by Emma Savant
I wiggled in my chair. I had no chill, and I didn’t care. Grandma laughed at me.
“When did you find the time for this?”
I shrugged. “Was sketching a bit during the latest two meetings, and I try to do a little before bed. I squeeze things in here and there.”
“Me, too.” She pulled a box of chocolates out of her desk drawer and poked it across the table to me, then leaned back in her seat. “How is the plan coming?”
“It’s coming,” I said. It had been almost a month since I’d first gotten the coven and pack into a room together, a month full of collaboration the likes of which I hadn’t dared hope for, and the plan had been slowly coming into shape. “Alec has been helping a ton. The logistics are still ridiculous, though.”
“Logistics always are,” Grandma said. “But you’ve coordinated the better part of a fashion show. This should be easy.”
“That’s what I keep telling myself.”
I bit into one of the chocolates, and orange cream laced with fairy dust oozed out of the shell and across my tongue. Grandma picked up a white chocolate and turned it over, as if staring at it hard enough would tell her what was inside.
“These are from Mr. Brick,” she said, gesturing at the chocolates.
I almost spit mine out, but she waved a hand and popped hers into her mouth.
“Nothing wrong with them,” she said. “Trust me, I checked. It’s just a power play. I sent back an absurdly large flower arrangement and congratulated him on being named one of Magician Monthly’s most influential men of the year.”
“That’s, like, championship-level passive aggression,” I said. “Unless he’s trying to hint at a truce?”
Grandma scoffed. “He’s toying with me.”
“Might be good to get the word out that you’ll be at the Waterfall Palace fundraising dinner the night of the harvest festival,” I said.
“Already on it.” She leaned forward and propped one of her elbows on the desk so she could rest her chin in her hand. “Speaking of which, do you think the Burnsides took the bait?”
“The Wildwoods have been spreading the news,” I said with a shrug. “If I were a werewolf, I’d think our chosen spot was a perfect hunting ground. But I don’t know if they’ll take the bait.”
“It would be easier if we could infiltrate the pack.” Grandma sighed and reached for another chocolate. “We’ll do what we can and hope for the best. It’s worked for us so far.”
“Which is no guarantee it will work this time.”
But we couldn’t wait around for guarantees. We had an opportunity, and we had to take it. My job was to make sure we were ready.
I should have known that one of the biggest challenges would have come from within my own team.
“Brendan,” I said, as if somehow the mere mention of his name could knock some sense into his thick skull. “Why is this so hard for you to understand? Nelly isn’t going. You’re not more special than the Stiletto.”
I slammed the tea things around. Chances were good half the house could hear us, and I was glad. Maybe someone else would show up and knock some sense into him.
“It’s because I’m special that you want me to stay home,” Brendan said. “Newsflash: It’s not happening.”
“You’re an alpha.”
“Which means I should be there with my pack.”
“If Brick sees you there, you’re dead,” I said, turning on him with a half-filled kettle in my hand. Water sloshed onto the floor. “And if you’re dead, your pack is going to be without an alpha. So how exactly is that going to help anyone?”
“If Brick or Sienna see you,” he countered, “you’re also dead. You’re a future Stiletto, and Sienna hates your guts. Why do you think you’ve got a better shot than me?”
“I’m not an actual alpha.”
“No, you’re an actual Stiletto,” he said, mocking my tone.
He glared at me as if we were in the middle of a no-holds-barred staring contest, then raised his eyebrows.
“You’re wasting water.”
I spun back around to the faucet and finished filling the electric teakettle. It was unreal, how angry he made me sometimes. I would put my life in his hands without a second thought, but I also thought I might scream if we stayed in the same room for a minute longer.
I slammed the kettle into its base a little harder than was good for it and turned it on. I took a long, deep breath before turning back to face him.
He was sitting at the table, his jaw set in a stubborn line, and I wondered how difficult it would be to just tie him to that chair and leave him there.
“I’m not going to hide,” he said flatly. “Sienna murdered members of my pack. Any one of the Burnsides would murder you if they got a chance. I’m not going to lose the opportunity to avenge my family or let you put yourself in that kind of danger without me there to watch your back. Not. Happening.”
There was a finality to his words and the set of his jaw. I realized I may as well have tried to knock down this old brick mansion with the force of my breath, for all the good it would do me.
“I know you don’t like it,” Brendan said.
No apology followed. I set a mug on the table in front of him so hard I was surprised it didn’t crack.
“What kind of tea do you want?” I said.
“The kind that’s not made of wolfsbane,” he said.
I cut my eyes at him and dropped a mint teabag into my empty cup. The herb was supposed to be soothing, though I wasn’t sure even Grandma’s strongest witchy brews would be enough to stop me from being furious at him.
Alec wandered into the kitchen a moment later, Rowan on his heels.
“Sounds like everyone is very good friends in here,” Alec observed.
I pulled out my dry teabag and chucked it at his head. He caught it and tossed it back.
“Couldn’t help overhearing.” Rowan pulled a chair next to me and rubbed my back, soothing me like she did the coven’s toddlers whenever they threw themselves into tantrums over not getting the right color of sippy cup.
