Speaking of Poppy’s twelve-year-old son, she’d left Libby to fuss over Finn and tuck him into bed so we could spend the evening working on the pieces for my new ‘healing’ bandage line.

  The zombie housewife had leaped at the chance to play matron and had probably made the kid’s evening a misery—just like she did mine whenever I let her. Libby wouldn’t know fun if it flipped her skirt up, Marylin Monroe-style. I wouldn’t have been surprised if she’d parted Finn’s hair, sewn his name into his underpants, and ironed every article of clothing he owned. But better him than me!

  Poppy shrugged again. “I trust my magic, and I trust yours, so why not?”

  Poppy continued when I didn’t reply, starting on yet another potion. Judging from the new set of ingredients.

  “I think this is a really good thing you’re doing, Wanda. Starting a healing line is a little off-brand for you, but I think it’ll help so many people, and the supernatural set especially.”

  “It’s entirely self-serving, I assure you,” I said, not wanting her to get any ideas. “After my close encounter with Genevieve, I don’t want to leave anything to chance.”

  I couldn’t stop myself from tracing the twin indentations just above my collarbone. It had almost been a year since one of Lorcan’s spurned admirers had ambushed me and attempted to tear my throat out. I’d lost a lot of blood to the crazy vampire bitch. If Lorcan and Poppy hadn’t been on hand to perform an emergency transfusion, I’d be dead. Or undead because I’d technically given my vampire… suitor permission to bring me over to the dark side.

  I grimaced.

  Suitor. I stumbled over the word every time, even in my thoughts. Though we’d been going on dates for a while now (I refused to call it ‘dating’), I hadn’t claimed Lorcan as mine in front of anyone. That was, until Yule, when his assistant had come knocking at his front door, smitten and obviously wanting an invitation inside.

  And, truth be told, I wasn’t sure what I was going to do about Lorcan. But that was a messy subject better left in the dark recesses of my mind—otherwise, it just gave me a headache.

  The sound of claws scratching across Poppy’s front door made us both jump.

  It was nearing ten o’clock, and the shop had been closed for hours. In a sleepy little town like the Hollow, almost no one was around at this hour, let alone someone or something that could make such a noise.

  “What’s that?” Poppy asked, clutching the crystal bottle in her hand so tightly, I thought it might shatter.

  I sighed. “If I had to guess, it’s—”

  “Open the door this instant, you mephitic trout!”

  “Hellcat,” I finished with a scowl. “Damn. And just when I thought I was rid of him.”

  “Rid of him?” Poppy repeated.

  I nodded. “He’s been keeping to himself and staying mostly at the house since we rescued Olga. I don’t think he likes her familiar.”

  He definitely didn’t like the guardian spirit Lorcan inherited. Yule looked like a big, floppy-eared beagle, but was actually a protective spirit and could, in theory, turn into something large and ferocious if need be. As it might be inferred from his name, he came into Lorcan’s life during Yule, though we still aren’t exactly sure where he came from, other than originating with the Goddess. I was glad Lorcan had the guardian spirit, and I also took vindictive pleasure in the distress it caused my ill-tempered familiar.

  “I think what Celestine did that night—sending vampires after you—might have shocked Hellcat for a while,” Poppy said.

  “I can’t imagine anything shocking that cat. Especially not my near death.”

  She cocked her head to the side. “True, Hellcat doesn’t like you, but that doesn’t mean he’s going to dance gleefully on your grave.”

  I frowned at her. “That’s debatable.”

  She shook her head. “Wanda, you almost died that night, and it’s partly your mother’s fault.”

  I nodded because she had a point. “I doubt that’s the reason, though,” I said, crossing over to the door. If I continued to ignore him, the fleabag would scratch up Poppy’s door for spite, and I wasn’t in the mood to replace it. “But I appreciate the thought.”

