I didn’t have time to think about much else. Not the man I’d just left behind me, or my friends sitting at the table and probably wondering what the hell was going on. I couldn’t think about anything as I emerged into the biting night air, except, She can’t be dying. She can’t.

Out the front door of Spook Hall, then across the street and hurrying up the stairs through the park, the quickest route, even though my heels weren’t doing me any favors on those steep steps. The cold hit my exposed neck and chest and shoulders almost immediately. Or maybe that was simply the chill of realizing what my great-aunt’s passing would mean to me. To all of us McAllisters.

Dora a few paces ahead, the two of us hurried up to Paradise Lane, where Great-Aunt Ruby’s house stood. The light on the front porch shone forth serenely, as if nothing was wrong, but I knew better.

As soon as we entered the house, Dora paused in the entryway. “She’s up in her room. She — she wanted to see you alone.”

Mute with worry, I could only nod. Then I grasped the shining oak banister and more or less pulled myself up the stairs. Although I’d never been there before, I knew her room was on the left of the landing, in the location that would give her a panoramic view of the town and valley beyond. Not that there was much to see tonight. It was a dark night, heavy with clouds, the moon not yet risen.

Somehow I made myself cross the landing, knock on the door. “Aunt Ruby? It’s Angela.”

“Come in, child.” The voice I knew so well, usually so imperious, now sounded fragile, brittle as the bones in the body it emanated from.

Swallowing, I opened the door and let myself in. The room was warm with candlelight, tapers flickering from the dresser and the delicate writing table under the window and the carved walnut mantel of the little marble-faced fireplace I’d always loved. Great-Aunt Ruby lay propped up against the pillows, pale hair let down from the hard little bun she usually wore it in. Something in her face seemed to have slackened, lost its usual wiry strength, but the blue eyes were clear enough as they met mine.

To my surprise, she smiled. “Well, just look at you. Like something out of a movie. Always thought you’d clean up good.”

My face grew hot, and I made an off-hand gesture. “Oh, it’s just for the Halloween dance. I — ”

She shook her head. “Goodness, child, don’t apologize for looking beautiful. Come here.”

I couldn’t disobey. Slowly I walked to her bedside, and she reached out and took my cold fingers in her bony ones. I had thought she’d be cold as well, but she felt strangely warm, as if some fire were burning within her, consuming the last of her long life.

“I haven’t got long,” she began, “so I need you to listen, and listen well.”

“Oh, Aunt Ruby — ”

“No time for that. I told you I made my peace with it, and the truth is I’ve held on far longer than I wanted to. But I needed you to be ready, and you are.”

I wanted to protest that I wasn’t, not at all. Arguing with someone on their deathbed didn’t seem like a particularly wise thing to do, though, so I just nodded and waited for her to speak again.

“I’m not going to say you know everything, because you don’t, and there are some things you can’t plan for, however much you know. But you’ve got the strength in you, Angela, and the power to do the right thing. You’ll protect this clan, and do a good job of it.”

My fingers tightened around hers. “Can’t you — can’t you just stay a little longer. Just until — ” I broke off, my throat tightening with tears I didn’t want to shed in front of her. I didn’t want her to see how weak I really was.

“It’s hard, I know. You shouldn’t have to face this alone. But I told you he’s out there, and he’ll come to you when the time is right. You won’t be the first witch who’s had to lead her clan without a consort. We all know everything happens because it’s meant to, even if we can’t see the reason right away.” She shut her eyes for a moment, and I held my breath, wondering if this was it, the moment I’d been dreading for too long. But then the crepe-y eyelids fluttered, and she looked up at me once more. “Don’t give up hope, child. It’s the one thing that will always be there to guide you.”

“I won’t give up hope, Aunt Ruby. I promise.” I wasn’t sure if I really believed that; I just wanted to say something I thought she wanted to hear.

She smiled, gently, and her eyes went wide. Her focus was not on me, though, but on some point past me. An expression of incredible joy passed over her features, and for the briefest second I saw not the withered shell she’d become, but a vibrant, beautiful young woman. “I’m here, Pat!” she cried out, her voice strong and full. “I’m here!”

