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  “That bad news is that deals with demons don’t expire or go away on their own,” Morgan replied. “You must either pay the debt or find a way to vanquish the creature yourself. Gwenlyn, I have to set this before I do the healing spell or your nose will be crooked for the rest of your life. Come with me into the kitchen so I can see what I’m doing.”

  Holding my head back so that none of the orange paste dropped onto the carpet, I followed Morgan through the dining room and into the kitchen. Morgan took a short stool from underneath the sink.

  “Have a seat.”

  I lowered myself, and Morgan leaned over me. “Do it fast.”

  My nose burned red-hot as Morgan manipulated the cartilage into alignment. Right after, she cast the healing spell. It all molded back together, and the orange paste fell out of my nostrils. I took a deep breath.

  “How’s it feel?”

  “Good as new.” I wiped the rest of the dried paste off over the sink. “Though it stinks of turmeric. You could have done that in the living room. Why did you want to get away from Pilar?”

  “Because, if I’m not mistaken, this is your self task.”

  I patted my face dry with a white dish towel. “How do you figure?”

  “It’s pretty obvious to me,” Morgan said. “You instinctively wanted to check out Pilar when I mentioned her this morning. She’s involved in a magical deal despite the fact she’s mortal. You were the one to discover the demon and got Pilar to safety. You exercised initiative, logic, defensive measures, and quick thinking to do all of that, each of which is a trait to be admired among adult witches.”

  “So this whole thing is a test?”

  “I do believe it was an engineered coincidence,” Morgan answered. “By helping Pilar, you should discover something important about yourself.”

  I checked my nose in the mirror over the sink. As Morgan promised, it was no longer crooked, but the paste had left an orange tint across my cheeks. “That’s great, but where do I start? What can you tell me about this demon?”

  “Remember the rules,” Morgan warned. “I’m not allowed to help you. Besides, I didn’t see the demon. I have no idea what it could be.”

  I narrowed my eyes at her. “You always have some idea.”

  She shrugged and turned away. “Perhaps. If I were you, I’d check the archives for evidence of wish demons. We’ll keep Pilar safe until you find a lead.”

  “I should call Alberta, right?” I said. “To keep her updated?”

  “That’s your decision,” Morgan replied. “Give her a call if you like.”

  All of the phones in Morgan’s house belonged to different eras, but not one of them was plugged into a socket or hooked up to the telephone company for service. I picked up the receiver in the living room, and Pilar watched as the rotary dial spun by itself.

  “How does it know which numbers to pick?” she asked.

  “Through my intention,” I explained. “I use my craft to power the phone, and the magic does the rest of the work.”

  “Fascinating,” Pilar breathed. “If I could do that—”

  “You can’t,” I interrupted. “If you aren’t born into it, you’re not supposed to mess with the craft. It can cause disruptions in daily life, such as—oh, I don’t know—rogue demons ripping up the town.”

  “Duly noted.”

  Witch phones didn’t ring like normal phones. If the witch on the other end of the line wanted to talk to you, she answered normally. If she didn’t want to speak with you, there were numerous ways to decline a call: Silence, a fake answering machine, undesirable noise—

  Alberta opted for a foghorn effect that blew my eardrum through my brain and out the opposite side. I hung up the phone, my head ringing. “I hate her.”

  “Your mentor?” Pilar asked. Since she was so interested in witchcraft, I’d explained a bit about my coming of age ritual to her. “That’s not healthy, is it?”

  “Probably not.”

  Malia and Laurel arrived home, popping into existence in the front yard. It had begun raining, so each of them erected a shield to keep themselves dry and rushed toward the house. In the foyer, they stomped mud out of their boots and shed their coats.

  “Well?” Morgan asked from where she sat at the head of the dining room table. “Did you get it taken care of?”

  “For the most part,” Malia replied. “By the time we got there, half the town had arrived, including a police team. Thankfully, Chief Torres was there, so he helped us clear the area. What time is his surprise party by the way?”

