I smiled, trying not to let my suspicions show. “Let me walk you to your car.”

  I made sure Chloe got into her car and locked the doors, and then I watched from the porch as she drove away. Part of this was ingrained habit from living in a much larger city, but the other part was that I simply wanted to make sure she’d left. My skin was crawling, and my headache was doing a drum solo behind my eyes, and I didn’t have the brain power to try and put it all together, but I did know something was off about Chloe.

  I just hoped it wasn’t anything bad.

  Every time I blinked, it felt like I was trying to lift hundred-pound weights with my eyelids. I managed to drag myself upstairs basically through force of will and stubbornness. I didn’t even bother with the leftovers Chloe had put in the fridge, I just wanted to check on Charlie and Sean and fall into bed.

  I almost cried having to haul the humidifier out and fill it with water and a few drops of Poppy’s potion she’d made especially for the boys, but if it could help keep them from tossing and turning all night, then it was worth it.

  When I straightened up from plugging the machine in, the corner of one of the posters on the wall caught my eye. It was a brightly colored picture of Ironman—the superhero Sean was obsessed with. One of the corners of the poster was flapping free in the slight breeze from the humidifier and that immediately caught my attention. Someone had pulled the adhesive off, so the corner of the poster wasn’t secured to the wall any longer. I’m not sure why that struck me as odd, but it did all the same.

  When I ran my hand over the poster in order to smooth it down, I felt a lump underneath it. A big one. Carefully easing the other bottom corner off the wall, I tugged the poster up, to reveal an old horseshoe nailed to the wall and hidden beneath the poster.

  What the heck? Why would anyone put a horseshoe on the wall? And it was hammered in there pretty good, too. The horseshoe was also high enough up that I knew it couldn’t have been either of the boys who had put it there. Besides, I was fairly sure they didn’t know anything about why one would want to hang up a horseshoe on their wall. As far as I could remember, I thought it was something folks did in the old days for good luck. But as to who had left it there? If it hadn’t been Marty, then it would have had to have been Chloe. And for some reason, Marty didn’t strike me as the superstitious type.

  But why would Chloe put up a horseshoe? It wasn’t a decoration, or she wouldn’t have hidden it. Maybe she’d had second thoughts about putting a hole in my wall? But why a horseshoe? It made me uneasy, looking at it. Not knowing why it was there bothered me more than the hunk of metal nailed to my son’s wall. I took the time to slowly work the nail out of the drywall so I could take it down. As soon as I touched the thing, my fingers stung, prickling uncomfortably. Was there something on the metal? Something that was now burning me? My head pounded. It was so hard to think.

  I finally stumbled back down to the kitchen, knowing I was never going to get to bed with this whole bizarre situation hanging over me. I was halfway to hitting Maverick’s number on my phone when I remembered he’d said he was spending the night watching movies with Sybil, since he hadn’t managed to see her much lately. I hesitated and then called Wanda instead.

  Wanda Depraysie was the High Witch of Haven Hollow’s Circle Scapegrace. She was also a council member, and our go-to for all things weird and magical. If anyone would know about curses or the reasons behind hidden horseshoes, it would be Wanda. Plus, thanks to her vampire masquerade, she strictly worked nights, so it was practically first thing in the morning for her.

  The weirdest thing was, when it had been up on the wall, even looking at the horseshoe directly had made me feel a bit sick. My head hurt worse, and my stomach cramped up. I didn’t want it anywhere near me. But lying on the table, it was fine. I had no aversion to it at all. My headache even eased back a little. Strange.

  All I knew was that if someone had been trying to hurt my kids, I’d hit them with everything winter had and they’d have to wait until spring to thaw out again. Just the thought of it had curls of frost snaking across the table.

  I had to do some deep breathing exercises, just like Bea, my Faerie instructor, had shown me. Bea was the only person who could teach me how to pull the strings of Winter back—how to reign in my powers. And right now, I didn’t want to freeze my phone.

  Wanda picked up on the fourth ring, just before the call would have been sent to voicemail.

  “What?” she barked.

