“I thought you wanted Lorcan to kill me so you could go back to her? You want to be free of me, you’ve always wanted to be free of me, so why the change of heart?”

  He flicked a significant glance at William as if that were answer enough. So, the vampire had something to do with it? But what? What the spell was Mother doing that had anything to do with the vampires? And Maverick.

  “Let me out of this cage, you tiresome trollop,” Hellcat said, though the words lacked their usual venom. “If you insist on this foolishness, you will need me. You are not capable of defeating Celestine without help.”

  “How do I know you won’t turn traitor?”

  “Because, if Celestine thinks you’re anywhere close to the truth, she’ll pick us off one by one, and I want to live to see the next fortnight.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  Astrid had transformed herself into the next best thing to a Disney princess by the time we returned.

  A half dozen familiars had attached themselves to her. A snowy owl and a parakeet were perched on her shoulders while a goldfinch roosted in her hair. A snake with acid green scales wound itself around her wrist like an exotic bracelet. A fluffy, cotton-tailed bunny was tucked into the crook of one arm while a tabby cat coiled its way through her legs. The bunny was tiny, maybe only a few weeks old.

  “Stop that,” she giggled, prodding at the snake’s underbelly. It flicked out its tongue, tickling her wrist again. “Seriously, you’re going to make me drop Buster.”

  “I imagine that’s the point,” Hellcat drawled, pacing into the shop. “Your scaly friend must make at least a token attempt to eat the rodent.”

  He was trying his best, but couldn’t quite hide his disdain for the place. Most covens bred their own lines of familiars. It was why we’d been associated with certain animals for so long. Cats, rats, and toads had been popular for centuries. Breeding willy nilly like this must have offended Hellcat’s delicate feline sensibilities. Still, he hadn’t launched into a traditionalist tirade, for which I was grateful.

  “Rabbits aren’t rodents,” Astrid said, frowning at Hellcat. “They’re lagomorphs. That’s a completely different order than Rodentia. Buster says most people make that mistake, though.”

  I glanced down at Buster. “Baby familiars are similar to baby humans, Astrid. They can’t talk until they’re older.”

  “But he’s talking to me,” she insisted with a frown. “Right now. He’s...”

  She trailed off, watching the bunny snuffle along her arm. Her eyes went round, and she came to the realization at almost the same time I did.

  “He’s thinking the answers at you, not saying them aloud,” I finished, but even so, I wasn’t privy to whatever the creature was saying. “Can you hear and understand them all?” I asked, unable to contain my own surprise.

  Yes, I could understand the other familiars—Charlie Ray, Isis, and I would have been able to understand Franz if he spoke English—but that was only because they were bonded to their witches. That allowed other witches to understand them. Animals that weren’t yet bonded, though, were another story.

  “Zoolingualism?” she whispered. “But isn’t that really rare in pure witch lines? I mean, the only witch I’ve heard of who can do the same thing is half-sasquatch.” As soon as the thought left her lips, her eyes went wide and she shook her head. “I can’t be half-sasquatch, right? I mean… I’m nowhere near tall enough. Or hairy enough or...”

  She set Buster and the green snake down on a table and began to pat herself down, ignoring the birds on her hair and shoulders. She slid her hands desperately over herself, as if trying to spy some new bumps or scales that might give her an indication of her own genetic makeup. It wasn’t surprising that Astrid had no idea who her father was—witches preferred things that way.

  I moved forward to stop her, but Lorcan beat me to it, pulling her hands gently away from her stomach. She looked ready to pop the buttons of her blouse and check to see if her chest had suddenly sprouted hair. Her breath came out on a shaking exhale when Lorcan lifted her hand and sniffed delicately over her wrist.

  “You don’t smell like a sasquatch, Astrid,” he said, voice slipping into the lilting cadence that always seemed to put Astrid at ease. I had to admit it was a treat to listen to.

  “I don’t?” she asked in a small voice.

