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PROLOGUE

TWO DAYS AGO.

An inquisitive flute-like note lifted from the pixie house as the frost-hardened stem crunched beneath Ame’s paw. On this side of the picket fence and the floral wards, the cold of winter had already come. The caliby cat hunkered down in the weeds, her patchwork fur providing the perfect camouflage against any spying eyes.

And there were many around the farmhouse on Apple Blossom Lane.

“Never mind, Dart,” Ame whispered, hedging that it was the largest of the pixies who’d been roused by the snap of the traitorous stem. “Go back to sleep. She’ll be here soon, and you’ll need your strength then.”

She didn’t let the impending arrival of the cider witch hasten her forward. Rather, the old cat took the time needed to make sure her sneaking into the garden wouldn’t be noticed by the Stag Man’s spies. Blackbirds circled overhead and creatures with faelight in their eyes watched from the forest. When the moment was right, she wormed through the gap in the fence slats and darted up the garden path.

Ame disappeared into the tangle of morning glories and creeping myrtle beside the porch steps not a moment too soon. Hunched and tail tucked in tight, she watched the sky from behind the screen of leaves shielding her from view. When no alarm was raised by the spies, she wiggled around and tunneled through the network of vines until she reached the lattice barring the crawlspace.

It was no simple lattice of hem-fir—this had been fortified by a witch. And again by magic stolen by the Brotherhood.

Pressing her paw against a wooden crosshatch, Ame whispered, “ Aperio .”

The wood and the wards strengthening it didn’t want to comply, but the ex-familiar was a cat, after all, and exempt from many of the rules governing most magics. She’d also put the entire weight of her will behind the command. And, as everybody knew, intent was nine-tenths of magic. And her intent was to save the cider witch, and the farmhouse understood.

A hole appeared in the lattice, just big enough for her to squeeze through, and she disappeared into the crawlspace.

Just a few loping strides later and Ame was positioned on top of a compact pile of ashes and rosemary sprigs that had once hidden a grimoire. Above, cobwebs dangled from all but a set of floorboards that appeared more worn compared to their surrounding counterparts.

“ Aperio .”

There was a shout as the loose floorboards shot upwards, along with a braided rug, but the witches inside were too weak to react quickly enough to bar her entry. When she leapt out of the crawlspace and landed inside the farmhouse, another shout rang through the house. Not one of alarm, but to call off the attack .

Four witches—Peony and Eranthis in the kitchen, Tod in the dining room, and Hyacinth craned over the banister of the stairs—quickly snuffed out the magic wreathing their hands. Ame just flicked her tail, unperturbed on the outside but very much perturbed on the inside.

The Hawthornes had been too weak to summon battle magic. Was she, and Meadow, too late?

Tod was the first to recover. He bent to right the chair he’d launched out of at the dining room table. “Ame, how did you get inside? The wards—”

“Mean nothing to a cat.” She stood, flicking her rear foot free of ash, then padded past the two stunned witches in the kitchen and into the hearth room.

The farmhouse ember licked at a log of red cedar with the same pitifully slow cadence of a beaten dog cleaning its wounds. Ame sat on the hearth stones, which held none of their usual warmth, and craned her head back to examine the farmhouse at large. Despite the seven witches residing inside, it was merely a shell of its former self with its mistress gone.

“I’ll speak with the young witch now,” she told the elder witches crowded in the doorway. She heard Hyacinth’s hurt exhale and ignored it. “And I’ll have a bowl of that soup, if you please.”

The Hawthornes were so defeated by the loss of their matriarch, two of their young witches, their hearth ember, not to mention the inability to go outside and ground themselves, that they didn’t even protest. They obeyed willingly, and at speed. That set off another alarm within her, but Ame revealed no hint of her trepidation. Though she had every right to despise them, these witches needed hope. And for the love of her ward, Sawyer, and Fern’s great-niece, Meadow, who had proved her mettle time and time again, she would keep her bitterness to herself .

In minutes, Otter Hawthorne appeared with a bowl of beef-and-potato soup.

The young witch, thirty-something or so, looked gaunt. He’d always been on the willowy side, reminiscent of a lean and lithe Renaissance bard, but he now resembled more skeleton than witch. Or maybe a man with one foot in the grave. Deep in the grave.

