I thrust the cooling beaker back at Meredith after a second of thought, worried that Lucretia might think I was going to lob it like a Molotov cocktail and set the tavern on fire. Meredith eyed me warily and reached for the beaker with palpable reluctance, clearly unenthusiastic to touch me even in passing. Vampirism was contagious, but it took a damn sight more than just a brush of fingers to turn you into one of the undead.

  Lucretia beat her to it, snatching the bottle from my hands so forcefully that one of my fingers bent the wrong way. I didn’t give her the satisfaction of watching me flinch though, so point for me. Lucretia held the potion up to eye level, examining the contents before fixing her daughter with a glare. Meredith curled in on herself even further, exuding a palpable aura of misery.

  “This is a travesty,” Lucretia said in a low voice. “A vampire is more capable of spotting flaws in your potion-making than you are. Do you have any idea how that reflects on me?”

  “Mother—” Meredith began weakly.

  Lucretia shook her head and the sheriff badge on her lapel seemed to almost glow in the low light of the tavern—no doubt courtesy of witch magic. Her lips pressed into a thin line. “Pack your supplies and take this useless vial of muck to be properly disposed of. I want three viable samples from you by morning, or it’s detention for a week.”

  This time, I did wince. I’d been forced to redo potions before. For a potion as complex as this one, Meredith would be up all night trying to complete the assignment. She’d probably be hexed if she nodded off in class, as a result. You just couldn’t win with some witches.

  “Yes, Mother,” she said quietly and began stacking the crystal and herbs into her carrying case. When she was through, she grabbed the beaker from her mom’s hand, slung the case over one shoulder, and sprinted from the bar, lest her mother see the tears dewing on her lashes. Lucretia didn’t seem to notice, but I did.

  Yep, been there, done that.

  Lucretia turned her glare on me once more. Then she jabbed a finger in my direction and I took a step back, ready to duck if I felt her magic coalesce around her fists again. I couldn’t use magic to ward her off without giving myself away, but I was fast enough to dodge a curse.

  “Stay away from my daughter,” she warned.

  “But I just–”

  “Don’t come near her,” she cut across me, voice rising to drown mine. “If you even glance in her direction again, I will make you wish you never clawed your way back from the grave. Do you understand?”

  I wanted to spit all kinds of curses, wanted to tell her that this hadn’t been my idea and that only a few months ago she’d have been thrilled to let me help her daughter. But I kept my mouth shut. I’d made a promise to Uncle Fox. No big reveals until we were ready.

  “I understand.”

  Chapter Five

  “Aster!” a voice called. “Aster, come sit over here!”

  I paused in the threshold of the doorway when I recognized my new name, one foot out the tavern doors. It took a moment to register that someone was calling out to me. No matter how many times I heard the new moniker, it just didn’t fit. It didn’t matter that it was the closest I could get without actually using my real name, it just wasn’t me. I was Astrid Depraysie, and I’d always be Astrid Depraysie, no matter what silly names I had to adopt.

  I turned on my heel slowly, scanning over the heads of the tavern’s occupants until I found the speaker. He was a tall man, even sitting down, and he was built long and lean, like a career marathon runner. He was... well, simply put, he was gorgeous with a capital G. He emphasized his incredible physique with a tight-fitting cable-knit sweater, fitted jeans, and a floor-length coat you’d usually see on private detectives or rogue loners in buddy cop movies. And I knew that coat, because I’d actually enchanted it for him once upon a time. What was more, if I stuck my hand into one of its many inside pockets, I’d come out with a weapon or something equally as deadly.

  The man was watching me from a corner table, his syrupy brown eyes unusually intense in the sharp planes of his face. It was hard to believe that he was even better looking in his true Sidhe form. Even harder to believe? The undercover fae royal was none other than my flesh and blood uncle, the one and only Fox Aspen—a man who’d been training me in the fine arts of faerie magic and court politics.