  “No. Trust me, I’ve had enough scraps with Osborne to know what one of those brutes smells like. You smell like a witch. A witch who is wearing a little too much perfume, but still a witch.”

  Astrid’s cheeks flushed pink, and she darted a nervous glance behind me before dropping her gaze. I felt William and Amos hovering nearby like brooding, undead shadows. I’d been right—she definitely had a crush on our vampire bodyguards—one or both, I wasn’t sure. Damn it. I was going to have to sit her down for a talk before she did something she’d regret. One impulsive move and we’d have another Blood Witch on our hands.

  “How much perfume is too much?” she asked.

  Lorcan shrugged. “If you’re trying to impress a human, the amount you’re wearing is fine. To any other type of creature, a few drops will suffice.”

  “Stop giving her supernatural dating advice!” I snapped, even as I realized that wasn’t exactly what Lorcan was doing, but apparently such was on my mind. “She’s not dating anyone or anything for a long while,” I continued, spearing Astrid with a serious expression. “We are not doing a ‘Sixteen and Pregnant’ witch-style.” As far as I was concerned, Astrid could date when she was thirty, and potentially even older than that.

  “That’s not fair!" Astrid cried. Her outburst startled the birds on her shoulders and head enough that they flew off, squawking all the way. “I’m seventeen, and I’m almost legally an adult. And that means soon I’ll be allowed to date and do... other stuff!”

  “If you can’t even say ‘have sex’ then you shouldn’t be having sex,” I responded, cocking an eyebrow at her as she blushed with embarrassment even more than she previously was.

  Astrid’s eyes were shiny with mortified tears, but she didn’t reply. Instead, she stalked away from me, hands balled into fists at her sides. Buster, the tabby cat, and snake hopped, padded, or slithered after her. Zoolingualism, and a possible tie to other nature magics—it was a sure sign she was coming fully into her powers and would have a familiar of her own soon. Possibly before her eighteenth birthday, which would make her precocious. Though with a red-haired witch, what else could I expect?

  “You could have done that with more tact,” William said, voice dry as he faced me with a frown.

  He was watching Lorcan’s retreat as well, an odd sort of intensity in his gray gaze. I turned toward the nearest shelf, pretending to be very interested in dancing ferrets. They were trying to catch the attention of every passing witch by doing a lively swing number. They even had a little speaker in their enclosure playing music.

  “Maybe,” I answered on a sigh, refusing to meet his penetrating gaze. “I’m not good at this mothering thing, okay?” I asked, pouting. “I never expected to have a kid. I waited too long, and now the only man I want to sleep with can’t get me pregnant.”

  “Then Astrid’s…”

  “My cousin. She should be at home with the coven, learning from her real mother, not huddling in the Hollow with me, getting a second-rate education.” I took a deep breath as I shook my head and continued feeling sorry for myself.

  “We know,” Amos said, melting from the crowd. He was identical to William down to the last dimple. They even parted their hair in the same spot. If William weren’t all wicked smiles and vague one-liners, it would have been impossible to tell them apart. But Amos almost seemed like a pale ghost when contrasted with William’s vitality.

  “Because Scarlett told you?” I asked, suddenly getting irritated with the fact that I had more questions than I did answers. “Because she seems to be spilling a lot of our secrets. Mother will upend a cauldron for this.”

  “Scarlett didn’t have to tell us,” Amos said, and again, there was that look. His eyes, somehow so familiar, locked on mine, willing me to understand. But I didn’t know what he was getting at—what they both wanted me to know so badly.

  “We know witches better than most,” William added. “You could say we have an intimate knowledge of how covens work.”

  I frowned down at the ferrets.

  They’d successfully drawn the attention of a group of New York witches.

  “Oh, my gawd,” one of them gaped. “The ferret just did a perfect rendition of Thriller, Lucinda!”

  I pushed away from their table. I was already getting odd looks just from my proximity to these vampires. If we stood by, speculating about the High Witch of another clan, there’d probably be a minor magical skirmish. And with so many unbound familiars around to channel magic... it could get messy. Think sparks in a firework tent.

