“Every witch in Jinx Junction will be down for the count then,” I said. “You and I are the only ones for miles who stand a chance of taking that bitch and her tickly toadies out before they make that jailbreak and bust that asshole out.”

  “We are.”

  “So, what do we do now?” I asked.

  Meredith sucked in a deep breath, steeling herself before she faced the window squarely, raising her hands in a defensive gesture once more.

  “We need to smash our way out.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  Meredith’s game-on face looked a lot more like a constipation face.

  Forcing herself to bring forth magic she’d never practiced looked painful. It had to go against every fiber of her being, reaching for something other than the black magic her mother had drilled into her head. When flickers of light did spring from her fingers, they only caused a few wards to flicker, and tiny fissures appeared on the window pane. It was enough, though.

  I drove my shoulder through the glass with all my might, grunting in pain when Uncle Fox’s wards finally gave up the ghost, searing my face with magical backwash. I was now probably ‘Astrid, the eyebrow-less vampire wonder’, but I didn’t care. All that mattered was the glass shattering outward, spraying the crowd below with shards of glass. A Mahaha let out a terrified giggle that echoed eerily through the night before it scuttled away, with a cry of, “Mistress Hellebore!”

  Hellebore.

  The name sounded familiar. After another second, I remembered why. Professor Verglas had covered her history at some point in class. Hellebore was attached to Graupel. His sister, or maybe his niece. Human or Faerie, the aristocracy all tended to be related to each other.

  She rounded on us, orienting on our position the second I leaped from the window, Meredith in my arms, landing in the snow drift outside. The landing was noisy, and sent up a big puff of snow, but we might have gotten further without detection if Meredith hadn’t screamed the entire way down. We were really going to have to work on her ‘stoic in the face of danger’ thing.

  “Well, well,” Hellebore sneered. “The half-breed and Lucretia’s greatest disappointment.”

  “Well, well, if it isn’t the cliche, knock-off Disney villain from the bottom of the bargain bin,” I replied, dusting snow off my ass as I stood.

  Every part of me was smarting. The blood in Lorcan’s room had only taken the edge off my hunger. I still needed to feed properly to be up to my full strength. Not that I was going to let bad-hair day Elsa wannabe know that. If life in Crescent Circle Coven had taught me anything, it was to fake it ‘till you make it, and never let them see you sweat. People like this were predators. At the first sign of blood, they’d be on you like sharks at a feeding frenzy.

  Lady Hellebore’s face creased into furious lines. She whipped her hand in our direction and I seized Meredith around the waist, dragging her out of range of the faerie’s strike. A spear of ice as tall as my Porsche jutted from the ground where Meredith had been standing only seconds before. Meredith let out another squeal of fright, her face burrowing into the crook of my neck as more ice flew in our direction, drawing stinging lines across every exposed inch of skin. I set Meredith down yards away, steadying her when she swayed.

  “We can’t defeat her,” Meredith whispered, eyes showing white, like a spooked horse. “We can’t!”

  “We don’t need to. We just need to break the binding staff. I’ll deal with Hellabitch. You keep the Mahaha off my back, okay?”

  “I don’t think I can—”

  “You can,” I insisted, shaking her hard enough to make her teeth clack together. “Don’t think about what your mom would do. Think about what you can do! What are you good at? The magic doesn’t have to be dark. Hell, it can’t be, with the binding staff nearby. Show them what a white witch can do.”

  She nodded shakily. “I… I can do that…. I think.”

  “Good. Now go!”

  I gave her a push toward the nearest Mahaha. It came at her with its arms outstretched, fingers wriggling in spasmodic little motions, giggling the whole while. Another joined the first seconds later. She ducked beneath their arms and shoved a hand into one of her pockets, producing the befuddlement potion she’d flung at my face earlier. She uncorked it in one deft motion and sent the potion slewing toward their faces. The potion turned into fine, snowy powder when it hit the air, and some of the flecks actually carried past the two Mahaha, hitting their fellows in the face.

