Prologue

S omeone was calling my name.

I could hear it inside my head, a whisper of a voice that was as much thought as it was sound. At first, my brain told me it was a dream… or at least, an invitation into a dream. Just relax, it told me. Just take a step forward into sleep and follow it, like walking through a door.

But I didn’t want to walk through a door. I wanted to stay here and find out where that voice was coming from. If I gave in to sleep, I told myself, I would lose my grip on it.

I drifted back toward full consciousness, like a bubble floating to the surface of water. My eyes fluttered open, and I heard it again, somewhere inside myself.

Wren. Wren Vesper.

I sat up and stared expectantly around my little bedroom, a room that was still renewing its place in my heart and my memory as really belonging to me. I was sure I’d see someone standing there at the foot of my bed, waiting for me to wake up. For some reason, this did not scare me. It probably should have, but I felt nothing at all except a feeling of calm expectation. It was only when I found myself seemingly alone that I began to feel uneasy.

A week ago, I would have doubted what I was hearing or at least been terribly afraid of it. I’d have thought I was losing my mind somehow. But I knew better now. I knew that the world— my world—was teeming with things I’d never imagined.

Wonderful things. And terrifying things.

But I also knew the most terrifying of them all couldn’t touch me here. Here, inside Lightkeep Cottage, I was safe. Spells. Enchantments. Curses. Hexes. Every conceivable method of protection had been employed over the centuries by generations of Vesper women to keep danger at bay within these walls.

A soft mewling sound made me turn my head, and I spotted my black cat, Freya, perched on the window seat. She captured me with her radiant gaze and then turned her head back toward the window with an impatient flick of her tail. The instructions couldn’t have been clearer if she’d opened her mouth and suddenly spoken English.

Stop wasting time lying in bed and get over here and look out this window.

For half a moment, I wondered if Freya had been calling my name. A friend had informed me that she wasn’t just my pet… she was my familiar. I hadn’t had any time at all to understand what that meant, but hearing her little kitty voice in my head didn’t feel completely out of the realm of possibility.

I stared at Freya.

Freya stared back. Impatiently.

“Did… did you say something?” I asked her.

She meowed in reply. So, that was a no.

Feeling foolish, I pushed my blankets back and heard it again: my name, spoken both inside and outside my head. This time, Freya’s ears perked up, and she turned once again to stare out the window. This time, I hastened to take the hint and ran to the window and peered down into the darkened garden below.

My dead grandmother stared back up at me.

“Asteria!”

Wren.

That was the moment that I recognized the voice that was calling my name. It was her. Her voice. Asteria. It had been more than six years since I’d heard it, but I knew it now.

I bolted from my room and nearly fell down the staircase in my haste to get out into the garden. I pushed open the front door and jumped down off the front porch, losing my footing in the gravel and skinning my palms as I put them down to catch myself. I stumbled to my feet and made a beeline for the garden gate, fumbling the catch with shaking fingers, all the while the same question on repeat in my head.

How can she be here? How can she be here?

I ran as fast as I could, dodging the flower beds and skirting the bushes around the side of the house. Any moment now, she would come into view. I leaped a final low shrubbery and skidded to a halt to find…

Nothing. There was no one there.

I spun on the spot, my heart pounding, my breath coming in frantic gasps.

“Asteria? Asteria, where are you?” I whispered into the rose-scented night.

But only the wind answered me, redolent with salt from the nearby sea.

Bewildered, I looked up at my bedroom window, where I saw Freya blinking back down at me. I walked to the very spot I’d seen her standing, refusing to give up.

There. In the dew-dipped grass. The imprints of two bare feet. I reached down with trembling fingers and touched the indentations.

“Asteria,” I whispered once more into the silence.

She did not answer.