I’d never really been one for old Western movies, but even I knew this scene: the one where the bad guy comes through the swinging door of the old saloon, and the music falls silent and everyone stares for one, loaded second before they go for their guns.

  And as far as I was concerned, Annie didn’t have a gun to get.

  It wasn’t a fun feeling to have that weighted attention swinging my way, that was for sure. I didn’t dare make any eye contact with anyone, and I wasn’t going to just bolt out of the room. But I could feel every witch in the place watching me as I carefully strolled my way across the hotel’s lobby towards the double doors. If my heart could still beat, it would have been slamming up into my throat.

  Yeah, nifty lesson Uncle Fox wanted me to learn.

  I could feel the press of all those malevolent looks on my back like a heavy hand. The small hairs at the rear of my neck stood on end, the flesh beneath prickling. I strained my ears, listening for the rustle of cloth or the ozone snap of a hex being woven, ready to launch myself out of the way if I needed to. But no one moved. In fact, I made it all the way to the doors, and then out them without so much as getting singed by a curse.

  And that was something. In general, witches took extreme offense to vampires, no matter if said vamp was just a young girl, minding her own business. They could take offense, and they frequently did take offense, especially when the vamp in question made themselves an obvious target. As to why no one had attacked me, either physically or psychically? Maybe the Outlaw Hotel had a policy about not attacking guests?

  It might have been something else, though.

  Word of exactly what went down at Blood Rose Academy was being hushed up as much as the administration could manage. But witches were still people, and people liked to gossip. Eventually, at least some of the gossip was going to slip out. If nothing else, that meant tension between the witches and the vampires was going to go from uncomfortable to yikes in a hurry.

  The last thing anyone wanted was another Blood War. The last two had been devastating to both sides, from what I’d read. To the point where the witches and vampires had agreed to a hostage situation to seal a truce pact at Blood Rose.

  Well, unfortunately, some people actually did want to kick off a war, as Valserak and his co-conspirators proved. But only because they thought they could win said war. And in a world full of extremely arrogant witches and vampires, there was an uncomfortable amount of hubris on either side. But most people, the sensible people, didn’t want to see a return to the bad old days.

  And in a place like Jinx Junction, where those who lived here took their duty of maintaining the most secure supernatural prison in North America seriously, well they’d also take that kind of threat seriously. I was sure, out of all the people they had in lockdown in the prison, at least a couple old, powerful vampires numbered among them. The kind of vampires that, if a war was kicked off, other vampires might be invested in springing from captivity.

  So, it could have been that the fight-happy witches of Jinx Junction might just hold back on their petty spell casting to avoid setting a spark to that particular powder keg. Or they could have decided I just wasn’t worth the hex. It was hard to tell, honestly.

  The second I stepped out onto the wooden walkway outside the hotel, a mob of tumbleweeds beelined towards me, aggressively slamming into my legs. Okay, they were definitely targeting me. But a few cranky bushes I could handle. I hopped over the ankle-biting horde of dry brush and powerwalked away, refusing to run just in case anyone was watching.

  And it was a good chance someone was watching. Jinx Junction ran more like a military camp than a town, and paranoia seemed to be the name of the game. So, I kept my head up and on a swivel, but I didn’t let myself look hunted. I didn’t need any more problems than I already had.

  Speaking of problems, I was pleased to see that I couldn’t find any sign of Mocha. Maybe he was busily meeting with Uncle Fox and reporting on all my comings and goings (which I was fairly sure he did). Or maybe he’d returned to Faerie once Uncle Fox had come here? I wasn’t sure, but I was just happy I didn’t have to deal with him at the moment.

  As to Jinx Junction and keeping myself occupied while Lorcan took his dental call, there wasn’t a whole lot to do that I hadn’t already done or seen. Regardless, I headed in the opposite direction from the bar, not wanting to risk bumping into the sheriff again, just in case. Just remembering the power pouring off that woman brought a sick twist to my gut. If she’d been granted the opportunity, she would have blasted me to powder and never even thought about it twice.

