“Hello?” I didn’t want any more bad news. The break in our dry spell was not welcome. But more bad news it was.

“Camille, can you come over? We have a problem here.” It was Lindsey Cartridge, the FBH director of the Green Goddess Women’s Shelter and leader of the most prominent coven in Seattle.

My first thought was that something was wrong with her baby. But when I asked, she put that fear to rest.

“No, Feddrika is thriving. But remember when my coven was having problems a couple of months ago? Looks like it’s not over yet.”

“More psychic vampires?” I so did not want to deal with more bhouts—ghosts who ate magical energy and transferred it to their controller. Gulakah had really messed with a good share of the witches in the area, as well as a number of the magic-using Fae.

“Not exactly. One of my covener’s sons is in trouble. Sean was out hunting for graveyard dirt—don’t even say a word about that.”

I chuckled. I couldn’t very well say much, seeing that I used graveyard dirt myself. “Go on. I’m listening.”

“Well, he was out early this morning digging up a little graveyard dirt when he saw grave robbers in the cemetery. He managed to hide before they caught sight of him. When the cops showed up, they got into a fight with the thieves. Sean managed to escape before he was caught, but he’s terrified. And he said there were some odd things going on there—the energy was fucked up.”

I bit my lip. This was all getting too close for comfort. Thinking for a moment, I finally said, “You, your covener, and Sean meet us at the FH-CSI in an hour or so. You have to tell Chase about this. I promise, we’ll make sure Sean doesn’t get into trouble. At least not more than a dressing-down.”

Lindsey agreed and hung up. By that time, Delilah was back and we headed out. We took my car. Delilah’s Jeep had been acting up and Jason Binds, our friend Tim’s husband, had said he would come out to look at it today. As I tossed my purse into the back and strapped on my seat belt, it occurred to me that vacation was over and we were firmly back in the trenches.

“I need to stop by Mystic Charms before we head to HQ. It’s on the way, and I’ll only be a few minutes.”

The minute Delilah had shut her door, I eased out of the driveway and headed onto the—for once—dry roads. The sun was peeking through wispy clouds, in that perfect union of cool breeze and warming rays that sparked the imagination and cleared the head.

I rolled down my window and inhaled deeply. Someone, somewhere, had recently mowed their lawn. The clean, newly shorn grass smell gave way to rotten eggs as we passed through where a skunk had let loose.

Delilah let out a muffled “Ugh,” and I grinned at her. Ever since she’d been skunked, she gave them a wide berth.

And then we were nearing the metropolitan area, and I closed the window and turned on the air. Exhaust wasn’t my idea of a good time.

“Marion called last night,” Delilah said.

“She and Douglas find a house yet?” Marion was a friend of ours—a coyote shifter—who had been displaced when the Koyanni burned down her house and her café. The café had been restored, but she and her husband had been living with our neighbor Wilbur—our neighborhood necromancer and frootloop—helping him out. He’d also been a victim of collateral damage, only instead of a burned shell of a house, he was missing a leg.

“Yeah, they’re closing on it and moving in about three weeks. Marion’s sister came to get Snickers, their cat, when they moved in with Wilbur. She’s going to keep him for them until they move. They didn’t dare take Snickers to Wilbur’s, not with Martin around. He might eat him.” Delilah grimaced, and I grimaced along with her.

“He’s a freak show, that’s for sure.” I sighed. “But I guess he’s our freak show, as much as we might not want to claim him. I imagine Wilbur will be glad to have his house back, though.”

“Marion thinks he’s going to miss them.”

“He’s such an odd duck. Just when I think I might actually like him, he goes and does something to piss me off. He wanted to borrow Rodney the other night, but Morio told him to fuck off.”

“What did he want with Rodney?” Delilah sounded as suspicious as I felt.

“I dunno, but it couldn’t be anything good.”

Rodney was a bane and a curse, though he’d been given to us as a gift. The bone golem would have made the perfect love child of Howard Stern and Rodney Dangerfield. Toss in a touch of Don Rickles, and he’d be the perfect storm. We couldn’t get rid of the little freak, though, because Grandmother Coyote had given him to Morio. I not-so-secretly hoped that one day Rodney would find himself on the business end of a very big sledgehammer.

