Layla woke and stretched, the tugs of sleep heavy in her arms as she reached for her cell, only to see that she had no messages and that it was nearly noon.

She hurriedly got up, showered, dressed, and went downstairs. Damaris was nowhere in sight, but Sophie was in the kitchen.

“Layla! I was beginning to wonder if you’d been hit with a sleeping spell.” Her eyes were twinkling, and Layla smiled uncertainly.

“Sorry. I guess I didn’t realize just how tired I was.”

“Don’t worry about it. You’ll have plenty of late mornings to come. Learning to use magic is tiring, and you’ll find yourself sleeping more at first when you use it. That gets easier, the more you do. You build up a fitness for it.”

Layla took the soup and fresh rolls Sophie offered her, guiltily remembering her resolution to buy her own food.

“I’ll be out of your hair soon,” she promised. “I just need to get a new job lined up. Hopefully, it won’t take too long.”

To Layla’s surprise, though, Sophie looked crestfallen. “Oh. I’d hoped you’d stay with us permanently. Join our coven. It’s not the biggest, and we can be a little weird at times, but I’d honestly hoped you’d be happy here.”

Taken aback not just at Sophie’s words, but by the obvious feeling behind them, Layla froze where she stood, food forgotten. “What would that mean, to be part of your coven?”

Sophie apparently took the question as a good sign, and her face became more animated as she gestured for Layla to sit down and eat, even as she answered. “There would be an initiation ritual, and then you’d formally be one of us. You’d eventually be assigned a mentor to teach you, though we’d all have a hand in your training. Every coven does things differently. As high priestess, I mostly let everyone do whatever they want, unless there’s something that affects us as a group. Then we band together to solve the problem.”

“Like the witch killings?”

Sophie nodded solemnly. “Such serious issues don’t come up often, though. Most of the time, we just have fun and spend time together.”

Layla considered the offer, trying to wrap her mind around it. She’d feel bad living off of others, as she did now, but she could start contributing once she had a job. She’d never really felt like she belonged anywhere, but this offer... These people were like her, and more than that, she felt comfortable with them.

She could see herself living with them.

“Okay,” she said nervously, wondering what she’d gotten herself into. “That would be great.”

“Excellent!” Sophie grinned at her, genuine joy coming off her in a way that made Layla suddenly want to cry, it felt so infectious—this welcome, and Sophie’s excitement over her being around, was unlike anything Layla had experienced in the past.

“The others will be so pleased,” Sophie continued. “I’ll tell them to start preparing, and we can do it this evening, before the others arrive.”

“Others?”

“We’ve accepted Hunter’s offer.” Sophie’s mouth twisted unhappily. “Working with demons isn’t exactly ideal, but we’ve all been worried about these killings for a while, and we’re no closer to stopping them.”

Layla tried to keep delight from her face. Maybe the others didn’t like working with demons, but she couldn’t wait to get to know Hunter better. She thought of the half-finished drawing of him she had up in her bedroom and wondered what the chances were of them getting some time alone together when he was supposed to be helping the coven.

“Just be careful,” Sophie continued. “Demons can be great for contracts, but that doesn’t mean we should get too close to them or trust them too much,” she added, seeming to read Layla’s thoughts.

“When are they coming over?”

“Tonight at midnight. We’ll do your initiation first, so that you’re properly a part of the coven before they arrive. We can stand as a united front then.”

Layla remembered something Damaris had mentioned last night. “Do we know why they’re here? Damaris was saying that she didn’t know why they’d go through all the bother, considering how unpopular they are here.”

Sophie looked troubled at the question, but answered after only a moment. “They’re here because the underworld is slowly vanishing. No one knows why, but it has a lot of the demons feeling nervous. That and the fact that female demons are hardly born anymore, which means that, if they want a mate, they have to look elsewhere.”

Layla felt her face reddening at the mention of mates. Was that what Hunter wanted here? Had he found anyone yet?

“Once you’ve eaten, you need to purify yourself,” Sophie told her without missing a beat. “It’s part of the ritual. Rose will pick you up. There’s a hot spring about an hour away that we use.”

“Is there anything else I need to do?”

“Plenty!” Sophie laughed. “One step at a time, though.”