  “Have you dated witches or something?” I asked. “Because I can see why Scarlett would overreact to that.”

  That would at least track with what Mother had done to Olga. Mother had strict ideas about what a witch should and shouldn’t do. Falling for human men was disgraceful, and most witches would agree with her. What I’d done was worse—even though I’d had no say in the matter of my blooding. Even so, vampires were viewed as the enemy. You didn’t speak with them, let alone swap spit with them or strip in front of them, or come onto them in hotel rooms...

  Amos rubbed at his temples. “So close and yet so far...”

  “She’ll get it eventually,” William said, patting his brother on the back. “The truth wouldn’t occur to you right away either, if the positions were reversed.”

  “Of course not because it never should have happened in the first place! But if she can’t figure it out before the end of the assembly...”

  “She will,” William said. He sounded so damned confident. I’m glad one of us was. I was with Amos: I didn’t see how I could possibly crack Mother’s secret with only forty-eight hours to go.

  “So, I’m close? This has something to do with a romance of some sort?” I paused, a thought occurring to me. It seemed impossible, but... “Did either of you… ever… Goddess, I hate asking you this, but… have either of you ever slept with Mother?”

  Their faces morphed into almost identical looks of disgust. They appeared so horrified, it actually made me laugh. “Okay, so that’s a no.” And there was a sense of deep relief associated with that ‘no’. “Was it one of my sisters then? A cousin? Am I even close?”

  “Think something more… platonic,” William suggested. “Intimate, but not sexual.”

  Intimate but not sexual. Did that mean they’d befriended a witch at some point? Had that witch spilled secrets to an enemy? Had Mother punished the witch in question somehow? Or worse? Had that witch been killed? It would tally with what William had said about Scarlett. The witch might have been one of Scarlett’s friends. Or spell, it might have been one of her daughters? I vaguely recalled that Scarlett had lost a child at some point.

  I opened my mouth to ask a question but closed it again when I heard raised voices further into the shop.

  “Dragon balls,” I muttered. “Someone must have seen Lorcan with Astrid. This could get ugly. Can we finish the round of twenty-one questions later?”

  “Of course,” William said. “That’s what we’re here for.”

  We picked up our pace, but short of bowling people over, we could only move so quickly but still managed to draw unfriendly stares as we bustled past matronly witches and their young apprentices.

  “Why exactly do we need this much security?” I asked. “Five vampires seems like overkill.”

  “Because witches aren’t the only thing you have to worry about,” Amos said, moving ahead of me to clear the path. It was effective. Most witches gave him a wide berth. “Guy has effectively taken over most of the supernatural scene in Newark, but there are a few undesirables who defy the order of things. Most of them happen to be vampires, but they have some human hopefuls who run errands during daylight. They’re armed and dangerous, and we never know when they might strike.”

  “We don’t think it will be a problem,” William continued, “but we’d rather be overcautious than lose our guests.”

  A vampire clan with armed goons and a grudge against the mobster head of a Hollow. Great. That was exactly what this assembly was missing. We didn’t have enough going on already.

  “So why are we getting special treatment? I don’t see anyone guarding the other attendees.”

  “You’re the smallest and newest of the covens,” William answered. “Not to mention your coven is… not of the status quo. The rest have strength in numbers. You don’t.”

  But a glance at his face revealed it was a lie. He had the pinched, almost angry expression I’d come to associate with the binding. They had another reason to fear the vampires, and that reason had something to do with Mother. I just couldn’t for the life of me figure out how Celestine was connected to any of this.

  We finally broke through the crowd and I spotted Astrid standing half in front of Lorcan, one hand balled into an angry fist while the other was held up as if to ward off a blow. The air crackled around her, and every familiar in the area was going berserk trying to escape their cages and go to her. Her fiery hair was standing on end. Her expression was twisted, as though she didn’t know if she wanted to shout or cry.

  “Just breathe, Astrid,” Poppy whispered as she reached out and placed a hand on Astrid’s shoulder. “Just breathe.”

