I didn’t stop to think. Instinct took over, and I was bolting toward the back of the shop, running down the corridor, until I reached the back door and flung it open, then slammed it behind me. Yes, I know — some way for the next prima of the McAllisters to act. But I’d never seen or heard of anything like that before, and had no idea of how to fight it or dispel it. The smartest thing seemed to be to put some distance between it and myself.

Once I was outside, I felt a little bit better, and retained enough presence of mind to lock the door before I hurried down the smaller, less-traveled street that backed up to our building, then cut back up to Main. Although most of the stores closed at six, there were still a good number of people out and around, either on their way back to their cars or heading for an early dinner. As soon as I had people around me, some of the cold and dread seemed to leave me, although my hands were still shaking.

No thought now of getting a pizza to go and taking it back to the apartment over the store. I knew I should probably high-tail it down to Tobias’s place and get my aunt, tell her what had just happened, but I hated to bother her, especially after the run-in we’d had this morning. Besides, I was supposed to be the next prima — shouldn’t I be trying to figure these things out on my own? Aunt Rachel would find out soon enough; she might be spending the evening with Tobias, but she wouldn’t stay over for the night. She never left me alone, not for that long.

So I continued walking up toward Grapes. I still needed to eat, one way or another, and better to do it in a familiar place surrounded by other people.

As I’d feared, the restaurant was crowded, but a group was just being seated outside as another party was leaving their table, and so I was able to snag that one. Normally I would’ve just sat at the bar and not kept a whole table to myself, but I wanted to snug in against the wall and feel something solid at my back. And apparently Linda, who was tending the bar and also doing traffic control, saw something in my face, because she didn’t even suggest that I not take that table.

“Rough day, huh?” asked Tina, the server who came up to check on me.

I knew her, of course, just like I knew everyone in Jerome, but she felt a little closer than some because she’d babysat me from time to time back when I was in elementary school. Neither she nor Linda were part of the clan, although as long-time residents, they knew about the McAllisters. Like Sydney, though, they could be trusted to keep our secrets. A quiet vetting process went on in our town every time a house or apartment became available. We made sure that no one moved in whom we couldn’t trust. It was a quiet spell, but an effective one, the charm that brought sympathetic souls to us.

“Rough day,” I echoed. “Yeah, you could say that. A glass of the Plungerhead, please?” I hadn’t bothered to look at the menu; I could probably recite it by heart at this point.

“Got it. Know what you want to eat?”

I shook my head. “Not yet. Pizza, yes, but I haven’t decided which one.”

She shot me a reassuring smile, then said, “I’ll get that wine for you right away.”

Goddess knew what was on my face right then, but I didn’t much care. It just felt good to be there, surrounded by familiar smells and friendly faces. About half the crowd was made up of tourists, but everyone seemed to be having a good time, so the energy was good…a far cry from what had been emanating from that entity back at the shop.

Another shiver, and I clenched my hands on the tabletop. No ghost like any I’d ever seen, but maybe the ghosts themselves would have some input. Normally I wouldn’t bother Maisie on a Saturday night, since she didn’t like crowds. In this case, though, I didn’t think I had much of a choice. I would have to try coaxing her out, see if she’d heard anything.

Felt anything.

I crossed my arms and wished I’d brought a jacket. Not much chance of that happening when I was bolting from the store like a frightened hare. Anyway, the chill moving through me right now didn’t have much to do with the air temperature, although I knew it would get cold outside damn quick once the sun was down. That walk over to rustle up Maisie would not be a comfortable one…and it would only be colder when I walked down to Tobias’s house.

But I wasn’t completely unprepared. Aunt Rachel had taught me a long time ago to always carry a scarf or wrap of some kind in my purse, so I reached in and pulled out the same pashmina I’d worn the night before. The bright emerald green wasn’t the best match with the pale blue top I wore, but I wasn’t trying to impress anybody.

