Color leached into her cheeks, her sable hair, the brilliant blue of her eyes. And that little bullet hole below her headband disappeared. The gauzy edges of her spirit form became more distinct—more solid and three dimensional. Death had washed most of the color from her body, leaving her a pale imitation of her former self. Even her clothes had been muted. But as I watched, the colors and details returned. It was as if someone had taken a brush and applied a fresh coat of paint on her, starting at the crown of her head and sweeping down in broad strokes until she was undeniably colorful and… solid. Flesh rounded out her arms, her cheeks, her trim waist.

  “Darla?” Poppy repeated again as my heart rode up into my throat.

  Oh, crap, not again.

  Darla yelped as gravity clenched her in a fist, dragging her down, from where she’d been floating around the ceiling, with startling speed. She landed with a soft, startled, “oomph!” on Henner’s lap. His arms shot out automatically, curling around her shoulders and sliding beneath her knees, lest she roll off his lap and hit her very fleshy head on the edge of the coffee table.

  She stared up at him, eyes impossibly round as he stared down at her, eyes equally round. Darla drew in one shaky inhale, then another, chest heaving. Henner stared back, as bewildered as the rest of us.

  A hush fell over the room, and every eye was glued to the now corporeal Darla.

  “She’s alive,” Roy said simply.

  “Alive?” Poppy repeated in a hushed whisper. “But that’s... that’s not possible!”

  “Um, I’m pretty sure it’s possible, because it just happened,” Marty pointed out.

  “She’s much hotter as a human,” Finn said, grinning widely.

  “But… how?” Poppy continued, shaking her head. “It’s not possible! No one raised her body! And… and she’s not even buried in this state! She was shot in Silver Lake… in California! How...?”

  One by one, every head in the room turned to me, mirror images of shock on each face.

  My stomach performed a violent backflip.

  I stared at Darla in mounting horror.

  A zombie was one thing. Betanya had raised a handful in her decade as a Blood Witch. But this... I’d never heard of anyone being able to drag a spirit through the veil and restore said spirit to life. But, that’s exactly what had happened. Darla appeared, for all intents and purposes, as alive as the rest of us.

  “What did you do?” Marty asked, voicing the question etched into each face.

  “I don’t know,” I answered.

  And that scared me spitless.

  ***

  On the whole, witches don’t surrender in the face of adversity. We don’t run away or cower. Even tactical retreat is an oddity, though sometimes a necessity if you’re facing a werewolf with moon madness or a ghost who has suddenly become fleshly.

  I did not sprint from the gypsy’s living room or dart up the stairs to her guest room in order to breathe without so many sets of eyes staring at me. I merely... excused myself for the evening and took a brisk walk to the second floor, leaving everyone else to deal with the newly corporeal Darla.

  I’d done enough for one evening.

  Once alone in the guest room, I shut the door and pressed my back against it, breathing hard. I just was… spent. Spent from the exertion, the shock, and the stinging at the corners of my eyes... stinging that was owing to… dust. Yes, that’s what I’d go with.

  After a few minutes of heavy breathing, I slumped over, clutching my middle. The tears I’d been doing such a good job of controlling suddenly broke through my restraint and started rolling down my cheeks, and I batted at them furiously.

  Stupid Poppy, with her stupid games, and her stupid ghost! This was her fault! If the stupid gypsy hadn’t stuck her stupidly cute button nose into my business and insisted Libby, Hellcat and I stay with her, we wouldn’t be in this mess!

  Um, I think you’re the one who actually asked Poppy to take care of Louisa’s spawn, remember? I reminded myself.

  I just as quickly ignored the reminder. Furthermore, if that stupid gypsy with her stupid happy smile had never moved to Haven Hollow in the first place, my life would be significantly better! I wasn’t exactly sure how or why that was, but I decided to go with it, anyway. When one is in the midst of a fantastic run of feeling sorry for oneself, no other thoughts should intervene.

  So, right, yes… this was Poppy’s fault! If she’d never come to this town, I might even be dating the deliciously brutish sasquatch, who had a special loathing for a certain vampire dentist—a vampire dentist I loathed just as much! Even more so!