  My eyebrows slowly climbed up my forehead. Wanda was never going to win any awards for being kind and sweet, those were reserved for her friend Poppy, but that was still a little short, even for her.

  “Good evening to you, too, Wanda.”

  Wanda’s sigh was long and drawn out, blowing static over the line. “I’m kind of dealing with things here, Taliyah.”

  “What things?”

  “Not police things,” she barked and then sighed as if she also realized she was acting extra bitchy. “Olga won’t stop crying about something, but I can’t make out what that something is. Meanwhile, Betanya keeps making cups of tea, and then forgetting them somewhere in the house, and then she starts making more cups of tea, and now there’s no mugs, glasses, or tea bags left. Imani keeps thinking she’s seeing Voodoo Loas all over the place and now she’s holed up in her room and won’t come out. And I’m dealing with the worst undereye bags I’ve ever seen in my life, which is making me not want to leave the house either. The point is: I really don’t have time for anything else.”

  “Let me guess,” I asked, my voice dry. “None of you have been sleeping.”

  There was a long pause, then, “How did you know?”

  “Because it’s going around. No one in town seems able to get any rest. It’s been going on for days, and now it’s gotten to the point where it’s getting dangerous. People are seeing things that aren’t there, or they’re zoning out and getting into accidents. How has your own sleeping been?”

  “Not great, certainly, but I also have vampire blood to help me keep going. Lorcan hasn’t been having any trouble, but he’s technically dead during the day, not sleeping, so there’s that.”

  I heard a muffled, “Thank you, Sweetling,” across the line, and pinched the bridge of my nose. At least the vampire wasn’t going to hallucinate and run amok through Haven Hollow. Talk about small mercies.

  “This isn’t actually why I called, but if you have any suggestions, I’m all ears.”

  “I need to look into some things.” Wanda’s voice dropped into a low, dangerous purr then. “But if someone has actually put a curse on Haven Hollow, I’m going to enjoy making them regret it.”

  I didn’t even have it in me to argue. It wasn’t like there was much I could do within the legal system, anyway. I was pretty sure Wanda cursing someone wasn’t even technically a crime, unless she used the threat of the curse to extort something from the victim. But good luck even finding a jury of peers to try her in front of. I jerked my wandering thoughts back in line like an excitable dog.

  “Are you going to tell me why you’re calling?” Wanda asked.

  “Any idea why someone would nail a horseshoe to my wall?”

  The line went silent.

  “Wanda?”

  If I’d thought her voice was dangerous before, it was nothing to the ice in her tone when she spoke next. “Who nailed a horseshoe to your wall?”

  The back of my neck prickled, and I was suddenly much more awake. “I’m not sure. Why? What does it do?”

  Wanda’s sigh gusted across the line, and I heard the creak of her grip shifting. “An iron horseshoe nailed in a house, usually over the doorway of the threshold, is a very old charm that was used to protect people from Faerie magic.”

  My stomach dropped.

  Chapter Nine

  I’d thought I’d been so careful.

  I hadn’t even let on that I was the Chief of Police, I’d used a fake name, I’d been so careful. But it didn’t matter, because I’d let someone into my home, near my kids, someone who must have known I was fae. Someone who was leaving threats in my own home, around my children.

  How could I have let this happen? How hadn’t I seen it? I knew she was too good to be true. Why didn’t I listen to my instincts?

  Was she a plant from Janara? That didn’t sit right, though. Janara really didn’t have any use for humans, and unless she had a better glamour than I’d ever seen, I was pretty sure Chloe was human.

  For a few minutes, the sheer fury raging through me had driven back the fog of exhaustion. But when that rage burned itself out, to be replaced with nothing but confusion, it left me feeling hollow and a bit sick. I didn’t know what to do.

  I didn’t know how long I’d sat there before my phone chimed with a text from Maverick.

  Come and let me in.

  It took me a second to understand what his text meant, but then I hurried to unlock the front door and found a furious Maverick waiting on the porch. The second the door was open, he stepped forward and pulled me into a hug, folding me against his chest. And although I was shocked, I immediately fell into him, loving the warmth of his chest and the feel of his hands as he clasped my head to him.

