Chapter 1

Maeve Brennan’s eyelids drifted shut as she swayed, the sexy beat of the music climbing inside her and riding the wave of bourbon singing through her veins. Her heart pounded in time to the rhythm of the song, her feet fairly gliding through the crowd as she brushed against the fevered bodies seeking release on the dancefloor.

The gossamer fabric of her skirt brushed her thighs, the sensation like a lover’s caress over her skin. Raising her arms high above her head as she moved, her bangle bracelets clanked as they slid from her wrists to her forearms. Long curls teased her cheeks and cascaded over her shoulders, then down her arms as they swirled around her. Stonyville’s first nightclub, Surge, had been an instant success and her own personal refuge after long hours of making her boutique a success.

She and Courtney had finally dragged Crystal’s Closet kicking and screaming into the black one day before her twenty-fifth birthday, and by God she was going let go for the night to celebrate it.

Courtney pushed through the crowd and handed another bourbon neat to Maeve with a wink. “Drink up, you uptight bitch,” she said on a laugh as she glanced at her phone. “Because in one minute, it will officially be your birthday.”

Maeve took the glass and raised it in the air. “To the twenty-fifth…and the downhill slide to thirty!” she joked.

Actually, she looked forward to that downhill slide. She hoped for a few lines on her face. Not so many as to have her jump on the Botox wagon, but just enough that the world took her seriously. At least, other business people.

Because after meeting with seven banks and three private investors, and being laughed at by all of them, she’d reached her quota of judgmental bullshit.

Of course, it made her brutally determined to make her boutique a success, so two years, one partner, zero dollars left in her savings, and after an unfortunate quantity of ramen noodles, she finally did it.

She smiled at her friend, her partner in crime, the single-most dedicated person she had ever met.

They finally did it.

She took a long sip. The crowd blurred before her. The edges of her vision skewed, smoke billowing in from all sides like effects at an ’80s hair band concert. The music reached her ears as if slogging through stagnant, brackish water.

A decades-old scream pierced her ears, a river of red flashed before her eyes, and a cry of anguish flooded her. The glass slipped from her fingertips, crashing to the floor, shattering into hundreds of shards scattering about her feet. Dropping to her knees, the glass digging into her flesh, she flattened her palms on the wood, desperate to stop the swaying dizziness that sent her stomach pitching. However, what should have been cool and smooth under her palm felt spongy and damp.

The crowd backed away from her. Courtney grabbed her arm. “Oh, my God, honey—are you okay?”

Courtney’s muffled words barely reached her. The vision shot through her so much more vividly than the times before. It sucked her in, wrapping around her, binding her, trying to drag her into another time, another place—to bear witness to another woman’s crushing grief, still so alive that it gutted Maeve to the core.

She took jagged breaths, desperate to suck in air as grief clutched at her. She raised her head and looked out to the sea of people, but they had vanished and a moss-covered field spread out before her. Along the edge stood a gnarled cluster of trees, twisted into a jagged braid. At the base, where the roots drop into the earth, lay a strawberry-blond-haired woman with gentle eyes, a hand cradling her stomach. Her skin glowed almost translucent as her life, her energy, slid out of her.

Maeve squeezed her eyes shut tight, shook her head, and slammed her palm against the floor. In a rush, the crowd swam before her, glass biting into her hands and knees as the last shimmers of the vision evaporated.

“Oh, honey. Let me get you to a hospital,” Courtney said, worry lacing her voice and making it shake.

“I don’t know what happened,” Maeve mumbled, trying to push herself up.

The bartender rushed over with fresh towels.

“Oh, thank you,” Courtney said, taking the terrycloth and wrapping it around Maeve’s bleeding hands.

“Yeah, no problem,” he muttered, frustration in his tone. “You’re not supposed to be on the dancefloor with drinks, you know,” he said, aiming a glare at them.

Courtney pursed her lips and shot him a glare. “Oh, take a pill, guy. It’s not like anyone here said they were going to sue you or anything.”

The cloth hitting the cuts sent a sting coursing through her veins. Her skin burned hot and a flush crept over her, making her cheeks flame scarlet. Scrambling to her feet, she grabbed Courtney for balance.

Courtney wrapped her arms around her and led her out of the bar.

Cold, crisp air greeted them, washing away the stench of beer, sweat, and cheap cologne.

Funny, she hadn’t noticed any of those scents until right before she headed out the door. Now they filled her nostrils, making her wonder if she would ever get them out. “Do you smell that?” she asked Courtney.

“What?”

“God, it’s so strong I could practically cut it with a knife. The body odor, the beer, all the perfumes.” Maeve shook her head and flinched. “You really don’t smell it?”

Courtney stopped and tucked the extra towels under her arm as she took Maeve’s face in her hands and narrowed her eyes while she examined her. “I watched you go down, but didn’t see you hit your head or anything. Did I miss it?”

Maeve shook the head in question and experienced not one stitch of pain from the neck up. “No, no head injury—just my hands.” She held them out and froze.

