Page 1 of The Filigree Key

PROLOGUE

TWO DAYS AGO.

An inquisitive flute-like note lifted from the pixie house as the frost-hardened stem crunched beneath Ame’s paw. On this side of the picket fence and the floral wards, the cold of winter had already come. The caliby cat hunkered down in the weeds, her patchwork fur providing the perfect camouflage against any spying eyes.

And there were many around the farmhouse on Apple Blossom Lane.

“Never mind, Dart,” Ame whispered, hedging that it was the largest of the pixies who’d been roused by the snap of the traitorous stem. “Go back to sleep. She’ll be here soon, and you’ll need your strength then.”

She didn’t let the impending arrival of the cider witch hasten her forward. Rather, the old cat took the time needed to make sure her sneaking into the garden wouldn’t be noticed by the Stag Man’s spies. Blackbirds circled overhead and creatures with faelight in their eyes watched from the forest. When the moment was right, she wormed through the gap in the fence slats and darted up the garden path.

Ame disappeared into the tangle of morning glories and creeping myrtle beside the porch steps not a moment too soon. Hunched and tail tucked in tight, she watched the sky from behind the screen of leaves shielding her from view. When no alarm was raised by the spies, she wiggled around and tunneled through the network of vines until she reached the lattice barring the crawlspace.

It was no simple lattice of hem-fir—this had been fortified by a witch. And again by magic stolen by the Brotherhood.

Pressing her paw against a wooden crosshatch, Ame whispered, “Aperio.”

The wood and the wards strengthening it didn’t want to comply, but the ex-familiar was a cat, after all, and exempt from many of the rules governing most magics. She’d also put the entire weight of her will behind the command. And, as everybody knew, intent was nine-tenths of magic. And her intent was to save the cider witch, and the farmhouse understood.

A hole appeared in the lattice, just big enough for her to squeeze through, and she disappeared into the crawlspace.

Just a few loping strides later and Ame was positioned on top of a compact pile of ashes and rosemary sprigs that had once hidden a grimoire. Above, cobwebs dangled from all but a set of floorboards that appeared more worn compared to their surrounding counterparts.

“Aperio.”

There was a shout as the loose floorboards shot upwards, along with a braided rug, but the witches inside were too weak to react quickly enough to bar her entry. When she leapt out of the crawlspace and landed inside the farmhouse, another shout rang through the house. Not one of alarm, but to call off the attack.

Four witches—Peony and Eranthis in the kitchen, Tod in the dining room, and Hyacinth craned over the banister of the stairs—quickly snuffed out the magic wreathing their hands. Ame just flicked her tail, unperturbed on the outside but very much perturbed on the inside.

The Hawthornes had been too weak to summon battle magic. Was she, and Meadow, too late?

Tod was the first to recover. He bent to right the chair he’d launched out of at the dining room table. “Ame, how did you get inside? The wards—”

“Mean nothing to a cat.” She stood, flicking her rear foot free of ash, then padded past the two stunned witches in the kitchen and into the hearth room.

The farmhouse ember licked at a log of red cedar with the same pitifully slow cadence of a beaten dog cleaning its wounds. Ame sat on the hearth stones, which held none of their usual warmth, and craned her head back to examine the farmhouse at large. Despite the seven witches residing inside, it was merely a shell of its former self with its mistress gone.

“I’ll speak with the young witch now,” she told the elder witches crowded in the doorway. She heard Hyacinth’s hurt exhale and ignored it. “And I’ll have a bowl of that soup, if you please.”

The Hawthornes were so defeated by the loss of their matriarch, two of their young witches, their hearth ember, not to mention the inability to go outside and ground themselves, that they didn’t even protest. They obeyed willingly, and at speed. That set off another alarm within her, but Ame revealed no hint of her trepidation. Though she had every right to despise them, these witches needed hope. And for the love of her ward, Sawyer, and Fern’s great-niece, Meadow, who had proved her mettle time and time again, she would keep her bitterness to herself.

In minutes, Otter Hawthorne appeared with a bowl of beef-and-potato soup.

The young witch, thirty-something or so, looked gaunt. He’d always been on the willowy side, reminiscent of a lean and lithe Renaissance bard, but he now resembled more skeleton than witch. Or maybe a man with one foot in the grave. Deep in the grave.

Despite his appearance, there was no creaking of joints as he sank down into a cross-legged sitting position and set the bowl gently in front of her. He swept the long brown hair out of his eyes, gave her a tentative smile, and said, “Hello.”

His gentle, musical voice speared at the cold thing in her chest she called a heart. Despite everything he’d been through, all the terror and grief and betrayal, his eyes were still kind. He was still kind.

“You have Fern’s gentle heart,” she said abruptly, startling even herself. She’s hadn’t come here to talk about the good ol’ days when she’d been the happiest familiar alive bonded to the most amazing witch . . . before that witch’s sister had made them dissolve their bond.

The smile dropped from his lips with the same abruptness of a wintry mountain shedding an avalanche. A glassy sheen had come to his eyes at the mention of his grandmother. “I-I would’ve thought you would’ve wanted to talk to Mom. Hyacinth. Fern’s daughter.”

“She has her mother’s fear,” Ame spat. For decades Ame had solely blamed Iris for ripping Fern and her apart, but she’d come to accept that it had been by Fern’s own hand that their bond had broken. Her choice. Because she’d been afraid of a prophesy and of her own sister. “I want to talk to the one who has Fern’s hope.”

Otter swallowed, his now-prominent Adam’s apple bobbing like a vulture’s gullet.

“Have some of this soup,” Ame ordered. “You’re too thin.”