  “Wanda told me what happened. Are you okay?”

  I didn’t even know how to answer that question, but I wasn’t hurt physically, so I nodded against his chest, the wool of his coat scratchy against my cheek.

  “I’m fine. I just feel stupid. And I’m irritated that a freaking horseshoe is giving me a low-grade headache, of all things.”

  I made myself step back to make sure the door was shut and properly locked before turning back to face Maverick. He looked grim, his jaw tight. “Wanda said the point of the horseshoe was to ward off fairies in your house.”

  “Right.”

  “Well, I think we need to make sure whoever did this didn’t leave any other nasty surprises.”

  “Good point,” I managed, irritated I hadn’t come up with the same idea.

  Together, we searched the house from top to bottom, other than the boys’ room. I didn’t want to wake them up, and no charms against fairies would do anything to them, anyway. And after we’d searched the entire house, we didn’t come up empty-handed. Instead, we found salt hidden under the door frames and sprinkled on the windowsills, dried rowan berries hidden on bookshelves, and rue twigs bound in clumps with thread tucked into odd places, like picture frames. With every discovery, Maverick got tenser, until I could almost feel his fury from across the room, like I was standing next to an oven turned up full blast.

  It wasn’t a big pile of stuff collected on my kitchen table, but it was stilly worrying.

  “These are all meant to ward against and drive out faeries,” Maverick gritted out, his jaw clenched so tightly I was worried about his teeth. “Someone was targeting you in your own home.”

  A terrible, greasy nausea rolled through my belly, and for a second, I thought I was going to be sick. I knew the boys hadn’t done it. Where would they even get a horseshoe, and how would they know about the rest of the items? Long story short—they wouldn’t. And they wouldn’t want to do this to me. While they knew I was different, and a princess from a ‘magic world’, I didn’t think they really grasped what the fae were. Which meant that either some random person had broken into my house without being seen by anyone, or Chloe had been spending her time laying traps for me in my own home. Because I wouldn’t believe for even a second that it was Marty who had done this.

  “It has to be Chloe,” I finally admitted out loud. “But I don’t understand why,” I continued on a shrug. “She’s human. How does she even know about faeries at all, much less that I’m one of them? Why would she go through all this just to target me?”

  Maverick made a sharp slashing motion with his hand. “She’s clearly a spy sent by Janara. But if it’s proof you’re so desperate for, I think I’ll go and pay this girl a visit. It’s about time we chatted.”

  Nothing good was going to come from Maverick going on the warpath. I was furious, too, but I was trying to keep a clear and level head, trying to be objective. Chloe’s actions just didn’t make sense to me. And I had serious, serious doubts about Maverick’s ‘spy for faerie’ theory. Janara would have used a lesser fae before she’d ever have bothered with a human, and I would have bet money on Chloe being human. I hadn’t gotten so much as a little fizz that I usually got from magic users when I’d shaken her hand.

  “I do want to talk to Chloe, obviously. But we can’t go in half-cocked. And I’m certainly not going to confront her anywhere near my house or my kids. I’ll call Marty in the morning and see if he can watch the boys while I go to Chloe’s place.”

  Maverick’s face looked like a thundercloud, clearly not happy, but he also decided not to argue with me, at least.

  “Fine,” he gritted out, grudgingly. “But I’m staying here tonight.”

  Blood rushed into my face, fast enough that it left me dizzy. “I… what?”

  He couldn’t mean what I thought he meant, could he? We’d never done… anything, really. We might have been married, but all we’d ever shared were a few kisses. It wasn’t a real marriage. It was just… helping out a friend, right?

  That slow, lazy smirk that I’d grown to both love and hate curled Maverick’s lips. He took a step closer, and I was suddenly reminded that, while Maverick was slender, he was tall, and he had very broad shoulders. A swimmer’s build, they called it. My thoughts were spinning in a way that really wasn’t helpful. Not to mention the first curl of heat waking up in my belly.

