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Chapter 1
Trixie
“Stop here.”
I glanced in the rearview mirror at my last passenger of the night. At nearly three o’clock in the morning, a man who identified as “Little Hank” sat in a drunken slump in the backseat of my car, just conscious enough to give me directions. Little Hank smelled like pretzels and crayons.
“You want me to stop here?” I squinted, slowing the car. “Are you sure? There’s no address that I can see.”
An address wasn’t the only thing missing from our location. Technically, we were in the middle of nowhere. My cell service was barely hanging on. I pulled over on a two-lane highway that was the definition of abandoned.
“There’s nothing around here.” I faced Little Hank, my canister of pink pepper spray tucked discreetly next to my thigh. My hand played over it carefully. “I don’t feel right leaving you in the middle of nowhere.”
“I’m not paying you cash to offer your opinion.” Little Hank handed over a wad of bills. “Don’t tell anybody about me, and we’ll be golden.”
I tucked the cash into my pocket as Hank loped out, surprisingly lithe and coordinated, seeing as he’d tripped over a sidewalk crack on the way into my car. I felt a little bad about leaving him here, but he’d insisted multiple times this was the right spot. I wasn’t here to judge. I was just here to drive.
Unless there was one slightly more reasonable explanation this man wanted to be dropped in the middle of the woods under a full moon. Like the fact that maybe Little Hank was a werewolf.
I spun the car around and made the drive back into New York, heading into a little alcove near the Upper East Side that was densely populated by paranormal types. Our little nook in New York was called The Hollow, and thanks to intense enchantments from the magical folks in charge, it didn’t appear on most maps. It just sort of squeezed itself into the city unbeknownst to regular humans, a couple block radius of glittering skyscrapers and magical emporiums and spellcasting services.
We were close to the paranormal Sixth Borough—an entire magical borough set inside city limits, but unlike the Sixth Borough, we lived amongst the mortals in our day-to-day life. We were just sort of folded into the bustling streets like a book on a bookshelf.
I included myself as a paranormal, even though I didn’t currently use magic. I was technically a witch by blood. I just preferred to ignore that smidge of a fact. I didn’t want to be a witch; I just couldn’t exactly deny that it was where my bloodline had landed me.
My phone rang, and while I’d like to say that I hit answer on my Bluetooth, I’d be lying. My car didn’t have working Bluetooth functionality. I answered on my cell’s speaker.
“I thought you were going to be home hours ago?”
“Hey, Emmy,” I said to my roommate. “I picked up a strange fare. I’m just on the way back to the city. I’ve got a bottle of wine and a date on the couch with you.”
“It’s three in the morning.”
“You’re still awake, aren’t you?”
I could almost see the studious Emmy poking glasses up her cute little nose. Everything about Emmy was sweet, which meant she was basically the polar opposite of me. It somehow made us the perfect pairing to live together.
Emmy sighed. “I’m waiting for my cultures to be ready so I can get them under the microscope tomorrow. If these stupid little toadstools aren’t ready for me to pop into my potion soon, I’m going to lose an entire week’s worth of research.”
“Sounds like you need cheap wine,” I repeated. “I’ll be home in ten minutes.”
When I made it back, I turned into a sketchy little restaurant that was only open for three hours a day on Friday afternoons and was definitely a front for something. Every month, I paid a big guy named Chopstix—a dude I wouldn’t want to meet in a dark alley—a hundred bucks in cash for a parking spot. I wasn’t sure if Chopstix was even affiliated with the restaurant, but my car had never been towed, so the arrangement suited me.
Speaking of dark alleys, I climbed out of my car and made my way down one said alley behind the restaurant toward my apartment building. The block between the restaurant and my apartment complex wasn’t all that far in distance, but it was the block that crossed from the human section of town into The Hollow.
One never knew what sort of thing—human or otherwise—would be stumbling around at three in the morning in these parts. Usually things worked out fine for me. I had to settle for usually because parking at my building was one ridiculous expense I couldn’t afford.
I made my way three steps into the alley on the paranormal side of town when I realized something wasn’t right. At that exact moment, I also realized I’d left my pepper spray on the front seat of my car where I’d been fondling it in anticipation of an altercation with a transforming werewolf.
“Who’s there?” I asked, glancing around, seeing nothing but rusty old garbage bins and puddles leftover from the evening’s thunderstorm on the ground. “I’m armed.”
A skitter sounded to my right, but it was just a huge rat ferreting around for some dinner. I sighed, let my shoulders drop. Another skitter and a bang from further down the alley, and I saw a raccoon pop out of a trash can.
I crept uneasily forward, too far down the alley to turn back and head for the sidewalk. I really should have taken the sidewalk, but the alley was a serious shortcut, and I was lazy, and that was the entirety of my excuse.
I shifted my shoulder bag higher, feeling the bottle of wine clink against my hip, reminding me I had something I could use as a weapon. A cheap red cabernet in a glass bottle could do a number against someone’s head if needed.
Then the feeling returned. The eerie sensation of being watched. It felt like the temperature dropped twenty degrees in mere seconds. I shivered, reached a hand comfortingly around the neck of my cabernet bottle.