I heard the door to the restaurant open, but I didn’t bother to look up. No, I stared down at the chipped polish on my nails and vaguely wondered when I’d have the time to take it off, and then tried to figure out why I even cared. I had much bigger things to worry about at the moment.

Someone approached my booth and sat down without so much as a by-your-leave in the seat opposite me. I looked up, frowning, a frown that only deepened when I saw who it was. Adam McAllister, my third-or-fourth cousin, someone I really didn’t feel like dealing with at the moment.

“Hey, Ange,” he said. “Word on the street is that you’ve been looking for love in all the wrong places.”

I blinked at him. “What?”

“I heard about your little ‘incident’ at Main Stage last night.”

Damn. I’d almost forgotten about my scuffle with Perry in the parking lot the night before. “How the hell did you find out about that?”

“Alicia’s working dispatch for the Cottonwood P.D., remember?”

Oh, right. Adam’s big sister had gotten a job as a dispatcher for the police department about six months ago. It was a little out of character for a McAllister, since we tended to be artsy types who stuck around Jerome, but she wasn’t a very strong witch. On the other hand, she was a hell of a gossip. Working as a dispatcher was probably her dream job, since she got to hear everybody’s business firsthand.

And obviously she’d heard all about my business last night. Sigh.

“It was just a misunderstanding,” I said, and hoped Tina would come by with my wine soon.

“Must’ve been some misunderstanding, with him ending up in the hospital.”

At least one wish was granted, because Tina did appear with my zinfandel, which she set down in front of me before sending a quizzical glance in Adam’s direction. Naturally I’d said nothing about someone joining me…because I had no idea somebody would.

“A Corona for me,” Adam said, and I had to keep myself from rolling my eyes. Typically tone-deaf of him to order a beer in a restaurant called “Grapes.”

Maybe it would’ve been polite to wait until he had his beer before I drank any of my wine, but the hell with that. It wasn’t as if I’d invited him to sit down or anything. So I picked up the little carafe Tina had brought me and poured about a third of it into my wine glass, then took a good swallow. Much better.

“Is there a point to all this, Adam?”

“I just don’t know why you’d bother to pick up some civilian down in Cottonwood when you’ve got me right here.”

I really did not need this right now. “I wasn’t ‘picking up’ anyone. He’s a friend of the guy Sydney was with. That’s all.”

“‘All’ doesn’t usually end up with someone in the hospital and the Cottonwood P.D. paying you a visit.”

“He got a little handsy, okay? Nothing I couldn’t handle.”

“I guess so.” He grinned, and I really wished it was permissible for the future prima to sock someone in the jaw.

That wouldn’t be dignified, though — and would definitely bring down Aunt Rachel’s wrath — so I settled for asking in acid tones, “Is that the only reason you’ve invaded my space, or did you have some other reason for dropping in without an invitation?”

He shrugged. “It’s a public place.”

“The restaurant, yeah. Not the booth I just happen to be sitting in.”

“Okay, you got me.” He opened his mouth, as if he were about to say something else, but Tina arrived with his Corona and set it down in front of him.

“Ready to order?” she asked.

“Prosciutto and mozzarella for me,” I told her.

“Italian meat,” Adam said with a grin.

She shook her head slightly and headed back to the kitchen. I would have been even more annoyed by him ordering something besides just the beer, but I’d known I was doomed from the minute he sat down in my booth.

“So you were saying,” I prompted.

He was in the middle of taking a swig from his Corona, and so I had to wait until he swallowed the beer. “I went by the shop first, but you’d already closed up.”

“You did?” Despite my better instincts, I couldn’t help asking. “Did you…notice…anything?”

“What was I supposed to notice? You weren’t there. I’d already thought about getting a pizza to go, so I came up here and saw you through the window. And here we are.”

Yes…unfortunately. In a way it was funny, because a lot of girls back in high school had had their crushes on Adam, and yet all he cared about was pursuing me, even though it was hopeless. We had no connection. It didn’t matter that he was good-looking, with his thick brown hair and gray-blue eyes and nice strong chin. He wasn’t my match, my soulmate, my other half. And I really wished he would figure that out once and for all, and leave me the heck alone.