  Yeah, I was seriously loving my vacation so far. Thanks ever so much, Uncle Fox.

  Chapter Six

  There was an ice cream store, done up like an old-time general store, including a huge wooden sign out front boasting about the hand-churned ice cream.

  I didn’t bother going in. My ice cream eating days were long gone, and boy did that suck, because I loved me some black cherry.

  It wasn’t just the idea of never eating ice cream again that caused my heart to drop. It was the idea that I was never going to eat again. Period. I wasn’t sure I could, even just for the taste. Lorcan had hinted that anything other than blood would make me pretty sick, but it hadn’t really fully sunk in.

  Well, until now.

  No more pumpkin pie. No more sitting down to a huge feast with the coven at the Solstice. No more hot cocoa with Wanda when I was upset, and she was doing her best to console me (and Wanda truly was the worst at consoling anyone, because she was usually too caught up in the throes of panicking about feelings), but she still tried.

  No more watermelon on a scorching summer day.

  No more chocolate.

  Being a vampire sucked. And not just literally.

  And it was going to suck for a long, long time.

  I walked a little faster past the ice cream store, trying hard not to think of Stomper’s Creamery back in Haven Hollow. And then I tried not to think about all the other quaint stores on Main Street. And then I really tried not to think about the fact that I missed my home. I missed my coven. I missed Poppy and Finn. Truly, I missed everyone in Haven Hollow.

  But there was no use in getting all bummed out about that. Especially when I needed to keep an eye on my own back, because everywhere I went in Jinx Junction, I could feel eyes on me. Jinx Junction wasn’t a big town as towns went, but it started to feel like the buildings were closing in on me. Every time I turned a corner, a new bunch of tumbleweeds hurled themselves at my legs, like they were trying to trip me—the little assholes. I was half expecting the wooden walkways that ran through the town to start sucking my feet in, trapping me.

  And it wasn’t just paranoia, though after being attacked, murdered, turned into a vampire and locked up in a creepy basement, I did have some healthy amounts of that too. People really were watching me. Even as the thought occurred to me, I watched a few witches leaning on their front porches, while those sitting at outside tables made no motion to hide the crane of their necks as they eyed me walking on by. One witch, who was leaning against a hitching post, glared at me until I disappeared around the corner. The skin between my shoulder blades crawled with tension, and my ears were pricked for the first muttered curse, or the ozone malice of a hex.

  And it wasn’t like I could change the flow of my thoughts by instead focusing on the stores around me, because the only stores I wanted to browse were witch stores. And both the owners and patrons wouldn’t be happy about me going in, so I wandered further and further towards the edge of town, where there were fewer people to contend with.

  Normally, that wasn’t a good idea because less witnesses meant more danger. But I was pretty sure if a witch staked me in the middle of town square, no one but Lorcan would bat an eye. Well, maybe Uncle Fox would. He was kind of a jerk at times, like when he left me in the middle of a hostile town full of witches just to teach me some stupid lesson…

  But Uncle Fox didn’t want me dead.

  Near the edge of town, I caught sight of a double wide trailer parked next to an old, fieldstone well. The trailer wasn’t anything that out of the ordinary, other than the fact that it was painted in blues and greens like an ocean current. The well was more interesting—the stones were grey and patched with dark moss in a couple places. It looked like something out of an old movie. Especially since Jinx Junction obviously had running water, so why would anyone ever bother hauling buckets of it up and out of the earth?

  There was a woman sitting under the striped awning pulled out from the trailer, slumped back in her wooden chair, lazily fanning herself with a folded bit of paper, even though the heat had plummeted once the sun sank below the horizon. She was dressed in an assortment of shawls, one of them draped over her head like a hood. I could see the glitter of her eyes in the shadows as she watched me come closer.

  “Read your fortune, young miss?” The woman’s voice was odd. I’d kind of assumed she was older, huddled up in her shawls and skirts like she was, but her voice was low and strong, if a little throatier than most.

