The Witch Queen of Halloween
: Prologue

New Orleans

Halloween

“A priestess, a sorceress, and a Valkyrie meet in a graveyard,” Nïx the Ever-Knowing said to her two visitors when they joined her atop a mausoleum roof. “I can’t remember the punchline. Is it . . . sex?”

Bertil, the bat she carried on her shoulder, flapped his little wings. Bat laughter.

Loa the voodoo priestess sighed at Nïx’s appearance. The Valkyrie soothsayer wore a plastic Viking hat with one horn missing, a pair of bell-bottoms, and no shoes or shirt. Two thick braids covered her breasts, the jet-black plaits gleaming in the waning light of the day.

From a distance, a Lykae’s howl sounded, and thunder rumbled in waves. This Halloween would prove a night ripe for fate.

“The spirits told me you were here, Valkyrie,” Loa said, her accent tinged with notes of a warm island paradise. “You’re looking a fright.” If Nïx was a fright, the priestess was a sight—dressed in a red number with a slit up the thigh to show off her knee-high boots. “Are you well?”

“I’m doing better than the Queen of Evil.” Nïx hiked a thumb at La Dorada. “She almost lost her life to a human last year, and it set back all of her regeneration.”

“An unfounded rumor,” Dorada said, though her life actually had been in jeopardy. With a nonchalant air, she smoothed her long, black mane and gold dust trickled down. Her mystical ring, one that granted wishes (with a catch), glinted in the last rays of the sun.

Nïx asked her, “And how did you replace me, Dorada?”

“Only because you wanted to be found,” she answered, her speech vibrating from a translator spell. “Something wicked rises, Valkyrie. Almost as wicked as I, and I walk in apocalypse.” She didn’t walk alone. Several of her undead Wendigos prowled among the crypts below, licking their lips for the taste of fresh corpses.

Loa cast an annoyed glance at the sorceress. The two weren’t fans of each other. For one thing, like many in the Lore, Loa owed a debt to her—because of a granted wish—and no one knew when Dorada would collect on those debts.

For another, the sorceress’s recent rising after centuries of mummification did in fact herald the end of this mortal realm.

Apocalypse . . . soon?

It didn’t help that Dorada was a prickly sort of evil. Or, as Loa put it: “That sorceress woke on the wrong side of the sarcophagus.”

So, naturally, Loa plotted to assassinate her. But what was a touch of murder between colleagues?

Now Loa told Nïx, “If we’ve been feeling this disturbance, you must have. Mariketa the Awaited dispatched someone on a mission tonight, and the fallout could be catastrophic. We feel the change coming. Is it already too late?”

“A disturbance in the Lore! Or is it the Lorce?” Nïx chuckled. So did Bertil. Flap flap went his wings.

Dorada glared. “I thought you had control over the House of Witches.” Gaze going distant, she mused, “I could control them, if more of them were evil.” She could compel any evil creature, enslaving them to her bidding.

Feigning a serious look, Nïx said, “We should address your shared worries head-on.” She strolled over to a sunken area on the mausoleum roof, and the others followed. Kneeling in front of a puddle of water collecting there, she said, “Witch in the glass, come in. Witch in the glass, do you copy?”

Mariketa, a captromancer also known as the Queen of Reflections, was a young witch of unbelievable power. One could contact her through a reflection (unless she was in bed with her werewolf, which she often was).

“Breaker, breaker one-nine.” Nïx grinned coyly at her audience of two Loreans and one bat. Flap flap. “Witch, come in?” Her reflection in the puddle clouded . . .

. . . and Mariketa’s face took its place. “’Sup, Valkyrie? What a surprise!” The witch’s expression—all innocent gray eyes—might have struck a three-millennia-old soothsayer as rehearsed.

“I have Dorada and Loa with me, and they’ve raised concerns on this Hallowed Eve.”

“A meeting of alpha bitches?” Mari sounded hurt. “I could be there in a flash.”

Nïx laughed. “Consider yourself safer there! Some of us atop this roof are mentally unwell. I do so worry about them.”

Her companions looked bemused. Mari pointed toward Nïx’s hat to say something, then clearly thought better of it.

“Spill, favorite Wiccan-type person,” Nïx said. “Are you playing at fate tonight? Using some of your vast array of talents to see the future, perhaps?”

Mari’s gaze darted. “You, uh, told me to use my powers for good. This could change a lot.”

In a scandalized tone, Nïx said, “This could change everything. Even monsters and mayhem have a purpose. Shouldn’t you consult the coach before taking players off the bench?”

Dorada said, “The scales were balanced, and soon they won’t be. It’s too unpredictable. Even I can’t compel so many.”

Mari shook her head. “The scales weren’t balanced as long as the Møriør have us in their sights.”

The three fell silent at that. The Møriør was an alliance made up of primordials, each of them the oldest and most powerful being of a particular species.

Mari sighed. “Though Nïx won’t cop to it, we all know they’re favored to win this Accession.”

“May the Lorce be with you!” Nïx exclaimed. When she rubbed her nose against Bertil’s, the bat gazed up at her with dreamy adoration.

Dorada glowered at the Valkyrie. “If immortals consider a madwoman like you their leader—their coach—then maybe the Møriør should win.” She waved to indicate Loa. “The priestess must think so, else she wouldn’t be selling them information.”

Loa’s amber eyes glittered. “I’d watch your rottin’ tongue, sorceress.”

“It’s no longer rotting!”

“Hey!” Mari cried. “Can we have just one discussion without arguing and imminent bloodshed?”

Dorada and Loa: “NO!”

“The journal,” Nïx whispered, cutting through the tension. Her gaze had gone vacant. “The Enemy of Old is going to want it. Should I give it to him? Will anything matter after this?” Lightning flashed above. “The spheres are smudged once more. Will they crack under the pressure?”

The others grew uneasy, even Dorada.

Mari cleared her throat. “Uh, you okay there, Nïx?”

“We are not.” She abruptly stood, telling Mari, “The die is cast. It’s too late to change anything. Depending on what is unleashed tonight, the Lore will convulse. I hope you know what you’re doing, because for once, I don’t.”

Mari swallowed. “That sounds less than ducky. I thought you’d still be acting as, like, the guardrails for me.”

Dorada smirked. “Looks like you’re about to careen off the cliff and take all of us with you.”

Nïx didn’t deny it. “That’s the thing about shaping fate, young witch.” She stomped her bare foot into the puddle; lightning flashed again, and water splattered up to her face. “Sometimes it resists.” The bat didn’t laugh when droplets ran down her cheeks like tears.