinced that there was a conspiracy going on in Haven Hollow—he’d thought that conspiracy was something along the lines of a cult, judging by the secret meetings and cover-ups he’d witnessed. He’d written his suspicions down in his personal notes, and, after his death, I’d been sure he’d been right. Furthermore, I’d also been pretty convinced that Cain asking the questions he had was what had gotten him killed. I’d stepped into his old job, Police Chief of Haven Hollow, ready to burn the entire place to the ground to avenge my brother.

  Haven Hollow had been exactly like Cain had described it; too many things that just didn’t add up, everyone dancing around certain subjects, strange reports that didn’t amount to anything. Everyone had considered me an outsider, and to be fair, I was. But it was more than that—it was the way everyone had looked at me—like they all knew something I didn’t. That had been what really put me on edge.

  And then one day, Fifi, the owner of Hallowed Homes, the local real estate office, had come to my house to talk to me. She was also the Hollow’s resident succubus, but of course, I hadn’t known that at the time. I’d simply thought she was going to deliver some cryptic threat, or maybe bribe me to keep from looking too deeply into what was going on in the town. But instead of an intimidation attempt, Fifi had sat me down at my kitchen table and slowly, and with great sympathy, had told me that my entire life was a lie.

  She’d informed me that ‘Taliyah Morgan’ was just the human guise for the Crown Princess Olwen of the Winter Court of Faerie. And that after a bloody coup, Winter loyalists had smuggled their infant princess to the only place they thought was safe: the human world. And so, for almost fifty years, I’d lived with the Morgans, never knowing that I was anything other than human.

  Fifi had babbled on about how I was part of some prophecy, and that on the Winter Solstice, the spells keeping me hidden away would break—just in time for me to regain my memories of who I was. Then I would have to take up my power and reclaim my throne, just in time to walk down the aisle for my wedding to Prince Reynard of the Autumn Court. Apparently, I’d been betrothed to the bastard since before I was even born.

  Of course, when Fifi had started telling me the story, I hadn’t believed a word of it. Lost Faerie Princesses? Other realms? Magic? It sounded like the weak synopsis to Frozen 3 or something. While I’d figured Fifi meant well, I’d also assumed she was trying to sell me on some crazy delusion. Or that she was just on something. But then there had come the day when something happened—something that had just about ruined my entire sense of self and something that also came close to wrecking my life.

  The magical seals that had been placed on me in order to hide me in the human world and keep my power in check, had strained under the knowledge Fifi had given me, and they’d broken too early. And once those seals were broken, Winter had ripped through my house, filling it with ice and snow. This had been months before it even should have been possible. I’d been almost catatonic while other memories, knowledge of an entire other world, of magic, and duties and rules that made no sense to me, had tried to jam their way into my brain like someone clumsily shuffling a deck of cards.

  Even my body had changed. Now, I hadn’t been a bad looking woman before—just on the far edge of middle aged, and I’d had the gray hairs and lines to prove it. But as soon as the seals were ripped away, suddenly I had waist-length, silver hair and any wrinkles and laugh lines I’d earned over the years were gone. Right—poof, erased like someone smoothing their hand over sand. Even my scars vanished, and didn’t that send me for a loop...

  The weirdest thing was my ears. It wasn’t really noticeable to anyone who hadn’t spent forty-seven years living otherwise, but my ears suddenly came to a graceful point, like the edge of a leaf—like what you saw on the elves in Lord of the Rings. I didn’t know why, but that one small change bothered me almost as much as the rest of the changes combined.

  I’d just been grateful my boys had been out of the house when the snowpocalypse hit. After I’d managed to drag my brain through the unlikely realization that everything Fifi had told me was real, and once my headspace was close to normal again, well that was when all the other fun started.

  I’d had to start magic lessons, so I didn’t turn Haven Hollow into a permanent winter wonderland. Then I had to deal with the fact that my birth parents were dead, so there was no happy reunion there. Furthermore, there were people out there who wanted me to join them so I could take back the throne of Winter. And then there was Fox.

  Fox Aspen, the oh-so-clever name that Prince Reynard used when he was slumming it around the human world, showed up repeatedly at my door like the world’s most annoying round worm.

  Marry me, Taliyah, he’d said (only he hadn’t called me ‘Taliyah’ but ‘Olwen’ which was even more annoying). Abandon your entire life to play faerie princess, Taliyah. Uproot your kids and move them to an entirely different dimension—the land of Faerie, where it’s extremely clear that people don’t balk at murdering infants for political gain.

