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forefinger she traces the intricate floral engraving down the handle. “The one I’ve got upstairs isn’t nearly as nice as this.”
    “Doesn’t have a demon in it, either. Can you fix it?”
    She casts a glance toward the foyer. Helena’s guests are leaving the parlor now, clearly disgruntled. Hieronymus has made short work of them. “It’s tourist season!” shrieks the parrot as they slam the door behind them. “Now where did I put my gun?”
    “We’ll go up to my room,” Vega says, and we spend the next quarter of an hour laying the spirit in the privacy of her attic bedroom.
    She raises the mirror once more, tilts it so she can see his face, and makes eye contact (or would, if there were any balls in his sockets). She doesn’t open her mouth, but I can tell she’s speaking to him, and from the sudden heaviness of the air in Vega’s ordinarily cheerful room it seems he’s not especially grateful for it. The clouds part and a muted shaft of light spills onto the hardwood floor. I see a shadow pass along the wall out of the corner of my eye, and when I look down I see faint boot prints in the hooked rug by the bed. Vega’s eyes are glued to the looking glass, her mouth set in a grim line. The rest of this eldritch business passes quickly enough, though, and once the boot prints have faded she heaves a sigh, places the mirror on her vanity table, and declares we’ve earned ourselves another glass of the sweet stuff.
    When we come back downstairs there are half a dozen gals—our friends, not the weekenders—in the kitchen helping themselves to the lemon squash, all of them looking rather glum. Our gathering ended yesterday, but the local ladies are reluctant to go back to their routines.
    The covention, if you’ll forgive the pun, is a twice-annual event that brings all our hundred-plus members back to Blackabbey. These weeklong events straddle the summer and winter solstices, though the end-of-year covention is naturally the more festive of the two. The covention is not merely a social occasion. There are memorials for our recently departed and rituals of welcome for babies and other newcomers, and the oath-taking for those on the cusp of adolescence. And on the extremely rare occasions when one of our members is suspected of breaking that oath, we hear testimonies, confer among ourselves, and form a judgment by consensus. It’s a distasteful business, needless to say, though fortunately I’ve never had to witness any trials for sorcery in my century and a half of Blackabbey coventions.
    Minor problems are dealt with, too, of course—we hash out our conflicts, offer up our transgressions. Mind you, we’ve all bent the rules at some stage, but when one of us is angling after love or money like the crassest of neo-pagan frooty-toots, with their plastic runes and two-bit spellbooks—well, then an intercession is necessary.
    Otherwise, we pass the evenings with music and gossip, ribald jokes and epic card games, the tallies running year to year. We stuff ourselves with cakes and cookies, and we bawdy old broads indulge in our signature liqueurs while the children drink themselves giddy on nose-tingling ginger tonic. Those who travel tell of all the strange and marvelous things they’ve seen since the last covention, and among the armchair set there are recipe exchanges and reminiscences of coventions past.
    Our coven has grown increasingly diverse through the generations, as hereditary members return with the progeny of their exotic unions, and as Blackabbey itself swells with those wandering beldames attracted by its reputation. Even the local coven members sleep over during the event, and the house grows another dozen or so rooms to accommodate everyone. My sister brings out the NO VACANCIES sign when there’s an excess of tourists, but there’s always room at covention time.
    H ELENA BUCKED the trend by marrying twice. Her case was exceptional, too, in that neither of her husbands left her—Henry