13 Jasper
JASPER
Rock music blasts through the speakers hanging from the rafters of my woodshop as I run the sander in smooth, even circles over the top of this reclaimed cherry wood dining table.
It’s a commissioned piece I was supposed to have finished last week.
The chairs all sit neatly stacked in the corner, wrapped and ready for shipment.
I hate being late with a project. If I say I’m gonna do a thing, I fucking do it.
On time. Every time. I’ve just been so distracted.
Balancing all my obligations has left me feeling like a scrap of meat twisted and torn apart by a pack of wild dogs.
Everyone wants a piece of Jasper Prescott these days. My time, my money, my opinion, my sway.
I have sway now. When the hell did that happen?
When Mom was alive, I never had sway. She minded the coven, and I minded my own business.
She ran Salt & Sage too. Gracie was the dutiful apprentice, the high priestess in waiting.
Everyone adored her and looked to her for greatness.
Captain of her softball team. Apple Queen at the Founder’s Day Festival.
Earth witch of prodigious skill. She was everyone’s favorite.
She was my favorite.
To watch her waste away? To watch the life drain from her eyes?
All that potential, all that magic, Burr Island’s every hope and dream .
. . gone. Five years ago, she died and every eye on this island turned to me.
The lesser of the two Prescotts. The lone wolf.
They handed me a crown I never wanted and now I can’t take it off. Now I have sway.
Salt & Sage is my legacy. The furniture business is mine.
I’m a landlord. A committee chair. A board member.
A high priest. A surrogate father. Got a problem?
Take a fucking ticket. Wait in line. If I’m not arguing with suppliers over missing shipments for the store, I’m sparring with the island council over proposed new rules about parking zones and shopfront beautification.
Our shop has been painted the same color since before the Civil War. I’m not changing it now.
But I can’t care about shopfront beautification.
Not when I know something is haunting my fucking shop.
Something is here. Some malevolent force, intent on watching me.
I’ve tried handling it on my own, but nothing is working.
The lone wolf in me hates asking for help, but that’s what coven is.
I have to tell them. I have to get over this idea that I’m failing when I ask for help. Otherwise, I’m no better than Mom.
With a frustrated groan, I click off the sander.
Setting it aside, I tug my bandana from the pocket of my jeans and wipe my sweaty brow.
It’s not often I let myself think about Mom.
Esther Prescott was a prolific witch. She served as high priestess of the Burr Island Coven for more than twenty years.
As de facto queen of the island, she ran everything.
I was her only son, her oldest child. And she hated me.
I’m sure I didn’t help much. I was a wild and angry kid, prone to breaking things—hearts, heads, occasionally furniture.
She resented my lack of ambition, and she was jealous of anyone she saw as more powerful than her.
I think if she had things her way, I’d be the one dead in a box, not Gracie.
I also think she never wanted to be a mother.
She tolerated us at best, always neglecting us in favor of the shop, the coven, and her many messy love affairs.
The coven raised us. The Dents came over with meals at the start of each week.
Alora Poole took Gracie and Frankie to the mainland for softball games.
When Gracie got pregnant at fifteen, Hortie moved in and never left.
She’s more of a gran to Phoebe than Mom ever was.
If I have a weakness on this island, it’s Hortense Hastings.
That witch saved me from myself. She was the one who started me woodworking.
Got me sober too. Kept me out of Mom’s way and gave me purpose, a skill beyond running my damn mouth.
Hortie showed me the power in fixing things, not breaking them.
That’s why I like restoration projects, taking old, broken things and giving them new life.
It soothes the green witch in me, helps me feel more in touch with my magic, my essence as a creator.
As I reach again for the sander, my phone buzzes in my pocket. Muttering a curse, I check the caller ID. Chuck Greenwood? This can’t be good. My witch’s intuition hums like a hive of bees in my chest as I mute the music and answer the call. “Chuck, what?”
“Hey, Jasper. Hate to call you on a Sunday like this. You in the shop today?”
“Just tell me what you need.”
He heaves a heavy sigh.
Chuck’s family has been on this island almost as long as mine, but there’s not a drop of magical blood in it.
Still, he has his uses. He sits on a number of important boards, including the Island Zoning Commission and the Historical Society.
I don’t even have to pay him to give me information.
He offers it willingly because his wife, Hazel, is in my coven.
“Look, I don’t know what happened,” Chuck hedges.
“I thought we weren’t voting on any new permits until next month at the earliest. Then this morning I get an email saying they’re calling an emergency zoning meeting fifteen minutes before the meeting started, something about needing a research permit expedited. ”
I stifle a growl, clutching tighter to the phone. “On a Sunday morning with no fucking notice? Who called the meeting?”