  “My future?” I answered, surprised to find her addressing me.

  She nodded. “I can see your future in the waters, if you’re interested.”

  I didn’t roll my eyes, but boy was it a struggle. It was just, any witch worth her cackle could do divinations. It was baby stuff, and almost no one bothered with it, because the future was always shifting around. It wasn’t set in stone, it was more like a desert in a windstorm, whole dunes rising and vanishing within an hour. Getting an accurate reading of more than a day was so unlikely as to be useless.

  Of course, I realized with a lurch, I wasn’t a witch any longer.

  And the woman would have no reason to think that a vampire could do their own divinations. Vampires didn’t feel the touch of the Goddess. They didn’t have magic.

  It suddenly felt like I had a rock in my throat. It hurt to swallow.

  The woman beckoned me closer. One of the only benefits to vampirism was that my night sight was absolutely killer. And picking out the woman’s features in the blue and violet shadows of her shawl was a snap.

  She looked to be about forty something, her features mature, but there were only a few lines near the edges of her eyes and the corners of her smile. There were also no threads of gray in what hair I could see, which I realized after another step closer, was a deep, vivid green. Hmm, interesting.

  She smiled at whatever expression I was making, flashing strong teeth and gums that were also a brilliant viridian color.

  “Jenny Greenteeth,” I said, surprised as the realization suddenly dawned on me.

  “One of them,” she agreed with a low chuckle.

  I was definitely curious; I couldn’t deny it. Jenny Greenteeths were known for luring victims, pretty much always men, down to the water, where they would often drown, then eat them. Talk about a bad way to go. Regardless, they were wickedly dangerous (at least, when they wanted to be) and they tended to have a strange, beguiling magic.

  And they weren’t witches.

  They also tended to live near swamps and rivers, so I wasn’t sure what this one was doing in a place like Jinx Junction, which was about as dry as a witch’s sense of humor.

  Was this Jenny Greenteeth dangerous? Absolutely. But no more so than anyone else in this stupid town. But she didn’t and wouldn’t have any personal beefs with me, so there was that. Not only that, but I also didn’t fit the usual preferred victim profile, since I wasn’t a dude. Also, I didn’t need to breathe unless I wanted to talk, so trying to drown me would just be super time-consuming, fairly useless, and basically awkward for everyone involved.

  What the heck, I figured as I stepped closer. “What does it cost to have my fortune read?”

  Always best to get that kind of thing out of the way up front. I wasn’t about to get caught in some kind of feigned bargain that really wasn’t a bargain at all.

  “For you?” Jenny Greenteeth looked me up and down, her eyes lingering on my red hair that I’d scraped back into a bun, trying to make it as unremarkable as possible. “For you, little halfling, I’ll do it for free.”

  “For free?” That was concerning. Almost as concerning as the fact that she’d just referred to me as a ‘halfling’.

  She nodded. “Just for the curiosity.”

  I stiffened, wondering how she’d known I was anything other than a vampire? Was this a trick? Some sort of trap? Was she trying to get leverage over Uncle Fox somehow?

  She smiled, that strangely green smile, one cheek dimpling. “No tricks, girl. Maybe I just know what it’s like to be both and neither, always betwixt and between.”

  That… actually made some amount of sense. Jenny Greenteeth were fae, sort of. But they were also kind of like hags, lurking in swamps as they did. Thanks to their beguiling, they got a lot of side eye when they were out and about, but they also had the physical power of a hag. So that meant this Jenny Greenteeth was a little like me—I was fae and vampire, but also neither and both at the same time.

  But not a witch. I’d never be a witch again.

  It was too direct to be a lie, at least. Fae might talk at you until you were convinced down was up and the sky was plaid, but they wouldn’t say it outright. Still, I couldn’t stop feeling like I was about to make a big mistake.

  “Okay,” I said, trying not to sound as suspicious as I actually was. “What do I do to have my fortune told?”

  Jenny Greenteeth gestured towards the well. “Bring me a cup of water from the bucket, and focus on what you’d like to know.”