  Uncle Fox beckoned me over, and I walked toward him, despite my misgivings. Stares followed me as I went and the weight of dozens of witches’ eyes on my back made my neck itch. It would only take one wrong twitch to have conflicting spells trying to peel my skin off, set my hair on fire, and make my fangs rot out of my head—all at the same time. My instincts were screaming at me not to turn my back on the lions in their den, but I didn’t have much choice. I couldn’t fight back in a public venue, per Uncle’s orders.

  Upon closer inspection, I realized Uncle Fox wasn’t sitting alone at the table. There was a woman sitting opposite him with her back to the wall. She was sipping a martini with the flat, disinterested stare of someone who’s been in a board meeting an hour too long. She’d crossed her shapely legs under the table, flashing a distracting amount of toned calf and thigh at the casual observer. She’d even added a dainty charm anklet to her ensemble, drawing more attention to the pale perfection of her skin. She wasn’t just pale, either. The color of her skin reminded me of swan feathers more so than human flesh. Her mini dress was burnt sienna, a startling contrast to her light pallor. She’d tugged hair the color of barley up into a sweeping updo, accenting it with amber hairpins.

  As I approached their table, the woman tracked my progress with the anticipatory hunger of a coyote, rather than the warm, effusive greetings I’d gotten from other Autumn Fae when Uncle Fox had made my introductions. Maybe this was one of the ladies of the Sidhe who’d been pitching a fuss about the idea of a half-breed ascending the throne? Uncle Fox had made a big deal about attempting to smooth things over by showing his people they had nothing to fear from me.

  “Aster, I’d like you to meet one of my friends, Cattleya,” Uncle Fox started with his beaming smile. “Cat, this is my niece I told you about.”

  “Charmed, I’m sure,” she said, voice so cool and brittle, I thought it would chip away and form ice chips on the table. For the third time in as many minutes, I received a head-to-toe examination and was found lacking. Cattleya took another delicate sip of her martini before continuing, “She’s... cute. Like a little kitten.”

  The clear and contemptuous emphasis on the word ‘cute’ made me bristle. I’d been compared to a lot of unfortunate things since leaving Crescent Circle. A Labrador, an infant, Little Orphan Annie. The list went on and on. And on. Add in the cruelty of teenage witches in a school setting, and I’d heard a lot worse. But there was just something about Cattleya that put me on edge. Maybe it was the smug look on her face or the cold, controlled sense I got of her aura. I’d never met an Autumn Fae that was more rigid than she was, and I’d been exposed to a fair number of them since leaving Haven Hollow to begin my training with Uncle Fox. Autumn faeries, even the fussy ones like Moschata, had a sense of warmth to them that this woman utterly lacked. I’d have found a dead fish more personable.

  “A pleasure to meet you,” I said, forcing the lie through my teeth.

  “It’s important that you remember Cattleya,” Uncle Fox continued as he reached over and pulled out a chair for me. I took a seat and faced him with a question in my eyes. “She’s one of many spies for the Autumn Court,” he continued.

  “Spies?” I repeated as I faced the woman with a sense of excitement. I mean, I figured it took a certain personality to be a spy and this woman had just become much more interesting to me.

  “Yes, Cattleya lives on the outskirts of Faerie with the job description of finding any intel I might deem important,” Uncle Fox continued.

  “Intel?” I asked him.

  He nodded. “Information she finds out about any of the other courts, but mostly Winter.”

  Cattleya then faced me. “I am very pleased to make your acquaintance.”

  “Thanks,” I said with a smile. “And I am too. I mean—to make yours.” She gave me a weird smile that said I’d come across just as awkwardly as I thought I had.

  “I thought it important that you and Cattleya meet, Astrid,” Uncle Fox said, and my eyes went wide when I realized he’d just called me by my real name. He smiled and waved my concern away. “We’ve ensured that no one can overhear us,” he continued. “And I’ve already told Cattleya just who you are and how important you are to the throne and the future of Autumn.”

  “Oh, good,” I said, not really sure what more to say as something else occurred to me. “So, that’s why you wanted me to meet you here, in Jinx Junction?”

  He nodded. “I had business with Cattleya here—we always choose Jinx Junction as our relay location and this time, I thought it a good idea to bring you along.”

