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“What?” Now she’s starting to look outraged. “But that’s not even a requirement. I knowfivewitches personally who don’t have familiars. These things take time.”

Sybil’s own familiar tilts his head at me, like he too doesn’t understand.

I press my lips together, not saying what to me seems obvious.

The coven is making me climb these hills because, at the end of it all, they don’t trust that I have what it takes.

Sybil grabs my hand and squeezes it. “Fuck them. You’vegotthis, Selene, I know you do. You are a witch—you can literally make magic happen. So go home. Have a pity party. And then it’s time to plot.”

* * *

I do go back to my apartment in San Francisco, which is really nothing more than a basement converted into a studio flat, but it’s my little slice of heaven.

I close the door, leaning back against it while I debate giving in to that pity party Sybil talked about.

At my back, something crinkles. I turn around to see a sticky note pressed to the door.

Return Kyla’s call and apologize profusely. (She’s still mad at you for forgetting her birthday.) Also, buy groceries.

Damn. I pull out my big-ass planner from my satchel, making a few vials of something or other clink at the bottom of the bag.

The planner is engorged with extra sheets of paper, and a flurry of sticky notes stick out from its sides. I flip to a blank page and take the sticky note from my door and place it inside.

I’ll deal with you later.

For now, I have admission requirements to complete.

I walk past my bookshelf, which is filled with more of these notebooks and makeshift planners. I go through them like potato chips. These journals of minearemy memory, each one meticulously labeled.

There’s another mounted shelf across the room packed with homemade, handwritten grimoires, each one organized by subject.

My tables and counters are lined with stacks of blank sticky notes, my wall is covered with a zoomed-out map of the Bay Area, and all my most important places are pinned and labeled on it—my apartment, my work, Henbane Coven, and so on.

I was serious when I said I’d be an asset to Henbane.

Witchcraft is my purpose. I want to study it. I want to excel at it. I want to go out into the world and do big things with it. And I will, with or without the coven’s help, I reassure myself. But that doesn’t change the fact that I badly want to get in.

I cross to my desk and drop my bag next to it, then head to my kitchen.

I need tea before I settle in to work.

Unfortunately, when I get to my cupboard, a sticky note stuck to it says:

Buy more tea bags—you prefer the fancy herbal kind.

Well, damn.

I open the cupboard anyway, and sure enough, there’s no tea. There is, however, a bottle of wine.

There’s a sticky note on this too, only this one is not in my handwriting.

The booze-fairy was here!

Hell’s spells, I love that sneaky friend of mine. I grab the wine, thanking the triple goddess that it’s a twist-off cap. I unscrew it then and there and pad back over to my laptop, drinking straight from the bottle.

Probably not the best habit to drink alone, but whatever, I’ll call this my celebratory drink for standing up for myself and getting a foot in the door.