More importantly, though, he’d gone by the shop and hadn’t sensed anything, seen anything out of the ordinary. He wasn’t an overly strong warlock, but normally he was sensitive to places, air currents, weather. If a weather spell needed to be cast, he was often the one to do it. Wouldn’t he have been able to feel something terribly not right about the store if there really was some malignant presence lurking around the place?

I couldn’t think of the right way to ask him, though. If I told him what had really happened, then he’d probably try to get all manly and protective, and that would almost be worse than the ghostly figure I’d seen.

No, scratch that. A guy trying to protect you when you really didn’t want to be protected wasn’t exactly on a par with some vaporous apparition reaching toward you and saying that it wanted you.

Maybe I shivered. Adam set down his beer and stared at me, eyes narrowing. “Are you okay? You look like you’ve seen — ” He broke off, but I knew what he’d meant to say.

You look like you’ve seen a ghost.

Well, hey, that was nothing new. That was just something Angela McAllister did. I wished that was all I had seen. A ghost was fine. But this?

Not fine at all.

I took a few more swallows of wine. “It’s nothing.”

Adam was a lot of things, but stupid wasn’t one of them. His gaze sharpened. “You don’t look like it’s nothing. What’s going on?”

It would probably get out sooner or later anyway. We McAllisters didn’t keep a lot from one another. “I saw…something.”

“Saw what?”

“I don’t know what it was. I’ve never seen anything like it. And I’ve seen my share of strange things.”

“True.” He shifted in his seat, and for a second or two I was worried he would try to reach out and touch my hand where it rested on the tabletop. He appeared to resist that impulse, though, and said, “But it scared you.”

I didn’t like to admit it, least of all to Adam, but he’d already seen the truth in my face. “It did. I had to get out of there. So I came here.”

“What did you see?”

For a few seconds I didn’t say anything, only ran a finger along the wood grain of the table. Even thinking about that shadowy apparition made a wave of cold move over me, a chill that had nothing to do with the warm, friendly surroundings in which I sat. “A shadow. It was standing in front of the door to the shop. I could feel it watching me. I thought it had to be some sort of spirit, even though I’d never met one like that before. I asked it who it was, and it didn’t say anything. Then I asked what it wanted, and…” I paused again, and swallowed. “…And it told me, ‘you.’”

Even Adam seemed shocked by that revelation. “Damn, Angela, you need to tell someone. Someone besides me, I mean.”

“I know. I will. It’s just that my aunt is over at Tobias’s place, and I didn’t want to bother her….”

“I don’t think she’ll mind being bothered.” He hesitated. “I’ll walk you over there, if you want.”

Never did I think I would be so relieved by Adam McAllister offering to accompany me somewhere. But there were lots of dark and shadowy places between here and Tobias’s house, and I forced myself to admit that I’d feel a whole lot better about the whole thing if I didn’t have to walk it alone. “Okay,” I replied. “I’d like that.”

He grinned, and for a second I wished I hadn’t agreed to him coming along after all. But then Tina showed up with our pizzas, and for a minute or two everything seemed normal and prosaic, just Adam and me dishing ourselves a slice, doling out the parmesan and the red pepper flakes. I knew better, though. There wasn’t anything normal about any of this.

Still, now that I knew what I was doing after this, I felt a little better. I had no idea what Aunt Rachel was going to say, and it seemed as if my plan for talking to Maisie would have to be shelved for a while. She wasn’t going anywhere, though, and I could always try to scare her up — so to speak — the next day.

Whether she’d have anything useful to contribute, I couldn’t begin to guess.