  Instead, I was trapped in this little town with a vampire as a landlord, and a group of brainless… idiots! And these brainless idiots pretended like they were my friends, but they weren’t, really! No one could befriend a witch because witches were… well, we were unpopular in general. And that was the way we liked things.

  Thoughts of that bastard penis named Lorcan returned to my already overwhelmed mind and I shuddered. I’d kissed him! And I’d been the one to initiate it! It was dangerous. He was dangerous. And this was all his fault! Right! This was his fault, even more than the gypsy’s fault! If stupid Lorcan Rowe had never tried to save me with his stupid blood, I’d be back in the coven and much happier. Thanks to what he’d done to me, I was now defying the laws of nature, blighting houses, and raising spirits that had no right to exist on this side of the veil.

  What in the spell had gotten into me? Where was the cool, calm and unfriendly witch I used to be? Where was the strong Wanda, the Wanda who didn’t give two stuffs about what anyone thought of her? And who was I now? What had I been reduced to? Kissing vampires like I was some floosy! And bringing ghosts back to life and creating zombies… oh, Hecuba, it was all too much! My life was completely out of control.

  It took me several minutes to collect myself before I could stagger toward the bed, being careful not to trip over Hellcat, who I just now realized was in residence with me. The furry monster had thankfully been indulging in chicken while I’d done nature-defying magic downstairs. If he’d had any inkling what had happened, he’d have been on the phone to Mother sooner than you could say ‘catnip.’

  Currently, he was curled into a pile of faded patchwork quilts, discarded cans lying in his wake. His ears occasionally flicked in his sleep, but he didn’t lift his head and snarl something uncouth, which assured me he was well and truly out.

  And thank the Goddess for that, because he was the last thing I wanted to deal with at the moment.

  Poppy had drawn the curtains, so only a trickle of moonlight slipped in through the gap. With my newfound vampire senses, I could make out the interior of the room without difficulty. Honestly? I wished I couldn’t. The gypsy’s decorating sense couldn’t even be termed as such, and the country pastel colors and competing florals were enough to give a person a headache. The walls were painted a light pink, the duvet was lilac, and the throw pillows were green, cream, and periwinkle. The lampshades on either side of the bed were cornflower blue. Overall, it looked like the Easter Bunny had broken in and vomited all over the place.

  “Ugh, this is like trying to bunker down inside a cupcake.”

  I’d have insisted on leaving, on getting a hotel room in town, but that would require going back downstairs and dealing with the mess I’d just caused. I wasn’t sure my nerves could stand up to a round of twenty questions.

  So I flopped onto the bed, groaning into the pillows. How was this my life? I was a hundred and forty! I was only a little past my prime. I should have been in Portland, living it up, mingling with high society under Mother’s finely chiseled nose. How had I ended up in a Hollow, abandoned by my family, and now bumming a room off my rival? This was what he’d reduced me to. Oh, if I’d never hated Lorcan Rowe before, I certainly did now!

  When I finally managed to pull myself from the mire of self-pity (which was some time later) I crawled across the duvet to pluck my purse from the opposite side of the bed. I kept the miniature leather-bound journal full of Betanya’s observations nearby at all times. There was a dearth of information on my condition, and Betanya was the only Blood Witch to survive long-term in over a millennia. The record of her life and experiences had been invaluable to me over the past few months. I’d taken scrupulous notes and consulted them often. So I knew, without even glancing at the pages, that what I’d done—that morphing Darla from ectoplasm into flesh—should have been impossible. Even powerful mediums couldn’t draw spirits past the veil. Those with extraordinary skill could bind spirits to objects or allow the spirit to possess their bodies for brief periods of time. But outright physical incarnation? It was unheard of.

  Still, I rifled through the pages, desperately seeking an answer or an explanation, something to ease the tight, cold knot in my stomach. But after ten minutes of exhaustive searching, I found nothing. Betanya had only raised a handful of zombies over the decade she’d lived in Haven Hollow, which was standard fare for the average Blood Witch.