  A moment later, I realized why.

  The woman standing with her back to me was almost toe-to-toe with Astrid. She was tall and regal, with a stunning hourglass figure. She wore power and dignity like an expensive perfume. She’d twisted her hair up into a tight chignon, but I knew that if she let it down, it would trail down to her waist, just like mine.

  Everyone had always said I took after her in the looks department.

  The sight of her now made my heart squeeze tight and stole the air from my lungs.

  “Mother?”

  Chapter Fifteen

  But it wasn’t Mother.

  The woman turned so I could see her properly, and my breath came out on a sharp exhale. Some of the ache in my chest eased, though seeing her still hurt.

  “Aunt Tabitha,” I amended.

  It was easy to mistake them for one another if you could only see their profiles. They shared the same almost aristocratic beauty. But when you looked closely, you could spot the differences. Tabitha’s lips were thinner, her eyes a little more sunken. Both gave her an almost woebegone look when she wasn’t smiling—and usually she wasn’t smiling. The lines around her mouth tightened when she turned toward me. Her voice was soft when she spoke, but held a note of stern disapproval.

  “So, it’s true.”

  “What’s true?” I pretended ignorance.

  “You’ve formed a coven from the… rabble.” She shook her head and sighed. “I didn’t want to believe it when my daughter told me.”

  “We are hardly rabble,” Poppy answered as she pulled Astrid closer to her in that motherly way of hers—a motherly way that I was suddenly so grateful for because it was exactly what Astrid needed and I was too far away to provide it.

  Astrid flinched, and her eyes grew shiny with tears. Power leaped to my fingertips, ready to defend her, though I knew from experience this wasn’t something I could protect Astrid from. Vampires, witches, and meddling humans I could deal with. Parental neglect was something else.

  “Her name is Astrid,” I responded, feeling my eyes narrow of their own accord. “Or are you such a cold-hearted bitch that you won’t even call her by the name you gave her?”

  I waved my hand broadly at Maverick. He was standing a ways back, looking like he wanted to melt into the falcon enclosure. His familiar stood at rigid attention on his shoulder, wings half-extended like she might take flight and go for Tabitha’s eyes. I didn’t blame her.

  “And what about Maverick?” I continued, glaring at my aunt. “In case you’ve forgotten, he’s your son. Don’t you give a damn about him?” Tabitha looked over at Maverick but said nothing, just held her nose aloft in the air like she thought she was some German princess from a long line.

  “You can call my coven whatever you want to call it, but we’re all a damn sight braver than the rest of you,” I continued as Darla, Libby and Poppy instinctively took a step closer to us. I still wasn’t sure where Olga and Betanya were, but hopefully they’d join us soon. We could definitely use strength in what little numbers we had.

  I could feel every eye in the place on us. Apparently, Tabitha could as well, because her mouth mashed into a furious line, and what little color she had bled from her face.

  “I’ve always done what was best for my children,” she said finally, chin still held upright.

  “You think tossing them out of the coven was for their own good?” I sneered, glaring at her. “Yes, lovely plan, Tabitha. You’ve scarred them both for life.”

  “I did it to keep… them… safe,” she insisted. “Astrid was sticking her nose in places she shouldn’t. Celestine was furious and as far as Charmin goes—”

  She cut off mid-sentence with an odd gurgle. Her eyes bulged, and she clutched at her throat as though she might be sick. If I hadn’t seen something similar happen to William and Hellcat, I might have missed it. But I recognized the signs now, and it chilled me.

  Mother had bound Tabitha.

  Her own sister. Goddess, this had to be grim. And once again, all fingers pointed to Maverick. What the spell did Maverick, Scarlett, William and his clan, and Tabitha all have in common?

  “Yes, that’s what you’d call it, wouldn’t you?” Maverick said, finally straightening out of his slouch. Something dangerous burned in the gray of his eyes. “In your mind, you were just keeping us safe.” He breathed in deeply.