The sun had long disappeared by the time Adam and I emerged from the restaurant. I pulled my wrap around my shoulders in a futile attempt to stave off some of the brisk wind blowing outside. At least it was coming from the south. Although I knew the Wilcoxes had little to do with it, a north wind, the kind that blew down from Flagstaff, always put me on edge. An ill wind, as Great-Aunt Ruby liked to say.

Adam noticed the somewhat flimsy pashmina, and I worried that he might try to make the gallant gesture of offering me his jacket. Something in my expression must have warned him off, though, and so he kept silent, walking next to me as we headed down Main Street. It was too early for that night’s band to have started up at the Spirit Room, but the street in front of the bar was already lined with Harleys, and people hung around outside, chatting and smoking. Their presence comforted me, although I knew the crowds would thin out as we wended our way down the hill.

As they did. By the time we passed the Ghost City Inn, Adam and I were the only people on the sidewalk. Down here I could feel the wind even more strongly. The stars glittered against the black sky, and a thin moon had just begun to rise above the mesas to the east. It would be full on Halloween, I realized.

All around me were buildings and trees and cars I’d seen hundreds of times, and yet somehow now seemed foreign, unfamiliar. Part of me wanted to draw closer to Adam. I told myself that was foolish, for several reasons. I certainly didn’t want to give him the wrong idea, and of the two of us, I was the far stronger witch. Having him come along had been sort of silly, in that respect, although of course the two of us working together would be more effective than even me casting a spell of protection alone.

He was silent, as if realizing I really didn’t want to talk, and I felt a rush of warmth toward him then, that despite his usually irritating ways he understood my need for silence, my need to have someone walk with me through the darkness. For a second or two I found myself wishing things could be different. I was so very tired of having to look for someone who seemed to not even exist.

Tobias shared studio and living space with three other artists in a renovated commercial building on the edge of town. Each flat had its own entrance and kitchen and studio, so although they shared common walls, they were still very private. His was the one on the south side of the building — “I like the light” — and faced out over the lights of Cottonwood. In the daytime you could see the line of the Verde River from here, but now of course all was dark.

From the other side of the building I heard music and the sound of people talking. Susan Callery lived over there, and I’d heard her mention a small opening she was having, if I wanted to stop by. Between the mess at Main Stage the night before and my latest spectral sighting, I’d forgotten all about it.

Adam and I made our way down the winding path that led to Tobias’s front door. Wind chimes jingled in the darkness, and I saw the prayer flags hanging from the trees outside his windows fluttering in the night wind. Out here, though, it seemed less oppressive, instead wild and free, and I felt my spirits lift a little.

As we approached the door — a massive thing of local twisted juniper, lovingly polished — I could hear laughter from within, and a pang went through me. I wished I didn’t have to disturb my aunt on her night out, but I certainly didn’t want to go back to the apartment without reinforcements that were somewhat more substantial than what Adam could offer.

So I raised my hand and knocked, then waited for a minute until Tobias opened the door. He held a wine glass in one hand and blinked down at me, his gaze traveling over to Adam and then back as if he couldn’t quite figure out what was more strange — that I should be there at all, or that I was standing there with Adam McAllister next to me.

“Angela?” Tobias said at last.

“Hi, Tobias,” I replied, attempting to sound breezy and probably failing miserably. “I need to talk to Aunt Rachel. Is that okay?”

He blinked again, then seemed to recover himself. “Of course, of course. The two of you come on in.”

We both went inside, and waited as Tobias shut the door. The place was laid out with a small entryway, and then opened into a large combined living room/dining room/kitchen. The remains of dinner seemed to still occupy the dining room table, and off to my right I saw Aunt Rachel sitting on Tobias’s large leather couch. A fire flickered in the freestanding fireplace near the far wall.

As soon as she saw us, she set down her own wine glass on the coffee table and got to her feet, her expression understandably puzzled. “Angela?” Her gaze flickered to Adam, and she frowned. She knew I wouldn’t have dragged him down here without a very good reason. “What’s the matter?”

“I — ” Now that the time had come to explain what had happened, words seemed to fail me.