  Hellcat bounded through the door the second I opened it, streaking towards the front counter. He had something large and white clamped in his teeth. For a moment, I thought the lousy cat had gotten off his furry butt and caught something, but then I remembered this was Hellcat we were talking about. Not a second later, the shape resolved itself, and my heart lurched into a dead sprint.

  “You have mail, my eternal annoyance,” he said, depositing a large white envelope onto Poppy’s counter. It wasn’t just any mail. “I suggest you open it post-haste.”

  I took one unsteady step, then another. My legs felt like they were made of water, and my hands were shaking by the time I seized the envelope. The shimmering green-gold of witch wax kept the envelope sealed, and only the magic of a mature witch would be able to unseal it.

  “Wanda, you look pale,” Poppy said as she approached me. “What is that?”

  I could only hear her voice distantly, like she was speaking from the bottom of a well. I jerked away from her when she tried to place a gentle hand on my back.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked, eyes wide with concern.

  I held up the envelope for her inspection. She took it, tried to pry open the wax, and couldn’t—just like I knew she wouldn’t be able to.

  “It’s bespelled so only a witch can open it.” I sucked in a shaky breath. “And I’m fairly sure it’s a summons sent by a High Witch. I think this is from… Mother.”

  Chapter Two

  Mother.

  Small word to pack such an emotional punch.

  My throat constricted, and drawing even a shallow breath was difficult. To my horror, my eyes began to itch in a precursor to real tears.

  Tears.

  One official summons was all it took to reduce me to a pathetic, blubbering mess. It was completely undignified. And yet, I couldn’t seem to undo the knot of grief that formed in my gut. This was the first communication I’d had with Mother since the incident.

  Almost a year ago, I’d faced off with my former coven to rescue Olga. At the time, I hadn’t understood why Olga had been imprisoned, and it made even less sense to me now that I had an answer.

  Olga had the gift of second sight, a rare ability that sometimes came to witches after their two-hundredth year. A witch’s power doubled or sometimes tripled past her child-bearing years, which was a frightening prospect now that I was a Blood Witch. How much worse would things get when I put the possibility of children behind me?

  I’d been a sprightly little seventy-year-old when Mother had received the sight. And when she had... well, things had changed between us. I hadn’t put it together then, but she’d gone colder. The change was gradual—it started small—negging here, a subtle hex there. Then she’d imposed more rules, became more capricious, and eventually stopped talking to me much at all.

  The saddest part? I hadn’t questioned it at the time. Witches squabbled over the most trivial things. I’d figured I must have done something to deserve her sudden indifference. It had taken exile from the coven to realize what anyone on the outside looking in knew at a glance. Our society ran on a broken system and was a good hex away from imploding. But it was the suspicion of everyone on the outside world that acted as the brittle glue that bound us all together.

  “Will you help me open it?” Poppy asked. From her tone, I was sure if it wasn’t the first time she’d asked the question. “You can sit down and I’ll read it.”

  I shook my head.

  I didn’t want to open it and I certainly didn’t want to read the thing or listen to Poppy read it. I wanted to toss it into the gutter, pray to the goddess for rain, and then watch it disappear down a storm drain. And hopefully, the storm drain would be home to a demonic sewer clown.

  Or two.

  Poppy gripped my elbow and tugged me over to one of the chairs at her work station. She sank down onto her haunches, staring up at me with concern, the envelope still clutched tightly in one hand.

  “No, you won’t open it, or no, you don’t want me to read it?”

  “Both,” I finally managed.

  Could she hear me unraveling in that one syllable?

  Because I could feel it coming.

  I’d been waiting for something like this to happen. There was no way Mother, the High Witch of Portland’s Crescent Circle Coven, could allow the insult I’d dealt her stand. It didn’t matter that I’d only been defending my life and the lives of others.

  I was a threat to her power, and I had to be dealt with. It was as simple as that.

  The thing that really snapped my stockings was the fact that I didn’t know exactly what threat I posed. The infuriating nature of second sight meant that neither Olga nor Mother could speak plainly about future events. Even nudging me toward their desired outcome could be dangerous.