  Fox just would not stop, always acting like I was the unreasonable one because I didn’t want to tie myself forever to a man I’d met fifteen minutes ago after barely clawing my way free from my previous marriage to a controlling, unfaithful douchebag. And all because my birth parents (whom I’d never met and had no lasting memories of), had given him their word. At the thought of taking my kids to a place where they would be in constant danger, and always seen as something lesser? Yeah, that was a hard pass for me.

  Too bad Fox hadn’t been willing to take no for an answer, something which really proved that not marrying him was absolutely the right and, really, the only choice.

  The days until the Winter solstice had ticked down in my head like a doomsday clock, and I’d been constantly on edge—worried that Fox was going to pull something, that he was going to somehow force me into this union I didn’t want. As the time before the prophecy took effect wound down, I’d been drowning my sorrows at the Half-Moon. It had been Christmas Eve, and I’d been doing my best to drown out the panic with a glass of whatever alcohol Roy was giving me, when my savior had appeared.

  The thought of what Maverick would say if someone called him a savior to his face made me smirk. Well, that was exactly how I viewed him. He was a good guy, even if he would never, ever admit it. Prickly, suspicious, sure. But he’d always had my back in a fight, and he was willing to pitch in with supernatural busts, when I couldn’t risk my mundane deputies seeing something they shouldn’t.

  Not only that, but Maverick had swept in at the almost literal eleventh hour, and he’d offered me his own solution to my quandary—that I marry him instead.

  The prophecy had only dictated that I get married, but not to whom. And if I was magically tied in a ceremony to Maverick, then Fox couldn’t touch me. I hadn’t had any better ideas, and at least I knew Maverick and trusted him (which was a hell of a lot more than I could say for Fox). Furthermore, I knew Maverick wasn’t going to go all creepy possessive on me. Plus, there was the fact that he was unfairly hot, which I spent a lot of time trying not to notice.

  His cousin, Wanda, the High Witch of Haven Hollow had done the honors, and I’d gotten married right there in her living room that very night. And the rest, as they say, was history.

  To say Fox hadn’t been pleased was an understatement of biblical proportions. He’d withdrawn Autumn’s support from Winter, and also from Haven Hollow, an act that left the town vulnerable to faerie meddling. It also meant that none of his people had showed up when Janara, the traitor trying to take my throne, had attacked and tried to kill me.

  The fact that Fox hadn’t been willing to help me, that was fine. I got it. It was politics, and wounded pride, and maybe even frustration. But that he’d sat back while a town full of innocent people were hurt, some of them killed, and he’d done nothing? I wasn’t sure I could ever forgive him for that.

  I hated that my refusing to take the throne was causing problems in Faerie. I hated that Janara’s people were attacking the fae who were still loyal to the old king and queen (and to me). I hated that my refusal to wed Fox had kicked off a war. But I had a life and a family that I was responsible for, promises that I’d taken on willingly, and I had to keep them.

  The door to the bar opened then, and I glanced up, reflexively. I was still early for my meeting. All the more time to nurse my coffee and worry about the upcoming interview.

  Mrs. Jenner, the woman who’d been watching the boys for me after school, had decided to move to Portland to be closer to her own family. I couldn’t blame her. Even without being a supernatural, it wasn’t hard to see that Haven Hollow wasn’t the slow, safe little town it had been once upon a time. The Council did their best to cover up and hide whenever some supernatural creature stepped out of line, holding to the secrecy that made Hollows spaces where the mundane and the magical could exist together and be safe. But there had still been deaths, and thefts, and fighting, and that meant people had stopped believing in the Hollow to keep them safe. Now lots of them were leaving.

  I understood why Mrs. Jenner was leaving, sure, but her departure left me kind of high and dry, because now I had no one to keep an eye on the boys. My cousin, Marty, was a big help, and he did his best to help when he could. But he had his own job as a graphic designer, as well as his amateur ghost hunting business on the side, so I couldn’t expect him to drop everything on a moment’s notice when I had to work a late case.

  But finding someone else to watch the boys was a scary task. I needed someone I could trust, and not just in the normal helicopter parent kind of way. Janara was still gunning for me. Her hold on the throne of Winter wouldn’t be secure with the old king and queen’s heir apparent running around. Just by being alive, I was a threat to her. And my kids would be an awfully tempting target, because there wasn’t anything I wouldn’t do to make sure they were safe.

