Chapter 1

With a snickof my iron knife, the purple-stemmed bramble of a dormant wild blackberry released from the ground and into my hand. I caught it softly, mindful of the thorns, and added this long cane to the others I had piled nearby. There were ten in total now—nine for the circle, and one for me.

Slipping my knife into the sheath on my thigh, I straightened from my crouch by the eastern woods and brushed the dewy debris from my palms. While it had started to frost consistently at night now that it was October, it wasn't a hard hoarfrost, but a delicate shell of ice that made everything slippery at the first hint of heat from the dawn light. Carefully gathering the canes in my arms, the thorns snagging into the weave of my jacket, I set off at a sprint back to the farmhouse.

Sawyer, the young tabby cat who'd been nosing about in the long grass for beetles, got his tail playfully yanked as I charged by.

"Hey!" the cat yowled, jumping straight up into the air. He landed a second later, fur pointier than an agitated porcupine. "I was stalking something, Misty!"

"Slow poke," I merely shouted over my shoulder.

The tomcat yowled again, this time in a clear challenge, and it took him no time at all to catch up to me. His whiskered lips peeled back so he could stick his tongue out at me, and then his black paws dug into the loam of the orchard as he took off. Even though he wasn't wearing a collar of braided gold with moonstone name tag, there was no mistaking this cat was my cat.

"Coming through!" he yelled.

The hobs, already hard at work gleaning the rest of the apples from the trees, froze as we raced past. They'd quickly adjusted to their hearth witch running barefoot through the orchard every morning, often racing her cat, and knew the chances of a collision were small if they just stayed still.

"Oye, lass, you're never gonna catch him!" Walt shouted after me.

"Wanna bet?" Green magic flared to my fingertips, sparking gold, and I cut my hand through the air. The earth jumped, a three-foot hill rising right in front of Sawyer.

The cat leapt, claws digging into the hill and using it as a springboard to hurl him even closer to the farmhouse. "Nice try, witch," he laughed.

And then an apple tree suddenly lurched forward, snatching him out of the air, just as I'd planned. Slowing down to a walk, I sauntered past the struggling cat as he tried to wiggle free, clawing at the dark brown branches that held him six feet off the ground.

"You were saying?" I quipped.

"Let me down," he whined, squirming.

The apple tree released him, leaning back into its original position and becoming dormant once more. The tomcat swatted at my bare ankles with velveted paws. "No fair!"

"Gotta be ready for anything," I told him, unrepentant and smirking.

"Witch combat isn't exactly a course they teach at school," he grumbled.

"And what do they teach at Grimalkin University?"

Sawyer gave me a sour, amber-eyed look. "You know I can't tell you that."

Now that Sweet Cider Farm's revenue stream was secured, despite Brandi's cider hex, I'd been able to turn my focus to tackling the curse on my family's grimoire and Sawyer—after much pestering by his mentor Ame—had been able to return to school. The university for familiars was very close-lipped about their academic coursework, and you know me and secrets. Let's pop open a bottle of Reisling and go unraveling. I still hadn't found the location of Grandpappy Hob's secret whiskey cellar. But whatever Sawyer was studying, he was doing it from home, the caliby cat Ame checking in every two weeks on his progress.

No doubt she was evaluating me too, though for what, I didn't know.

Gotta be ready for anything. My own words rang in my ears, my ivy-green gaze drifting down to the wild blackberry canes I held to my chest. These were the last ingredients I needed to finally tackle the curse on the spell book, and part of me still couldn't believe it'd taken me this long to prepare. I'd been in the little forgotten town of Redbud, Indiana for six weeks now, and each additional day was a gift I couldn't believe I'd been granted. Six weeks and I hadn't been found by the Hawthornes or the coven who'd cursed our family grimoire—no trackers, no hellhounds, no Big Nasties. My hearth's flame had reduced in size, no longer deploying counterspells against Brandi and her skinks, which meant no one else was seeking or working against me anymore. Was my Vanishing Spell really that good, my hearth that powerful? And if so, why had Grandmother Iris chosen Marten as the next member in our coven of nine instead of me?

Those were questions I'd probably never know the answers to, and it did more harm than good to dwell on such things. I needed to focus on the things I could actually change, and I'd been doing that rather well lately. Grandmother would be so proud, I thought, a wry smile forming at the irony of it all. Her star granddaughter finally focusing enough to successfully steal the family grimoire and run away.