Then her head fell back against the pillows, and the fingers dropped away from mine. A warm rush, as if I could feel her life energy moving over me and through me, like the gentle winds of a summer long gone.

And deep inside me I felt a new stirring, a glow of power, of strength. As she’d gone, she’d passed her powers on to me. The powers of the prima.

Slowly I lifted her lifeless hand and pressed my lips against it. Thank you, Ruby. I will be strong…for you.

They were waiting when I descended the stairs — Dora, and Aunt Rachel, and Tobias, and Adam and so many others, including the clan elders, Margot Emory, and Allegra Moss, and Bryce McAllister. Not all, of course. To have every single member of the clan just up and leave the dance would attract far too much notice. But enough.

“She’s gone,” I said clearly, pausing on the bottom step. My eyes burned with unshed tears, but I didn’t want to weep in front of them. I had to be strong. I was the prima. “It was a good passing. She called out to him, at the end. I think he was waiting for her.”

Her two sons, Lionel and Joseph, stepped forward. “Can we go to her?” asked Lionel.

“Of course.” I moved aside so they could go upstairs and make their own farewells. It was probably hard for them, to think that she’d asked for me at the end, and not her own sons, but allowances had to be made for the passage of power from prima to prima.

I hoped it would be enough that they could spend this small bit of time with her before we had to let the outside world in, call the funeral home in Cottonwood, make arrangements for her burial in the McAllister plot in the town cemetery. There’d once been a “Boot Hill” up in Jerome, but the hill was far too unstable; no one had been buried there for generations.

Aunt Rachel stepped forward, Tobias just a pace behind her. “How are you, sweetie?”

The endearment almost made my tears burst forth. Somehow I held them in check and managed a weak smile. “I’m okay. Tired. I just want to go home.”

At the word “home,” the clan elders exchanged a significant glance. Tradition held that this should be my home now. But I had no consort. True, as Aunt Ruby had said, there had been primas without consorts before me. None from the McAllister clan, however, and probably not many in as vulnerable a position as I currently was. And frankly, the thought of having to live in this big old house, with its antiques and portraits of former McAllisters, was not very enticing.

Rachel must have caught the unspoken dialogue amongst the elders, because she frowned slightly and said, “Nothing needs to be decided tonight. We all need our time to grieve. Let me take Angela home.”

Margot Emory nodded. She was a striking woman with gray-streaked dark hair and clear gray eyes under strongly arched brows. Ruby had been her aunt as well, but her expression was serene and calm, with no evidence of the sorrow she must be feeling. “Yes, she needs her rest. There is much that will have to be done.”

Those words were more than a little ominous, but my aunt just reached out and took me by the hand, led me through the watching crowd. As I passed him, I felt Adam’s worried gaze on me, and wished I could stop to ask him what had happened with Sydney and Anthony, whether they knew why I’d had to leave so precipitously. But I couldn’t think of a way to do so without making it seem as if my friends’ concerns were more important than those of the clan, so I only shot him an uncertain smile as I passed by and then went on out the front door.

A cold wind washed over me, but of course Aunt Rachel had thought of everything. She pulled an embroidered wool shawl from where she’d had it draped over one arm and handed it to me so I could cover up my exposed chest and shoulders. I murmured a thank-you, and we went down the front steps and to the quiet street, then down the steeply sloping hill back to the store. Tobias followed us the whole way, not speaking, but keeping watch over the two of us. At least he’d left the scythe behind, and had dropped the hood of his black robes. Now he looked more like a burly bear of a friar, although he had a full head of hair and not one of those silly-looking tonsures.

Maybe it was foolish of me to even be thinking of such things, but it kept me from brooding on what had just happened. Great-Aunt Ruby was dead. I was the new prima.

I didn’t want to believe it. There had always been this small part of me that had thought they must all be wrong, that there had been some sort of mistake. Yes, I could talk to ghosts, but I didn’t possess any great power. Or so I had thought.

