Chapter 1

CHAPTER ONE

Somebody’s Coming

The liminal era begins a week before Halloween. It’s my favorite time of year, when half the trees are barren, and others burst with leaves the color of glowing fire coals. The garden and forest give their final offerings for harvest before the dormancy of winter creeps in. The air turns frigid, but beams of sunlight stay warm, and as the new year approaches, it brings all the traditions and celebrations that unlock the lovely longing of nostalgia. It’s during this week that my magic grows strongest.

I should have been in bed hours ago, but the crackling fire to my left and the dozing cat in my lap make it impossible to move from my antique reading chair. Minutes pass, the content silence broken only by hushed feline snores and the soft stretch of cotton thread pulling over my crochet hook. Tonight’s crafted creation is a little white ghost with a friendly smile and blushing cheeks. I’ve been in a bit of crochet frenzy since decorating my cottage for Halloween. The living room is adorned well enough for the holiday, with orange and black garlands draped on my mantle, cotton spiderwebs around my light fixtures, and a cast-iron cauldron hanging in my fireplace. But the kitchen still needs some festive touches.

I sew a second tiny black felt eye onto the ghost’s face and smooth the edges with the tips of my fingers.

“Too cute,” I say, admiring the pear-sized figurine in my hand.

A soft little mew escapes from Merlin. He looks up from my lap with droopy, displeased eyes.

“Sorry,” I whisper.

He shakes out his ears, his collar chiming. With a lazy stretch, he rises and jumps off my lap, resettling onto the dark green loveseat on the other side of the living room.

“You’ve got a lot of attitude for a cat that’s scared of mice,” I say to the black pile of fluffy fur.

He gives me another look of consternation before laying his head down and going back to sleep.

Rolling my eyes at his dramatics, I carry the newly crafted ghost to the kitchen window. It looks right at home on the sill, next to my other crocheted decorations: a pumpkin with curling green vines, an oversized candy corn, and a small black cat modeled after Merlin. With this figurine tableau and the homemade wreaths of dried maple leaves I’ve placed in the windows, the kitchen decor is finally coming together.

The clock on my mantle whirs and clangs, three soft tolls that chastise me for still being awake. As the echoes of the last chime fade away, the gnarled hickory broom propped against the wall of my kitchen tips forward, crashing against the wooden floorboards.

Merlin lets out a startled cry, bolting off the couch and out of the living room.

A knot forms in my stomach. My mother’s old adage about fallen brooms comes to mind.

“Somebody’s coming.”

Shaking off the nagging phrase, I place the broom back in its proper corner and survey the front of my cottage. Dark wood walls, pristine kitchen, messy desk, herbs that need organizing. All is as it should be. Outside the kitchen window, the night is silent. Up the hill from the cottage, Goodwin Manor looms against the night sky, glittering stars reflecting in its large windows. I moved out of my family’s ancestral home a decade ago, out from under my mother’s loving and ever watchful eye. These days, the emptiness of the manor casts a surreal shadow on my childhood. Every day that passes, those younger years slip further away, never to return. And yet, the building that witnessed all those moments still stands, my memories echoing within its walls.

Across from the hill, surrounding my cottage, is Ipswich Forest. The trees are frozen against the sky, not a single wisp of wind disturbing them. As if they are waiting for something.

Witches all have our ways of fortune telling. Miranda, my older sister, says the sea glass she collects from distant shores whispers to her. My younger sister, Celeste, divines from tarot cards and the movements of planets. As a hedge witch, premonitions come to me shrouded in the mists of dreams. But when I’m awake, I watch the forest. And tonight, with the trees in their silent vigil, the woods unnerve me. A few miles behind the tree line is a graveyard, the final resting place of every Goodwin mother for the past four hundred years. Including mine.

I have not been to it since she was buried in June.

Crash.

I jump, a hand flying to my heart. The broom has fallen over again, its wooden handle pointing directly at my front door.

“What are you trying to tell me, you pesky thing?” I ask, picking it up and placing it on the kitchen table. Perhaps the bristles have gone wonky? I should trim them tomorrow when I have a free moment. It’s much too late to start another task now. With a final cursory glance out my window, I look toward the forest, where a dense fog is rolling in. Something just behind the tree line disturbs the creeping cloud’s slow expansion.

My heart gives a shuddering beat against my chest. An old woman in a long white sleeping gown similar to my own walks through the swirling mist. Silently, I move forward, pressing my nose against the window. With every exhale my breath fogs the glass. With every inhale, it clears. And the woman draws closer.

Margaret Halliwell.

An elder of my coven and a sea witch like Miranda.

With a breathless curse, I grab a woolen coat off the stand and throw it over my nightgown before ripping open my front door and running barefoot into the cold.

“Mags? Are you okay?” I call out. She stops walking and stares at me, her gray hair floating in the windless fog.

“Hecate,” she says. Her voice flat and strange.

“I’m here,” I say breathlessly, reaching her. I shrug off my coat and hold it out for her, but she makes no move to take it. “What’s wrong, Mags? How did you get here? Are you unwell?”

As a hedge witch, it’s one of my duties to care for the sick members of the Atlantic Key, the coven I was born into. With just over one hundred and thirty witches, their needs keep me busy. At almost eighty, Margaret’s health has been failing for a while now. Every two months for the past year, I’ve made her a tin of hawthorn balm to help combat her chronic fatigue. I sent the newest dose just a few days ago.

“He calls for me, Hecate. I have to go,” she whispers.

My heart gives a pang.

“It’s okay, Mags. We’ll get you home,” I say gently. Her husband passed away a few years ago, and Margaret is at an age where past and present are starting to merge in her memory.

She holds one of her wrinkled hands out to me. I hesitate. I so rarely touch people, finding more discomfort than solace in that level of closeness. Even my patients are used to my light-handed work. But it would be cruel of me to deny her this small sympathy. I smile and place my hand in hers.

The pain is immediate. A tugging vacuum-like sensation twists my stomach. Every hair on my arms stands on end, my skin begins to prickle and sting, and my ears swell with pressure. I try to pull my hand away, but Margaret’s grip has turned viselike, her fingers clutching into the skin of my wrist. The intention of her magic coils around me, squeezing like a constrictor snake and burning cold.

“Mags!” I choke with the effort of speaking. “What are you doing?”

“You are not what you should be, little girl.” Her voice is not her own. It comes out in a deep, rasping hiss. “That is deeply disappointing.”

“Release me!” I shout, tugging violently to escape her grapple. Panic rises in my chest. Even at this time of year, even at my strongest, I don’t possess the kind of magic to fight an elder of my coven.

Margaret gasps and the pressure around me eases slightly as her eyes clear.

“I have no more time,” she whispers, her voice returning to normal. “The veil weakens as Samhain approaches. The King Below tests you. Find your mother’s book, and you’ll know why she named you a hedge witch.”

The fog closes in around us, and shadows ripple through the vapor. The pain is a roaring train in my ears now. The sting erupts into a blazing fire. I scream and wrench my wrist from her. A ripping sensation flashes across my belly, and I fling backward, tumbling to the ground.