Feeling a little overwhelmed, Layla went back to her soup. By the time she was finished, Damaris had wandered downstairs and was just helping herself to soup when the doorbell rang. For a moment, Layla hoped it was Hunter, but then Rose and Lizeth came in. Apparently the doorbell was used as a sort of greeting by the witches who didn’t actually live there. Entering, both women looked tired and drawn.

“Rough night?” Sophie’s voice had an underlying tension that made Layla stiffen.

“We got a visit from the witch’s family. The one who was killed. They wanted to know why this happened so close to our territory, why we aren’t doing anything about it.”

“Why didn’t they go to her own coven?”

“Couldn’t find them,” Rose answered simply. “This is the second witch they’ve lost. When they heard about the most recent killing, they all went into hiding. Not that I blame them for it.”

Damaris nodded, but Sophie looked angry. “They should have at least talked to the family before they went dark. It’s the duty of their high priestess to see to that.”

Rose sighed. “Apparently, the woman killed was their high priestess.”

Sophie seemed to have nothing to say to that. She slumped down into a chair. The mood at the table was suddenly bleak, and Layla started to get up in order to escape the dampened mood, but Lizeth stopped her. “Come here, Layla, I want to show you something. If that’s okay, Sophie?”

“Yes, go ahead.” Sophie waved her hand, and Layla followed Lizeth to an extensive bookshelf in the living room. All of the books looked pretty normal. Lizeth pulled out five from the center shelf, revealing a thick leather-bound book behind them. This book didn’t look normal. It looked distinctly magical—an impression which was reinforced by the reverent way Lizeth handled it.

“This is our spell book.” She handed it to Layla, who opened the cover carefully, the spine cracking in protest; yellowing paper betrayed its age. “You should take a look through it. Maybe before you go to cleansing, you can try a spell.”

“Already?” At once alarmed, Layla nearly tried to hand the other witch the book she’d been given. What if she blew up the house?

“You have to start training somewhere. Don’t worry, we’ll make sure nothing bad happens. Besides,” Lizeth added, “the sooner we figure out your limitation, the better. Until that happens, we should try to make sure we’re all here whenever you try to cast something. We have no idea what’ll happen to you afterward, and you may need help like Rose does.”

Layla remembered Rose screaming with pain and fought to keep her expression neutral. Hopefully, she’d have a restriction more like Damaris.

Sitting down on the couch, she flicked through the book’s old pages. It seemed as though the book was organized in order of power. The first spells seemed small and mostly trivial, including such spells as those for cutting nails to a perfect shape and changing the color of a rose. As she went on, though, Layla began to find more interesting and complex spells.

There was one to enchant a coin to glow when there was danger about. Another one to warm the caster and those around them. One to let the caster see in the dark and one to turn on lights remotely.

Nearer the back, Layla started seeing more powerful spells. Fireballs, wards, lightning sticks, explosions, healing spells for major wounds, offers of temporary invisibility… it was endless.

“Is there a spell to cure addictions?”

Lizeth shook her head, and Layla hated the pity in her eyes; she clearly knew what Layla was thinking. “I’m sorry, but no. There are healing spells, but those don’t work well on diseases, mental or physical. A talented healer could possibly ease the symptoms of addiction, though those would come back once the spell wore off, and no one can cast healing spells around the clock.”

Disappointed, Layla kept looking. Most of the spells had a Latin incantation and a number, which Lizeth told her was an indicator of how much power the spell used. Toward the back, even the instructions started getting more complicated, to match the spells’ various purposes—as with the truth spell. Layla flicked to the last page and gasped.

“A spell to reawaken the dead?”

Lizeth was already shaking her head. “Not in the way you’re thinking, and believe me, you don’t want to try it. First of all, the dead can only be awakened with another life, meaning that someone else has to die to cast the spell. Secondly, the awakened one doesn’t stay alive. They’ll slide back into the realm of death within a few days, a week at most.”

Layla was horrified. “Why would anyone do that, then? Why is it even in here?”

“It’s been used before. There’s one story told of a man who was dying. He had a few weeks to live, and he wanted his daughter to see her mother again. He gave his life to the spell, sacrificing his last few weeks so his daughter could spend some time with her mother.

“There’s another one about how, in a time of war between immortals, a high priestess was killed before she could reveal vital information on how to win the war. One of her coven members died to save everyone else. She brought the high priestess back so that she could tell them the secret to victory.”