They didn’t hurt.

She looked down at her knees. “Courtney,” she whispered. “Look.”

Courtney crouched down and examined her for the gashes and digs that had been in her skin only minutes before. “Holy shit! There’s nothing there.” She took Maeve’s hand and gently unrolled the towel.

Red splatters had started to turn brown around the edges where the fresh blood had begun to dry.

Her hands, although dirty with dried blood, lay unmarred.

“How is this possible?” Maeve whispered. In a split second, significant moments of her life flashed through her mind—she imagined much the way they did for people who claimed their life flashed before their eyes in the seconds before disaster struck.

Only, this wasn’t disaster looming. It was the slow death of the life she had known as a future of terrifying uncertainty loomed before her.

She knew the world to be a magical place, with witches, shifters, vampires, really any mystical figure you could imagine living among humans, but she had always been in the shadows of their magnificence. A mere human, she imagined those spectacular beings encountering her and her human inadequacies with a bored tolerance.

And now, she couldn’t deny she was one of them.

Somehow.

Courtney pulled antibacterial wipes out of her purse and rubbed them over Maeve’s skin, much the way a mom would her rambunctious child. “You know, I got used to you having weird little visions and dreams, but this was something else. What happened when you fell? What did you see?”

She swallowed the lump that rose in her throat. “A woman in a field, dying.”

Courtney glanced up. “Did it look like something happening now, or in the past?”

She closed her eyes and recalled the woman and the details of her clothing. “She wore a long flowered skirt and a tank top. I just—I can’t tell from what I’m seeing. I mean, I would say this definitely happened in the last thirty years or so.”

Courtney took her arm and led her to the car. “Was there anything else around her? Some detail about the area? Another person? Anything?”

Maeve slid to a stop. “The tree. She was leaning against this twisted tree. It had to stand at least twenty feet tall, and the trunk looked like three trunks…braided almost. I could sketch it.”

Courtney opened the passenger door and guided Maeve inside. “Here,” she said after she pulled a pen from her purse. “Napkins are in the glovebox.”

Maeve slid the pen over the napkin, keeping her strokes feather-light to keep the ink from bleeding into it. After ten minutes she stopped, looked it over one last time, and handed it to Courtney. “That’s the tree I saw.”

Courtney took one look and gasped. “I’ve heard of this tree. It has that weird fourth trunk that winds around it. Almost like a serpent. I went to grade school with this girl, Ellie Wolfe—she used to talk about a tree like this.”

“Can we call her?”

Courtney bit her lip and shrugged. “I guess we could. I’d have to see if I could get my hands on her number, but I don’t know how much she actually knows. It sounded more like something she’d heard about and just relayed what she had overheard. I think we’d have better luck going to her mother, Barbara.”

“Whose number you also don’t have,” Maeve said with a smirk.

Courtney pointed a finger in the air and grinned. “Ahh, that’s where you’re wrong, my snarky little friend. She was tight with my Aunty Meg. She stopped by when she saw me cleaning out the place after my aunt died, just a few days after I agreed to our boutique deal. She wanted to stop in when we had the place up and running to see how it all turned out.” She patted her purse with her hand. “I happen to have her number right here in my purse. Let’s get you home and I’ll give her a call.”

Maeve leaned her head against the headrest and closed her eyes. “Thank God.”

Courtney squinted, and wrinkled her nose. “Umm, not sure you’re supposed to thank God anymore. I mean, you might actually have many gods, or priestesses, or who knows what. I haven’t really paid close attention to the paranormal world, so I couldn’t tell you for sure, but yeah, put that on the list of issues you need to revisit.”

Maeve rolled her head the side and cracked open an eye. “Leave it to you to find humor in this. For all I know I’m going to turn into some sort of goblin or God kn—er—who knows what, and you’re starting a to-do list to get me started just right.” She lay her hand over Courtney’s. “This is more than you signed on for when you agreed to this partnership, and if you want out—”

“Out?” Courtney scoffed. “Oh, hell no…this could be so much better. You can smite asshole customers for us now. And there will be asshole customers. It’s one of the few things in life that are guaranteed, like death and taxes. You can curse them by wishing instantaneous diarrhea on them or something when they do annoying shit, like rip off the tags by accident, leave clothes balled up on the floor in the dressing room, or try to return clothes they bought with the sole purpose of wearing once and taking back.” Courtney bopped her head and grinned while holding the steering wheel. “This is power. I’m all in. So in. As a matter of fact, we should revise our contract to stipulate that you have to use any newfound powers for company benefit.”

Despite the onslaught of fear and worry bombarding her, she laughed. “And what’s in it for me?”

Courtney turned to her and raised her brows. “I’ll be your lifelong designated driver?” she offered in a hopeful voice.

Maeve tapped a finger against her bottom lip as she thought about it. “Actually, that could work.”

Courtney flinched. “Yeah, just one problem…I think I’m too drunk to drive tonight.”

Maeve grabbed her cell and opened her apps. “Well, the first step is admitting it. Uber it is.”