  I sprinted past the stunned Mahaha, leaping to avoid one of them who’d kept his (meager) wits about him. I cleared his grasping hands by inches and hit the ground near Hellebore on my side, rolling to dodge the attack I knew was coming next. The ice spikes missed my face by inches. Hellebore howled in frustration, a sound almost indistinguishable from the wind. She must have known she didn’t have the tools she really needed to put me six feet under for good. If she couldn’t put a shard of ice through my heart, she was sunk. Fire and sunlight were my new kryptonite and winter was in short supply of both.

  Want to kill a vampire? Call a Summer faerie instead.

  “So, what did you do with the real Cattleya?” I demanded.

  “Killed her, so I could take her place—exactly what I’ll be doing to you shortly,” Hellebore answered on a malicious laugh.

  I snapped one of the icicles at its base and lined up a shot before Hellebore could get me in her sights again. Then I backed up, putting all my strength behind the throw, like I was set to send a football toward Finn. It was a familiar motion; one I’d performed a million times before with a Nerf football. Except this wasn’t a game, and I wasn’t flinging foam into her face. I sent a chunk of ice the size of my fist flying with all my strength at the delicate bones of her wrist.

  It was incredible what being undead did for one’s hand-eye coordination.

  Hellebore let out a deafening shriek of pain when the ice found its mark. The binding staff fell from her numbed fingers, spinning on the frozen ground, coming to a stop when it hit a snow frosted tumbleweed. I dove for it. And bless that little thing’s heart, it tried to move forward to get me, like it had been spelled to do, pushing the staff into my outstretched hand.

  “No!” Hellebore shrieked, aiming the crooked fingers of her good hand at my head. I flattened myself to the ground, army-crawling away from the permafrost hex she sent my way. It still managed to catch patches of my hair, turning them milky white and the consistency of straw.

  Too little, too late, though. I dug the end of the staff into the ground, holding it in place while I seized the other, twisting the metal into the shape of a pretzel. And, for the second time in a night, a backwash of magic hit me square in the face. This time, the stuff was noxious enough to make my eyes roll back into my head.

  Dark, oily magic rolled over me in a stinking, clinging wave. It was a damn good thing I didn’t need to breathe, because inhaling any of it might have put me in the ground for good. As it was, the dark magic blew over me like a funeral shroud, pushing me away from the world. It dragged at me, pulling me down into darkness that was absolute.

  The last thing I saw before I passed out was Meredith reducing a Mahaha into a melted pile, and another witch rising from her position, half-buried in the snow, blocking a strike from Hellebore that would have laid my friend flat on her ass, at the very least. Hellebore took one look at the Hexus Ranger and disappeared into a portal to winter, leaving her henchman to die alone.

  And die they certainly did.

  ***

  “Your defense of this Hollow was… adequate,” Lucretia said.

  I didn’t think she could bring herself to use ‘heroic’ or any of its synonyms. Not when she was addressing a vampire and her own daughter, in any case. There was no way that Lucretia’s pride was ever going to unclench that far. But it was whatever, because I didn’t need praise from Lucretia to know we’d done an awesome job.

  Not just awesome—Meredith and I had kicked serious ass, all on our own, after we’d been dismissed and ignored, and I wasn’t about to let anyone forget that. What we’d done wasn’t just heroic, it had been damn near suicidal. If the binding staff’s effects weren’t quickly reversible, Hellebore would have gotten away with her plan. She’d have maimed or killed Meredith before resuming her murderous plot, and not a single one of the witches in Jinx Junction, not even the oh, so impressive Hexus Rangers, would have been able to stop her.

  Okay, so maybe I was gloating a little. But, shit, I deserved to.

  Lady Hellebore had sent a legion of her biggest, stinkiest yeti friends to skirmish with Uncle Fox, Lorcan, and the most formidable of the Hexus Rangers, keeping them firmly in one place while the real fight was going on inside the Hollow. A woman of Lucretia’s caliber must have been fuming that her defenses had been bested, leaving only two kids to protect everything she’d built.

  “Adequate enough to earn me an apology?” I asked innocently. “I mean, you did try to kill me after I saved your daughter’s life.”

