Chapter One

I'd pinned the lace trim on this particular dress three times already.

If it didn't lie flat this time, I was tempted to set the whole thing on fire with a muttered word, and go make my fortune in bricklaying instead.

I sat back on my heels, dragging in a slow breath and holding it while my pulse tried to pound its way out of my skull. Extremely annoying hemlines aside, I needed to get a grip on my temper before I burned my store down. After all, I'd never make it as a brick layer—talk about absolute hell on my manicure…

Still, it was hard not to take it personally. I glared at the lace, like my disdain might be enough to get the damned thing to lie flat and straight like it was supposedto. No such luck, though. So, I jabbed my pins back into the cushion with more force than was strictly necessary, but at least I felt a little better. A smidge anyway.

Alright, so maybe it wasn't the stupid lace that had me on edge…

At that thought, one pin skipped across the edge of the cushion and sunk right into my finger with a bright spark of pain. Hissing quietly, I stuck my finger in my mouth to keep the blood from seeping into the delicate fabric. If I had to do the trim over again because I stained it, I was going to actually scream.

Not to mention, considering all the interesting things my blood and magic got up to these days, letting my blood come anywhere near the spelled fabric could land me somewhere between a disaster and criminal negligence.

And wasn't that just the problem? I scowled at the faint trace of copper on my tongue. It was barely a drop of blood, a wound tiny enough that I shouldn't have even been able to taste it. But I did, and that little ember of heat and iron was enough to cause my jaw to ache and my gums to tingle.

Ugh.

This was all Lorcan's fault.

Well, and my mother's. And a vampire war criminal's. And my ex-coven's.

But mostly Lorcan's.

I'd been living my best life. Right—I'd been a ridiculously talented, beautiful witch in her prime, right up until the accident when my car hit the side of a building. And wasn't it just my luck that the dentist working inside said building had saved my life. Usually, you'd probably be grateful for such things, but not when you're a witch and your ‘savior' is a vampire. Then you'd rather be dead. Never mind the fact that said vampire was gorgeous, blonde, and had a lilting brogue that made my toes curl in my Louis Vuitton's, he was still a vampire.

In his very small defense, Lorcan hadbeen trying to save my life, and he hadn't realized I was a witch (or so he'd said on numerous occasions). But there was a reason that witches would never, ever, agree to being turned into the undead. Not only because we lost our connection to the natural world and all our magic, but mainly we'd never agree to becoming undead because of what happened when we didn't actually die. When a witch didn't die, she didn't complete the transaction of the natural world, which meant she couldn't be reincarnated.

So just like that, Wanda Depraysie, one of the most skilled, incredible witches of the Crescent Circle Coven, was turned into a Blood Witch. And then kicked out of the coven quickly thereafter.

Maybe I shouldn't have complained too much (or be complaining now). Historically, the way the covens and vampires dealt with Blood Witches involved a lot of fire—and if you avoided fate by flame, you might be forcibly turned vampire all the way (because even the vamps couldn't suffer a Blood Witch to live). But no, I was still going to complain, because it was all very stupid.

Plus, I was still dealing with it.

Deposing the High Witch of Crescent Circle, my mother, by revealing all her various crimes helped a little. I mean, at least witches didn't show up gunning to burn me at the stake anymore. But the vampires didn't appreciate Blood Witches, or their affinity for magic with the dead. And that meant I'd had to put on a very convincing act. In fact, I'd been playing at being a fully turned vampire for a while, and that had worked out okay-ish. The nocturnal hours and not being able to publicly declare myself the High Witch of my own newly formed coven, Circle Scapegrace? Well, that had stung. But it was worth it, to keep from being turned fully vampire against my will. At least for a while.

Killing Lorcan's adoptive sire had bought us a little breathing room, but now there was another vampire intent on taking over his position. And this vampire was already sending spies sniffing around Haven Hollow, trying to get a look at me to decide if I was, in fact, full vamp. So, who knew how long my cover was going to last. Still, I wasn't going to give it up without a fight, and that went double for my pulse. Which meant I just had to deal with a few side effects. Like spontaneously raising the dead. And having a frankly unsettling appetite for extremely rare steaks.

Still… just knowing there were more vampires out there, as close as Portland, who were spying on me, trying to catch me in a lie? It made the night feel a little too close, the walls a little too thick. Sometimes I just wanted to throw everything I had into a suitcase and drive into the sunset, somewhere far away, where I didn't have to bother with any of this crap. But that would mean leaving Haven Hollow, leaving the little family I'd forged for myself, my coven, and probably Lorcan… I mean, if I didn't take all my shoes, I might have been able to fit him in the trunk.

But more than that, I was a Depraysie witch. And while my mother might have done her best to drag that name through the mud, one fact was still chiseled in stone.

We didn't run.

Haven Hollow was my home. I'd claimed it by spell and by rite. No one was going to drive me from it. No matter how freaking claustrophobic the cheerful little town was starting to feel.

At least my finger had stopped bleeding. Still, I wasn't taking any chances with watered silk, so I stalked out into the front half of the store and headed for the register counter. There was a stash of enchanted bandages there, and just a dab of Poppy's wound ointment would have a stupid pin prick gone before I could put the lid back on the jar.

My mood lifted slightly the second I stepped onto the shop floor of my store, Wanda's Witchery. There was something deeply satisfying about walking through the racks of carefully arranged clothing, the mannequins set up just so, and the sheer number of colors and textures of fabric.

And I'd built it all.