  But Olga had been fairly clear in that the vision she saw showed that I would threaten Mother’s reign. I would threaten her control and her power.

  And that was why she’d sent this summons.

  The supernatural world operated on a few core rules, and one of the most sacred was the outward appearance of showing respect to each other, even if we cursed each other in private. It would be unacceptable to ignore an invitation from a High Witch, and a refusal to attend would open me to retaliation from the entire coven. But attending was more dangerous still. No way to win.

  I didn’t realize I’d been tugging at the roots of my hair until Poppy tried to disentangle my fingers.

  “Wanda! Talk to me! What’s going on?” she asked as she placed the letter on her counter and faced me with concern.

  “She’s backing me into a corner,” I answered in a hollow voice, a tone laced with fear. “She’s done this on purpose.”

  “Do stop with your histrionics, girl,” Hellcat drawled as he pounced up to the counter so he could stare at me, eye to eye, with his emerald ones that glittered like gems. “The epistle is not from your mother,” he answered as he reached down and pawed the wax seal. “There’s a crest pressed into the wax.”

  “So what?” I asked.

  “Sooo,” the cat hissed. “If you had half a brain cell, you would recall that Celestine did away with her signet ring years ago. It was… too turn of the century, I believe her words were. Very gauche.”

  I sat up straighter at that, and the tightness in my chest eased by a few degrees. If this summons wasn’t from Mother, though, who was it from? Had I managed to make yet another enemy? One that I wasn’t even aware of?

  I snatched the invitation from the counter and flipped it so the wax seal faced up. It shimmered in the low light, and if I squinted, I could just make out a seal in the wax. A rose in bloom with a border of thorny vines. Definitely not the waning moon in complex knotwork that I’d grown up with.

  Relief suffused me, but I wondered if it would be short-lived.

  “I don’t recognize the seal,” I said.

  The admission hurt.

  Hellcat usually used my ignorance as an excuse to launch into a scathing review about my intelligence, always comparing me to Mother so he could find me lacking. Sometimes he didn’t even need the excuse. Simply being alone with one another was enough to prompt one of his diatribes. To my surprise, his tail only flicked once in annoyance.

  “I can’t expect you to keep up with current events in this cesspit of a town,” he answered, lifting his chin in what was probably meant to be a magnanimous gesture. “Thus your ignorance, while vexing, can be forgiven.”

  “How generous of you,” Poppy said. Don’t ask me how she managed to keep a straight face while she said it.

  “Alright, my furry fount of wisdom, why don’t I recognize the seal?” I asked.

  “Because the particular coven that bears this seal was only formed in the last few years, and your mother was not inclined to befriend their High Witch.”

  Now that was interesting.

  In the world of witches, your ability to schmooze would take you far. Power was all well and good, and while strong witches always made names for themselves, it was the politically savvy witches who came out on top. If I’d been even a fourth as charming as Mother, I could have eventually taken her place as High Witch in the next hundred years. Alas, I’d always been abrasive (even more so than your average witch), and it hadn’t earned me many friends. My older sister, Belladonna, was poised to take the title when Mother passed.

  So why would Mother deliberately shun a potential ally? Unless said potential ally was a pariah like Olga or I (which seemed unlikely as whoever this was, she’d climbed to the position of High Witch) ignoring her didn’t make sense on a personal or political level.

  “That’s out of character for Celestine,” I said at last. If Hellcat could aim for diplomacy, it only seemed fair that I attempt the same. Goddess forbid I be less mature than my mouthy familiar. “Is there any reason Mother wouldn’t recognize this High Witch?”

  Hellcat nodded to the envelope in my hand. “Open it. I am quite certain things will become exceedingly clear when you read the letterhead.”

  I gave him a narrow-eyed look, before pressing my palm to the wax seal. I half-expected to find a hex worked into the wax, given how helpful he’d been thus far. It just wasn’t in Hellcat’s nature to be obliging without an ulterior motive. But aside from the sealing enchantment, the wax was perfectly innocuous. The spell was just a loose knot and came apart with a slight tug.