  Morgan checked the clock. “In a few hours.”

  “Good,” Malia said. “He’s going to need a beer. Vinnie’s looks like a tornado hit it.”

  “We couldn’t make a story stick,” Laurel added. “Usually, it’s easy to spell the mortals into forgetting something magical happened, but with the protection and secrecy spells down—”

  “They’re not falling for our tricks,” Morgan murmured. “Does the town suspect anything of us?”

  Malia hung her coat in the closet by the door. “Not yet, but there are plenty of rumors to go around.”

  “We added our own to the mix,” Laurel said. “We told everyone that a pipe must have burst under the spa and caused the foundation to cave in.”

  “After we created a sinkhole to corroborate the story,” Malia added. “It was the only way to keep everything from blowing up, but I’m afraid we caused more damage in the process. I’d like to hold a fundraising event for Vinnie to get the spa up and running again. It’s our fault we didn’t see this coming.”

  Pilar came into the dining room and leaned against the wall. “It’s not your fault. It’s mine. I could have prevented all of this from happening if I’d made a different decision earlier.”

  “You made a mistake,” I said. “We all get caught up in the easy way out every once in a while.”

  “Still,” Pilar said. “If there’s any way I can help, please let me know.”

  “For now, we need you to stay hidden,” Morgan said. “Don’t leave this house until Gwenlyn figures out exactly what kind of demon we’re dealing with. If you so much as step onto the front yard, the demon will be able to sense you.”

  Pilar’s face drained of color. “I’ll stay put. I promise.”

  Morgan turned to me. “Any luck with Alberta?”

  “As usual, she’s incommunicado.”

  “Looks like you’re on your own then,” said Morgan. “I’ll give her a call myself. She’ll be hard-pressed to ignore the coven leader. Get started on your research, Gwen. The sooner we figure out what this demon is, the better chance we have of defeating it.”

  The coven’s archives were a collection of texts on the various history, spells, and witches that had come to the Summerses’ attention. It contained textbooks, personal diaries, potion recipes, and numerous other items. Not all of them were valuable. For instance, not many witches entered the archives to find pages of ink-drawn toad doodles from one hundred years ago. Then again, if you needed to identify a certain type of toad, this was the place.

  The archives were hidden in a section of the town library invisible to mortals. To access it, you had to use a spell to reveal a staircase behind the self-help section. For a while, this wasn’t a problem, but over the years, more and more mortals wanted to learn about meditation, self-care, and the various methods to accomplish a better quality of life. It made casting spells in the library a bit less simple.

  Thankfully, Ari spent most of her spare time in the library. I could always count on the pre-teen to have her nose in a book. She always sat at the same table right by the self-help section, reading everything from fantasy novels to political theory textbooks. She was the coven’s tiny genius.

  “Hey, lady,” I said, sliding into the chair next to hers. “Whatcha got there?”

  She held up the book so I could see the cover.

  “Euclidean geometry.” I made a face. “What does that even mean?”

  “It�
��s about space, planes, and dimensions,” Ari replied. “You probably wouldn’t get it.”

  I stretched over the back of the chair, unoffended. “You’re right about that. Can I ask you for a favor?”

  She caught my eye. I glanced over at the self-help section, and Ari followed my gaze. Five people mingled at the shelves. Each individual removed a book, examined the back cover, and put it back like some bizarre ritual they were bound to repeat for the rest of the hour.

  “You need a distraction?” Ari muttered out of the corner of her mouth.

  “If you’re not too busy.”

  She grinned mischievously. “I’m never too busy to cause a little trouble.”

  “Nothing too intense,” I warned her. “We’re already dealing with a catastrophe at Vinnie’s Wash and Go.”

  “Don’t worry. I got this.”

  Ari slid off her chair and under the table like a snake disappearing into the grass. When I checked by my feet, she’d already disappeared. I drummed my fingers and pulled Ari’s geometry book over to make it look like I was reading. The patterns and numbers made no sense to me.