"Uh, Misty?" Sawyer said tentatively, dispelling my wandering thoughts. "Your ring is glowing again."

"Thistle thorns," I muttered, glancing down at the glowing-white tourmaline.

Normally a striated purple-green, the gem of the parasite ring glowed white when it was working overtime to devour my excess magic. In hindsight, it was probably this ring and not my Vanishing Spell or my hearth that was doing such a good job at keeping me off the covens' radars. It reduced my magical signature to that of an average green witch, enabling me to hide in plain sight. So long as I didn't use my magic to the fullness of my ability.

"Getting an apple tree to grab you takes barely any magical effort." I shook my hand as if that would jostle some internal components within the ring to realign and start working properly.

"Maybe you're maxing it out?" the cat asked. "Maybe you're getting stronger?"

Two ideas, one of which was more valid than the other. I hefted the blackberry canes in my arms. "It's a good thing I cut an extra bramble, though I hadn't expected to make a new ring so soon. I'll need a new tourmaline stone, too. If it's glowing more than normal, it's only a short time away from bleaching out and becoming useless."

With the back gate of the farmhouse's fenced-in gardens within arm's reach, I stopped dead in my tracks, eyes widening.

"What?" Sawyer demanded, spinning a circle and bushing out his fur in anticipation of an attack. "What is it? Misty!"

"I-I just had a thought." I swallowed thickly, lowering my voice to a whisper so not even the pixies zooming over the nearby wildflowers could hear us. "What if the tourmaline isn't strong enough to mask me when I perform the spell tonight?"

Though the young tomcat and I weren't bonded familiar and witch, I'd come to trust Sawyer with all the secrets in my life, minus one, and he had done the same, Grimalkin University coursework aside. He knew about the parasite ring and the grimoire hidden in the farmhouse crawlspace and my family name. Though, I reserved the details of that night, the night the Big Nasty had followed Marten home and just what my family had done to prevent it from killing the newest robed elder of the coven, to myself alone. I didn't want him to think my family were monsters, or me, by association.

Sawyer's ears flattened, his amber eyes going wide. "That would be a big problem."

"I'll have to use the amazonite pendant," I said, gnawing on my bottom lip as I opened the garden gate.

"But you said you only like using the pendant as a backup."

"I do, but… do I really have a choice?"

"You could wait until you got another gem."

Wait.I was starting to get irritable, wondering if this false sense of security the last six weeks had lulled me into was nothing more than a trap. That the hammer was coming down in the next hour, not the next day. "I've squandered enough time."

"The patient cat gets the mouse. The even more patient cat gets the juicy fat mourning dove," the tomcat said, trotting out of the fields and into the manicured lawn. "The hearth is healthy—you fed it ash wood just a few days ago. We're protected, Misty. What's the harm in waiting a day for the library to open and do an internet search for nearby crystal vendors and then go get one?"

Not for the first time was I a little frustrated I'd chosen Redbud as my haven. Off-the-beaten-path small towns were great to hide in, but their resources were sometimes limited, including staffing the local library. In exchange for having Saturday hours, the elderly Ms. Paige Tomeson closed the library on Wednesdays.

I unhooked the thorns of the blackberry cane from my jacket and dropped the cut ends into a nearby bucket of water to stay fresh, then sank to the back porch steps with a sulky huff. At twenty-five years old, I was quite mature, but even I succumbed to the occasional hissy fit when life was just set on being difficult.

Sawyer padded up the steps and rubbed against my knee. "You don't know what spells are binding the grimoire anyway, nor the nature of that curse. Better to save the pendant to deal with that backlash, right?"

I gave him a sideways glance. "You've been studying."

He flicked his tail. "I was always a good student. Just never wanted to be forced to bond to anyone."

Sinking my fingers into his fur, I kneaded the skin along his spine until his back arched and his toes curled. "You're a good kitty, Sawyer, and so's your advice. I'll wait." Getting up with a sigh, I headed over to the outdoor spigot to rinse the dirt off my legs and bare feet. "Besides, Misty Fields the country green witch has a few things to handle today before Meadow Hawthorne the hearth witch casts some spells."

"The bakery?" Sawyer asked, ears pricking. "Do I get tuna cookies this time?"

"Only after everything else is baked. Those cookies stink up my kitchen something foul."

The tomcat only grinned. "Worth it."