I knew I should feel insulted by the attention, but it felt nice and actually did calm my rage a bit. I dropped my head onto the table and let her have at it.
A moment later, the kitchen door opened again, and Cate came through. She helped herself to a mug and rummaged through the box of teabags without looking at us.
The wolves had gotten comfortable in the mansion over the past month, comfortable enough to help themselves to tea and whatever snacks were lying around, and it warmed my heart a little. Nothing bonded people like a shared enemy, Grandma had observed recently. I was learning the truth of that firsthand.
“None of the wolves are staying home.” Alec fixed me with his serious hazel eyes. “You hurt one member of the pack, you hurt us all. And Sienna hurt us badly.”
“You weren’t even in the pack at the time,” I grumbled, and everyone ignored me.
“Row, you have any more of those macarons?” Cate said.
“In the fridge,” Rowan said. “Container with the red lid.”
With fragile cookies and tea in front of me, and members of my expanded coven on every side, I finally felt myself relax.
I couldn’t blame Brendan for insisting he be part of our plan, I realized, looking around as everyone dug into the cookies and chatted about the plans we’d discussed at tonight’s meeting. There was nothing anyone could have said or done to keep me away, either, and I was in arguably more danger than all of them.
The danger didn’t matter, to Brendan or to me or to anyone else.
We would protect our families, no matter the cost.
30
The cold air bit at my face. Behind me, the lights of the Glimmering Harvest Festival sparkled and danced over a field covered in hay bales and tents. The air smelled like kettle corn and the smoke from the fires at the warming stations, and the rollicking music from the main stage gave the event a festive feeling.
I tugge
d my dark-red hoodie forward to make sure it concealed as much of my face as possible. Alec had given me the hoodie, since he claimed my red leather jacket was too recognizable even under a glamour, and it smelled like him, a bit like sawdust and cinnamon and forest air.
Clutching the paper of candied almonds I’d purchased just to make myself fit in more, I moved under a string of turnip lights, all carved with spooky faces and accompanied by an educational sign sharing the history of jack-o’-lanterns. The educational signs were all over the place, and each one dispensed magical tokens that were part of a scavenger hunt for all the kids. This was a family-friendly Glimmering event first and foremost, and that knowledge kept me on edge. I was standing on prime hunting ground, and I could barely afford to blink.
A line was forming over by the corn maze, and Blaze was there wearing a glamour and giving out tickets with shifting golden numbers on them that indicated the time each ticket holder could enter the maze. Close by, hidden in the middle of a stack of hay bales, one of the Wildwood werewolves used one of our brass dagger charms to let Blaze know which ticket holders smelled like Burnsides.
Someone touched my arm, and I jumped.
“It’s just me,” Alec said in a low voice.
I caught a whiff of the strong cologne he’d used to mask his scent. He had a different appearance tonight, with his russet hair glamoured to black and his skin a few shades paler than normal. His eyes were darker, but still large and long-lashed. At first glance, it would be easier to assume he was a vampire rather than a werewolf tonight. I hoped that would be enough to keep any of the Burnsides from looking at him twice.
“Too many Halloween costumes,” I said quietly. “Blaze has been insisting people remove their masks when she hands out tickets.”
“What’s the excuse there?”
“A one-time-through rule,” I said. “She’s been claiming the maze is so in demand that anyone who wants to go through a second time has to wait until after ten and keeps insisting to people that she never forgets a face.”
He laughed, or tried to, and handed me a paper cup of apple cider. I took it and sipped, keeping my face buried behind my hood.
“You know I’d rather you stay out of all this, right?” I said.
“You know I’d rather you stay out, too,” Alec said. “Doesn’t mean it’s going to happen for either of us.”
“Where’s Brendan?”
“In the maze,” Alec said. “The others are getting into position.”
Over at her station, Blaze checked a few tickets before waving a group of my coven sisters and their werewolf dates into the maze. They seemed like a group of ordinary Glimmering couples ready to face a few jump scares and sneak kisses in dark dead ends.
My stomach twisted itself into knots as the group disappeared between stalks of corn. I was sending them into a trap that would allow no escape. Once our sealing spell fell over the maze, there could be no backing out, no never-minds, no second chances. They would be in an arena with more werewolves than any of us had ever faced, and the responsibility for the decision to send them in there rested squarely on my shoulders.
Alec put an arm around me, giving us the appearance of intimacy and him the chance to whisper in my ear.
“This isn’t going to be wasted. I don’t have a way to guarantee that the whole pack is here, but Cate just clocked another group of them walking in and heading for the maze. And Matt says he overheard one of the Burnsides bragging about how this was easy hunting ground, since everyone will assume their victims are screaming for fun.”
The audacity of the Burnsides talking about their activities so openly unsettled my stomach. They were confident, and their confidence made me nervous.
“I’d feel better if the bait wasn’t our families,” I said.
“Come on, like anyone we know would be happy attending an ordinary fall festival,” he said. “It’s not a nice evening out unless there’s a little murder and mayhem.”
I tried to smile up at him, but it came out as more of a grimace.
“My sisters like that sort of thing,” I said. “I don’t know about your wolves. They came to Brendan because they wanted an escape, and I’ve given them a battle.”