  I peeled the seal back carefully and opened the envelope.

  The letter inside was printed on pink stationery and scented with rose perfume. More roses and thorny vines curled around the letterhead. I read the name printed at the top of the page and let out a surprised bark of laughter. And the longer I read, the more giggly I became. Giggling. Me. Goddess, I needed to get a grip.

  “What’s so funny?” Poppy asked, leaning over my shoulder as she read the top of the epistle. “And who is Scarlett Velardi?”

  “One of the most reviled witches in North America,” I answered, wiping at the tears streaming from my eyes. This was just too funny.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “It means… she’s married and… monogamous.”

  Poppy’s brows drew together in bewilderment. “I feel like I’m missing something.”

  I shook my head, still grinning.

  I’d almost forgotten what it felt like to have a proper laugh. I felt lighter, somehow. This could still blow up in my face, and most probably would, but things weren’t as fraught as they’d first appeared. At least there was a chance I’d come out the other side in one piece. A summons from Mother, on the other hand? No chance in hell.

  “I’ve told you before. Witches are matriarchal. We may sleep with men, but we don’t carry on long-term relationships with them. Most witches only stay with a mortal man long enough to get pregnant. Now, with IVF, a lot of them cut men out of the process entirely and only bother with a man if they have an itch to scratch. Getting married is... well, it’s just not done.”

  “Hmm,” Poppy said, and I had a feeling it was probably difficult for her to wrap her Pollyanna mind around what I’d just said.

  “Scarlett Velardi doesn’t even have an open relationship with her husband,” I continued.

  “It is truly blasphemous,” Hellcat drawled as he shook his head.

  “She only has sex with her husband.” I laughed again. “Even Olga would be regarded with more respect. At least she didn’t commit.”

  “So, as a single mom, I’d be sort of the norm in a coven?” Poppy asked.

  “As if you would ever be in a coven,” Hellcat said snidely.

  We both ignored him.

  “You’d need to have about five more kids to be normal, but yes. Single motherhood is the default.”

  “Weird,” she muttered. “So… what does Scarlett want?”

  I glanced back down to the letter and scanned through the opening paragraph until I got to the meat. “She’s inviting Head Witches all over the country to the Sub Rosa Sanctuary for an assembly.” I looked up at her then. “They only happen once every few decades.”

  “The Sub Rosa Sanctuary?” she repeated.

  I nodded. “It’s a chance for witches to meet up, share spells, trade secrets, goods, services, so on and so forth.”

  “Sounds fun,” Poppy said cautiously. “Which, given that we’re dealing with witches, means it’s anything but… So why do you look so happy?”

  “Because assemblies also provide an opportunity for witches to square off against each other for entertainment. And doing so can change a witch’s position in her coven.”

  “So, what does that mean?”

  “It means if Mother doesn’t turn up, she’ll lose face.”

  “Okay?”

  “It means,” I continued, smiling even more broadly, “that Scarlett is giving me a chance to meet Celestine on equal footing, and most likely a chance to beat her.”

  Chapter Three

  Scarlett’s invitation opened up a world of possibilities for me.

  There was only one problem.

  To attend, I had to be the High Witch of a coven and I wasn’t.

  Yet.

  With Olga, Betanya, and Astrid all living in the Hollow, I had enough witches to start a coven, so long as everyone agreed to be bound to one another. Well, and so long as I actually wanted to go through with it.

  And after debating that subject for another hour, I decided yes, I wanted to. Not only to take on Mother at the Sub Rosa Sanctuary, but also to bond our magic to make it that much more powerful in order to melt this blood bond with Lorcan.

  If my magic recognized Poppy and allowed her in, there’d be five of us. We’d be the smallest and strangest coven in attendance. A Blood Witch, two red-haired upstart witches, a lovelorn German witch on probation, and a gypsy single-mom. So, what was wrong with offering membership to yet another misfit?

  Aside from everything, of course.