  A loud bang! echoed from the opposite end of the library, startling me and the rest of the readers. Those at the self-help section replaced the books they’d been perusing and murmured amongst themselves about what could have happened. A plume of smoke rose from behind the shelves, its source unseen.

  “Fire!” The librarian ran from the front desk to usher everyone out of the building. “Everyone out! Out!”

  The self-helpers stampeded for the door, coughing as the smoke filled their lungs. When it reached me, I had no such trouble. The smoke was an illusion that only worked on mortals. As the library emptied, Ari appeared at my side.

  “Fire spell?” I asked her.

  “Grenade potion.” She showed me an empty vial with one bright-blue drop of liquid in it. “I’d been saving it for a special occasion, but this worked out better.”

  “I don’t want to know what the special occasion was.”

  “Good, because Morgan would have given me a stern talking to if you told her.”

  I nuzzled Ari’s head. “You’re a good egg. Want to help me look for something in the archives?”

  “No way. It smells like feet down there.”

  As the smoke cleared, she hopped into her chair, crossed her legs beneath her, and went back to reading her book. I chuckled to myself and performed the spell to access the archives, sketching a rough outline of the stairs with my green aura. When I completed the process, the books parted to reveal the hidden entry then rearranged themselves into a staircase. I headed down.

  The archives were housed in a small circular room with two leather armchairs, a large desk, and a wood-burning fireplace. No matter the season in Yew Hollow, the crackling fire and golden glowing candles always made it feel like winter. It helped that the underground room always felt a little chilly if you didn’t sit near the fire. The temperature and humidity was regulated magically to preserve the books and texts as well as possible.

  Unfortunately, the archives weren’t arranged in any particular way. We didn’t have a system in place to organize the contents, and no one ever cared to put one in place until they needed to find something. Inevitably, the witch would locate whatever information she needed and forget about alphabetizing the rest of the archives. If you needed something, it required a patient temper, a few hours’ time, and a bit of luck. I could spare the time, but I wasn’t often blessed with patience and luck.

  I started by perusing the textbooks for any mention of demons. Several titles caught my eye: The Basics of Demonology, Lesser Demons and Their Dimensions, and The Trouble with Demon Lovers all sounded like decent places to start, though I hoped Pilar had not engaged in any demon-loving activity.

  I brought a pile of twenty or so books to the desk and began going through them. I searched the table of contents for any mention of making deals with demons. Each time I came across an entry, it featured the same species of deal-making demon:

  Daemonium multum is a breed of lesser demon that often dwells in dark, damp places such as caves, coves, or grottos. This particular demon is named for its habit of luring humans into its home and offering them a deal in exchange for a piece of the human’s soul. They are shade-dwellers who fear the sun and do not often venture from their comfort zone, preferring to guide victims to them by imitating a human’s cry for help.

  After the tenth book with similar information, I tossed aside the thick volume in frustration. According to Pilar’s personal account, we weren’t dealing with a multum. For one, Pilar’s demon was a shapeshifter and didn’t have any problem with coming out of its supposed cave to track Pilar down. I abandoned the books on the desk and returned to the shelves. As I let my fingers tickle the spines of the books, I relied on instinct to guide me.

  I hesitated at a book titled Devastating Magical Choices that Changed the World. I pulled it off the shelf, flipped open the cover, and scanned the table of contents. Chapter thirteen was called “The Wish Demon’s Revenge for an Unpaid Debt.” Hurriedly, I flipped to the corresponding page number.

  But the entire chapter had been ripped out of the book.

  12

  To take a book or article from the archives, explicit consent from the coven leader was required, but I didn’t think Morgan would mind that I tucked Devastating Magical Choices under my shirt to keep it dry from the rain and left the library with it. There was only one way to find out who ripped the pages out of the chapter I needed.