“And they all chose to fight it,” he said.
He pulled me in for a quick hug, and I leaned into him.
We wandered through the booths, watching a hedge witch’s butter-churning demonstration and a group of pixies making candied apples almost as big as their heads. We passed a few more educational displays about hex moth farming and rampion cultivation, and stopped to scratch behind the ears of the pigs at the petting zoo.
Finally, the dagger charm under my shirt glowed warm, and I received a brief mental flash of a sharp man in a well-cut coat walking onto the field with his arm around a woman—a woman with dark-brown hair with red ombre tips.
Impulsively, I grabbed Alec’s hand. Near the corn maze, Blaze quietly handed the ticketing off to another volunteer, a teenage faerie who had no idea of anything that was going to happen tonight. Blaze slipped into the maze and was gone in an instant.
“They’re here,” I told Alec in a low voice.
We ducked behind a stack of hay bales and waited. Alec leaned me against the bales in a perfect imitation of an overeager boyfriend and shielded me, just in case they came around this way. I breathed in his clean sawdust scent and waited.
My charm flashed hot again.
It was time.
31
We flashed our tickets at the faerie, and she waved us in. Seconds after we stepped into the maze, my charm flashed hot again, and this time it stayed hot. I counted to ten, and then the heat faded. I pulled my hand away from Alec’s and reached into my boot. I closed a hand around my dagger.
The spell, held at each corner of the maze by one of my sisters, had fallen. The maze was sealed off. No one could exit until they lifted the spell, and no one would lift the spell until every Burnside werewolf had been accounted for.
My skin tingled, and my heart raced as the quiet darkness of the maze settled in around me.
We crept quietly forward, listening for the distant sounds of others in the maze over the soft, spooky music that drifted down from speakers hidden in the corn. I heard the soft click of a tongue, a warning, and then someone in monster makeup jumped out at us and roared. I screamed, the way any jumpy woman might have, and the Wildwood in the makeup whispered to us, “They’re up ahead. We’re trying to herd them to the center.”
I nodded, and the girl fell into step behind us. We walked under cobwebs crawling with enchanted spiders and past jack-o’-lanterns whose flames flared as we passed. Every time one of the wolves or witches staffing the maze jumped out to scare us, we feigned surprise and waved them to follow.
Up ahead, a few raised voices spoke.
“This maze was better last year when that sorcerers’ group was running it,” a man said. “Still, this year’s staff can’t be beat.”
This was met with sniggers and laughter. I exchanged glances with Alec and pulled down my hood. A tendril of dark hair that had come loose from my braid fell into my eyes. I brushed it aside and stepped forward. I felt as if I might miss something or give us away if I inhaled too loudly, so I kept my breaths shallow and ears strained for the next sound.
Someone jumped out at the group ahead of us. A few people screamed, and one man swore loudly before laughing. Their footsteps stopped.
“Nice makeup,” the guy said. There was a long silence, and then he spoke again. “I think this is as good a place for us to start as any, don’t you?”
“Don’t be greedy,” a woman said. “Let the rest of us get ahead, at least, before they all start running out of the maze.”
“You can’t just run out of a maze,” the man replied. “That’s the whole point of coming to one.”
“Still, at least give me a chance,” she whined. “I don’t want to have to chase them.”
Someone roared, as if whoever was staffing the po
int up ahead was trying to get them to move on. The wolves ignored her.
“I like when they run,” another man said. “That’s half the fun. It’s not like you get enough exercise anyway, Bri.”
A few of the wolves barked with laughter, and I took the chance to inch forward without being heard. I caught a hint of movement around the next corner through the corn stalks and stopped to peer through the gaps.
There were at least five of them, plus Phoenix in zombie makeup and tattered clothes. She was one of the youngest of the teen Daggers staffing the maze tonight, and my heart clenched at the sight of her.
I’d fought against allowing the younger girls to participate, but they had argued for their right to be involved, and I had ultimately been overruled, by both them and Grandma, who insisted that they were our best chance at tempting the Burnsides to attack.
I knew the wolves couldn’t touch Phoenix. The charmed bracelet firmly fastened around her wrist would prevent them from being able to make any kind of contact with her body. The charms had been difficult and time-consuming to create, so we’d only given them to the youngest girls. I couldn’t help wishing every Dagger and Wildwood in this maze had the same kind of protection.
She stepped backwards, away from the wolves, and roared again. The sound was timid this time.
“Fine, you guys go ahead,” the first man said. He leaned in toward Phoenix, and she shrank back into the rustling stalks. “I’m going to stay and get better acquainted.”
He grabbed at the fabric of her zombie costume and yanked her toward him. He couldn’t touch her, but he could do anything he wanted to her clothing. My stomach twisted.
The other werewolves moved forward, deeper into the maze. Silently, attention still fixed on what I could see of Phoenix through the corn stalks, I reached into my jacket. My fingers closed around one of the tiny barbs that filled my pockets.
I waved at the others to stay where they were and crept around the corner. The man was leaning in toward Phoenix, talking to her in a soft voice, and the terror on her face was enough that I wished I’d held my ground and insisted she and the others stay home.