“She saw something, Rachel,” Adam supplied.

Her hazel eyes widened. “Saw what?”

Tobias moved past us to stand near Aunt Rachel. “It couldn’t have been good, to have you come walking all the way down here.”

I found my voice. “No, it wasn’t. It — there was something in the store, something…evil. Dark.”

The lighting wasn’t all that good in there, since the only real light on was the overhead fixture in the kitchen. Candles flickered on the dining room table and on the coffee table in the living room, and by their uncertain light I thought I saw her turn pale. But her tone was firm enough as she asked, “Do you know what it was?”

“No.” I pulled the pashmina a little more closely around my shoulders, as if it could do anything to rid me of the pervasive sensation of cold that seemed to take over whenever I thought of the dark shape I’d seen in the store. “But…it wasn’t the first time I’d seen it.”

“What?” came in unison from both my aunt and Adam, and then they stared at one another in confusion.

Might as well come clean. The only way to attempt to figure out what was going on was to use all the available facts. “I saw it last night as I was driving home. It was standing in the last bend before the road curves up to town. Since it was so dark, I thought it was a person. I thought I’d hit somebody. But when I got out, no one was there. And then today….” I trailed off, and swallowed.

“Today?” my aunt prompted.

“It was after you’d left, right after I put the money and the receipts away. I think maybe it was waiting.”

“Waiting for what?”

“For me to be alone.”

She watched me carefully, gaze fixed on me, as if we were the only two people in the room, as if Tobias and Adam didn’t exist. “Go on.”

“It was standing in front of the window. It was shaped like a man, but it had no detail…only shadow. And when I asked it what it wanted, it said it wanted…me.”

Silence then, as she watched me, and Tobias watched her, and Adam stood beside me, not saying anything, either. I think he knew he’d done what I’d asked of him, and now it was time for the more important players to step in.

At last she said, “This is not good.”

“I didn’t think it was,” I replied.

“Tobias, would you come up there with us?” she asked him, and he nodded grimly.

“I wouldn’t let you go back without me.”

After that he went and got his coat, and Rachel’s as well, and we all went back outside. He didn’t bother to lock his door. Jerome was sort of like that; the only reason we locked up the shop was all the merchandise inside, and the fact that it was right on the main drag.

Tobias and Aunt Rachel took the lead, with Adam and me bringing up the rear. Maybe I should have volunteered to go first, but I wasn’t feeling very brave at the moment. They wouldn’t have allowed it, anyway — their duty, as they saw it, was to protect the next prima.

We came up the back way, along Hull Avenue. As the three-story building loomed over us, black against black in the night, I swallowed. No, I didn’t really feel anything back here, except the heebie-jeebies I was giving myself, but it was so very dark. We had a light we usually kept on at the back entrance, but of course I’d run away so quickly that turning it on had been about the last thing on my mind.

Aunt Rachel fished her keys out of her purse and unlocked the door. As she did so, I heard her murmuring under her breath, a spell of protection, of light. I guessed that was why she used her key — she wanted to save her energy for the protection spell. And the hallway lights did blaze forth as the door opened before us, showing the same short hallway I’d walked down thousands of times, with its scuffed tile and the warm sienna paint we’d applied two summers ago.

“Do you feel anything?” she asked Tobias.

He put his hand against the doorframe. Solid, natural materials were his strength — wood and stone, clay and tile. He shook his head. “No.”

Apparently heartened by this reply, she stepped inside, with him following so closely they appeared joined at the hip. Adam and I followed. I put forth a mental plea for strength and vision, and sent my own questing tendril of thought down the corridor, out into the main shop space. I felt nothing, sensed nothing.

Then again, I hadn’t sensed much until I’d seen that…thing…standing right in front of me.

The lights in the store turned themselves on at my aunt’s silent request. Everything looked perfectly ordinary, perfectly normal, from the display of windchimes in one corner to the table loaded with books on local history in the other.