Layla quickly turned away from the spell. She didn’t want to think about this, not now. She moved right back to the front of the book, focusing on the silly spells—the ones that didn’t really do anything useful.

“What about this one? The one to change hair color. Could I try that one?”

“Of course. You should try something similar to the shade you have currently, as that’ll be easier when you’re first starting. Maybe just a lighter brown. Just do one strand, too; no way will you manage more than that without further training, and it’ll fade back to normal after a few hours.”

For a crazy-simple spell, this was sounding pretty complicated and difficult.

“Okay, what do I do?”

“Say the incantation, Colmatio, and concentrate very hard on the strand of hair and what color you want it to be.”

Layla did as she was told. The word sounded foreign in her mouth, and she went cross-eyed looking at her hair strand.

But nothing happened.

“That’s okay,” Lizeth said easily. “No one gets it on the first time. Try again.”

Layla tried. And tried.

And tried.

Two hours passed before Lizeth called her off.

“I’m no good at this,” Layla said sadly.

“You will be. It took me four weeks of solid practice before I could cast my first spell, and even then it didn’t go as planned. It was a nail growing charm. I ended up with no nails for months! My mother wouldn’t grow them back for me, either; she said it was part of the learning process.”

The laugh Lizeth’s story gave her made Layla feel a bit better, though she did wish she’d at least made some progress, even if it would have meant the spell backfiring.

She wasn’t given much time to dwell on her failure, though.

Rose took her to the hot spring, which was quite an experience. Layla had never been anywhere like the cave, which seemed to be masked from the public. Rose gave her some special soap to wash with and then went to stand watch at the entrance while Layla bathed; by the time she’d finished and reappeared at the cave’s entrance, feeling more refreshed than she would have guessed was possible, the sun had sunk lower in the sky. Layla felt her nerves mounting, seeing how time had passed and knowing what was coming. Two days ago, if someone had told her she’d be preparing to join a coven of witches, she’d have thought them crazy. She guessed her life had taken some pretty strange turns since then.

By the time they got back to Sophie’s house, the living area had been transformed. The couches were pushed out of the way and candles rested everywhere. Layla half-expected the women to tell her to strip and sit in the middle of a ritual circle, but fortunately, it didn’t seem like that kind of ritual.

Sophie, Damaris, Rose, and Lizeth held hands in a circle around her, with Layla facing Sophie.

“Do you, Layla Nordmeyer, join us of your own free will?”

“Yes.”

“Do you promise to uphold the honor of this coven and obey the high priestess?”

“Yes.”

Sophie dropped the formal tone and grinned. “Congratulations! You’re officially one of us.”

She hugged Layla and pressed something into her hand. Layla looked down to see a bright blue stone on a chain. Looking around, she saw that everyone held something like the stone in her own hand now.

“It’s traditional to give new members a gift,” Sophie explained. “The stone has no magical properties, but once you learn enough, you can enchant if, if you want.”

“Thank you.” She couldn’t believe she’d just joined a coven of witches.

Lizeth gave her a bracelet with blue stones that weren’t unlike the one Sophie had gifted her. Damaris handed her a painted tea mug to put in the cupboard as her own. Rose presented her with an intricate dreamcatcher, also in blue.

“Okay, seriously, how did you all know my favorite color is blue?”

The others laughed. “It’s a simple enough spell,” Damaris told her. “I’ll teach it to you someday.”

“You have spells that can read people’s minds?”

“Oh no, nothing like that!” Damaris answered quickly. “There are specific spells to get some of the basic pieces of information that live on the surface of each of us, like birthdays and colors. If it’s something you want to keep private, it’ll be buried in your mind where no spell can get at it.”

That was heartening. Layla didn’t know how she’d feel about mind reading spells. Thanking the other women, she tried not to dwell on it, and pushed down the emotion she felt bubbling up within her; she belonged somewhere now. She put on her jewelry, placed her mug in the cupboard, and ran upstairs to hang her dreamcatcher above her bed.

By the time she got back downstairs, a chocolate cake had appeared out of nowhere. Rose put the candles away while the others sat down with Layla and talked of normal things.

Layla already felt like she belonged here, and it was amazing.