“Why didn’t you warn me about that?” I whisper. Around us, other witches are still heading toward the cemetery, many of them glancing back at the rider.

“Because that didn’t happen last year!” she says, her eyes wide. “Goddess,” she says, grabbing my aching hand, and I have to smother a wince. “Are you all right?”

I sense Memnon still eavesdropping.

“I’m fine,” I say, more to him than to her.

She searches my features, then glances back at the fairy. “Fuck!” she curses as the hoofbeats start up again. “Duck!”

I don’t know what good ducking will do, but I drop to the ground anyway.

The fae rider and his steed pound past us, my floating veil clutched in his grip. He doesn’t notice me at all as he veers off into the woods.

I’m breathing heavily. “Who thought letting him in was a good idea?”

“He’ll leave by dawn,” says an older witch passing by. “The bride he takes will have agreed to go.”

Oh really now? Because he didn’t seem super into consent when I was in his clutches.

“Those are the rules for hunting on coven property,” the elderly witch finishes as she moves away from us.

“Hunting?” I echo, horrified as Sybil and I begin walking again. I keep scanning the woods where I last saw him. “We’re not deer to be caught.”

The older witch gives her head a shake. “To some of them, you are.”

Maiden, Mother, and Crone.

“What will happen to the witch who goes with him?” I ask.

“The same thing that happens to all brides the fae steal away,” the witch says. “They are taken back to the Otherworld, and the union is made official.”

Sex is what she means. Sex followed by…whatever fae do with mortals.

“Sounds hot,” Sybil says.

I give her a traitorous look.

“In theory,” she adds, smoothing out her costume. “Anyway, you should’ve seen that fae’s face when his ass hit the ground. Pure disbelief and outrage. You knocked years off his life. Where did you learn to hit like that?”

Memnon.

It felt like muscle memory—being on the horse, throwing the hit. It didn’t seem to matter that millennia separated those memories from this evening.

“It’s just one of those things that came back with my memories,” I say evasively.

I give the darkened woods one last glance before turning my attention ahead of us. I can make out the end of the pathway and the gravestones and crypts beyond it, the stone markers lit up by yet more lanterns.

Once we enter the cemetery proper, it’s clear this is where the party is at. There are more pumpkins stacked around gravestones, along with candles and marigold flowers. A fiddler on the far side of the cemetery has struck up a tune, and large tables rest between grave markers, all of them set with candelabras and laden with food spelled to be accessible to both spirits and mortals. On one side of the cemetery, a large cauldron bubbles away. I veer right for it, dragging Sybil along after me.

“Someone is super eager,” she mutters.

“You would be too if you just barely escaped getting kidnapped seconds ago.” We weave our way through the graveyard, passing headstones covered in moss.

“Yes, it sounds so awful to be chosen as an immortal’s bride. Real tough life you have there.”

I stop at the cauldron, knocking some of the marigold flowers at its base askew as I turn to gape at her. “He picked me because I wore white and was easy to grab! That’s all! That’s, like, the most unromantic way to get a girl.”

Sybil looks unconvinced as I grab a glass and reach for the cauldron’s ladle, pressing my lips together at the steady throb still coming from my hand.

“If the dude is so in need of a female companion that he has to travel to a whole different realm to snatch one away without even getting to know her,” I say, filling up the glass and handing it to my friend, “he probably sucks.”

Sybil tilts her head as she takes the cup from me. “You may have a point.”

“Thank you,” I say, feeling vindicated. I fill up my own glass of witch’s brew, down the cup in a few long gulps, then refill it once more.

In the distance I hear the baying cries of wolves.

Sybil looks positively thrilled. “Looks like your kidnapper might’ve made it to shifter territory.”

That thought pleases me for two-point-five seconds before I remember that if the lycanthropes manage to scare the fairy off, he’ll just return.

I chug my second drink, only vaguely noting that this version of witch’s brew tastes strongly of star anise and clove.

“You’re going to want to chill on how fast you drink that,” Sybil cautions as I refill my glass again.

“Or you can just make bad decisions with me,” I say, looking pointedly at her own glass.

She cackles, then knocks her drink back.

“Fine,” she says, handing over her cup. “I’ll join the bad decision train with you, you freak. Now, refill our glasses, and let’s grab some food!”

I understand Sybil’s caution only once it’s too late.

We end up drinking another glass of witch’s brew and gorging ourselves on the foods set out for this outdoor banquet.

It’s only once I’m sitting on a crypt alongside Sybil and several other housemates of ours, nursing my fourth glass of brew, that I feel the first stirrings of desire.

I shift a little to ease the sensation, only now remembering that espiritus, the active ingredient in witch’s brew, makes witches extra lusty. For now it’s just an inconvenience, nothing too distracting.

Around us, ghosts and other witches sit on crypts and tombstones, enjoying one another’s company. Many have also taken to dancing around the graves.

“You guys thinking about going to the bonfire?” asks Yasmin, a petite witch with brown skin and curly hair cropped in a bob. She daintily eats a caramel-dipped apple in one hand and sips brew from the other, completely unaware that one of her tits has slipped out from between the linen bandage mummy dress she wears.

Next to her, Olga stands in a Victorian dress, her once-coiffed hair now tugged mostly loose and the high-necked collar of her dress gaping open, a few buttons missing. That’s not the only thing missing. Her Ledger of Last Words, a book dedicated to collecting the final words of the dying, is also absent tonight. Olga’s eyes are a little glazed from the witch’s brew, and she’s tugging absently on the back of her corset as though she might be able to loosen the lacing.

A wave of desire slams into me, this one much more insistent than anything that came before, and I white-knuckle my glass, nearly moaning at the throbbing sensation between my legs.

Mai, a witch with pale skin and wide, high cheekbones, eyes Olga. “You ladies can do whatever you like,” she says, “but I’m going hunting for wolves. I want to get eaten like I’m Little Red fucking Riding Hood.”

“Oh, count me in,” Sybil says from where she sits next to me on the crypt.

“Count you in for what?” I say dazedly, only half following the conversation.

I tug at the low neckline of the satin slip. Two hours ago, this felt like a wisp of an outfit, but now my skin is hot and overly sensitive, and the dress chafes in a way I cannot suddenly stand.

Around us, other witches have begun to strip, the outer layers of their costumes haphazardly tossed over the gravestones.

Sybil rubs her neck absently, her wings fluttering behind her. “Getting fucked by a lycan.”

My body viscerally tightens at that word. Fucked. Goddess, how much espiritus did they put in the brew this time? This is like a lust potion gone wrong.

I swim through the haze of my thoughts, finally refocusing on the conversation.

“Wait, what?” That’s her plan? “But the shifters…they’re still in seclusion.”