Despite his appearance, there was no creaking of joints as he sank down into a cross-legged sitting position and set the bowl gently in front of her. He swept the long brown hair out of his eyes, gave her a tentative smile, and said, “Hello.”

His gentle, musical voice speared at the cold thing in her chest she called a heart. Despite everything he’d been through, all the terror and grief and betrayal, his eyes were still kind. He was still kind.

“You have Fern’s gentle heart,” she said abruptly, startling even herself. She’s hadn’t come here to talk about the good ol’ days when she’d been the happiest familiar alive bonded to the most amazing witch . . . before that witch’s sister had made them dissolve their bond.

The smile dropped from his lips with the same abruptness of a wintry mountain shedding an avalanche. A glassy sheen had come to his eyes at the mention of his grandmother. “I-I would’ve thought you would’ve wanted to talk to Mom. Hyacinth. Fern’s daughter.”

“She has her mother’s fear,” Ame spat. For decades Ame had solely blamed Iris for ripping Fern and her apart, but she’d come to accept that it had been by Fern’s own hand that their bond had broken. Her choice. Because she’d been afraid of a prophesy and of her own sister. “I want to talk to the one who has Fern’s hope.”

Otter swallowed, his now-prominent Adam’s apple bobbing like a vulture’s gullet .

“Have some of this soup,” Ame ordered. “You’re too thin.”

His smile was soft, so tender like Fern’s had been. “I don’t lack for food, Ame. But my hope is dwindling. You came here to tell us something?”

“Yes.”

Ame paused their conversation to lap up the soup, not stopping until every last shred of beef, bit of potato, and drop of broth had disappeared into her stomach. She hadn’t had a decent meal in over a week—faelight mice tasted awful —and she could digest as she talked.

“Would you like some more?” Otter offered.

“No, or I’ll be too heavy to outrun anything chasing me.” She took a moment to clean her whiskers and chin, then sat at attention. “Meadow is coming to the farmhouse. She’ll be here very soon. Eh,” she scolded as Otter leapt to his feet, “sit back down, boy. There is nothing you can do to prepare for her arrival, save for replacing the floorboards and rug when I leave.”

“But—”

“Shush. Just listen. Meadow’s memory has been tampered with, but she is awakening. Remembering. Yet the wards and illusions on the farmhouse are still strong enough to prevent her from interacting with you, as if you’re in parallel universes. She will not hear you, see you, smell you, or even perceive your presence. Except where your two universes overlap—the hearth.”

Having sat back down, Otter leaned forward so his elbows perched on his knees and asked quickly, “What do you want us to do?”

“Meadow is bringing the Hawthorne ember to recharge it in the hearth.”

As if the farmhouse ember could understand her words, the little yellow flame put on a burst of light and heat. It twisted and writhed, much like a toddler flailing about with gleeful abandon upon hearing she was receiving a puppy for Yule .

While heartened by the display, Ame ignored the flame and focused on Otter. “In doing so, the farmhouse will be rejuvenated. For a time. Meadow will eventually leave, and when she does, she must not take the ember with her. Either of them.”

The young witch wet his pale lips. “To take the Hawthorne ember back will be depriving my cousin of a very powerful resource. With a tampered memory and her magic curbed by that shield on her core, she needs all the help she can get against the Stag Man.”

“I agree. Which means she needs you all to get your fannies out of here. You will take the embers, you will use their power to boost your own, and you will free yourselves of this prison and get out of Redbud.”

“I am not leaving my daughter,” Forsythia snapped.

Ame whirled to find every Hawthorne witch packed shoulder to shoulder in the kitchen, watching them. Forsythia shoved her way into the hearth room, Tod quickly on her heels.

“Meadow is suffering this fate alone because we didn’t trust her with the truth.” Forsythia smeared the brimming tears from her eyes with an angry swipe of her fingers. “I’ll not handicap her again!”

“Meadow is not alone,” Ame told her calmly. “Sawyer has found her.”

“How much can a simple cat do for her against the Stag Man?”

“Sawyer Blackfoot is no simple cat .” Her claws sprang from her paws, grating against the hearth stones. “Not that I expect you to understand that. And you will leave, Forsythia Hawthorne, because in the end, that is the only way you can help your daughter.”