Now, though, with the gift that Ruby had passed on to me coiled like a glowing snake somewhere in my belly, I thought I began to understand. It wasn’t simply the gifts one was born with, but whether a given person had the predisposition within them to accept the prima energy and make it their own. What precisely I was supposed to do with it, I didn’t quite know, but I guessed the clan elders would have some insight on that.

The main thing, though, was that I be kept safe until my consort came to me. Until we were joined, I would not be able to fully use these powers. They were powers meant for a grown woman, not the girl I still was. The girl I would remain until I met the one who would take that girlhood from me.

We went inside, Rachel closing but not locking the door behind us. As we’d approached the building, I’d seen out of the corner of my eye the approaching forms of three of the “bodyguards,” and I knew they would come in and secure the place once I was upstairs.

Never before had the stairs up to my room felt as steep, but eventually I got there, my aunt and Tobias pausing out in the hallway.

“If there’s anything you need — ” she began, and I shook my head.

“I just want to sleep,” I told her. “There’ll be — well, I know there’ll be a lot that has to be done over the next few days, so I might as well get my rest now.”

Her eyes glittered with tears. “That’s right, sweetheart. You sleep, and we’ll work everything out tomorrow.”

I doubted everything would be worked out. However, I knew she was just trying to reassure me, to let me know this wasn’t all as horrible and awful as I thought it was. So I nodded, murmured “goodnight,” and closed the door.

My room looked just as it always did, the embroidered bedspread cheerful with its primary colors and background of soft ecru, the walls painted a bold turquoise and covered with folk art and candle sconces and an assortment of symbols: crosses, a carved “om” symbol, the leafy face of the Green Man. That familiarity should have comforted me, but instead it sent a painful pang through my chest. Would this still be my room, my home? Or would I be forced to take my place as prima in the cluttered Victorian mansion on the hill?

I didn’t want to think about that now. I didn’t want to think about anything. I walked over to the bed, kicked off my borrowed shoes, and then collapsed, sobs finally wracking my body.

Even then I wasn’t sure whether I wept for my great-aunt, or the life I knew was about to change forever.

“Of course you must go up to the house,” Bryce McAllister said calmly. “It’s yours now. You’ve seen the will.”

My head ached. I’d cried most of the night, slept fitfully for a few hours just before dawn, then went downstairs and brewed myself a strong pot of tea. It hadn’t helped my head much, but at least now I didn’t feel as if I were going to fall asleep standing up.

The other two elders, Margot Emory and Allegra Moss, nodded. We all sat at the long dining room table in the apartment, with Aunt Rachel on my right and the three of them facing us. Tobias had spent the night, I thought, but he was gone now. This was business between the prima and the elders, and he was not needed…or that seemed to be their view on things, anyway. Rachel they’d grudgingly allowed to stay, since I still lived under her roof.

And yes, I had seen the will; they’d brought it with them so I would know my rights and responsibilities going forward. The big house was mine, as well as a far larger share of the money that came to everyone in the clan every month. Ruby’s individual wealth, as well as a number of personal items, was to be divided between her two sons, with them deciding which pieces should go on to their own children, who numbered five altogether.

Even so, I realized tiredly that my great-aunt’s bequest had made me a very wealthy young woman. Too bad I really didn’t care about that.

“I don’t think it’s safe,” I argued. “Down here I’m surrounded by people. Aunt Ruby’s house only has neighbors on one side.” I didn’t bother to mention that those neighbors were Adam’s parents, which would only make things that much more awkward. True, he’d moved out, but I got the feeling he’d find excuses to go visit if I were right there, too. “That is, I think we can all agree that I’m in sort of a precarious position right now.”

An expression of dismay crossed Allegra’s normally placid features. “Of course we would maintain the guard on you. That is not going to change.”

Of course not. So I’d be stuck in that house with a bunch of bodyguards, and not even my aunt’s leavening influence to make things a little more tolerable. I turned to her. “I don’t really have to move out, do I?”

