Prologue
Millie
I don’t like these dreams. Sometimes they’re not scary, and I settle into a pleasant moment in them. But then my mind betrays me, and I’m suddenly fighting something horrible.
Something evil.
This time, it didn’t start nice at all. I jumped right into the middle of a war.
Where are my sisters? Why aren’t they with me?
“It’s no use,” I say to a woman I don’t recognize. “He’s too strong.”
“This happens every time,” she replies. How can she be so calm? Fire surrounds us, and something pulls at me. Trying to claim me. “You have to concentrate. You’ve been groomed for this over dozens of lifetimes.”
I shake my head, frantically searching for my sisters.
“Stop, a stór mo chroí.”
The male voice seems to come from inside my head. It’s calm and firm. A lifeline in the middle of all this chaos. This isn’t the evil.
It could be my salvation.
I turn and see Lucien. I don’t know how I know his name, but I’m certain he’s Lucien, and there he is, standing at least fifty yards away. He didn’t yell the word, so how did I hear him?
“Don’t be afraid,” Lucien says inside my head. “We’ll defeat the evil one, but not today. Not yet.”
“We have to!” I scream. “He’s going to destroy all of us!”
I’m weakening. I feel the evil pulling, the tug stronger as if it’s desperate now. Lucien starts to run toward me, but then he’s gone, and I can’t see him anymore.
Even the fire has disappeared.
It’s just me. And him.
The evil.
I sit up in bed, sweating, my chest heaving as I gasp for air.
Brielle thinks that I have these dreams now because I hit puberty, and it’s all because of hormones.
She’s my older sister. She probably knows about those things.
But deep down, we both know better. We’ve done enough research—away from the house so Mama doesn’t know—on our abilities to know that we’re special. The spirits we see, the things we know, they aren’t normal.
And our mama would kill us if we spoke of it in this house.
Just like she killed our daddy.
I lay back down and tug the covers up to my chin, trying to breathe normally so I can go back to sleep. Unfortunately, the spirits here know when the dreams happen, and they like to continue the torture while I’m awake.
Especially him. Daddy might be dead, but he’s not gone.
I risk a glance into the corner of my bedroom and see him standing there. For a long time after he died, I could read his thoughts.
I had to learn how to build up my defenses because the things he thinks about are worse than any nightmare I’ve ever had.
I don’t want to be alone. Brielle, Daphne, and I tried to talk Mama into letting us share just one bedroom, but she refused.
Mama likes to taunt us as badly as Daddy does.
We can’t escape it.
Walking through the old house in the bayou in the middle of the night is its own kind of torture for me, but being with Brielle makes it worth it.
I take a deep breath, toss back the covers, and hurry from my room. I slowly open the creaky door, cringing at the sound it makes and hoping with all my might that it doesn’t wake Mama.
I pause, listen, and reach out with my mind to see if she’s still in bed.
She is.
And spirits surround her.
I shiver as I raise my shields again and set out down the hallway. I have to flatten myself against the wall so I don’t run into one of the most aggressive ghosts we have in the house, and then I run as fast as I can down the long hallway to Brielle’s room.
I close the door behind me and climb into bed with her, surprised to find our baby sister, Daphne, already there.
“We all dreamed tonight,” Brielle murmurs softly as I join them. “Yours must have been bad to risk the house at night to get here.”
“So much fire,” Daphne whimpers. “Why is there always fire?”
“Because he’s the devil,” I reply and run my hand down her soft, red hair.
Suddenly, a door slams somewhere in the house.
“Oh, no,” Brielle says. “Mill—”
“Already looking.” I reach out again and feel everything in me go cold in terror. “Hide.”
Chapter One
Millie
Early mornings at the Witches Brew are my favorite time of day. I rarely sleep. Dreams have plagued me for my entire life, and as I’ve gotten older, I’ve learned to survive on less and less rest. Instead, I use the night to learn, the early morning to enjoy, and the day to work.
The sun isn’t up yet, and I’m alone here in my café in the heart of the French Quarter, adding some new potions to the menu board.
I perfected a new protection brew last week that I feel confident giving to my customers, and I tweaked the love potion just a bit.
I can’t have any more men ordering that damn thing, taking a drink, and deciding I’m their soul mate. No matter how many times I tell them to wait and drink it after leaving the café, they never listen.
Men are horrible about that.
So, I had to weaken the spell a bit. Make it more of a lust potion.
Once I hang the board behind the counter, I walk to my newest addition to the space—my reading nook. I have two couches in deep purple velvet situated on opposite sides of a square coffee table—thanks to my sister Daphne’s antique shop. She says the table came from a couple so deeply in love that they died within minutes of each other so one wouldn’t have to know life without the other.
And Daphne would know. She’s psychometric. She sees the past when she touches objects.
I fluff the colorful pillows on the couches, wipe up a ring on a side table, and make a mental note to go across the street today to buy some fresh flowers to set in front of the window that overlooks the courtyard out back.
The New Orleans French Quarter is known for its hidden courtyards, tucked back behind the shops and businesses that line the streets. I’m lucky enough to have one here. When it’s not too hot outside, I open the door and offer tables and chairs for my customers to sit and enjoy the magnolia trees and the cobbled patio that connects the outside to Witches Brew.
This shop is my favorite place on Earth, and I baby it every day.
Once I have books back on their shelves , I grab a bag of garbage to take to the alley.
Brielle would yell at me for going out back by myself in the pitch-black dark, so before I step through the door, I reach out with my mind to make sure it’s safe.
No one’s lurking in the shadows.
Well, no one living, anyway. There are plenty of spirits everywhere. But I’ve had my shields in place against their minds for a long, long time.
I hurry out and swing the heavy trash into the dumpster and then turn to go inside before stopping short, my senses suddenly alive in awareness.
“Meow.”
I tilt my head to the side, trying to see better in the darkness. “Hi there. Excuse me.”
I open the door to my shop and am surprised when the cat walks in beside me.