  I closed the journal, hunching over the book in defeat. Nothing. Witch Tayir hadn’t left so much as a breadcrumb, no spell or ritual to guide my path forward. I’d sailed so far into uncharted waters, I’d completely lost my way.

  “Damn you, Lorcan Rowe,” I whispered.

  I stared at the journal for a protracted second before setting it on the nightstand (painted a soft butter yellow). Then I slipped under the duvet, squeezing my eyes shut, hoping when I woke, this would all be nothing more than a terrible dream.

  ***

  The night sky swirled with heavy gray clouds, moving in to blot out the light of the full moon, which hung like a mercurial disk in the sky. Even so, I could make out my surroundings with perfect clarity. The ground sloped gently downward, blades of grass as piercing as broken glass, the cold coating everything in a thin layer of hoarfrost.

  The movements of my body were lithe and more graceful than they’d ever been in the hundred and forty years before. Granite headstones, worn down by time and coated in lichen, pushed through the cold earth like the thick fingers of a buried giant. Stone angels lifted their heads in silent entreaties to an unfeeling sky. Mausoleums towered over the stones, casting looming shadows. Things waited in the dark, but I paid them no mind.

  This was my place. I feared nothing here.

  My pale flesh shone opalescent in the darkness, draped in nothing but shadows that twisted and writhed in the gale sweeping in from the south. My dancing steps brought me to the edge of the graveyard, and I stepped over the boundary without a thought. Scents wafted to me on the wind. The sharp aroma of assorted woods: oak, maple, mahogany, cherry, and pine melding into a pleasant perfume. But beneath that was the sour note of decay. I could smell the putrefying flesh, taste the dust of the long-decayed corpses in their graves, feel the writhe of every maggot, hear the scrabble of insects in the ground.

  And I loved it.

  The smell, the taste, the sounds, every sense ringing, my feet moving in tempo to the danse macabre.

  “Come to me,” I whispered.

  A sound like that of the wind rustled through the trees, an eerie punctuation to my words.

  I alighted on one grave, and then another, still moving to the beat within my head, until it reached its final, violent crescendo. I spread my arms wide, and the searing cold of my power flared out like a pair of dark wings.

  “Come to me!”

  And they came, battering against their coffin lids until the coffins collapsed into broken wooden shards. Clods of earth rained down on every head, but the dead swam upward as though moving through water. Their heads cleared the sodden ground, bobbing to the surface of their graves like undead corks. With effort, they wriggled their arms free and lifted themselves from their pits of death. A few near the back were cadaverous, but most of them would have been indistinguishable from the living... except for the eyes. Every pair of eyes were vacant, with no spark of animation. They were unmistakably dead, and I’d unmistakably raised them.

  Tituba, I’d raised an undead army…

  They opened their mouths and in a chorus, they called out: “Murder! Buried! Hidden!”

  I stumbled back a step, my heart throwing itself violently against my ribs. The elation I’d felt just a moment ago was gone. The wind was clawing at me, raking violently through my hair, whipping the shadows away from my body so I was left bare before the zombies I’d just called from their graves. They stumbled forward, pale fingers forming claws, reaching for me, mouths opening and closing as they continued to call out murder, buried, hidden!

  “No,” I whispered. “Oh no, no, no!”

  They descended on me in a wave of clawing hands and clammy flesh.

  I hit the frozen ground, air exploding from my lungs as the stinking corpses climbed over each other to get to me. Fingers battered at my temples, and a pair of sharp needle teeth clamped down on one of my toes. I kicked out wildly, trying to get the zombie off me. It danced back a step, separating from the crowd of undead with a feline yowl of protest.

  But... zombies couldn’t yowl.

  The cadaverous old man had probably been ninety when he’d croaked. Even animated by black magic, his shoulders were too stooped to allow him to raise up to his full height. He smoothed the threadbare lapels of his suit down with knobby fingers and squinted at me. His mouth worked, and a familiar, scornful voice issued from it.

  “This is the last time I try to wake you from an unpleasant dream, my ever-present annoyance. Perhaps next time I shall let some night hag or other equally hideous beast feast on your whimpering screams. It is only fair recompense for sullying my mouth with your bunioned digit!”