As we neared the corner of Strand and Oakes, I pulled into a space that opened up even as we drove down the street. Bingo! Right in front of Mystic Charms. I had a knack for finding parking whenever I needed it.

“You want to stay here, or come in?” I leaned over the backseat to grab my purse and glanced into my side mirror to see if anybody was coming. Last thing I needed was for someone to take off my door when I opened it.

“Coming with.” Delilah hopped out. The sidewalks were cracked, barely above street level, and when the rains flooded the streets, the shops put out sandbags, just in case. But it was a low-rent district, and businesses that skimped by on a shoestring found it easier to survive here.

As we headed into the store, I automatically scanned the room for any sign of trouble. It was second nature now—especially when we were dealing with magical shops and clubs.

Mystic Charms was a homey little shop, but looks were deceiving. The owners were an interracial couple—an FBH witch and her Fae husband. Laslan had come over from Otherworld, met Beth, and fallen in love, much as our father had done with our mother. But instead of going back to Otherworld with him, Beth had persuaded him to give it a go over Earthside. They were both powerful, each in their own form of magic, and I respected their integrity, so I frequented their shop.

Delilah hovered over some pretty candles, while I checked out the other patrons in the shop. There were two who were obviously Wiccan—which was merely one branch of FBH paganism and witchcraft.

Another woman resonated with a dark, deep, shamanic energy. She felt edgy and powerful, and intriguing.

A fourth was flipping through the how-to books on the shelf, looking frustrated. I wanted to go over and tell him to quit reading and go out and just explore his magic, but that wasn’t my place.

Instead, I picked up a basket and glanced around, looking for the herbs and oils, which had been moved from their usual location.

In fact, now that I looked around, I saw that the entire shop had undergone a change in looks. After a moment, I spied the herbs and headed over to a wall that was now lined with cubbyholes.

Within each niche stood a jar filled with herbs. They were in alphabetical order, and as I set down the basket and began moving the mandrake root and wormwood to the counter with scales and plastic sacks, the man slammed the book he was holding back onto the shelf and, with a disgruntled sigh, headed out the door.

Beth, who had been watching him from behind the counter, marched over and tried to smooth the ruffled pages, then sighed and carried the book back to the counter. She turned just in time to catch my eye.

“Camille!” She bustled over to give me a hug.

“Who was Mr. Disappointed?” I nodded to the figure retreating out the door.

“Oh, him. Don’t mind him, except, damn it, he ruined another book. I don’t like to send them back—it messes up the authors—so I just buy them and add them to the lending library I keep in my home. Then I send Jake an invoice and he pays it without comment.”

“What’s his problem? He looked disgruntled.” In fact, he’d looked downright pissed off.

“Disgruntled? Yeah, that’s Jake all right. He’s always in here, looking for books to give him power. He doesn’t want to actually do the work, and he’s always looking in the sections that would burn his fingers, if he ever tried casting any of the spells from them. He’s not a bad person, per se. Just lazy, whiny, and apathetic. He shouldn’t be practicing magic in the first place. But enough about him. What do you need?”

She wrapped an arm around my shoulder as we turned to face the wall of herbs. “Do you like what I’ve done with the place?”

“I love it.”

And I did. Everything was organized and tidy. I glanced up at Beth. She was taller than I was, and larger—the woman was plump, that was for sure, but she wore it well, and her gypsy skirt and halter top suited her, as did the armful of bangle bracelets and the large chunk of smoky quartz hanging around her neck.

“I need herbs. Mandrake, wormwood, and a few others. I’m also looking for several oils—and they must be essential. No fragrance oils. Rose, and jasmine.” The differences between synthetic oils and essential were myriad—sometimes the scent was what I needed when it came to spell work and a fragrance oil was fine. But in this case, I definitely needed the essence of the plant.

