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PROLOGUE, PART I

HALLOWEEN, 1987

VINCENT

If I’m gonna pull this spell off, tonight’s probably the best night to cast it.

I check my front door. It’s locked. My house is located off a side street, tucked in the center of a shadowy cul de sac, but I know better than to think that the costumed neighborhood kids won’t traipse all the way over to see what kind of candy that they can find on Brandywine. Just in case, I put a ‘sorry, all out of treats’ sign on my door before pulling the curtain closed.

For the kiddies, Halloween is the time for dressing up as Gumby and Obi-Wan Kenobi, shouting ‘trick or treat’, and being prepared to TP any house that doesn’t hand out Snickers and Milky Ways.

If you’re a witch, it’s something else entirely.

The veil between realms is thinner tonight. Magic is infinitely stronger. Behind closed doors, covens will gather and take advantage of the supernatural boost, especially in a hidden supe town like Spellbrook.

That’s if you’re a witch. But if you’re a warlock like I am?

Well…

Our kind of supe is known to experiment on our own. With magic certainly, and if you don’t know the difference between what I’m going to do tonight and a gaggle of witches, then I can’t help you.

There’s a difference. I promise you that. Even if we have a few similarities, too, we are completely unique supernatural races… who just so happen to both be able to do magic and cast spells.

Hopefully like this one…

I glance down at the folded piece of torn paper on my kitchen table as I take a seat, then at the collection of ingredients I’d already gathered together for tonight. I have a pair of black candles and a box of matches. Some dried rosemary, straight out of my spice cabinet. A bag of catnip that I got from a local pet store. There’s a small vial of my own blood—which was a pain in the ass to collect by myself without it spilling everywhere—and a pre-brewed potion that I spent all of October working to perfect as a backup plan.

Oh, and the spell that I stole from a witch.

Well, not just a witch. If I’m being technical, the library that I broke into so I could—gasp—rip this page out of a guarded grimoire is a witch library, run by a team of supernatural librarians, and both owned and protected by the coven in Spellbrook, the nearest witch town to Weston, the ordinary, non-supe hamlet where a warlock like me can lead an ordinary life.

During the day, I’m a pharmacist at Weston Apothecary. It’s your everyday, run of the mill, small mom and pop drugstore, but when I first moved to Weston a few years ago, the fact that the century-old shop was called an apothecary in a town that not only didn’t boast a warlock order, but was also completely free of all other supernatural races… of course I had to apply for the vacant job. A little glamour, a little boost of my magic so that my resume as a warlock with an affinity for chemistry and herbs made me a perfect candidate for the pharmacist position, and I’ve been doling out over-the-counter and behind-the-counter prescriptions ever since.

That’s during the days. At night, I do what most warlocks do: I practice my magic, I take notes in my ledgers, I perform spells, fiddle with curses, and—most of all—I go in search of my one true mate.

Before tonight, I’d accepted that I would probably have to leave Weston soon. It’s been three years, and the feeling that led me here, the certainty that I’d find my mate somewhere near has faded. Worse, nothing has replaced it. My instincts are quiet.

It’s like she doesn’t exist at all.

I’m stubborn enough that I refuse to believe that. She might not be in Weston, but she’s got to be out there somewhere, and I’ve made it my mission to find her. And since there isn’t an incantation known to warlocks that would help me locate my mate, I decided that my best bet would be to use a different sort of magic.

Witch magic.

Witches have it easy. Their sort of magic is simple: if you want something, let yourself have it. With the right amount of power, the simplest of spells will work with very little training. There are specialties. Rare ones, like witches with an affinity for cursebreaking or elemental magic like the elusive fire witch, but also those who specialize in potions and transport spells and⁠—

Love spells.

It took months of research before I discovered that there was a bound grimoire in Spellbrook that might help me track down my mate. By the time I figured out a plan, it was almost All Hallow’s Eve. If the supernatural boosts helped witches, I didn’t see why it wouldn’t help a practiced warlock trying his hand at one of their spells.

I mean, how hard can it be?

I feel bad about stealing the spell, but I didn’t have any other choice. Witches and warlocks… we don’t get along. We never have. Humans tend to think a warlock is just the male version of a witch. Nope. There are plenty of men who are witches, but warlocks are a different sort of supe. The more intellectual of the two, we prefer to understand how magic works rather than waving our hands and wishing for something.

We’re also considerably rarer than witches—which brings me to my current problem.

I’m thirty-one years old, and somewhere out there is the woman fate supposedly created for me.

Warlocks have true mates. Witches don’t. Neither do humans, as far as I know. Wolves have their own version of a forever mate, something to do with their moon goddess, and vampires occasionally find a beloved bride if they keep their heads on their necks long enough, but for a warlock, there is one woman whose magic is made to complement his own.