  I knew that voice. I knew that tone.

  Hellcat.

  It wasn’t the zombie at all. And that meant…

  None of this was real. I hadn’t raised a graveyard’s worth of zombies.

  Yet.

  Chapter Ten

  I cracked one eye open with difficulty. My eyes were gummy from sleep, and the sharp slant of sunlight through Poppy’s gauzy drapes stabbed me in the retinas the second I tried to take stock of my surroundings. I swatted the left side of my face blindly and came into contact with cool but solid flesh. It reminded me so viscerally of the corpses I’d raised in the dream that I cringed away on instinct.

  “Get off me!”

  “I’m sorry,” a soft, familiar female voice whispered. “You seemed distressed. Should I have left you asleep?”

  It was just Libby. I lifted my head from the pillow with a groan and rolled over.

  Hecuba, I didn’t need this first thing in the morning.

  “No time for sleep, dollface! There’s too much to do, and I ain’t spendin’ my second chance at this livin’ shindig watchin’ you toss, turn, and drool on your pillow.”

  The second voice sounded from behind me and was familiar in a prickling, unpleasant way. It took me a second to realize it was Poppy’s featherbrained ghost, come to annoy me again. Except...

  Second chance at living…

  Darla’s words sank in and I bolted upright, heart slamming painfully against my ribs. Libby had to move over to avoid bumping heads with me. As I rolled over, I focused on Darla who was standing at the end of the bed, regarding us both with a big grin.

  So, that bit hadn’t been a dream. I really had dragged the ditzy ghost through the veil and given her a body.

  “Balls!”

  “Indeed,” Hellcat responded, voice as dry as a papyrus scroll. He jumped up on the bed beside me and regarded the now corporeal ghost with a frown. “I’m not one for coarse language, but I’d say dragging a ghost into corporeality warrants it.”

  I flopped back onto the bed with a groan, stuffing a pillow over my face. Only three minutes into the day, and it had already gone straight to crap.

  Hellcat had seen Darla in all her fleshy glory. He couldn’t fail to realize the magnitude of what I’d done. And, as such, I was sure he’d be reporting it to Mother the moment an opportunity presented itself. Well, if he hadn’t already.

  I twisted so I could glare at Hellcat from beneath my pillow. He stared back, unimpressed, whiskers twitching as he fought off a smug kitty grin. He knew what this meant. The commuted sentence the Crescent Circle Coven had offered me was coming to an end. In the not too distant future, I’d be punished for my transgressions and probably put to death to ensure the taint was gone from our line. This situation had passed beyond the bounds of acceptable aberration and staggered into depravity. Maybe with me gone, Hellcat could be nestled firmly by Mother’s side again—a place he’d never wanted to leave.

  “You can’t tell her anything,” I hissed.

  Hellcat’s whiskers twitched once again. The furry little bastard was completely and totally loving this.

  “Oh, I can, and I shall.”

  “How you gonna do that, kitty cat?” Darla insisted.

  Hellcat ignored her and continued glaring at me. “While my enchanted toys your mother gave me currently reside under a layer of mold in our blighted domicile, rest assured I will find a way to contact Celestine. This is exactly the sort of thing she tasked me to report.”

  Hellcat’s muscles bunched and, faster than the eye could track, he pounced. The leap took him from the foot of the bed and deposited him right on my chest. Twelve pounds of fur and bad attitude drove the air out of my lungs. I wheezed and tried to bat him off. Hellcat sank his claws through the soft sweater I’d never bothered to change out of, and held fast.

  “I’ll give you my learned opinion, though I doubt you’ll listen, doltish as you are.” He leaned closer, so one whisker tickled the tip of my nose. The reek of his poultry-scented morning breath threatened to make me gag.

  “Get off me, you little rodent!”

  “After I’ve said my piece. It feels as though we have shared an eternity of enmity with one another, so I have just enough care to give you this bit of counsel… Just… give… up.”

  The reek of his breath was threatening to make my eyes cross and it was difficult to focus on anything but the lamplike intensity of his eyes.