Then she flung her arm back and forward like she was throwing a baseball, muttering a charm in some other language. The fiery witch sign sped through the air like an arrow straight through my body into Mateo. He fell onto his back with an agonized groan, the etchings of witch sign shining on his skin like it did that night in Bayou Sauvage.

“Mateo.” I crawled to him, but he shoved me away so hard I slid across the slab into the base of the sculpture.

Sandra continued to mutter some enchantment, the witch fire licking up now with blood-red flames, casting Mateo in an eerie glow. He stood to his full height, no longer chained to one place, his chest heaving so hard, his eyes glowing brighter than the sun.

He shook his head, his voice dropping to a guttural range as he said, “I’m so sorry, Evie.” He tore his shirt from his chest with claws.

Fuck! Yes, black claws had extended from his hands that were elongating and bulging. So were his arms, his chest puffing out, growing, bones snapping as they reformed into his other self. “Remember,” he said, his voice almost inhuman, “I love you.”

Then his head flung back with a terrifying sound that was part-howl and part-groan. A beast in pain. I couldn’t even think straight, watching his skin, his body, burst out of his clothes. His jeans ripped as his limbs grew and shifted into the werewolf he was beneath the man. My nightmare came to life right in front of me, his face contorting, lengthening into a canine-like snout, jaws too wide and fangs too sharp to be of anything natural on this earth. He fell to all fours, and still, he was so huge, so giant.

The wicked laughter echoing outside this hellish circle dragged my attention to her. Sandra.

“Why?” I asked.

“You’ll see.” She grinned like a bad child with a secret.

I glanced at Clara, still out cold on the ground. “A blood spell,” I whispered more to myself.

“Yes, dear one. The best I’ve ever created. This is by far my finest work of art.”

I climbed to my feet, moving slowly, so slowly, behind the sculpture, watching Mateo who was heaving and breathing hard, his giant head lowered to the ground, saliva dripping from his open jaws to the concrete in a splat.

“You’re an Influencer, aren’t you?” That’s the only way she’d gone undetected, hiding her magic with her own magic, a kind of glamour some like her kind were able to use.

“Indeed. A very old and experienced one. Though I need something from you to live longer.”

“You need blood for a blood spell,” I said like a total idiot.

“Yes, I do.”

My God, my sisters. I needed them. Clara, please be okay. Tears pricked, but I blinked them away.

“What exactly is supposed to happen here?” I breathed in a hushed whisper.

“I’ve let the wolf loose, dear Evie. And he’s so, so, so hungry for blood. He’s been caged quite a long time. And you’re going to provide the perfect meal.”

“He’d never hurt me.” I knew it in my bones.

“Maybe not. So I’ll help him along with a little influence.”

I’d gripped the arm of the sculpture, then noticed that my hands didn’t look like my own. I pulled some of my hair in front of my face to see that it was blond.

“No.” Bile rose up my throat when I realized her intentions. I couldn’t believe it. She was going to trick Mateo. With his senses rocketing into orbit and wanting blood, he’d see me—looking like Sandra—as the enemy. I watched him, still on all fours, snarling low, heaving deep gulps of air.

I was to be the blood sacrifice.

Mateo would die once he discovered what he’d done. He wouldn’t survive having killed me. My magic. I needed to seek my magic. While I was petrified, my mind was still clear and focused. The tea. My small bit of psychic ability that all witches had must’ve prompted me to drink that tea.

Focus. I stared at the witch sign overlaying Mateo’s skin, blazing with an eerie glow.

Mateo’s, or rather Alpha’s, gaze shot to mine, the fiercest look I’d ever seen twisting his face into a feral snarl. He rose up onto his hind legs, easily over eight feet tall.

“It’s me, Alpha. Evie. You know me.”

Thankfully, my voice still sounded like my own. But it obviously wasn’t enough. His deadly focus on me, he lunged, scrambling around the statue to snatch at my arm. I screamed and punched a jolt of magic out, knocking him into the invisible wall of the witch circle. He shook his head, snapping at me again, a trickle of blood dropping to the white stone floor. He started circling around the statue. I moved in the opposite direction, trying not to panic with only two options here.

I could keep battering him up against the impenetrable wall Sandra had erected, which could very well kill him before it even knocked him unconscious. Or I could let him kill me.

There’s a third option, Hex-breaker, whispered a soft voice. A tingle in my veins and a gust of wind. My magic. She was speaking to me, filling my blood with promise and power.

Mateo pounced again. I rolled away, but his claws scraped the side of my ribs. I screamed and shoved him with a telekinetic push again, bouncing him against the barrier.

Hex-breaker.

