VenCo(65)

Freya explained as best she could while the two of them pushed an armoire full of gardening supplies and old jackets in front of the back door. “Lucille got us hammered. And she told us we had to split up, so Lucky took Stella and went to see a cunning person in Pennsylvania somewhere. And we are supposed to use a bowl to try and see the next witch, so we can let Lucky know. She’s focusing on the spoon. Then Morticia smelled a hunter on the way home, like, literally smelled the fucker. Oh, and we only have nine days to complete the coven, or I guess it’s eight now.”

“Eight days?” Lettie stopped pushing, and Freya straightened to stretch out her back.

“Yup. Eight.”

“And then what? What happens after eight days if we don’t have the spoon?”

Freya shrugged. “I guess it’s just over. We go back to where we came from. We go back to our shitty lives and our shitty mall job and try to forget this ever happened.” For once, she sounded incredibly young.

“Holy shit, Freya.” Lettie grabbed her arm. “How could we ever go back?”

“Well, it sounds like we’re only a real coven when we’re complete. Maybe we could try to stay in touch, or be roommates or something, but . . . that’s it.”

Lettie leaned against the heavy cabinet. It squeaked slowly across the floor. “Meena keeps saying ‘find the seven, wait for the rest,’ keeps talking about changing the world and shit, like she’s starting a charity. I mean, what could one small coven do, anyway? Do you think she even knows?”

Freya added her weight, and with a final heave, the door was blocked. There was now only one way in or out, the front door, and that was locked three different ways. “I don’t think anyone can really know.”

They found the others in the dining room. On the way down the hall, Freya said, “Wait—you don’t think we’ll actually die if Lucky can’t find her? That can’t be what they mean by it being over, right?”

Lettie didn’t answer. She wasn’t sure what she thought, and she sure as hell didn’t want to waste time getting scared, not now. Fear was paralyzing, and she needed to move.

The others were standing over the table, arranging items around a large glass bowl—crystals, a clutch of dried herbs held together by thread, candles, a big jug of water.

“What are we doing?” Freya asked.

“Hydromancy,” Wendy answered, carrying an oversized book to the table. “Divination with water, also called scrying.” She dropped the book with a thud, and Meena had to clutch the jug so it didn’t tip. “Sorry.” She began flipping pages.

“We need to focus, more than anything,” Meena said. “At least two of us, but preferably all.” She pulled her braids back over her shoulders, closed her eyes, and started breathing deeply.

Freya went to stand beside Wendy, who was running her finger down the yellowed pages. “Are we looking for the witch or the witch hunter?”

“The witch. I mean, both if we can manage it, but most importantly, the seventh witch,” Wendy answered. Her finger stopped. “Here it is—we need to pull attention to them, which will be hard since we don’t know who they are yet.”

“Can we do it without that?” Lettie was eyeing the back window nervously. She was having trouble thinking of anything but the hunter. She, more than any of them, knew what it was to be the object of a man’s loathing, to have hands laid on her.

Meena opened her eyes. “Lettie, you are so anxious right now.”

“Sorry, sorry, I just . . .”

“No, no, it’s good—useful.” She stepped away from the table without pouring the water into the bowl. “Let’s save the scrying for later. Right now, Lettie, why don’t you lead us in casting some protection spells. You have the focus we need to make them strong.”

“Okay.” She ran a shaking hand through her loose curls. “My intention—it’s to keep the walls secure?”

“No, love.” Meena slid an arm around her trembling shoulders. “It’s to make us invisible. I don’t want him to even be able to find our walls.”



After he landed from Toronto, Jay had to rent himself a car at the airport. How pedestrian. He stood in line, haggled for the best vehicle on the lot, which happened to be a matte black Range Rover, and then had to deal with the money aspect, which made him cross. His assistant usually handled these things, but he was travelling solo and had left in too much of a rush to plan ahead. He filled out the papers, was handed the keys by a beautiful Korean woman with plump cheeks and bleached hair—the one bright spot in the experience, but no time to dally—and tossed his Louis Vuitton duffel bag in the back seat.

Salem was too small for his liking. He spent so much of his time alone that when he went to a city, he preferred it be ostentatious, cocky even, like New York. Or London—London was so full of itself it barely allowed traffic to flow. Salem was both too hokey and too aware of the limitations of being up against the brutal ocean. Even worse, Salem was satisfied with itself, felt no drive to become a better version.

But this was where the boy Malcolm had said the new witch would be. Jay hadn’t thought the one in charge would be comfortable enough to bring coven business to her own home. He’d underestimated her, imagined her flighty, like a rabbit. As it turned out, she might just be the cockiest thing about Salem. She was, after all, a descendant of two powerful lines of witches that went all the way back to two continents, both Europe and Africa. This was why she had been so hard to find, so impossible to render vulnerable so that he could pounce. He’d spent many years hunting witches, more than he cared to count. Her old blood had saved her from sudden apartment fires or brutal car accidents, the fates that had befallen others who had tried to build the coven on his watch.