Chapter 1
ONE
If one more tree branch snagged her skirt or tangled in her hair, Blaire was going to scream. It was bad enough she had to trudge up a Horned God-damned mountain in the middle of the night without even considering what waited for her at the summit.
Or rather, who.
Joss Braddox.
Josephine.
Soft, sweet, silken Josephine.
Heart-breaking Josephine.
She couldn’t have called first? Or come by the house to say, “Hello, I’m sorry I vanished on you four years ago and, whoops, I guess I shouldn’t have gone no-contact if I was going to end up right back here as your boss.”
Well, sort of boss. Hedge witches and C.R.O.W.
witches had a weird relationship. Blaire could have said no to the summons, it was within her rights as a hedge witch.
She wasn’t beholden to the same laws as a witch sanctioned by the Coven for the Regulation and Oversight of Witches.
Yes, they had to play by a version of the rules: no hexing the mortals, no excess displays of magick, no making a scene.
But drawing notice had never been desirable to a hedge witch. They were root workers and hearth keepers and their work was vital to ensuring the pulse of magick in their holler remained strong.
The Hedge Witches of Hexen Holler fed their bodies, blood, and Souls into the earth, their effort strengthening the land and the C.R.O.W. witch in charge.
She could have ignored the summons. She could have written back a scathing reply or demanded answers. She could have burned the missive, bottled the ashes, and used them in a protection spell. But how could she say no to Joss?
The last Witch of the Demesne had begrudgingly involved Blaire’s family and the other hedge witches around Hexen Holler. Their invitations to rituals came late or not at all, their wards were disrupted, and their voices tolerated but not heard.
But Joss … Joss had inherited the mantle of Witch of the Demesne from her grandmother and with her first official act, she summoned Blaire to the summit of Roan Mountain.
“A warding ritual,” the scroll read.
“An abuse of power,” her Ma argued. “The Braddox family has no right to demand we pay into the ritual. ‘Specially not that daughter a theirs. Our holler was just fine without it. Our wards held, and no pack a stuffy poison witches had any say in the what or how.”
“It’s one ritual, Ma,” Blaire argued. “And shouldn’t we want to have our magick involved? We’ve been in the holler as long as the Braddox line.”
“An’ what gives them the right to the Demesne?”
“Literally every governing law of their coven.”
Ma hadn’t liked that answer and reprimanded Blaire for sass before storming off. She’d barely spoken to her in the two days since, and now Blaire was trudging up an overgrown trail in the middle of the night, cursing her robes and the summons’ demand that she wear them.
Who wore robes in the twenty-first century, much less robes and nothing else? It was archaic.
“I bet C.R.O.W. witches don’t have to wear robes,” she grumbled and ducked under another low branch. “Bet this was some sick power play to put the hedge witch in place.”
Gnarled twigs caught in the hood, yanking the fabric and choking Blaire. So, as promised, she screamed.
“Quiet!” an all-too-familiar voice rang out. “The warding potions are sensitive; one wrong vibration, and I have to start all over.”
“Sorry, not sorry,” Blaire snarled, jerking the excess fabric free from the tree.
“I know,” Joss sighed, her voice far closer than at first. “Thank you, I mean, for coming. But please, try to keep your voice low. If I don’t do this right tonight, it’ll be another month before I can try again.”
Blaire twisted around and found Joss a handful of feet away, gesturing with long, ring-bedecked fingers to the full moon in the sky.
Her breath caught at the sight of the tall, lean witch in silken robes dripping down her body like oil.
Moonlight rippled over the fabric, highlighting the curve of her shoulders and bust, gathering as darkness at Joss’s narrow waist only to spill out in a lovely blue-white sweep at her hips.
Blaire swallowed, her tongue suddenly dry and throat far too tight.
Four years, and the witch still held sway over her. Four years of nothing, and at her first glimpse, Blaire was ready to drop to her knees and beg for the barest scrap of attention.
As it turned out, she did not need to.
“I’m so sorry,” Joss blurted. She darted forward, a hand held out as if to grab Blaire’s robes or push her away. It was hard to tell as she began curling and flexing her fingers, torn between desires. “Horned God, Blaire, I’m so sorry. I never meant to—”
“Vanish?” All the bitterness of the last four years, all the hurt, put acid in her tone. “To leave without a word? You disappeared, Joss.”
“I know.”
“All we knew was you’d been named heir, and then you were gone.
I thought Hexen Holler meant more to you; I thought we meant more.
” She slapped her breastbone. A sting of pain webbed out, and Blaire bit off a sob.
She glanced at the potions bubbling in their cauldrons and flasks over low fires.
The ritual circle carved into the earth.
Mother, Maiden, and Crone hadn’t she felt each drag of that knife over her skin as she climbed Roan Mountain?
Felt the twist of that blade in the earth as if it were her own heart?
“I thought we were gonna—we were supposed to—”
“I wanted to,” Joss said in a soft, defeated voice. “Goddess knows, I wanted to. Gran named me heir, and I tried to sneak out the window. To come here, like we planned.” She swept an arm at the clearing. “My mom was waiting in the drive.”
“Your mom?” Blaire backstepped. Geraldine Braddox had acted as the steward of Hexen Holler in her daughter’s absence, tending the demesne with small magicks, just enough to keep it in the family line until Joss came back. If she ever came back.
Geraldine was an institution, a pillar of their tiny mountain town society.
If there was a fire, Geraldine was there with a bucket of moon water.
If a child was sick, she brewed the remedy.
She had attended the birth of Blaire’s niece and poured the wine at her cousin’s wedding.
Geraldine lived and breathed Hexen Holler.
“She sent me down to Charlotte.”
“Charlotte,” Blaire repeated, too dumbfounded to do anything but. Charlotte was only a few hours away—a day trip. There was no reason Joss could not have called or written or, nine rings, come home for Samhain at least once.
“And Aragon, for a year,” Joss continued.
“?esky Krumlov after that. Glasgow, Berlin, Paris.” She fumbled with her robes, sweeping the sleeves back and dancing her fingers in a sigil.
A bundle of papers and cards, tied together with string, appeared in her hand.
She held it out. “I wrote you. So many times, I wrote you, trying to explain, but my Mom—and whenever I tried to—” Joss bit off whatever she was trying to say, lips curling back in a grimace.
She paused, blinked, then looked down at the bundle in her hand.
A mystified expression overtook her face, and then she shook the parcel at Blaire, silently pleading with her to take it. “I’m so sorry.”
Blaire came closer, taking the bundle and cocking her head as Joss sighed in relief.
She swept a hand over her shaved head, blinking at the moon, her lips pressed tight together.
Flipping through the bundle, Blaire caught glimpses of Joss’s life.
Reports of meals and studies, museum stubs, and notes on the margins of maps. Her name.
Blaire.
Dear Blaire. Beloved Blaire. You would love it here, Blaire. My Blaire.
“Joss…”
“I couldn’t—”
“Send them.” She clutched the letters, maps, and memories. The life Joss had tried to share for years, but could not. “She hexed you?”
“I think. ” Joss nodded, then her brow creased.
“I’m not sure. A catacombs witch in Paris finally figured it out.
They even wrote a letter to explain.” She fluttered her fingers at the pages.
“But it couldn’t seem too—whenever I tried to, um …
” Joss furrowed her brow at the letters, a question forming and falling away.
Blaire weighed the letters in her hand, considering Joss with this new information.A hex made sense, but which one?