  She gave me a flat, unfriendly look. “Don’t push your luck, vampire.”

  “My name isn’t ‘vampire’. It’s Astrid Depraysie,” I said, tired of pretending to be someone I wasn’t. “I’m the daughter of Prince Fennec and High Witch Tabitha Depraysie. My cousin is High Witch of the Scapegrace Coven in Haven Hollow.” That worked to get Lucretia’s eyes to about bulge out of her head. “So, try putting a little respect into my name,” I continued. “And your daughter’s too, for that matter. I couldn’t have destroyed that staff without her help. And on that subject, it’s not her fault that she’s a white witch, any more than I can help that I was attacked and killed by a vampire at Blood Rose last semester.”

  Lucretia looked like she’d swallowed a lemon when she said, “Depraysie?”

  “Yes, Depraysie. I’m done trying to keep my name under wraps. I only did it because Uncle Fox asked me to. Assassination attempts are going to be made, now that people know of our relation to one another. Well, guess what? Hiding it didn’t stop this attempt, did it? So, I’ll use my own name, thank you. I’m done pretending to be someone I’m not.”

  I risked a glance at Meredith, expecting her expression to twist into one of disgust at the realization of who I’d been and what I’d become. She just looked… grateful. I doubted anyone in her life had ever told her mom to shove it.

  Well, in my opinion, it was long overdue. But I might have been the teensiest bit biased.

  I continued before Lucretia could recover her smug demeanor. “If anyone else had done what we did, you’d give them a medal. All I’m asking for is an apology and a favor. Then you can forget this whole embarrassing debacle happened. I won’t mention it to another soul.”

  Lucretia sat down behind her desk, folding her hands primly on its surface. Her eyes narrowed on me.

  “What’s the favor?”

  “Well, I have a few ideas…”

  ***

  One Day Later

  “You could have asked for any favor in the world,” Meredith said, staring at the slip of paper on her lap in wonder. “Why this?”

  The acceptance letter from Blood Rose was printed on expensive paper and stamped with the school’s official seal. It hadn’t been a difficult thing to get Meredith accepted either—all Lucretia had had to do was write them with the desire of Meredith attending and another twenty minutes later, the acceptance note appeared. I guessed it was good to be the head of the Hexus Rangers and the Sheriff of Jinx Junction.

  Meredith traced the headmistress’ name with the reverence of someone touching a saint’s writings. The reality of the woman would be a letdown, but I didn’t have the heart to crush Meredith’s excitement. This was a happy moment for her, and I’d let her savor it for as long as possible.

  “Because you’re miserable in Jinx Junction. Your mother might be giving you a little leeway after you stopped a jailbreak, but she’d eventually return to being the inflexible bitch she is the rest of the year. She’ll keep trying to force you into being the kind of witch you’re not. The kind of witch you probably can’t be, given your parentage. I thought you deserved a chance to try your hand at something else.”

  Meredith’s hands migrated up the page, tracing the portion of the letter that detailed what courses she was eligible for. Celestial and witch instruction. I’d been right. That flash of power she’d used to save my bacon had come from a non-witch parent. She was part angel or other celestial being. There were a lot of heavens, lots of angel breeds, and things that resided in the celestial layers that weren’t bright and feathery but were still benign. How the hell did Lucretia Boline think she could hammer a celestial halfling into being yet another dark sorceress? It was like trying to fashion a sword from goose down. You couldn’t change the nature of a thing just by willing it so.

  “Besides,” I continued when Meredith said nothing. “It would be nice to have a witch friend at Blood Rose. If you’d like to be friends with me, I mean.”

  The last one I’d trusted had sold me downriver to Valserak to preserve her escape plans. Morgana Grimsbane had been willing to sacrifice damn near everything to get out from under the enchantments that held her hostage, even the lives of everyone in the castle. My mortality had been a small price to pay. Her scheming had cost Morgana her life, in the end though.

