Chapter 1

It’s a heart.A demon heart.

As I crouched on the floor, staring through the hole and into the crawlspace below, I could envision the emerald gem—not a gem at all, apparently—pulsing in a rhythm that was reserved only for the living. Though the spell book was covered in a veritable mountain of ashes from my hearth and enough rosemary sprigs to populate an entire field and thus completely hidden from view, I still saw the pulsing green light in my mind’s eye.

How? I finally dared myself to ask. How had one of the most powerful covens on the East Coast get duped long enough for a rival to curse their grimoire with a Big Nasty half-heart?

I rocked back on my heels, mind reeling.

“Misty,” Sawyer said, his voice sounding faraway even though he was poised on the hallway rug, trembling. “Misty, put it away.”

Though I barely registered his words, my body obeyed, shuttling the floorboards into place and concealing the hole. The braided rug was pulled over the spot next, the tabby tomcat leaping to the side so he wouldn’t be sitting directly over the spell book.

“I’d set the kettle on if I had thumbs,” Ame announced in a rare show of generosity. She was still here, not disappearing like she normally did after dropping a bomb of information.

But I bypassed the kitchen and went straight for the hearth, sitting cross-legged in front of the warm flames. They flickered green when I stuck my hand in—just in case—registering my health and giving me a passing grade.

How?I repeated numbly. At the manor, the grimoire had stayed locked in a special warded room that resembled a narrow broom closet, the inside walls painted black and inked with silver runes and spells. And guarded by that glamoured not-dog so none other than a robed elder of our coven could remove the book from its pedestal.

The spell book was removed for its daily feedings, I’d come to discover, but before that, it was freed from its closeted purgatory when the coven had to perform serious magic. The everyday spell a witch could complete on her own, and more advanced spells could be performed with a minimum of three witches, initiated or not. Rare was it that a spell required the power of nine, and rarer still that they needed a specific arcane piece of magic from the grimoire.

Then again, I didn’t know much about the family business, how we could afford such a massive estate that supported over twenty family members and all of their needs. The na?ve me from two months ago had just accepted “that was the way things were,” never questioning the logistics, not until I’d had to fend for myself and all that entailed.

It was entirely possible, even probable, that the grimoire was removed far more frequently than us uninitiated witches knew. Grandmother and the coven didn’t need to explain themselves to us, even though we were family. And I did know of one particular occasion when I was twelve when the coven took the grimoire off the property to complete a spell for a client on site.

It’d been in the dead of night when they’d left, and I’d only discovered them after I’d woken up to wander into the kitchen for some of Aunt Peony’s candied ginger to soothe away a stomach ache. The whole coven had been dressed not in just robes and shiny black boots, but battle leathers. Even my mother, the academic. She’d looked frightening with her curly hair swept up into a bun skewered with two iron picks and a bow of black wood strapped to her back.

I pushed the memory away and stared into the flames, refocusing my thoughts. My mind cleared quickly after all those weeks of training, sharpening on the facts.

It had to be one of those times, I reasoned. One of those times when they took the grimoire away. No other coven or witch has ever stepped foot in Hawthorne Manor, and the wards of the hearth would’ve alerted us of an imposter.

My hands tightened into fists. Someone ambushed them! Someone had learned their schedule or been at the right place at the most opportune time (however unlikely) and had ambushed them! Subdued them, cursed the spell book, enslaved them to feed it with their magic, and what was worse, made them forget it was even happening!

But why?This next question had me shaking with anger. Why would someone do this? Why would a rival coven siphon off my coven’s magic? If someone was preparing for a spell that needed this much power, there would be signs. And by the Green Mother, what kind of spell needed that much power?

Ame’s words in the attic came floating across my mind at that exact moment: She was supposed to be a demon’s bride, after all.

Demons. Big Nasties. Whereas the Fair Folk could use portals into this Earthly realm, Big Nasties had to be summoned. That took magic, and more of it depending if you were just wanting a hellhound or something meaner. It was said they had a hierarchy of their own, that there were as many demon species as there were types of Fair Folk, some that even resembled humans save for their eyes and horns and dietary preferences.

Thistle thorns, was it some sort of perverted demon cult who was using my coven to summon their master?

I screamed and nearly jumped out of my skin when Sawyer licked the back of my hand. The tomcat hissed, back arching and fur bristling.

“Don’t do that!” I clutched my heart as I panted, trying to catch my breath and coax my soul back into my body. “You know I startle easily!”

“Well excuse me,” he snapped back, equally flustered. “Your bracelet was glowing because you had dark green briars writhing all around you. Misty, you were channeling magic and you didn’t even know it!”

At a moment’s reflection, I realized I was tired. Exhausted, actually. From both the emotional and magical strain. Angling my wrist, I examined the parasite bracelet. The three tourmaline stones were a dormant green-purple, and the runes on the iron cuff beside it were silent. Thank the Green Mother for that. If those runes had started to glow, it would be a beacon to my family to come find me, more so than my magical signature ever was.

I slumped back on the hearth stones, lying supine with my right side along the flames so I could keep the back door in sight.

“We sleeping here tonight?” Sawyer asked.

“Yep.”

“I’ll get a pillow.”

I propped myself onto my elbows. “I can—”

“I’ve got it!”

As he scampered down the hallway into the den, Ame approached and sat down by my elbow. “I’ll speak to Shari and Daphne at sunup. While I know you want answers now, Shari is not prepared to give them. She will need time. Coaxing.”

“Patience,” I muttered. That’s what my time in Redbud always boiled down to: an exercise in patience. Maybe that was the way of small towns, a less-hurried approach to life.

Well, my hearth and parasite ring—now a bracelet—and my Vanishing Spell had proven they could keep my true identity and location secret from the supernatural world for this long. Maybe, if I continued to be careful, they could endure a little more.

“Thank you, Ame. For… everything.”

The caliby cat blinked her bright yellow eyes and said, “I’ll accept more bone broth and some of those tuna cookies you bake for Sawyer as a thank-you. I’ll need the extra energy if I’m to be moonlighting as an emissary.”

Her attention shifted to the hallway as the young tomcat struggled with the pillow he was dragging. One edge was soaked in spittle by the time he proudly wrestled it into position behind my head.

“I see you haven’t been shirking your physical training,” Ame commented, reverting to mentor mode. “But try catching a rabbit this week instead of a pillow. Rabbits can actually fight back. I’ll update Fanga tomorrow, Sawyer Blackfoot, and your studies will continue.”

“Yes, Ame.”

The older cat left with a graceful spring to the kitchen sink window and then out onto the back porch. When Sawyer’s pricked ears relaxed, no longer sensing her or anything else, he crawled onto my stomach and stretched out along my sternum, tucking his front paws under his chin in the classic loaf position. His amber eyes didn’t drop down to slits, though; he was wide awake.

“Keeping watch?” I murmured. Thistle thorns, after everything that had happened in the past few days—surviving a corrupted core, binding a Big Nasty’s half-heart with a moonflower boundary and purging the town of blight, discovering the true nature of the grimoire’s curse, Arthur—I didn’t have it in me to keep my eyes open anymore. I needed a break, a have-the-world-forget-I-existed break.

“For a little while longer,” Sawyer answered. “Just in case.”