When my mother had booted me from my coven, she'd expected me to follow her orders and quietly accept exile to the middle of nowhere, living off a stipend she'd so generously bestow on me. She'd expected me to wither and blow away.

Honestly, it was like she'd never even met me.

Instead, I'd loaded up my car with my wardrobe and not much else, and I'd moved here, to Haven Hollow, where I'd made something for myself with my own two hands. Well, it had also required my fantastic sense of style and my amazing business sense.

If someone wanted an evening gown that would ensure all eyes were on them, or yoga pants that were enchanted to make the wearer actually wantto work out, or a delicate, lacy bit of lingerie that would showcase someone's best features while hiding their flaws, then they could find it at Wanda's Witchery. There were enchantments soaked into the cloth, woven between the warp and the weft, delicately embroidered on the inside of a seam. I specialized in clothing that made people look good and feel good at the same time. Of all the many, many incredible things that I'd done in my life, this shop was the one thing I was most proud of.

My relationship with my best friend, Poppy, was right up there, too. And my relationship with Lorcan was a good third. Chicks before dicks or however that saying goes…

As I walked into the room, I watched my cousin, Maverick, slide his coat on over his shoulders. As soon as I emerged from behind a mannequin dolled up in a sweater dress that was the color of fresh heather, he gave me a look. As far as my cousin went, he was supposedly handsome, though I couldn't think of him that way. The man I saw before me was stupidly tall and lanky, even if he was also muscular. At least his hair was finally growing out again. The Little Boy Blue chin cut hadn't suited him at all. The worst part was that I hadn't even been able to tease him about it since he'd gotten it hacked off by an insane vampire who'd tried to turn him. Not only that, but he'd then gone undercover to help save my pseudo daughter, Sybil, from another bunch of vampires. So, yeah, teasing him about the ridiculous haircut seemed in poor taste.

"It's about time," he said in that particular tone of voice that characterized the times when he thought someone was dawdling deliberately.

"You don't know what I've been struggling with," I answered.

He frowned more deeply. "How hard is it to tack on some lace?"

"Harder than you might imagine."

An eyebrow raised to join the frown. "You've been at it for an hour, Wanda, and some of us have places to be."

And just like that, my mood was a thunder cloud again. Maverick could still get under my skin like no one else alive. That was family for you.

"Excuse me," I snapped. "I came up here for medical supplies after I was grievously wounded." I held out my injured finger which, as I looked at it, didn't look all that injured. "Sorry that my injuryis interfering with you going home to read or mumble to yourself in the mirror or whatever your riveting plans are for the evening."

Maverick gave me a narrow-eyed once over. "You don't look grievously wounded."

I stuck my finger in his face, close enough that he almost went cross-eyed trying to see what I was showing him.

"What do you call that?"

The look Maverick turned on me wasn't quite scathing—no, he knew better than that. It was still in the family of scathing though, and the eyebrow he arched at me was definitely unimpressed. "An overreaction."

Well, he wasn't wrong. But being dramatic about the pinprick was making me feel just the tiniest bit better. And annoying Maverick was just a time-honored tradition, so I leaned into it.

"An overreaction? Tell that to the watered silk."

That had Maverick blanching, all the blood rushing out of his face and leaving him even more sickly pale than he normally was. His reaction was almost gratifying, right up until the point that he opened his mouth.

"I spent three days embroidering spells into those seams," he hissed, sounding more like an angry goose than a furious Blood Warlock. "If you got blood on it just because you've forgotten how pins work–"

That was the only trouble with winding Maverick up. He was almost as good at winding me up in return, and that was annoying all on its own. Still, it wasn't like I was going to hex my cousin over him acting like a git who showed absolutely no concern over the damage to my structural integrity.

The biggest trouble with Maverick was that, in the face of statistics and tradition, he was actually stupidly powerful. Magic always favored women over men. Women had magic more often, and in bigger, stronger, amounts. Add that to the fact that witches tended to have daughters? Well, that meant most covens didn't see many warlocks.

Especially not with my mother's quaint little habit of giving coven warlocks to the vampires to be attacked, turned, and stripped of their magic. All Mother cared about was removing the embarrassing stain of a warlock's presence from the coven. She'd planned such a fate for Maverick, too, but we'd saved him before the vampires had managed to do anything more than blood him. So, if Maverick had been formidable before, he was now a beast as a Blood Warlock.

Of course, if a Blood Witch sent the covens and vampires into a tizzy, a Blood Warlock would send them into a frenzy, frothing at the mouth. So, we were keeping Maverick's condition on the down low, as it was. I had enough trouble dealing with my own assassins, I didn't want to be distracted by his.

The point was, it wouldn't be smart to pick a fight with Maverick, no matter how satisfying said fight might have been. But I sure as spell wasn't going to start something while also standing inside my lovely store, filled with beautiful clothing that could be horribly mutilated with one rogue lightning bolt. And the last thing I wanted was another mannequin coming to life.

Instead, I glared. "Oh, heavens, Wanda, my dearest cousin! That wound you sustained looks terribly painful! Of course I'd love to help you! In fact, let me hand you some of these much-needed healing supplies."

Maverick's mouth twisted like he'd bitten into a lemon. "That rendition of me is in a word: horrifying. Also, you don't need a bandage, Wanda. Whatever you managed to do to yourself is so small, I can't even see it."

"Yet it's still there," I grumbled.

"Or so you say."

"I'm injured," I snapped.

"It's not even bleeding," he snapped back.

Before I could respond, the bell over the door rang as someone stepped into the store, and both of our heads snapped around like lions spotting a wounded gazelle limping its way across the savannah.