Yes. I was a Hex-breaker.

My gifts extended to twisting spells. When we were little girls, Violet and I liked the same boy in school, Tommy Hartford. Right in the middle of Social Studies, Violet cast a chicken pox charm on me so that I broke out into bright red hives. Without a thought, I changed the direction of the spell and slapped it back onto Violet. As well as Mandy Parker and Carrie Henagan who happened to be hovered around Violet’s desk at the time. I hadn’t broken the spell, but changed it.

This wasn’t a chicken pox charm. I didn’t think I could twist a blood spell. But I was going to die trying.

When Mateo lunged this time, he leaped straight over me, clawing at my back. I screamed and punched a giant bolt of magic at him, throwing him with such force I heard his leg snap.

“You bitch!” screamed Sandra. “What have you done?” She paced on the other side.

Mateo whimpered, my magic radiating off my body, humming along my skin in a way I knew meant I was running out of energy.

“Mateo,” I whispered, swiping away the tear that sprang from my eye and crawling across the slab.

He stayed on his side, whimpering, his chest heaving. Sandra was muttering again, charging up her spell, the pressure inside the ring compressing on my chest and my head. Mateo snarled, lifting the front half of his body onto his muscle-clad arms. As Sandra kept ramping it up, the witch sign on his body glowed white, seeming to burn into his skin. He howled in pain. The symbols swirled in my mind, that inner voice tapping on my shoulder.

So I closed my eyes and let go and listened. Blocking out my fear and my will to control what I couldn’t, I watched the signs twist and turn in my head, spinning till they made no sense, till I saw nothing, but felt its meaning. Felt everything.

“It’s not power.” I opened my eyes, petrified of the look in Mateo’s locked golden gaze on me as he crouched onto all fours, huge and imposing, stalking closer.

“It’s hate,” I whispered. “Hatred fuels her. Fuels the spell.”

As if to agree, Mateo growled, bearing his razor-sharp fangs.

“Viens á moi, mon amour,” I whispered.

His pointed ears pricked at the sound of my voice, still seeing me in the guise of Sandra.

He did. He came to me, a monster predator stalking toward me, just like in my nightmare. I stayed on the ground and let him crawl up my body, hovering over me with terrifying menace and bloodlust in his eyes.

“Attendez, love.” My voice trembled, but magic swirled around me, cocooning me with the rightness of what I needed to do. “Not yet. Don’t kill me yet.”

I pressed both my palms to my chest, pooling images of love in my mind: Clara making the speech on Thanksgiving, Jules putting her arm around my shoulder outside the Roosevelt, Violet laughing with pure joy in the living room, and Mateo. Mateo opening his truck door for me, dancing with me at the Cauldron, cooking breakfast, tucking my hair behind my ear and staring at me like I was the only woman in the world, rescuing me from the party, and loving me…loving me with his body, his hands, his words.

Balling it all inside my chest, I stared into his eyes and put my palms to his chest, covered in course hair and heaving in great gulps of air. “Arrêtez.”

A blinding flash of electric green light burst from my body and swept outward, guttering the red flames of the witch’s circle. Sandra screamed. I glanced at my hands still pressed to Mateo’s chest, recognizing them as my own. The pressure was gone, but the witch’s circle remained intact. My hands shook, my body going limp with the last drain of magic. They fell to my sides, and I stared up at what could still be the death of me.

My love.

Mateo’s eyes narrowed, still golden, full of the wolf. Alpha. His jaws opened, a growl rumbling from somewhere deep and dark inside him. So I used the one power I had left in me.

“It’s me, Alpha. Your Evie.” A tear streaked out one eye and dropped into my hair.

His pupils dilated, focusing, watching the trek of another tear slipping free. Trembling, I reached up my hand toward his face, so slowly. He watched, his growl rumbling louder.

“Remember last night,” I whispered. “Remember this.” Fingers shaking, I pressed lightly to his giant jaw. “I’m yours, remember?” A jagged sob shook my chest. “Please remember.”

His huge head dipped lower, then tilted toward the hand I’d put on his jaw. I let it fall, but he snapped out and clamped his jaws on my wrist—ever, ever so gently. Then he let it go and licked my wrist, my palm, my fingers, large, hot tongue lapping at my hand, his growl fading to a hound’s whimper. Then he nuzzled his snout into my hair, licking my neck. Before I knew what was happening, he’d wrapped a clawed hand around my waist and lifted me into a half-sitting position, my back crossing his lap, my head on his chest.

“No! How!” screeched Sandra, throwing what Grandma Maybelle would call a conniption fit. “How did you do it, you bitch! He needs blood. All werewolves must have it after so long!”