Chapter 24

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

Samhain

“No time for dillydallying, ladies,” Miranda snipes at a group of witches gathered in one of the corners of the ballroom. They all snap to attention, pulling candles, crystals, and talismans out of their bags and handing them to Miranda. She runs them over to the buffet table, where I’m helping Willow Dennison, a young meta-magic witch in training, sort items.

“Here are more materials,” Miranda says quickly, dropping them into a pile before walking off to welcome another group of witches that have just arrived. In the two hours since I told Celeste and Miranda everything that has happened to me this past week, my oldest sister has entered a mode of emergency triage that I’ve never seen from her. Messages of warning and requests for aid were immediately sent to every member of the coven, some via Miranda’s waves, others using my brand-new stationery set. Witches are arriving from all over New England, armed with their spell books and charms, to face the coming threat. Miranda has organized us into a small army, assigning tasks and barking out orders like a general.

Willow hesitates, holding her small hands over the newest pile. After a beat, she picks out a single tiger’s eye.

“I think this is the only thing that’s properly charged. Everything else feels too depleted.” She drops the stone into my hand, and I place it in a much smaller pile off to the side. It’s not much. The tiger’s eye, a few smoky quartz crystals from a hearth witch, a charmed horseshoe from a witch who’d taken a Texan hexan as a lover, and seven black candles that Rebecca brought from the Raven there’s a thrumming in my body, and the sense of doom blooms into panic, increasing exponentially with every beat of my heart.

Out of the corner of my eye, the glint of light shining off the horseshoe next to me blinks away. The sun has set. I have turned thirty-one. And Samhain has begun.

Outside, a dog howls.

“The ceiling!” A witch in the circle shouts. I look up. In every corner of the grand room, inky shadows descend from the highest points on the walls.

“Hecate.” Winifred tugs at my wrist, forcing me to look back at her.

“Do you consent to be contained?” she asks again. I don’t answer. There is a biting breeze in the room, as if someone has opened a door and let in the bitter north wind.

“Hecate,” Winifred whispers through gritted teeth. “I bid you say yes.”

The effect is almost instant. My mouth opens to follow her command, acquiescence on the tip of my tongue. But I rip one of my hands from her grip and slam it over my mouth, silencing the yes . I won’t let Winifred force my hand as my mother once did. If I agree, it has to be my choice. The room spins, from the shadows pouring down the walls and from my defiance.

“If you defy me,” Winifred seethes, “you will break yourself from this coven, and I will have every right to excommunicate your magic. Now, answer: Do you consent?”

We are out of time. The King Below’s minions are coming to make good on his threat from my nightmare. And yet I remain paralyzed by this decision. I want to scream in frustration at myself. Do I place my faith in my coven? Do I place it in Matthew? If I don’t agree, will the King Below take me anyway? He’s already proven his willingness to overstep the laws that bind him. Who’s to say he won’t take his wrath out on the Atlantic Key? On my sisters?

Suddenly, the choice is clear.

“No.” I force the word out. The coven gasps. Winifred releases my other hand. The vibrations of panic in my body stop for a moment as I bask in this newfound clarity. But the peace is short-lived.

A series of howls and barks sound out, just outside the windows. The witches around us break into disorder, with screams and shouts echoing around the room as the shadows continue to pour down the walls. Several members break from the circle and run across my path to escape. Their footprints create holes in the circles of salt. Obsidian-like ichor seeps up from the cracks in the floorboards, twisting and writhing among the stampeding feet. A long dark tendril reaches out for me. The moonstone dangling around my neck has turned the color of pitch.

A hand swipes at the pentagram around me, sending salt, a smoky quartz, and the horseshoe flying toward the shadow closest to me. The black cloud retreats.

“Get up,” Celeste says, panting. She grabs my arm and tugs me onto my feet.

“No!” Winifred says, reaching out for my skirt. I stumble backward and barely have enough time to right myself as my sister drags me across the ballroom. Black smoke pours from every crack and crevice. The main door to the exit is blocked by dozens of panicking witches.

“Over here!” Miranda shouts to us. Celeste and I both turn. Miranda holds open the door to the library that sits just off the ballroom. We rush over to her, going against the flow of moving bodies.

“Get inside,” she says as we reach her, practically pushing us both into the library and shutting the door. The sound of the tumult is immediately lessened behind the thick walls. Familiar sights greet us. Our father’s favorite reading chair, the chess table, and dozens of bookshelves with his most precious novels and encyclopedic texts.

“What is happening, Kate?” Celeste asks. She clears her throat, trying to keep her voice steady.

“The King Below wants me. Those shadows were how he took Matthew last night. And now he’s come to take me too,” I say.

“We will hold him off,” Miranda says, clutching her bag of sea glass and staring at the door in determination.

I shake my head. “It’s Samhain. He can walk the world of the living at his own will.”

“Yeah?” Celeste challenges, squaring her shoulders. “Then where is he? Why doesn’t the chump show his stupid face?” She turns around the room, asking the question to the open air.

A howl breaks out among the screams outside, and there is a fierce scratching at the library door. Books begin to fall off shelves as black smoke pours off the edges.

“Oh,” Celeste whispers meekly. The edges of the smoke flicker with orange light, and the books still on the shelves begin to ignite.

Celeste runs toward the shelves of our father’s beloved library and begins hurling books off the burning shelves. The dark smoke curls up around her dress, and her cape flickers with flame.

“No!” I shout. Miranda hurls a handful of sea glass at her, the glass breaks against her back and salty water pours out in a dense spray, dousing the flames momentarily. Miranda runs toward Celeste. A tendril of smoke wraps itself around her bad arm, and she collapses with a scream of agony.

“No, please—not again,” she cries. The inky clouds envelop her and begin to reach out toward me.

The library darkens further, shadows overtaking the entire room. Celeste curses. Miranda’s groans of pain grow louder.

This can’t be happening. If the King Below wants me so bad, then fine, but my sisters won’t be part of it. I will go to him, but on my own terms, under my own control. He won’t take my physical body. Not if I can help it.

I close my eyes and relax, focusing on the sensations all around my body. The scratchy feeling of the tights on my legs. The way my shoes pinch my little toes ever so slightly, the tickle of one of my curls on the back of my neck. And all that sensation, all that awareness of myself, I bring to the base of my neck, imagining a very specific set of fingers guiding me along my skin. My mind fills with images of the clearing in the forest that the hellhounds had herded me to, that place that seemed so familiar in my dream last night.

“Celeste,” I call out.

“I’m here,” she calls back from the darkness.

“Please try to catch me.”

I take a single breath. And then I push all of my intention forward and walk out into darkness.