  But I had a good feeling about Meredith…

  Her gaze met mine, soft and full of gratitude. It was unwitchlike in the extreme. But that was for the best. She wasn’t just a witch after all.

  “I’d like that a lot.”

  ***

  “Well,” Lorcan said, as he hauled the last of our bags into the trunk of his car. “Any last minute stops? Want to pick up any souvenirs?”

  I snorted, trying not to laugh in his face. I couldn’t wait to put Jinx Junction in our rearview. The only good thing that had come out of this town was Meredith Boline. The rest? They could keep it. I’d be avoiding the entire state in the future.

  “No, I’m good. Let’s just go.”

  Back to Haven Hollow. Back to the place that had felt more like home than anywhere else ever had. It might only be a short visit, before Uncle Fox had me running off on some other mission. Still, the thought of seeing Wanda and Maverick and the Scapegrace Coven again made my chest feel light, like someone had lifted a heavy stone off my back. And I couldn’t wait to see Poppy and Finn.

  I’d said my goodbyes to Uncle Fox just after sunset. He hadn’t apologized for dragging me into a horrible situation, or for locking me in my room like a child, but he had laid a hand on my shoulder and told me that he was glad I was okay, and that he was proud of me. So that wasn’t nothing. Besides, I didn’t think absolute monarchs were actually allowed to give out apologies, even when they were richly deserved.

  It was fine. I’d get over it. But in the future, I’d be asking a whole lot more questions up front before just leaping to obey whatever orders he laid down. Not that I’d actually ever leapt. I was still a Depraysie woman, after all.

  Besides, the fact that he’d dragged Mocha and the terror twins back with him was almost better than an apology. All I had to do now was find someone to take Yew off my hands. Maybe I’d ask Meredith if she was in the market for an annoying little rat. Because as far as I could tell, she didn’t have a familiar yet… hmm.

  Lorcan went to close the trunk, but I caught sight of something purple wedged in beside our luggage, and I stopped him.

  “Lorcan,” I said, staring in horror. “What are those?”

  I pointed at the offending object with a single finger, keeping myself an arm’s length away, like the leather was a rattlesnake that might strike at any time.

  “Oh, these?” He reached back into the trunk and pulled out the garishly purple cowboy boots with heavy tooling and silver star studs every few inches. “They seemed so popular around town, I thought Wanda might like a pair of her own.”

  I stared at him. And then I stared at him some more. My eyes dropped back to the cowboy themed monstrosity held in his hands. It was like watching a car crash in slow motion.

  “You’re joking, right? Please tell me you’re joking.”

  “No?”

  “Lorcan.”

  He frowned, looking at the boots cradled in his hands. “You don’t think she’ll like them? They’re real leather, you know—and hand dyed—at least, that’s what I was told.”

  There was just no saving some people. They just flew too close to the sun, and the only thing that could be done was to scramble to get out of the nuclear fall-out range. I shook my head and stepped away, never taking my eyes off the boots until I slid into the car. Then I closed the door behind me and waited for Lorcan to put his horrors away and join me.

  “What’s so bad about them?” He asked, turning the engine over. “I think they’re rather striking.”

  Striking. I sputtered. “Lorcan, it would be like giving Wanda a pair of crocs.”

  He pursed his lips, eyes on the road as he thought. “You think she’d want a pair of crocs?”

  I watched him for an agonized second, but his expression stayed open. Darn near earnest. Oh, sweet Goddess, he was serious. I couldn’t help the laugh that escaped my lips. “Oh, Lorcan, you’re lucky that you’re really hard to kill.”

  He sighed. “Everyone is a critic.”

  “Well, I just hope you still have a wife after you show up with those.”

  He laughed, sharp and bright, and against all reason, my lips curled up at the sound.

  We left the horrible pitted stretch of gravel pretending to be a road, and pulled onto the highway. With the windows cracked open, and the night air running its fingers through my hair, we set off following the bright circles of our headlights.

  Heading for home.

  The word had never sounded sweeter.

  The End

  ~~~~~

  Return to Haven Hollow in:

  Hexes and Hoarfrost

  ~~~~~

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