“But what of Mother?” Peony asked softly. “The Stag Man took our coven’s matriarch. We can’t leave her behind.”

“If Iris knew we jeopardized Meadow for a chance to save her too, she’d skin us alive.” Eranthis swallowed thickly, clearly unhappy with the words she was about to say. But, she was the family accountant and balancing risks was her specialty. “Violet’s heir is not expendable; the rest of us are, including Iris. It’s the reason why Iris, Fern, and Hare made a pact with Arcadis in the first place. Meadow is our priority. Iris wouldn’t want it any other way.”

The witches muttered amongst themselves, chafing under the callous assessment but unable to refute its logic or practicality.

Ame addressed what remained of the Circle of Nine: “You will leave Redbud so you can get that grimoire back into its protective cupboard where it belongs. It is by the Stag Man’s own hubris that he hasn’t realized what a cache of magic that spell book really is, and if he should acquire it, your coven will cease to exist and everything Meadow fought for would have been for nothing.

“You will go so you can come back at full strength and help free Redbud. The Coalition is on its way, but what they don’t know is that they will be in a fight for their lives. You all will.

“Meadow will become the primal witch of the prophesy. Meadow will anchor that portal to Elfame. And the Stag Man will attempt to consume her, body, magic, and soul, as he has done with the many witches before her. She will resist, of course, and then he will terrorize those she loves to make her submit. You cannot be his victims. And you cannot let her friends or this town become victims, either. Her heart is too big to choose herself over those she feels obligated to protect. That sacrifice will doom us all. So don’t give her the choice. Do you understand?”

Forsythia looked like she might protest again, but Tod took her arm and guided his wife against his chest, locking her there with a tight arm around her wiry frame. “We do. We will do as you say.”

The witches behind them nodded their agreement, their mouths pursed in grim lines.

“Good, then I must be off.” Ame turned to Otter, who was still seated on the floor on the opposite side of the dry soup bowl. “You may pet me in farewell, if you wish.”

A spark of joy kindled in the young witch’s face, and he reached forward to do just that. His long fingers disappeared into her fur at her jaw, nails scratching lightly against her neck. Just the way Fern used to do.

Before she could lose herself in the memory and lean into Otter’s touch, Ame lunged away and trotted towards the kitchen. The witches clustered inside hastily parted to let her pass then followed her to the hole in the hallway.

“When you return,” she told them, “I don’t know if the shield around Redbud will still be standing. If it is, come to the northern border. I have an access port growing there.”

It was a clever piece of magic, too: a ring of toadstools, the traditional transports of the Fair Folk. It was a half-ring, actually, but that’s where the Stag Man’s magic would work against him. The shield he had erected had a reflective quality to it when struck, and when the half-ring was done growing, a strike would create a full ring of toadstools, even for a moment. But a moment was all Ame needed to open the portal and allow the Coalition shifters to infiltrate the town.

“We’ll find it,” Tod assured her, and she didn’t doubt the tracker could.

“Don’t lose your nerve,” she told them, then jumped back into the crawlspace.

Her paws were silent on the packed earth, the only sounds coming from the witches as they replaced the floorboards and rug. Ame wiggled through the gap in the lattice, waited a beat in the myrtle to make sure the lattice closed behind her, then darted for the picket fence when the coast was clear.

One heartbeat passed, then two, and Ame was slinking through the weeds and brush until she was at the end of the driveway by the country road that led towards town. Across the street was a split-rail fence that had once corralled horses. She climbed up the nearest post, sucked in a deep breath, and released the most abrasive yowl her little body could muster.

Every spy in the sky, pasture, and forest arrowed in on her, and the chase began.

Ame led them east, in the opposite direction Meadow would be coming from.

“ Imaginari felis ,” she whispered, and a copy of her caliby cat self darted away to the left. Now her enemies had two cats to chase, one illusion and one real, and Ame prayed the ruse would work. And that she wasn’t captured, either. She was a far cry from the cat of her youth, but she had enough spunk and spite left to endure one last adventure. Yet mallaithe and sluagh and fiáin and faelight beasts would be the least of her worries if she was caught and brought to the Stag Man.

If I survive this , she thought, I’m going to let Shari turn me into the fattest house cat ever.