She snorted. “Pure jasmine oil? You prepared to pay a hundred bucks for a tiny bottle? Then I have it for you.” She nodded me into the back room. I glanced at Delilah, who was sitting at one of the small tables in the corner of the shop, flipping through a magazine. She waved for me to go ahead.

The room into which Beth led me was small, with a desk and two chairs on the other side. She motioned for me to sit down. While I waited, she unlocked a drawer on an apothecary chest behind her desk and pulled out a small bottle.

“Here we go. Jasmine oil. One-eighth of an ounce for forty-five dollars. And the rose absolute is forty.”

I picked up the bottle. One-eighth of an ounce was a very small amount, but for what I was making, I didn’t need a great deal. “Two bottles of each, please.”

“Good. And what herbs did you need? I can start Kerri on getting them packaged for you.”

“I need some cut mandrake root—two ounces—an ounce of sacred tobacco, as well as an ounce each of wormwood, damiana, and kava kava; a big chunk of amber resin; and three ounces of galangal.”

She set out my oils, locked the drawer again, and then quickly jotted down what I wanted. “Anything else?”

“Yes, actually. Bone chips. Silver dust. A sweetgrass braid. Two smudge sticks—sage and cedar.” I usually made my own, but we’d gone through my entire stash and my herbs weren’t mature enough to plunder in order to make more. So, until later in the season, I was working off store-bought ingredients.

As we headed back to the front of the shop, Beth stopped to give Kerri—her older daughter from her first marriage—my list. The girl began to pull herbs and measure them out for me. I wandered over to Delilah.

“Almost done. Anything interesting?”

She was reading an issue of Supe-R-Natural Weekly, a small newspaper on a shoestring budget at a regional press started by two Weres and one of the ES Fae. We had a subscription, though there usually wasn’t much in it. But we liked supporting our brothers-in-arms.

“Actually, something did catch my eye. Look.” She pushed the paper across the table. I picked it up and looked where she pointed. An advertisement that took up about one-eighth of the page, for a meeting coming up in two days. Run by none other than the Aleksais Psychic Network.

“Fuck…you have to be kidding.”

The Aleksais Psychic Network was the group we suspected of colluding with Gulakah to bring in the bhouts. They’d been accused of luring away Fae and magic-using FBHs, a lot like the Moonies had indoctrinated their cult members. We’d been trying to find some leads on them, and all we would have had to do was check the local magical rags.

“Why didn’t we see this in our issue? Did we even get this issue?” I glanced at the front of the paper. It had been out for several days.

“We might have accidentally let it lapse.”

“This would be the perfect way to check them out.” I looked up at my sister, who gave me a slow nod.

“But they’d know who we were. We are pretty visible, you have to agree with me on that.” She frowned, thinking.

I leaned back, glancing over my shoulder. Beth had my packages almost ready to go. “You’re right. But there are ways around that. I have some ideas. I’ll need help implementing them, though.”

“Camille—your purchases.” Beth called from the counter, and I pushed to my feet and headed over, handing my credit card to Kerri as she rang up the herbs and oils.

I glanced at the woman who’d first caught my attention—the one with shamanic energy. Her energy was stronger than I’d thought, and I found myself staring openly at her. She glanced at me, her dark gaze lingering on my face. It took everything I had to pull my attention away.

As Kerri handed me my package, I turned to Beth. “Who’s that?”

Beth glanced over at the woman, who had gone back to hunting through the shelves, then back at me. “Her name is Zinnia. She is one tough cookie, and nobody messes with her. Not nasty, but if you fuck with her, she’ll sure as hell fuck with you. And when she means business, heads roll in the magical world.”

“Zinnia, huh?” I made a note to remember her name and check her out later, when we had time. It paid to know the stronger witches in the FBH world.

I signed the credit card slip, picked up my package, and—with one last look at Zinnia, who was studiously ignoring me—headed toward the door. Delilah fell in beside me. I’d added the newspaper to my purchases so we’d have the information in the advertisement. Back in the car, I eased into traffic and we were headed to the FH-CSI.