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Conversation died as we entered, and every witch looked up at once. I told myself it was an encouraging sign. At least I knew Lou possessed enough money to buy a relic.

“What do you want, Hartley?” one of them asked.

“She’s here to make a sale,” he reassured them.

He was trying to act as if he belonged back here, but I could tell these witches made him nervous.

The witch closest to us closed her ledger. All the while, her dark eyes remained fixed on me. “He’s in the back.”

Hartley gave the woman a half-hearted salute, then pressed his silver medallion against the wall. Nothing happened until Hartley said, “Death is an illusion. Just like peace.”

Once he’d spoken the words, the wall shuddered, and a narrow door appeared where there hadn’t been one before.

My jaw dropped. How had he done that? He wasn’t magickal. Perhaps the spell was bound to the medallion. Or to the words themselves. I regarded the serpent-and-moon pendant with renewed interest and began to wonder why it had been scribbled into the margins of old family grimoires.

The magickal door swung open, and a wall of stench greeted us. It was the same smell that had bothered me when I first walked in, only stronger.

Hartley glanced back at me with a furrow between his brows. “Come on, Red. Let’s not keep him waiting.”

I didn’t like the way he looked at me or the way he said, "Let’s not keep him waiting," but what choice did I have? My need for coin was the only thing that kept me following the sailor as we walked through the door and into a room with a long oak table that stretched along the back wall. Six people in black sat in high-backed chairs around it.

All of them wore the same pendant.

“Don’t mean to interrupt, but I got someone who recognized the medallion. She wants to sell you a relic.” Hartley wrung his hands together. “Told me it was touched by Torment herself.”

He added the last line as if sweetening the deal. Clearly, he was invested in getting his cut.

The man at the head of the table must’ve been Lou. He was a big, barrel-chested man who had ruddy cheeks and a big nose. He had a scraggly red beard that was streaked with silver.

He carefully folded the parchment he’d been reading and tucked it inside his jacket pocket. As he did, I noticed a dark purple wax seal. He casually lifted his wand, and the door we’d come in through snapped shut behind us of its own accord.

The hairs on my arms stood on end. I didn’t like being sealed inside this place.

“Torment, is it?” Lou asked, glancing up at me with an appraising look.

I rolled my shoulders back and lifted my chin, trying to appear unbothered by this dark room and the robed witches and the pendants, but I couldn’t stop my hands from trembling, so I crossed them over my chest.

“How powerful the relic is depends on how much coin you have,” I said.

His eyes dipped to where my relics were hidden, and a greasy smile unfurled across his lips. “You’ve got a touch of demon blood in you. Don’t yah, lass?”

I said nothing.

“What’s yer family name?”

I’d sworn that I’d left the Kemp name behind, knowing I’d be labeled a traitor against House Allard for what my mother had done, but something told me it would be foolish to lie. I didn’t think these people, who were cloistered in a windowless room, had any particular loyalty to the crown. In fact, my name might curry favor with them and facilitate the sale.

Amongst Dark Witches, the Kemps were one of the most powerful covens. Or… had been.

“Kemp.”

Low murmurs went around the table. A silver-haired man reclined back in his seat. The younger, robed woman on Lou’s left elbowed the one on her right.

“Gorrath’s own blood,” Lou said.

My throat became uncomfortably tight at the mention of our patron demon. The one who spawned the Twisted Sisters. What would he have to say about my sale of his daughter’s relic?

Lou drummed his meaty fingers against the table. “I heard about what happened to Temperance.”