“I don’t know, Jas. They said it came down from the governor’s office. Some fancy suit was there citing all kinds of statutes and state laws. Total word salad. Long story short, those permits for Beale Pointe just went through. I’m sorry, I just couldn’t stop it this time.”
I slam my fist on the tabletop. “Damn it, Chuck. What are the permits for? What are they gonna do?”
“I can swing by your house within the hour with a copy. But it’s expansive . . . it’s everything we feared.”
My heart fucking drops.
Everything we feared.
Chuck Greenwood has no idea what I fear. To him, the supernatural world is limited to his wife and daughter lighting candles on Mabon and doing seances in the attic. There’s an entire world of magic and mayhem that exists all around him that he never sees.
Meanwhile, I am the high priest of one of the oldest covens on this continent. He can’t possibly fathom the horrors my mind can conjure. He can’t see the patterns either, the intricate webs of connection that all lead back to . . .
Oh.
Fuck me to hell on a knotty fucking broomstick!
“Jas? You okay?”
“It’s Homewood,” I say into the phone.
Chuck is clearly confused. “Yeah, I know it’s about Homewood. That’s what I’m saying. The zoning permits just went through—”
“No, it’s all about Homewood,” I say over him.
“What is?”
My mind all but sparks with electricity as I piece it all together. This is the first moment of clarity I’ve had in weeks. “All of this started as soon as that hiker got lost in the woods after that damn storm!”
“All of what?”
I stop answering his questions. Chuck is a friend, and loyal to his bones, but he’s not in my coven. Only witches are in the Burr Island Coven. Chuck doesn’t get to know all my inner thoughts.
Gods, why didn’t I see the pattern sooner?
The feeling of being watched by the ravens started right around the same time that Homewood was first rediscovered.
Ezra Howe and the historical society swooped in like a pack of hungry wolves, turning the forest into a circus of mainland media and nosy tourists.
All that attention secured him a mysterious private grant, fully funding his dig project for two fucking years.
Since that moment, he’s steamrolled his way through every board and committee on the island.
Approvals to clear trees, build an access road, set up permanent structures.
I’ve tried every legal way I know to stop him or at least slow him down.
Because there’s no way in hell this is just about excavating some old colonial-era farm buildings.
No, he’s looking for something, I can feel it.
And this feeling is starting to keep me up at night.
Homewood is sacred to me. It’s where it all first began, the founding of our island. Every witch in my coven can recite the names of the Sacred Five, the witches who first sought peace and sanctuary on this windswept pile of rocks:
Charity Ames.
Mathilde Blake.
Alice Dent.
Sybil Hastings.
Be-Good Prescott.
What is he looking for, sisters? What secrets did you leave behind?
As always, no answer comes.
We all thought Homewood was lost to the ages, buried by the forest soon after the people of Calumet took up their torches and pitchforks and burned our First Five to ash.
But now Homewood has been found.
And I’m being followed, my every move watched.
A dark shadow looms on the horizon, inching ever closer to Burr Island’s shores.
It can’t all be coincidence. Someone is helping Howe speed this along, someone off island.
Someone with the power to pull strings in the governor’s office.
How else could he get these new permits rush-approved on a Sunday morning?
Is the same malevolent someone having me watched?
I think it’s time to pay Howe a little visit.
Birdie’s warning from yesterday lingers in my mind.
I haven’t stopped picturing the Death card in her hands.
I even dreamed of the Skeleton Rider last night.
In tarot, Death is a sign of new beginnings.
A king has fallen. What new world will rise from the ashes?
But has the king already fallen? Or is he still falling?
Is the pulling of that card meant to be an omen, a sign of my impending doom?
Never.
This island has stood against the forces of malevolent magic for four hundred years.
We can bless the Sacred Five that our wards remain strong, nigh on impenetrable.
Whoever this watcher is, I will root them from this land and drown them in the sea.
I am Jasper fucking Prescott and Burr Island is mine.
“Jas?” Chuck says on the phone. “What do you want me to do here, bud?”
Fuck, am I still on this call? “Where are you?”
“At the store,” he replies. “Sunday’s our busiest day, you know that. It was all I could do to slip out to make the meeting. Maybe I shouldn’t have bothered. Without me, they wouldn’t have had a quorum. I really am sorry—”
“It’s not your fault.” I move around the shop, powering down my equipment. “I’m coming to you right now. Don’t fucking move, okay? Be ready with a copy of all the permits.”
“Yeah, of course. Is there anything else you want me to do?”
“Do nothing.” Jerking open the door of my truck, I climb inside the cab. “I’ll handle this myself.”