  “Malia!” I called upon returning to the house. The eldest Summers sister had the ability to see any object’s past by touching it. The house, however, was quiet. “Hello! Anybody home? Morgan? Laurel?”

  Pilar emerged from the living room with a yawn and stretched her arms over her head. The right side of her face was imprinted with the pattern of a crocheted blanket. “They went out.”

  “Where?” I wormed the book out from underneath my shirt, ignoring Pilar’s confused glance at my bizarre behavior. “To Vinnie’s?”

  “No, I believe I heard them say they would be out securing the perimeter.” She shrugged. “Whatever that means.”

  “Ugh.” Securing the perimeter meant all four sisters were patrolling the outskirts of Yew Hollow for signs of danger. With the protection spells weakened and news of a demon in the area, Morgan was on high alert. “Okay, thanks.”

  “Wait.” Pilar stopped me as I turned to leave. “Did you find anything? Is there hope? I’m not going to have to stay here forever, right?”

  I lifted the heavy, leather-bound book to show her the title. “There’s a chapter about a wish demon in here, but someone’s ripped out all the pages. If I can locate the pages, I might have more information on the demon you spoke to.”

  “I don’t know anyone who would do damage to a piece of literature like that,” Pilar said.

  “I wasn’t asking,” I replied. “Mortals can’t enter the archives. Whoever it was had to be a witch, most likely one of our own coven members. Malia should be able to tell me who did it.”

  “Does it matter?” Pilar tucked a strand of dark hair behind her ear. “You just need the information, right?”

  I cast a protective shield over the book so I wouldn’t have to keep running around with it under my shirt then zipped up my rain jacket. “It’s against our rules to tear pages out of a book from the archives. There’s a lot of questionable and dangerous information down there. It’s supposed to stay in the library for a reason. Morgan will want to discipline whoever did this.”

  Pilar fanned herself with her hand, though it wasn’t particularly humid or warm inside the house. “Witches have a lot more rules than I would have imagined.”

  I put up my hood and prepared to return to the rain. “You’ve only met the Summerses. Other covens do things differently, but if you want to keep making Yew Hollow a better place, it would do you good to familiarize yourself with the way we do things.”

  Wit
h the help of a quick location spell, I found Morgan and her sisters on the edge of town closest to the mountains. As they clambered over rocks and creeks with a giant, magical umbrella over their heads to keep them dry from the rain, they cast miniature protection spells every fifty feet or so. Each time they erected a new one, four strings of light—one for each witch’s distinct aura—traveled across the dirt to connect with the previous spell they’d laid. Once intertwined, the light path faded so mortals would be none the wiser to the protective border.

  “This seems tedious,” I commented from behind the witch sisters. “Is this what you used to do before Cassandra became one with the yew tree?”

  “Mom would do it with the other elder witches,” Morgan said. “You weren’t allowed to do it until a certain age. Traditionally, the oldest witches were charged with the protection of the younger ones. Did you find anything useful in the archives?”

  I unearthed Devastating Magical Choices from underneath my shirt. Upon seeing it, Laurel let out a sharp gasp.

  “You’re not supposed to take things from the archives!” she scolded. “It’s getting wet!”

  I waved my hand over the book so my aura shimmered. “It’s fine. I cast a protection spell on it. Plus, I’m not the first person to take this book out of the archives. Look.” I flipped the book open to display the hunk of pages torn from the spine. “Any idea who might have done this?”

  Karma shook her head. “Disrespectful, man.”

  Laurel let out a second gasp and placed her hand over her heart. “Oh, no. I’ll never hear the end of this from the trees. We can’t justify destroying their hard work.”

  Morgan gestured for the book. When I handed it over, she examined the missing pages. “These tears are all exactly the same, like someone used a spell to pull them cleanly.”

  “Like we wouldn’t notice?” I asked wryly. “I was hoping Malia might be able to tell me who did it. The missing chapter is about a wish demon. It’s my only lead.”