“Wait, you’ve been here before? Were you invited, or were you trespassing then, too?”
He grinned, his long canines gleaming. “Oh, I was a guest. The witch who lived here would host the most excellent gatherings for sisters of the coven. Deipnon, solstice, casting sessions . . . the food was always excellent, and we would dance until the sky lightened. Pernella knew how to throw a party. There was never a question of that. Mau? Ilemauzer? As I said, they’re a contemporary. They’re of the . . . feline persuasion, if you will.”
“Ilea. Their name is Ilea.”
The man snorted, rolling his eyes. “Is that what they’re calling themselves these days? No matter. Where can I find them?”
Harper grit her teeth. She wasn’t Ilea’s personal assistant, and she didn’t care for this attractive, gothic man’s assumption that she would jump to aid him. “They live in the main house. Not here. So, like I said, you should go. Wait, you knew my Great Aunt Pernella? How?”
Her grandmother’s sister had beenan eccentric, as she’d been told as a child. A solitary witch who practiced alone, isolated from the coven, and most unwelcome at gatherings. At least, according to her grandmother.
The man was too young to have known her great-aunt.Let alone to have partied with her.She swallowed down a snort at the thought. He looked to be no older than his early thirties at most, but if he was like Ilea . . . Harper gulped again. Familiars were tricky creatures. Shapeshifters possessing no true power of their own, acting as conduits for witches to realize and enhance their abilities . . . but this mandidpossess power, she could tell, and the longer she looked at him, the greater and more obvious it seemed. The vibration of magic within him was so strong that he nearly wavered at his edges. Perhaps it was merely the effect of the form he assumed, but he seemed like a witch in his own right, at least to her.He definitely doesn’t look like he’d be following anyone around with a headset and a clipboard.
“I did indeed. My witch was often a guest of hers.”
“You’re a familiar then? A friend of Ilea’s?”
His smile stretched, canines gleaming. “Why does, I wonder, the notion of that make you grip your little butter knife so hard, girl?”
Heat suffused her, creeping up her neck, but she held firm. She wouldn’t have Ilea tainting her home with their poisonous tongue, and if this man was Ilea’s friend, he needed to leave. “If you’re a friend of Ilea, you’re not a friend of mine. So, like, it’s time to get out. No offense.”
He continued to grin. “None taken. The enemy of mine enemy is mine friend, is that it? Well, I suppose that makes us the best of friends. Ilemauzer is no friend of mine. Your great aunt, was it?”
Harper knew it was likely ridiculous, a consequence of her troubled mind, but his declaration made her shoulders sag in relief. If he was an enemy of Ilea’s, even a superficial bitch-eating-crackers enemy, he could stay as long as he liked.
“My great-aunt, yes. My grandmother’s sister. Did you know her too? My grandmother said Aunt Pernella was a bit of a shut-in? Isolated from the coven. And you didn’t answer me.”
The man grinned again, stepping slowly around the room, examining her things. “Yes,” he answered at last, his gaze swinging from the stack of ice cream bowls collecting on her end table to her face, “I’m a familiar. I am Holt.”
Something deep inside her shivered, her primal witchy center, although she didn’t know why.
“I have always been Holt, and I always will be, so you never need to worry about someone barging through your door in ten years asking for me by some silly nickname. If you call for me, it will only ever be by my name.”
Harper bit her lip to keep from grinning, her grip on the knife slackening. She tried to imagine herself still here in a decade, perhaps working at the tea shop, hosting the witchy parties her great aunt allegedly had, this cocksure familiar in attendance.
“And no offense to your bloodline, witchling, but your grandmother was always a little idiot. A commonplace talent, more concerned with appearances and her gossiping friends to ever be of true value to the coven. A shut-in? Pernella? Solitary? Hardly. The only group she was isolated from were the other run-of-the-mill witches with pedestrian skills.”
Harper nearly choked on her outraged laughter.Hergrandmother? Her fussy, don’t sit on the good furniture, don’t run?don’t yell?don’t breathe too strangely grandmother? The one as preoccupied with perfection as Harper’s mother?Where do you think mom learned it?
“Once Authricia stepped down,” the cat-man went on, “your grandmother’s nasty-minded little coterie of dull plodders took control, which is how we find ourselves in such a sorry state today. Fortunately, their time is waning.” Harper gaped as he shrugged, turning away once more. “Sorry if you’re extremely devoted to this coven, witchling. Like I said, no offense.”
“None taken,” she echoed his words with another strangled laugh. Since she wasn’t currently enrolled in study, the coven expected her to continue attending the junior meetings, alongside teenagers, and she would sooner become a Buddhist. The notion of her haughty, hoity-toity grandmother being called acommonplacetalentby this goth familiar positively tickled her. “Did you know my mother?”
He turned again, thick black brows coming together for a moment. “Hmmm . . . no, I don’t believe I did. We were in a state of flux for a bit, my witch and I.”
“She hasn’t been an active member of this coven for a long time. She met my father in school, and they got married as soon as she was finished with the Collegium. They moved back to my dad’s hometown, and he ran the family forge with his brother. We only moved back here recently, since . . . since he died.” There it was again, that niggling little itch to give voice to the maelstrom of emotion within her. She kicked it back, hoping he didn’t notice the way her voice wavered.
“And Ilemauzer belongs to her?”
“Yes. Ilea has been with her since she was a girl.”
Holt sniffed. “Then I suppose she must be a slightly less pedestrian witch than your grandmother. That bodes very well for you, if we’re counting backwards.”
“I-I’m not so sure about that.”
“Aren’t you, though? You come from a long line of witches, some of them great ones. Areyounot a witch, girl? Or are you only playing make-believe by dressing like one?”
Her grip tightened around the knife. Never mind that he was right. Never mind that she was barely a witch at this point, was likely as pedestrian and commonplace as her grandmother, never mind that she was a drop-out and a failure with no real future and no idea what to do with herself. She wasn’t going to stand here and let some mangy, probably flea-bitten tomcat insult herwardrobein her own home.