  Louisa Rutledge had offered to keep the boys on occasion, but I needed something a bit steadier. Plus, as nice as Louisa was, she and her kids were werewolves, and with my very human boys around, they were constantly on alert, lest they accidentally let something slip. One thing of which I was sure? I didn’t want the boys finding out the truth about Haven Hollow. I wanted them to believe they were safe, and that they were growing up in a happy, loving household. They didn’t need to know that vampires and witches were real. And, as far as I was concerned, I was going to keep them as safe as safe could be.

  Yes, it was true that the boys were aware that I wasn’t human, but I didn’t need the rest of the supernatural experience shoved in their faces. My parents were back in Portland, and too far away to help out regularly, so that ruled out family.

  Technically, I guessed I could have asked Cain to help, but considering he was a ghost currently sharing the body of a flapper from the nineteen twenties, he had enough going on all on his own. And I couldn’t say I much trusted Darla with kids. She was a little, well, ditzy for lack of a better word.

  No, I needed a steady minder, one who could take care of the boys, help them with their homework, and someone who wouldn’t balk at the Chief of Police’s sometimes erratic schedule. And, most importantly, I needed someone who also wasn’t a plant from an evil Faerie queen who would kidnap the boys the second my back was turned.

  No sweat.

  Chapter Two

  I flipped over the resume in my hands, like I hadn’t read it a hundred times already.

  Chloe Masters certainly looked good on paper. She was a recent college graduate, with a degree in early childhood education. She’d worked as a nanny in the past, and her references raved about her when I contacted them. It was the only reason I’d agreed to do the interview in the first place.

  So, what if I hadn’t told her I was the Chief of Police, and I’d put out the ad under a fake name? When it came to my boys, there was no such thing as being too cautious.

  I sighed, staring out the window at the trees that dotted Main Street, their leaves all tinged with gold. I wasn’t looking forward to seeing them fall, even if every day that came closer to winter made me feel more alive, like I had an electric current flowing under my skin.

  But as my powers grew stronger, so did Janara and her lackeys.

  I shifted in my seat, making the leather booth creak. Anxiety made the three cups of coffee I’d already drunk roil uncomfortably in my stomach. Maybe I should have just asked Louisa Rutledge to watch the boys. I could have done a lot worse than the mother werewolf, even if she was a bit of a doormat in her day-to-day life. When it came to her kids, she lived up to the intimidation factor of her species.

  Just as I was thinking about forgetting the whole thing and going home, the door opened again, and Chloe walked in. I recognized her from the picture she’d sent after I’d offered her the interview, but a picture couldn’t tell me much about her. As she paused in the doorway, scanning the booths to look for me, I gave her a once over.

  She was certainly young—in her mid-twenties at most. Her sandy blond hair was pulled back into a pony tail, and her clothing was business casual—neat but not overly formal. Clearly, she was taking the interview seriously, even though it was being held at a restaurant. She had her arms wrapped around her mid-section, so she was probably a little nervous, but the gaze she scanned over the bar was direct and focused. She wasn’t just looking for me; I saw her note where the doors and windows were in the rest of the building. Hmm, that was interesting.

  I lifted a hand when she looked my way, and a smile flashed over Chloe’s face as she picked her way between the tables towards me.

  I was wearing a glamor to make me look like I had before the whole seal breaking garbage had gone down. So, I appeared just like I had when I thought I was merely human. And the way I appeared whenever I was around my human deputies, or humans in general. All white hair, I might have been able to explain. Hell, by late fall last year, it was eighty percent gray already. But suddenly looking twenty years younger, with pointed ears, and faintly luminous skin? Yeah, not so much. Besides, it wasn’t like my hair was gray, but silver.

  “Hi, Mrs. Jones,” Chloe chirped as she shook my hand and took a seat. “Thank you for the interview.”

  “Please,” I said, a more genuine smile crossing my face. “Call me Candace.”

  I might not have been sure about the whole situation, but meeting Chloe in person and shaking her hand told me one thing at least: she was human.

  There hadn’t been any frisson of energy when I touched her—not like what I might have felt from another faerie or a witch. As far as I could sense, Chloe was exactly what she looked like: a young woman looking for a job. It wasn’t very likely that she was a plant or one of Janara’s people, considering Janara’s faithful little followers seemed to look at humans as a slight step down from fungus. Plus, I’d done a decently good job of covering my tracks with the alias.

  Chloe ordered her own cup of coffee, and I settled in to give her an interview, trying to remind myself this was for a nannying job and not a police interrogation.