Her fingers knotted together on the brightly printed tablecloth from India. “I know it’s hard, Angela, but that is the prima’s residence. You knew you wouldn’t be staying here forever.”

Yes, but I’d thought that when I left this comfortable apartment, I’d be moving to my new home with my consort at my side. I hadn’t thought I’d be camped out there with a bunch of babysitters making sure that dark specters or roving Wilcoxes or whatever peril might be lurking nearby didn’t have a chance of getting close to me.

It hurt to think that Aunt Rachel was siding with the elders against me. “So you — you want me to leave?” I asked, my voice barely above a whisper.

Her face crumpled, and I could tell she was close to tears. “No, of course not. But what I want isn’t a factor in all this. There are…traditions. I can’t let my own feelings get in the way.”

I wanted to say, Fuck traditions! That wouldn’t be productive, though, and I knew I had to grow up and face reality…even though I really, really didn’t want to. “All right,” I said wearily. “But it doesn’t have to happen right this minute, does it?”

“No, that was never our intention,” Bryce said. “There’s the funeral the day after tomorrow, and then Lionel and Joseph will have to take out the things Ruby left them. Next week, I think.”

His reply calmed me a little. All right, so I was apparently stuck with that Victorian white elephant, but I would have a week to come to terms with everything, to say goodbye to my lively room and the view that had greeted me every morning since I was too young to remember. Would I be able to change anything in the house I’d inherited, or would I be expected to keep it in its current museum-like state, with all the furniture that dated back to the same time the house was built?

That was a question I knew I’d better leave for another day. In the meantime, there was still a great deal to do.

It was only when we were gathered together like this that I realized how many of us McAllisters there really were, even if we didn’t all share the same last name. We clustered in a corner of the cemetery, more than two hundred of us. A casual passerby might have thought us a strange-looking crew to be attending a grave-side service, for very few of us wore black. It wasn’t our custom to mourn in such a way. Of course we would all miss Ruby, miss her strength and her wisdom and her fierce loyalty to the clan, but we knew she had merely crossed over, not ceased to be. She was still living, only elsewhere. And I had seen for myself the expression of joy cross her face when it was time to walk over that threshold to the next world. I had no doubt that her husband Pat was there to welcome her. How could I be sad, when she had clearly been so happy to go?

As I stood by the grave, and watched the burnished mahogany casket with its beautiful crown of yellow roses — Ruby’s favorite — and spider mums be lowered slowly into the ground, I wondered if I would ever love someone like that.

There were too many of us to fit into anyone’s house, so we’d rented out Spook Hall for the reception afterward. More yellow roses greeted us there, and I thought of how I’d been here only a few days earlier, and danced with Zorro and worried — hoped? — that he might try to kiss me. That opportunity was long gone, and so was he, I supposed, back to Tempe and his master’s program and the real world.

Sydney had called me, eschewing texts in her worry, and I’d explained what happened. Too many things going on for me to be able to talk with her for very long, but she did tell me that Adam had said it was a family emergency, and so she and Anthony had slipped away not too long after that.

“I could tell it was something important,” she’d said, “since so many people began to leave, even though they hadn’t gotten to the costume contest yet. And your Zorro came up and asked about you.”

“He did?” I asked, cheered a little despite everything.

“He sounded worried, and I said it was a family thing, and then he told me you were just about to give him your number but had to leave, so….”

“So?”

“So I gave it to him. I figured it would be okay, since you were about to do it anyway.” She hesitated. “Was it not okay?”

“No,” I said wearily. “It’s fine. I doubt he’ll call. He lives in Tempe, and besides….”

“He’s a civilian?”

“Yes.”

A long pause. Then she said, sounding a little too cheerful, “Well, hey, you never know. I am sorry about your great-aunt.”

I’d thanked her for that and hung up. I could tell that she wanted to talk more, to ask about me being prima now and all that, but I just didn’t have the time…or the heart. Maybe after things had settled down somewhat I could have her come up and visit, but it would have to wait for a few days.

