Prologue
HELEN HADwaited a long time to do this—maybe too long.
As she buzzed along the suburban streets of Folsom, California, on her beloved Ducati, she had to admit that the neighborhood had changed in the last thirty years since she bought her cottage. She’d seen it happening in increments, but it hadn’t really hit her until some damned fool had put up three prefab houses on her once empty cul-de-sac and those damned college kids had moved in.
She felt her shoulders hunch, which she couldn’t let happen because once you hit a certain age, hunching over a motorcycle could be considered an actual injury.
Okay, okay, breathe out. Remember, resentment trapped the bad feelings in. The bad feelings created the shackles that held you down.
Sounded like new age crap, but after a long talk with her mentor, she’d come to realize that it was something more. It was the reason her life hadgoneto crap over the last ten years. Held grudges, a refusal to move, to motivate herself to break the chains that had bound her. She was a powerful witch. Age made those powers stronger, not weaker, and her metaphorical chains had become magical, physical manifestations very quickly.
She’d needed to break them before they consumed her, but in her panic, she’d done the unthinkable.
She’d shoved the keys to herverymagical witch’s cottage into the hands of the most responsible of the young people who’d moved into her cul-de-sac and had run.
That poor kid. God knows what had happened to him once he’d taken her keys and her hurried admonition not to touch any of the distilled oils. The kid had been smart as a whip. Friendly, kind. Offered to help her with her groceries once a week, was gentle to the nine feral cats she fed. She’d been desperate, but holy Hecate and blessed Brigid, what had she done?
As she rounded the corner of the perfectly normal little suburb, the chill wind of February settled more firmly into her bones. This wasn’t snow country, but the wind still had a bite on top of a motorcycle, and for a moment she was concentrating on a small spell to warm herself.
And then she realized where she was and almost laid out the damned bike.
“The actual hell…,” she murmured.
The cul-de-sac was deserted.
The three prefab houses had signs on the front proclaiming new developments to come from Asa Bryne, but judging by the dust on the windows, they’d been vacant for months. Helen’s eyes sharpened—she’d been out in the world. She knew that vacant houses often attracted squatters, drug addicts, indigents. But in spite of the likelihood of that happening, all she saw were a couple of turkeys wandering desultorily across the cul-de-sac and some owls perching on the gutters of the house in the middle. The house on the end appeared to have more than its fair share of squirrels, and there were starlings everywhere.
What in the everloving hell?
And then she saw her own cottage—or what had once been her own cottage—and for a moment, she had to fight hard to breathe.
It was… it had been….
It had…imploded.
That was the only word for it. The little shake roof, the neat wooden walls, the rickety front porch—all of it had been demolished in a way that implied a giant vacuum from the inside had sucked all the walls inward and the house had collapsed, the roof falling mostly intact on top of it.
Her feral cats, all of them more or less enchanted, had left.
She felt a pull toward the middle of the cul-de-sac and turned to see three stars, marked in faded tape and with the power of what had once been much use.
The first star was three-pointed and close to the center of the four houses. The next star had five points, and it was set a little farther back from the three-pointed one. Enough space stretched between them for a circle of people to form around each star, with nobody bumping elbows. The next star—seven-pointed—was set farther back from that, and Helen stared at the lot of them, stunned.
She could sense their power from the sidewalk. Those college kids had done this. Or rather thosepost-college kids had done it. Every iota of energy emanating from those circles had gone into keeping this neighborhood safe from the forces Helen herself had unleashed.
Her eyes burned.
Oh, those brave damned kids.
They’d taken her cottage, her library, her years of accumulated knowledge and run with it. And when the presence of ennui, of abnegation, had gotten too large, started taking over the neighborhood, they’d used those powers to fight it.
They weren’t here slaving away, growing old and hopeless, locked in the dance that the presence had locked Helen in for so many years. In fact, she felt… nothing. Nothing but the faint buzz of their protection and the residue of one holy hell of a spell. And the lingering scent of patchouli and rosewater and the myriad other oils she’d accumulated during the years, which had probably been released when her house had been destroyed.
They’d done it. What she’d failed to do for years. They’d broken those chains, and now she was well and truly free.
And so in debt to the universe she could hardly breathe.
She reached into her saddlebag and pulled out her satellite phone to call the one number she had.