  “I don’t know that that’s such a great idea,” I managed.

  All he did was smooth a lock of my hair back behind my ear. “Don’t worry, wife mine. I’ll take the couch. But I’m not leaving you here undefended tonight.”

  I had to swallow twice before I could unglue my tongue from the roof of my mouth. “Okay. Let me get you a blanket.” The words came out seven kinds of husky, and I could have kicked myself.

  I got Maverick settled on the couch and winced at how his knees and lower legs kind of hung over the side. He was way too tall to be sleeping there, and part of me wanted to tell him that we could just share my bed. You know, like friends do. But I knew if he was anywhere near me—close and under the covers, in the dark, I very likely wouldn’t be able to keep my hands to myself.

  Instead, I cleared my throat, feeling too warm and awkward. “Goodnight and... well, thanks.”

  Maverick watched me, his dark eyes intent. “Goodnight, Taliyah, and you’re welcome.”

  Back in the safety of my bedroom, and stripped out of my clothes, I fell onto my mattress. Something told me that I wasn’t going to be falling asleep anytime soon, but not because of the insomnia.

  After tossing, and turning, and squeezing my thighs together to try and quiet the less logical parts of me, I finally fell into fitful sleep, and a dream rose up and swallowed me whole.

  ***

  Snow tickled my bare feet as I moved through the woods. It didn’t creak under my feet like it should have, instead it felt powdery and cool, like a frozen beach. And while I expected my feet to rebel against the freezing temperatures, they didn’t. They didn’t even feel cold.

  Up ahead, there was a bobbing light moving between the branches. I blinked, and it suddenly took on the shape of a beam—as if coming from a flashlight. I figured the flashlight must have belonged to a hiker or bird watcher who’d stayed out too late and the night had caught up to them, leaving them lost, wandering the midnight woods. I hurried forward, trying to catch up to them, trying to lead them back to town. I knew calling out wouldn’t work. They’d never answered me before.

  Before?

  I hesitated, feeling oddly weightless. Had I been here before, in these winter woods? I didn’t think so—yet why did it feel so familiar?

  The light ahead fluttered, like a failing heartbeat, and I knew time was running out.

  It should have been frightening, pushing my way between the tree trunks, but the woods were softly lit by the moonlight pouring over the snow, making it almost as bright as daylight. It softened the harsh shadows of the trees, gilding their lichen covered trunks in pewter, and making the darkness pooling in the pockets and hollows more indigo ink than pitch black.

  I hurried forward, almost gliding over the snow, but as I started to close in on that softly bobbing light, the trees shifted, almost as if they were suddenly leaning in. I had to squeeze between two trunks that were moving to trap me and dodge a clawing branch.

  I was so close to the branch; I was almost in reach, so I dove forward, lurching for a shrub I had to push out of the way. The light was just on the other side of it.

  Two branches closed on my shoulder, digging into my skin as I twisted and fought to get free.

  “Taliyah. Taliyah, wake up.”

  I woke like I was breaking through the surface of a dark pond, sucking in a huge gasping breath. My heart was pounding like I’d just run a marathon, slamming against the inside of my ribs until they ached.

  Maverick was gripping my shoulders, staring down at me with obvious concern. “Are you awake?”

  “Yeah.” I coughed, trying to clear my throat. “What happened?”

  We were standing in the living room, technically, right by the front door, with Maverick holding me back. The blankets were rumpled on the couch, where he must have gotten up in a hurry. It took me a second to realize I must have been walking in my sleep.

  Maverick kept his hold on me, his eyes flicking over my face like he wasn’t sure he believed I really was awake. After a few seconds, he finally let go with a long exhale. Then he pushed his hair back off his face, and it was at that point my brain decided to kick into gear and point out that he wasn’t wearing a shirt.

  “You walked into the room, and for a second, I thought you hadn’t quite been able to resist my obvious appeal.” He gave me his usual cocky smirk, but it was strained around the edges. When things were too serious for Maverick to flirt, it was never a good sign.