  That was simple enough, and it wasn’t so different from how witches might divine someone’s fortune, though we were more about candles and moon phases—well, depending on what we were trying to see.

  I winced. Again. I wasn’t part of that ‘we’ anymore, was I? Even after all these months, you’d think I would have come to terms with it, but it was still a pretty bitter pill to swallow.

  In spite of the heat that lingered even after the summer sun had set, the well was cool to the touch, and a little damp. The stones were patched with moss, and a wooden bucket was perched on the ledge, as though waiting to be lowered into the well. It almost looked like something out of a fairy tale, and stuck out like a sore thumb in dusty, old west themed Jinx Junction.

  Which was just as well. I wasn’t in the mood for fairy tales. People like me always tended to be the bad guys. And I was sick of it.

  The water was shockingly cold when I hauled it up, and I almost dropped the bucket when a few drops sloshed over the side and onto my wrist. I sucked in a startled gasp at the icy temperature and set the full bucket onto the rock ledge of the well.

  There was a turned wooden ladle laid out there, and it was easy enough to scoop out some water and carry it back to where Jenny Greenteeth was waiting for me. She’d dug a bowl out from somewhere, though the word ‘bowl’ didn’t really do the thing justice. The container was a deep, dark blue that, even to my excellent night vision, looked almost black in the night. There was a thin line of mother of pearl running around the rim, and when Jenny Greenteeth tilted it back and forth to get a better angle, the pearl glinted with a soft opalescence in the moonlight.

  Following the beckoning of slightly too-long fingers that were also incredibly bony, I took a breath I didn’t need, and really thought about what I wanted to see.

  There were so many options, really. How was I going to make out as a vampire? Was it ever going to get easier? How about things between Rook and me? Why was he being so weird about everything and treating me like I was made out of spun sugar and likely to melt if he breathed on me too hard? Or, heck, what was I going to do about Uncle Fox? What kind of training was he planning on? Or, how about: was I going to screw up and embarrass him when he presented me as his heir? Would Autumn even accept a half-breed vampire?

  I was just depressing myself by this point. Besides, I knew scrying. I’d done it myself, before… well, before. I couldn’t go trying to see months or years down the line, not if I wanted anything more definitive than some smeared colors and maybe a ghost of an outline.

  No, the thing I had a question about needed to be something immediate, something that would occur within the next few days at the most. So, I focused on how things were going to go in Jinx Junction, and on how I was going to do with Uncle Fox’s idea of courtly training. If I was lucky, the divination might offer me a glimpse of what Uncle Fox was planning as far as my training went, and then I might have a leg up on figuring out what to do about it.

  With my question firmly in mind, I poured the chilly water into the prepared bowl. The water didn’t churn or slap against the sides of the bowl like I expected it to. Instead, it was like the dark glass had its own gravity. The water poured heavily, filling the bowl without even a ripple. And that was supremely creepy, making me already regret my choice of doing this in the first place. Never bargain with fae, not even if you are a fae, or so it seemed.

  But Jenny Greenteeth didn’t smirk, or start cackling, or do anything else that might symbolize the fact that I’d just made a deal with the proverbial devil, so I stayed quiet while her eyes flicked over the basin.

  Her eyes continued to flick for another few seconds. Then she frowned, worrying at her lower lip with a tooth that was just a little too long, and a little too sharp for polite company. Truly, her set of chompers could rival mine.

  When her face slowly settled into an emotionless mask, a prickle crawled up my neck. It just wasn’t a very reassuring look. Vampires don’t need to breathe, but all of a sudden, my lungs felt heavy in my chest. My ribs squeezed too tight.

  “What… what do you see?” I asked when I couldn’t stand the silence for even a second longer.

  Jenny Greenteeth’s eyes flicked up to me, her face somber. “See for yourself.”

  She slowly pushed the basin towards me, and it was creepy as heck that the water still didn’t slosh or shiver at all. It just hung there, heavy, more like glass than anything liquid had any right to be.