Aunt Rachel stopped in the middle of the space, eyes shut, and turned slowly with her arms outstretched. This was something I could sense — the ripples of power moving out from her, the glow of her spirit as it attempted to find something wrong with the very fabric of the world. Her talent had always been order, knowing when the peace and calm of the community were somehow being disrupted. It was a quiet strength, but an important one.

At last she opened her eyes, but I saw no relief in them. She was frowning, and I saw her teeth worry at her bottom lip. “I felt it…very faint, but something…wrong. Distorted, cold. Hungry.”

That last word sent another shiver through me. Hunger. Yes, that was something I’d sensed from the apparition, although at the time I’d been too scared silly to stop and really identify it.

“What now?” Tobias asked briskly, as if he realized I didn’t know what to do next. I might be the next prima, but I had no experience with this sort of thing.

“We’ll check the apartment, just to make sure, but we need to have the coven here to cleanse the place, to lay down the spells of protection again. Something got through, although I’m not sure what and not sure how.”

“All right,” he said. “Let’s send out the call, then.”

This was something we could all do together. In unspoken accord, Tobias, Aunt Rachel, Adam, and I all stepped closer to one another and joined hands, Adam’s strong and cool in my right, my aunt’s fingers warm and reassuring in my left. The energy surged up and out, calling to the coven, broadcasting our need.

Brothers and sisters, come to us now. Come for the circle — your strength is needed!

There were just shy of 450 people living in Jerome, and a little more than half of them were part of the McAllister clan. Of those we only needed a fraction, of course. Many rituals were performed with as few as three or seven. For the greater workings, we would need to combine the powers of twenty-one. That, I knew, was how many would answer tonight’s call, and I also knew they would be the strongest, the best suited for this sort of ritual.

Cousin Rosemary was there almost at once, since she lived in the apartment over the tea shop next door. Aunt Rachel had just pulled the white candles out from underneath one of the counters when there was a knock at the back door. Tobias went to get it, since I could tell my aunt didn’t want me out of her sight, and Adam sort of shifted from one foot to the next as if not sure exactly what he should be doing. I wondered if he would end up participating at all, as protective magic was not his strongest suit.

“Goodness, what is it?” Rosemary asked, emerging into the main shop space and blinking at all of us. She always reminded me a bird, light and fluttery, with her pale hair and big green eyes. She was five or six years younger than Rachel, but somehow seemed older, as if she’d embraced a little too much the whole idea of being a solitary witch. It didn’t take much mental effort to imagine her stirring a cauldron, although we McAllisters actually weren’t that big on potions.

“An incursion,” my aunt said briefly, setting a container of pink Himalayan salt next to the white candles. “We’ll need to cleanse the whole building and set up new wards.”

“Oh, my!” she exclaimed, and despite everything, I had to stifle a laugh as Adam sent me a sideways look. Cousin Rosemary did tend to act like she’d just escaped from a Harry Potter novel or something.

After that there wasn’t much time for conversation, as more people converged on the shop — Allegra Moss, who had a sculptor’s studio across the street from Tobias, and Efraim Willendale, who ran the tiny post office, and Wyatt McAllister, owner of a B&B a few doors down from the stately Victorian where Great-Aunt Ruby lived. So many of them, all surrounding us with their strength, until the magic number of twenty-one was reached. Well, twenty-two, counting Adam, but he wasn’t going to be participating.

“What about Great-Aunt Ruby?” I asked. Usually she would take part in something this important.

My cousin Dora, who lived with Ruby, shook her head. “She’s been feeling a little tired the past few days, so I thought it better if she sat this one out.”

At that reply I couldn’t help feeling a little guilty. When was the last time I’d gone up to visit my great-aunt? Had to be almost a week now. I’d spent way too much time wrapped up in my own problems.

Aunt Rachel also looked rather grim, but then she shook her head, as if reminding herself to focus on the task at hand. After pulling out a soapstone incense burner and some cedar incense, she said,