Witch Way: The New Ashton Chronicles Read online

  “Thanks for having faith in me,” Andy said, her voice flat. “Need anything else here, or are we done?”

  “I guess we’re done. Thank you. Thank you so much.”

  “I’ll bill you for the service.” She gave Maddie another forced smile and walked out the door. Her stomach cramped again and Andy did her best to ignore the intuition. She knew she couldn’t, not for long.

  A witch’s work was never done.

  Andy

  The sun had completely set by the time Andy arrived at the Kindheart Coven. She pulled her mother’s car to the curb and spent a good minute sitting there with her iPhone in hand. Bon Jovi crooned from the car’s speakers at mid-volume.

  Magical emergencies didn’t exactly leave a lot of room for a social life. This was the second time she had to cancel plans this week. It was Friday night, for fuck’s sake. She only wanted a few hours of distraction with a hot guy or girl, have some drinks, and get laid—a little R & R.

  So much for that.

  With a heavy sigh, she sent the cancellation text, put her phone away, and got out of the car. She dragged her feet along the flagstones, her bag slung over her shoulder. The walkway to the house never looked so long

  The porch light gleamed brightly but the wide windows cast soft, muted light onto the lawn. The whole place vibrated with benevolent magical energy. The sensation always gave Andy comfort. The pale blue siding dulled to cool gray in the early evening darkness, but it was warm and welcoming. Alive.

  Her home away from home. A sanctuary.

  She dropped her bag in the foyer by the coat rack and headed toward the dining room. The scent of rosemary pork chops lingered. Dinner. Her stomach rumbled and she followed the smell.

  She found the dining room empty. Dinner had been cleared away a while ago. So she wasn’t hooking up tonight and she missed dinner? Throw in the demon banishing and this had shaped up to be a swell night. Andy rolled her eyes.

  The rise and fall of soft voices brought her to the kitchen. Andy saw her mother first, with her vibrant red hair swept back into its usual messy bun.

  “Ah, here she is. Just like I said. The leftovers didn’t even get cold. Nothing goes to waste around here.” Mara held out a covered dish to her, smiling widely.

  “It’s almost like you knew I’d show up.” Andy took the plate gratefully.

  “What’s the use of being a seer if I can’t use my powers for good?”

  “Someone might call that cheating.” Neoma held out the fork to Andy, her full lips twisted in a half-smile. “As far from good as good can get.”

  With her pouty lips, dazzling blue-green eyes, and long dark hair, Neoma was a beautiful woman. Even dressed down in sweatpants and a tank top, she still dazzled. Andy had always thought so, even from the first moment they met as teenagers.

  Smiling more, Andy took the fork. “We like to call it advantageous.” She looked to her mom, her eyebrow arched. “But that’s mild, as far as visions go.”

  “I know, and I’m not complaining. Better this than cryptic doom and gloom.”

  Andy agreed with a small shrug. The visions that were the Foster women’s bane and benefit were never always clear, and most often dire. It was such a breath of fresh air to get a simple one without all the fuss, but it rarely happened that way for Andy. “Lucky you,” she added, taking a seat at the kitchen island. “Did the vision tell you why I’m back?”

  “Mm, no. It wasn’t as clear as all that.” Mara grabbed the dishcloth and turned to the sink. “I figured you’d fill us in on that part.”

  “I thought you had a date?” Neoma sat on the stool across from her.

  “Wasn’t a date.” She peeled off the cover and steam rose from the pork chops and roasted potatoes. “A hookup.” Not that a distinction was necessary. Andy didn’t do dates, not the dinner-and-a-movie type anyway. And Neoma knew that too, having been one of those other dates a time or two. Or a dozen.

  She gave Andy a pointed look, which only earned a vague shrug. “A failed hook-up,” Andy continued, stabbing at a potato. “Got a call on my way out of the shop. A frantic woman named Maddie Collins. She made it sound like life and death, but it was a demon summoning. Another lesser demon. But there was something… off about it.”

  “The fact it was a demon summoning wasn’t off?” Neoma asked, eyebrows raised.