  “Oh,” I said and gave her a weird frown-smile because I wasn’t really sure what more to say. “So, uh, how are things in the spying world?”

  “The spying world?” Uncle Fox asked with a smirk.

  “I must be going now,” Cattleya said and acted as if I hadn’t just asked her a question. Then she pushed away from the table so forcefully, the salt and pepper shakers tipped onto their sides. “I will leave it to you to fill your niece in on the information I provided you,” she said to Fox, her manner one of all business. “Highness,” she tacked on at the end, as if the word were an afterthought.

  “As always, I thank you for your information,” Uncle Fox said.

  “I think that concludes our business for tonight, Fox,” she continue, lip curling slightly at the use of the human pseudonym. “I’ll be seeing you soon.”

  “Always good to see you, Cat,” he answered, lifting his glass to her. He was drinking something with a suspicious silver sheen. A potion-laced drink, maybe.

  Cattleya tried to swing around me, but the very tip of one elbow brushed my arm as she passed. I caught a whiff of her perfume, something sharp and icy like mint, but with less personality. It had my lip curling and a wave of cold rolling through me, so fierce it froze the air in my lungs for a second. My nose twitched, like someone had shoved an icicle up each nostril. Of all the things I was still adjusting to, the sharper senses of a vampire tripped me up at the weirdest possible moments. My sense of smell wasn’t something I’d ever paid much attention to in the past. Things either smelled nice, or they didn’t. It was very different these days.

  In a second, Cattleya was nearing the double doors, leaving the hairs on the back of my neck standing on end and goosebumps straining every exposed inch of my skin. I rubbed at them absently, watching her lithe back as she sashayed through the doors and then disappeared out of sight.

  “She was about as friendly as the plague,” I told Uncle Fox.

  He chuckled. “She’s a good woman—has been with me for years. Just takes a little… getting used to,” he answered in an undertone.

  “And you meet with her regularly here?” I asked.

  He nodded. “She’s my eyes and ears in the world when I’m not in Faerie so, yes, I meet with her as often as I can. It’s tedious, but necessary, especially with Winter gearing up for another attack.”

  “Why in the world do you choose Jinx Junction?”

  He shrugged. “This is Cattleya’s territory. I meet in Massachusetts with one of my other spies, California with another and Minnesota with yet another.”

  “Hmm, you sound like quite the jetsetter.”

  He chuckled again. “And soon that job will be yours.”

  “I can’t wait,” I grumbled. “So, what information did Cattleya tell you that I should know?”

  “Nothing I’m ready to impart yet,” he answered, and I shook my head, sighing as I wondered why I even tried. Fox motioned to his drink then.

  “Have something to drink, Aster. You look pale.” So, we were back to using my fake name, were we? Rhetorical question.

  And I wasn’t pale, just cold. There was something... off about the feeling of Cattleya’s aura, and though it was still troubling me, I couldn’t put my finger on just what that something was.

  “I don’t think they serve blood here,” I answered on a sigh. “So, I think I’ll just head back to my room now.”

  He shrugged. “If you insist.”

  “I’m not insisting. Just saying.”

  He smiled at me, and it was hard not to notice how handsome he was. Especially because we were related (I’d only just learned as much, so the ick factor of finding my uncle attractive wasn’t as gross as it otherwise might have been).

  “I’ll need you well-rested for what comes next,” he continued.

  “What does come next?”

  “Training in a grove southeast of here at a half-hour after dusk, two days from now.”

  “Jeez. Try to be more exact, would you?”

  That smile again. “Don’t be late.”

  “So, we aren’t done in Jinx Junction?” I was annoyed to hear as much.

  “Nope. Why would you think we’d be done?”

  “Because you wanted me to meet Cattleya, and I met Cattleya so now we should be done here, right?”

  “Wrong. We have training to do and this town is as good a place as any to do that training.”

  “Did you fail to notice we’re in a town full of witches who hate vampires?”

  “I did not fail to notice that, no.” That smile again.