Now I stood off to the side and watched the clan members moving through the hall, or standing and talking in small groups. Toward the front was a table decked with flowers, and a large reproduction of a photo of Ruby when she was close to my age, her mouth painted with red lipstick, hair in perfect Rita Hayworth waves to her shoulders. She was smiling, but not directly at the camera. Maybe Pat had been standing behind the photographer, and she’d been smiling for him.

She really had been strikingly beautiful. I could see why there would’ve been plenty of young men vying for her attentions, and not just because she was the next McAllister prima. I wondered if her looks had factored into the Wilcoxes’ desperate attempt to steal her for themselves, or whether her beauty was just a nice bonus.

A shiver went over me then. I didn’t want to think about the Wilcoxes, or what they might be plotting…if anything. Ever since that long-ago kidnap attempt, they’d stayed on their turf, just as we’d stayed on ours, and they’d been quiescent enough for the most part. Even so, they weren’t to be trusted.

“Are you okay?” came Adam’s voice from over my shoulder.

I turned toward him. “Sure. Why?”

“You were frowning.”

“Oh, just thinking.”

“About nothing pleasant, I guess.”

“The Wilcoxes.”

“Definitely not pleasant, then.”

Despite everything, I grinned. “Not really, no. I’m just borrowing trouble, I think. By the way, I never got a chance to thank you for letting Sydney know what was going on so she wouldn’t think I’d totally bailed on her.”

“No problem.” He shifted from one foot to the other, looking vaguely uncomfortable.

Maybe it was the button-up shirt and loafers he was wearing, instead of his usual T-shirts and Converse high-tops. No, we weren’t required to wear black dresses and black suits and all that, but it was a sign of respect to dress nicely at the funeral of a clan member. I had on a vaguely retro full-skirted dress I’d bought at one of the shops here in town, and had borrowed Aunt Rachel’s pumps again. We all looked pretty respectable — probably more respectable than an outsider would’ve expected a gathering of witches to be. Just more of that whole staying inconspicuous thing. You tend to attract more attention when everyone in your group looks like a refugee from a Stevie Nicks concert.

“So,” he went on, drawing out the syllable as if pondering what exactly to say next. “I guess you really are moving into Aunt Ruby’s house.”

“Yes,” I said shortly. “Next Monday, I guess.” A day I was really not looking forward to.

“Oh.” Then he brightened a little. “You know, Saturday is that Day of the Dead thing over in Sedona. I was thinking it might be, I don’t know, good to go to that. Say another goodbye to Great-Aunt Ruby.”

I’d completely forgotten about the festival. Halloween was two days before that, although I knew this year there wouldn’t be too much revelry amongst the McAllister clan. Of course there would be our usual Samhain observances on Halloween itself, another way of connecting with the dead, when the veil between the worlds was at its thinnest.

Now that I thought about it, though, going to the Day of the Dead celebration seemed like a good way to make my final farewells and honor my aunt before my life went through its own change. “We’ll have to take the bodyguards,” I warned Adam. “No way are they going to let me go to Sedona with just you.”

“Oh, I figured that. Maybe your aunt and Tobias, too, if they’re interested.”

The offer touched me. Clearly he was doing this because he thought it would help me, and not to seize some opportunity, however artificial, to get me alone. I didn’t know if Aunt Rachel would really be up to it, as the double shock of losing Ruby and me at roughly the same time had shaken her a good deal. There was still a sign on the front door of the shop that said “closed due to a death in the family.” I hadn’t yet gathered the courage to ask her if she intended to open up on Halloween, which tended to be a busy day even when it fell in the middle of the week.

“I’ll ask,” I said. “But Rachel’s taking the whole thing pretty hard. I’ll let you know.”

“Okay.” He reached out then and gave my hand a quick squeeze before heading off toward the refreshment table.

I wouldn’t let myself sigh. I had to look as if I were in control, no matter what. But it was hard not to wish, just a little, that things had been different, that Adam was my one. No, he didn’t set my heart on fire or anything, but he’d been supportive and friendly the past few days, and I knew I could trust him. It would have been a lot easier if he’d turned out to be the consort.

But of course nothing can ever be that easy.