***
If it weren’t for the fact that I could hear my pulse pounding in my ears, I would have sworn I’d blacked out.
Shadows so dense that evenIcouldn’t see through them plunged the room into a kind of black-hole darkness, and it took me a painful moment to realize they were coming from me.
I felt them creep up my arms, forming talon-tipped fingers that gouged into the table as if my body were trying to anchor me there, to force me to stay and hear Ambrose out. But every instinct I had was screaming at me to move. To find the witch—the siren witch—who had kept my best friend,my mate, under compulsion for the last week.
It wasn’t until a large, warm hand settled over mine, and a much smaller, delicate one rubbed my arm from the other side, that I finally began to calm.
My chest was still heaving as the darkness receded, the shadow-talons dissolving as my pulse slowly steadied.
All I wanted to do was pull Ambrose into my arms. To reassure myself that he was here. That he was alive.
And suddenly, I understood.
This must have been howhehad felt all those months ago.
But I didn’t have time to sit with that realization—to wonder whether Ambrose’s reaction that night had been born of something deeper than friendship, if it was the reaction of a mate—because the sharpclankof ceramic on wood echoed through the room.
I glanced down.
Creep sat on her seat, a clenched ceramic fist braced against the table she’d just thumped, quivering with barely contained rage. Her other hand pointed accusingly at the deep gouges my talons had left behind, her glare snapping between me and the ruined surface.
“Sorry, Creep,” I muttered.
I half expected her to leap from the chair and retreat to the attic to plot her revenge. Instead, she crossed her arms, jutted her chin skyward, and glared pointedly at the ceiling.
“Creep, now’s not the time to plot murder over a damn table,” Caitlyn said.
The mania was gone from her tone, replaced by something sharp-edged and worried, as though Ambrose’s revelation had reset her entirely. Her lips were drawn tight, and she seemed to be fighting a losing battle to school her expression into calmconcern when what she clearly wanted was to hunt down Isadora and hex all her limbs clean off.
Without another word, she pulled out her phone and began furiously typing.
“What are you doing?” I asked, my voice cracking with the remnants of anger.
“I’m texting my best friend’s brother, Jake,” she said. “He’s, like, the smartest person in the coven.” She paused, then added, “Academically, at least. And he’s dating—” Another pause, longer this time, as though she were swallowing a string of curses. “—Isadora’s daughter, Priscilla.” Her jaw tightened. “He may not be emotionally intelligent, but he’ll know what to expect from a half witch, half siren. And he can give us a heads-up on how she’s likely to try to steal the house—seeing as she tried to steal houses before she was exiled.”
Caitlyn finished with a sharp, angry tap of her finger, then slid the phone back into the pouch of her overalls.
“You don’t need him to tell you,” Ambrose said quietly. “I already know.”
The silence that followed was palpable.
“Her compulsion can only last a few hours at a time,” he continued. “That’s why she wouldn’t let me leave the house, even to get groceries. Why she was reluctant to let me go into the forest to confront the hob. The farther I got from her, the more like myself I felt again.” He worried his bottom lip. “I still couldn’t tell I was under compulsion, but I could recognize that something was wrong.”
Ambrose hesitated, then went on. “Just before I managed to escape, I overheard her in her spell room.” He paused again, brows furrowing as though he knew what he was about to say would sound ridiculous. “She had a conch. You know, one of those seashells? I don’t know the exact mechanics, but I overheard her singing into it, and I believe it captures andconcentrates her song.” His gaze flicked to the doll. “I think she plans to get it into the house somehow. For it to take control of...” He paused. “Creep, was it?”
Creep’s fixed smile seemed somehow to widen.
“Okay,” Caitlyn said. Her voice sounded distant. “Okay. Well. We can handle that. She’s one person against the three of us. Not to mention Creep.” Caitlyn glanced down at the doll. “You can handle her if she gets past us, right? Drop a chandelier on her or something?”
Creep responded with a sharp, military nod.
I had a horrible feeling that whatever methods were now racing through Creep’s mind were far more inventive—and far more horrifying—than falling chandeliers.
Ambrose shook his head. “She’s dangerous, Caitlyn. She can just sing her song, and she could have one of us wrapping our hands around the other’s neck, and we’d do it gladly.”
“Isadora is a bitch, sure,” Caitlyn said, “but it’s not like she’s going to murder—”