  “Ugh, so that was the exact reason you wanted me to come here, isn’t it? Because of the fact that all the witches hate me.”

  “I had to meet Cat here, as I mentioned—and, yes, I wanted you to meet her as well, since she’ll soon become your right-hand-woman, as it were, but I also wanted to put you in a situation where you’d be surrounded by potential enemies so we can toughen you up a bit, Aster.”

  “Gee, thanks for that.”

  He laughed and then leaned in, whispering conspiratorially, “being queen isn’t all fun and games.”

  “I never said it was.”

  “You have to toughen yourself up and learn not to care if people don’t like you. What better place to teach you that lesson than a town full of witches?”

  “Okay, lesson learned. Can we leave now?”

  He shook his head and leaned back into his chair. “The lesson hasn’t quite been learned yet, Aster.” Then he stood up and gave me a wink. “See you in two days.”

  ***

  Two days.

  I had two days to kill. And while that might not have sounded like much, in Jinx Junction, where I was surrounded by enemies, it felt more like two weeks.

  After I returned to his room, Lorcan told me with a distracted frown that something had come up at his practice, and he needed to make a few phone calls, so I should go out and ‘enjoy myself’. I laughed at that, because there was no enjoying myself in this place.

  But eavesdropping on a conversation about dentistry and all the gross things that could happen with people’s teeth, wasn’t much better than facing a town full of witches that all hated my guts. Honestly, it was a tough call. But when I caught the faint whine of the dentist’s drill over the line, a nasty shiver skated down my back. It had never been a pleasant thing to hear, but my new super sensitive vampire ears reacted to it like someone was dragging talons over a chalkboard directly inside my head. Ugh.

  The thing about predators is that they hone in on any perceived weakness you might have. That was true of anything from wolves, to house cats, to vampires. And, as I learned as soon as I’d been old enough to start mingling with the Crescent Circle Coven, witches were no exception.

  I knew all that. Heck, I’d been raised with that lesson for the first sixteen years of my life. It wasn’t until I’d moved in with Wanda and then joined Circle Scapegrace that I’d learned things could be different—that coven members might actually care about one another. But Jinx Junction wasn’t Circle Scapegrace. Not by a long shot. In fact, it had a hell of a lot more in common with my home coven, where I’d always been treated like an outsider. Red-headed witches were known for causing chaos, and well, it looked like I’d gone and lived up to the stereotype. Or lived down to it, as the case may be. In Circle Scapegrace, sure there was bickering, and arguments. That was going to happen whenever you wedged more than one witch into a house and asked them to get along.

  But there was no sabotage. No backbiting. No yanking other people down to climb a little higher. And oh boy, did I like it. Being supported by all those amazing, powerful women. And Lorcan and Maverick, of course.

  That was what Valserak had stolen from me.

  Well, not stolen. The people in Scapegrace and I would always be family. But Valserak had tainted that connection, ripped it into pieces, destroyed abilities I’d treasured—abilities I’d known my entire life.

  The point was, my last few years aside, I was well versed in what went on in a group of witches, especially when they decided someone wasn’t an insider. But that didn’t make it one ounce easier to keep my shoulders back, my head held high, and not slink down the stairs of the Outlaw Hotel. But I forced myself to look the part of the strong vampire. Whether I succeeded was anyone’s guess.

  The common room was busy again, with strains of soft piano music drifting through the air as witches played cards, or worked on knitting (one woman appeared to be carefully peeling an onion for some reason). I didn’t dare stare too long at the onion (trying to figure out if it was really a spell, or she just liked peeling onions for fun). What was more, I wasn’t sure if it was the same crowd from the night before—with their black hair, dark clothing, and curvy bodies, witches all started to look the same after a while—especially if you hadn’t paid narrow attention to them the first time around.

  I thought I’d just be able to slip out the doors, since everyone was busy doing their own thing. Nothing to see here, ladies. Just a red-headed vampire gal out for another evening stroll around town. No need for anyone to take notice.

  But the second my foot touched down from the last stair, the piano music faltered and then fell completely silent. My heart dropped.