  “Hey, what experienced witches do in their own homes, on their own time—that’s their business. I only take issue if they don’t know what the fuck they’re doing and it’s going to end up hurting someone.” Andy made a face as she chewed. “Like the shit that’s been going on lately.” New Ashton had its fair share of demons, but the surge in activity and summoning lately was out of hand. She shouldn’t have been surprised she’d been called to banish one.

  Neoma’s face went from skepticism to concern. “What did she summon?”

  “Nothing, if you can believe that.” She shook her head as she cut into the pork chop. “She claimed she didn’t summon it but I didn’t believe her. I mean, it seemed pretty obvious that she had. I thought ‘Kothi demon’ at first. It was small enough. ” Mara made a sound at that, but Andy ignored her. “But no. Still a pest though. Like a gremlin, but not. Jesus, I thought she’d summoned it for a pet because she’d named it and everything.”

  “She named it?” Mara asked.

  “Apparently. After her fourth or fifth insistence, I realized she wasn’t lying. She didn’t summon it, but someone did. Might want to warn Wren and the other Priests and Priestesses. Mason too.”

  As the High Priestess of the Kindheart Coven, Wren could spread the word to her many connections. And among the Others too. Mason had far more resources and a higher knowledge of demonology. He was half-demon, after all, and had a good one hundred and fifty years head start on the rest of them. He had a definite chance of tracking it down.

  Dishes clinked together as Mara loaded the dishwasher. “I will,” she assured her. “But we need to also consider that it wasn’t summoned. That it just… was.”

  “No, Mom. I felt summoning magic. I could smell it. Someone called it.”

  “But someone summoning demons doesn’t mean—”

  “I know. And I know what I just said—but how many times have you said to always trust my gut?”

  “Every time.”

  “I’m trusting it now.”

  The kitchen went quiet until Mara turned on the dishwasher and its hum filled the room. Andy speared pieces of potato and meat together, talking around the mouthful. “It’s better safe than sorry anyway. Trust me on this.”

  “We trust you.” Neoma reached for a foil-covered pie tin and drew it close. “Dessert. I made it.”

  “Oh, Neoma. You’re too good to me. Do we have ice cream to go with it?” Andy abandoned the rest of her dinner for the chocolate silk pie. She picked up the tin.

  Darkness stretched out before her. It breathed and pulsed. It lived. Its coldness took her breath away and Andy shivered.

  Asphalt beneath her shoes. A road. It wound between trees and into the darkness. The Welcome To New Ashton sign vanished within the oncoming shadows. It rolled in like a storm cloud toward her. Silent.

  Then Andy heard weeping.

  A girl—No, a teenager. A small thing. Sixteen, maybe? Her clothes were ragged—torn jeans, hooded sweatshirt, dirty sneakers. Blonde hair streaked with vibrant pink, disheveled and peeking out from under her hood. Her cheeks were red, her blue eyes wet. She stared into the darkness.

  And then the darkness took her. It rolled up on her and swallowed her whole. She sank into inky black depths. A man’s laughter rang out.

  The pie tin clattered to the table. “Oh, gods.” Andy could hardly breathe, much less get the words out. Fear seized her. Her heart thumped against her ribs.

  “Andy.” Neoma’s hands were soft and warm when she took hold of Andy’s. Immediately, a different sort of warmth flooded into her. Soothing, compassionate. The fear soon calmed beneath the influence. Oh, she would’ve
kissed her, had the pain in her head not been so strong.

  Her mother stood beside her, eyes worried. “Take a breath. Then another.”

  Andy knew the drill. This wasn’t her first vision, not by a long shot. But she did as her mother said. Each breath helped, but only so much.

  “Anything you can do for my aching head?” she asked Neoma, Mara—either of them.

  “There’s a pain potion in the cabinet.” Her mother pulled away to grab it.

  Neoma rubbed her thumb back and forth across Andy’s hand. As an empath, she could pick up even the subtlest of emotions. The green stone she wore around her neck helped diffuse and filter most of those feelings. Thank the gods for enchantments, Andy thought. But even they couldn’t hold off strong and sudden waves, like her fear.

  Andy somehow managed an apologetic smile, then took the vial Mara pushed at her. “My nose isn’t bleeding, is it?”

