I look over and see that Dahlia is sitting with Esme and Lucien’s parents at a table nearby. I’ll have to apologize to her later.
Esme looks my way and offers me a smile. I wave at her and then turn my attention to the conversation going on around me.
I have a feeling Esme is the one we need to be worried about.
* * *
With night descending quickly, we gather our tools and sacred items and walk as a group out to the field.
The moon is high, big and yellow. I feel the strength of it soaking into my skin, and I’m grateful.
When all of the candles are set out in a wide ring, and the black salt is poured, we form a circle inside and join hands.
Suddenly, Cash reaches for the buttons on his shirt.
I share a look with my sisters and have to press my lips together so I don’t laugh out loud.
“What are you doing, child?” Miss Sophia asks.
“Isn’t this where we dance naked under the moon?” Cash asks.
I can’t contain the bubble of laughter that escapes. Daphne snorts.
Brielle cackles.
“I guess not,” Cash mutters. “I hate all of you. And just remember, payback’s a bitch.”
“Language, child. This is a sacred space,” Miss Sophia says, but her lips twitch with mirth.
Lucien’s laughing next to me, and as the others catch on to our little joke and join in.
“Come on, Cash, you know it’s funny,” Miss Sophia’s granddaughter, Lena, says. “At least you didn’t get naked.”
He narrows his eyes at me in response, then shakes his head and laughs, as well.
We join hands again, each take a deep breath, and Miss Sophia begins speaking the words that will cast our circle, beginning our ritual.
To start the rite, each of us must enter into the circle with perfect love and perfect trust and affirm as much when asked. We must all have a clear heart and mind and be open to the deities.
Miss Sophia stops mid-sentence before she even asks the first person to confirm their intent and looks around the circle.
“What’s wrong?” Lucien asks.
“Someone here doesn’t have pure intentions,” she says. “I can’t cast the circle.”
My eyes fly to Esme, who’s directly across from me. “Do you have something you want to tell us?”
Miss Sophia shakes her head. “It’s not Esme.”
“Then who—?”
My eyes follow hers. She’s staring at Dahlia.
Chapter Twenty-Six Millie
Dahlia’s lips turn up into a smug grin. “I didn’t say anything.”
Mama, who’s standing between Brielle and me, clenches our hands and starts to chant a protection spell. Brielle listens to Mama’s words and then joins in, following Mama’s lead.
Daphne joins them, then Cash, and then the entire circle, one by one, begins to chant the spell.
Dahlia snarls and lunges to her left for Lucien’s dagger, but the hilt burns the palm of her hand and she drops it.
“I’ll kill you,” she snarls at him. “I’ll kill all of you.”
Her body jerks, her eyes go wide, and energy pours out of her mouth. When she’s empty, Dahlia falls to the earth, unconscious.
An older member of the coven hurries to tend to Dahlia as the rest of us join hands once more, and Miss Sophia succeeds in closing the circle. The wind and light around us is strong, the flames of the candles soar.
And suddenly, right in the middle of the circle, Horace manifests himself.
I blink, certain I’m not seeing what my brain says I’m seeing.
Is that him? I ask.
This is the moment we were born for, a stór mo chroí. My eyes fly up to Lucien’s.
His are not afraid.
They’re angry.
“You think you’re the only ones with parlor tricks?” Horace snarls and, with the flick of his wrist, sends debris flying at us. Stones and twigs, grass and dirt fly at everyone, but no one waivers in their steadfast chanting of the protection spells.
I drop my shields. I have to see everything that he might throw at us.
And just as I do, shadows pour in from all around us, coming from the swirling wind above. They surround Horace with their arms linking around him in some sort of horrific protection.
“Do you see—?” Brielle starts to ask, but I just nod emphatically.
“The shadows.”
Put your damn shields back up, Millicent.
No, I have to be able to see what he’s doing. I can’t stop him if I’m blind.
Horace turns to me and smiles gleefully. “Did you miss me, darling? Have you enjoyed the wonderful gifts I’ve left for you?”
Do not answer him. Do not engage with him.
Horace turns to Lucien as if he can hear our private conversation and snarls. “You think you can control her? You think I’d let you have her? You stupid mortal, she doesn’t belong to you.”
Lucien reaches into his pocket and pulls out our handfasting cord, then takes my hand, the cord locked between us.
“I am hers, and she is mine, our souls forever linked. Be gone from here, any who would see us harmed, back to the shadows you must slink.”
The chanting around us is heightened, and they’ve changed to the spell they used last year at Horace’s cabin. It cast him out once, surely it will do so again.
He’s stronger, Lucien tells me. We need another spell to layer with this one.
I wrack my brain, trying to think of something stronger than this one, but I can’t think with him staring at me. The shadows are screaming. The wind is chaos.
Close your eyes.
I follow Lucien’s instructions.
You control the wind, Millicent.
He’s right. I take a deep breath, then open my eyes and bring the wind high above all of us and watch as Horace’s smile falls, and he stares at me in confusion. Then I blow out my breath, and the wind whips through the center of the circle, sending the shadows scrambling. Horace is knocked on his ass from the force of it.
He climbs to his feet.
“This is all in vain,” he begins, but Lucien snaps his fingers and encircles Horace in a wall of flames. I add the wind, and the
