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ago, if someone had told me Delia and I wouldn’t only be speaking but would be friends, I’d have laughed at the absurd notion. We’d been sworn enemies since the day we were born.
    Enemies, because this shop and its secrets had been destined to me upon my birth—the legacy was passed down to the eldest child in the family, and thanks to being born two months prematurely, I was older than Delia by six whole minutes. Outraged, my aunt Neige, Delia’s mama, had argued that gestationally Delia was the older of us, but my Grammy Adelaide turned a deaf ear.
    Furious, Neige had rebelled by opening Till Hex Do Us Part, a shop that sold hexes, and started embracing her dark heritage wholeheartedly. Though she had no access to the Leilara, the enchanted lily drops, her black magic was still strong and her shop prospered. But she’d do anything to attain the Leilara—and the power that came with them.
    Delia and I had grown up as rivals.
    But then Aunt Neige had followed her heart to New Orleans, Delia had taken over the hex shop, and just a few months ago had taken a leap of faith to bridge the chasm between us when she learned I was in danger. Since then we’d slowly been getting to know each other.
    But—and it was a big but—there was still a tiddly bit of worry on my part about the Leilara secret. And if Delia’s friendship was only a ploy to get her hands on the legacy that should have rightly been hers.
    “Argh,”
Delia said. “How can you be friends with him? He’s impossible.”
    Under her cape, she wore a pair of black skinny jeans, a black tunic top, and black sandals. Even her dog Boo was black, but I noticed she hadn’t brought him with her. He usually sat in a wicker basket that hung from her arm, ala Toto from
The Wizard of Oz
.
    On me, the black would have made me look like I’d done lost my mind, but on Delia it just made her look more mysterious.
    “Impossible not to love,” I said, laying the groundwork for my matchmaking. I reached in the bag for the fudge brownie—my appetite was back now that we weren’t talking about death anymore.
    “Gag me.” Delia scratched Roly’s head, who twisted her head for easier access to her chin.
    Okay, so I had my work cut out for me. I broke the brownie in half and handed a piece over to my cousin.
    “What was with the neck thing?” she asked. “Did someone really die?”
    Ainsley dusted herself off. “Possibly a murder in the making.”
    “There’s no murder in the making,” I said. But evenas the words left my mouth, a tingle slid down my spine. I wished Dylan would call me back as I gave up for good on the brownie. What a waste of perfectly good chocolate.
    “Is that why you hung up on me?” Delia asked, narrowing her eyes. “Like I said, I could forgive you if it was a matter of life and death.”
    Ainsley picked up the feather duster and went back to work on the potion bottles. “Nah, it was because Gabi Greenleigh came in.”
    Something dark flashed in Delia’s eyes.
    “What?” I said.
    “What, what?” she countered.
    “What was that look?”
    She lifted a shoulder. “She’s why I wanted to talk to you. I had a dream about you, and she was in it. Or maybe I had a dream about her, and you were in it. Either way . . .”
    Delia’s dreams were often premonitory and akin to my witchy senses—they were to be taken very seriously. Another warning tingle slid down my spine. “What was the dream about?”
    There was caution in her clear blue irises. “You two were together at your mama’s chapel . . .”
    “And?” Ainsley prompted.
    Delia shifted uncomfortably. “Carly was trying to calm her down, but she was screaming to wake the dead.”
    “Why?” I asked.
    Delia said, “It could have had something to do with her being covered in blood.”

Chapter Four
    A couple of hours later, I left the shop in Ainsley’s capable hands. She couldn’t diagnose ailments as I could, but she could sell premade potions better than anyone I