  Neoma drew her hands back, pushing a stray hair from Andy’s eyes while she looked her over. “No. You’re good.”

  At least there was that. Andy downed the lilac-tinted potion and made a face. Pain potions tasted like ass but they worked fast. Within a minute or so, the pain in her head reduced to a dull throb.

  “What was it?” Mara asked when Andy settled back on her stool.

  “A dark cloud. No, not a cloud but like—a living shadow? A darkness that was alive? It doesn’t make sense, I know, but I don’t know how else to explain it. It was moving and cold and—I’ve never been afraid of the dark, you know? But this? Yeah.”

  Neoma said nothing but she didn’t have to. Her large blue-green eyes were very expressive and worried. Mara took a seat across from her daughter, mirroring Neoma’s concern. If anyone at all understood what having a vision felt like, it was her mother. She was the most powerful seer in the coven, after all.

  “I don’t know how to explain it.”

  “Try.”

  “Deep breath,” Neoma added. “Start at the beginning.”

  Andy sucked in a breath and let it out slowly. “There was a girl. No one I recognized. Young—younger than Vinnie.” Her sister was almost nineteen. This girl had to be within a few years of that. “Maybe about sixteen? Her clothes looked dirty and worn. She might’ve been homeless.” Looking up, she met her mother’s stare. “She was crying. Lost.”

  “Where?” Neoma asked.

  “Just outside the city. By the welcome sign.” She could still see it in her head, devoured by the darkness. “It came from the city and headed right for her. It kind of looked like a storm cloud, rolling in. It—it took her.”

  “Oh, Andy,” Mara whispered.

  She couldn’t shake that image either. “It took her. Swallowed her. And I heard laughter—a man’s laughter. I don’t know what it means. Or what it could mean. I just—” She looked back up at Mara, helpless. Her brow furrowed and she drew back when her mother smiled sadly at her. She knew what that smile meant. And here she thought her night had reached peak excitement.

  “I’m going to have to follow through with it, aren’t I?”

  “You already know the answer to that.”

  “So I don’t get laid tonight and I don’t even get to console myself by watching TV and going to bed early? Well, fuck.”

  “You got the vision for a reason. Do something about it. You know that’s the only thing you can do. And it’ll bother you relentlessly until you do.”

  She was right. Andy couldn’t ignore it. Helping people—that’s what she did now. Chewing her bottom lip, she looked between her mother and Neoma.

  “Do you think it’s happening tonight?” Neoma frowned. “Or even right now?”

  “It was… urgent, but not present urgent. It’s happening soon.” As cryptic as the vision had been, at least that much was clear. That, and the location. No guesswork there.

  What else could she do? “Shit.”

  Mara smiled knowingly. “You can borrow my car again. You still have the keys. You better hurry.”

  “Good luck.” Neoma’s tone suggested she’d need it.

  Andy’s gut told her she would.

  Casey

  Later Friday Night

  This was the middle of fucking nowhere.

  The trees loomed and branches curled overhead. The road stretched between them, disappearing into a sharp curve. Casey Jennings followed the shoulder, gravel crunching underfoot. Creepy. She tried not to think about it.

  The weight of her backpack—usually a comfort—was like carrying an anvil now. She hitched it higher onto her shoulder and groaned with the effort. She’d been on the road for twelve hours, the last three of which on foot. Exhaustion made her drag her feet. How far was the town anyway? She’d passed the damn welcome sign about two miles back and still hadn’t seen anything of it. No lights in the distance, but the trees were so thick she couldn’t be sure.

  And no sign of her father. Not that Casey was surprised by that. She’d searched every place he’d ever mentioned in his journal and had turned up with nothing. New Ashton was literally the last place and there hadn’t been much beyond the town’s name and state written there, circled in black marker. If he wasn’t here, then where?

  She plodded on.

  The town had to be somewhere. It couldn’t just… not be there. And why this place? Why this town? She asked herself this every time she set foot somewhere unfamiliar in her search. Maybe it was a place her dad went on a hunt years ago. Maybe some demonic or supernatural activity drew him in and he’d been investigating. Maybe he found an amazing burger restaurant or the best apple pie in Virginia and he made a note of it. Maybe someone there knew him. Maybe he lived there now, had abandoned her all those years ago for a fresh life.

  That last possibility hurt more than she cared to admit, but Casey wouldn’t know until she checked it out. This might be her last chance, her last lead. She had to try.

  The weather was mild for a May night. She felt a chill, but not enough that she could see her breath. Still, she shivered and pulled her hoodie tighter around her body. Casey eyed the dark, foreboding trees to her right and tried not to shiver again.

  She’d walked for another half an hour before she saw them—the lights of New Ashton. They flickered in the distance, like hundreds of beckoning fireflies in the dark. She could rest soon. Just a little longer, she told herself.

  With her resolve stronger, Casey focused on the lights, but her attention drifted. Something wasn’t right. She stopped, rocks rolling beneath the soles of her sneakers. Her shoulders slumped. Hair came loose from her hood, pink-tinged strands shuffling with her exhaled breath. Had years of hard travel and too much caution made her paranoid? Was there something lurking, or could it be her imagination?

  She hated second-guessing herself, but the doubt crept in. Casey held tighter to the strap of her bag. The lump in her throat wouldn’t go down. This wasn’t right. Every leaf shrouded in shadow, every branch could be a creature moving in the dark, ready to pounce.

  She pressed her hand to her belt buckle and thumbed the latch to release the small, hidden knife. Too quiet, she realized. The rustle of the leaves around her had stopped, stilled. Gravel crunched under her slow steps, then stopped altogether. Her heart thudded in her ears, pounding so forcefully. She strained to listen over it.

  And then a scream—piercing and terrified. Casey jumped and her heart did too, right into her throat.

  Fuck!

  She moved fast, off the side of the road, racing to the ditch. She slid down into it, slipping through the muck and dead leaves to scramble back up the side.

  The scream came again, closer this time. She couldn’t see anything but brush and branches. The canopy of trees overhead obscured the light, plunging everything into inky darkness. Branches and twigs snapped under her weight. They scratched at her face and arms, snagged her jean jacket but Casey ignored them.

  Someone needed help.

  “Who’s there? Are you hurt?”

  No answer. Nothing but silence, punctuated
by Casey’s heavy breathing. Her bag slapped against her leg when she stopped. She pulled it up, securing it onto her back, turning to search the area. There was a knife in her ankle holster—much bigger than the concealed one in her belt, and she bent down to reach for it. Just in case.

  She never saw it, not until a heavy weight barrelled into her and knocked the wind out of her. Casey went down on her knees and pain shot through her when she met the hard-packed earth. Something sharp lashed out at her—she could see a thin arm and something like metal glinting in the dim light. She brought up her arm to block and shove it away from her.

  It screamed—the same terrible scream that had led her here. Shrill. Deafening. Casey winced and brought up her hands to cover her ears. Instinctively, she curled into a fetal position to protect her face, her chest, her stomach.

  Fuck, she’d been so stupid! How had she ever thought that sound was human? There was nothing human about it. A loud screech, like a banshee’s cry, but less deadly. And she’d know. She’d come up against a banshee once before.

  But this wasn’t a banshee. She wouldn’t die from the inhuman scream, but her ears rang, drowning out all other sounds. Something sharp dug into her back and Casey opened her mouth with a scream of her own, but she couldn’t hear it.

  She dug her fingers into the ground, clawing at the earth. She had to get to her feet. Something heavy pressed down on her, keeping her from moving far, pressing her into the dirt.

  Fuck, fuck, fuck!

  She had to act. She had to move. She had to do something. She would not fucking die here.

  She rolled back and forth to gain ground, to dislodge this thing off her back. The ringing in her ears began to fade. All noise came back to her. The thing groaned and grunted as it pulled at her backpack. Something sharp jabbed again and this time when Casey screamed, she heard it loud and clear.

  She needed leverage. Damn it, why wasn’t she stronger? She put weight on her arms and drew herself up, then rolled. The weight came off her back and she could breathe again. She could move again. Taking advantage of that, she scrambled away.