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zing of her healing magic and wanted to protest. She needed her power to protect us, but I couldn’t make my mouth move. Her voice, urgent in my ear, called my name over and over. I managed to briefly force my eyes open. As she pulled me closer, my head turned, my face sliding across spider-webbed glass, leaving a trail of crimson blood behind. Through the red haze, I saw the mourners, somehow unaware of the battle raging around them, marching through the wrought-iron gates of an ancient willow-bordered cemetery. As I slipped into unconsciousness, I could hear the spiritual “There Will Come a Day” echoing to us.
    I’d never ascribed to the belief that fainting made a lady delicate, ethereal, or whatever other bullshit word you wanted to use. Nope, I was pretty sure it was a liability. But my body refused to obey my order to stay away from the darkness. As I drifted away to Jacq’s voice accompanied by the mourners’ dark melody about war and lost innocence, my last thought was that sometimes it really sucked to be a mortal hanging with immortals.
    They never knew when to pull their punches.
    * * *
    Blue Ridge Mountains, Virginia—Hours Earlier
    It was amazing how the details of one man’s life could be contained within a few sheets of paper. Cassie LaFortuna sat on her great-aunt Lucine’s couch, sight blurring with unshed tears as she read and reread the pages clutched tightly in her hands. She knew what they said, what they meant. The lawyer had been quite clear. But she didn’t understand why.
    Why him? Why now? Why there?
    There was no explanation, not even a date of Arno Wellsy’s death. Only that it had occurred. They—the lawyer, Lucine, even the documents—focused on what she had been given. What about what they had lost? What of the man of whom the children would now only have vague memories? Wasn’t it enough they had already lost their mother? For them now to lose their grandfather, for her to lose the man who was like a father to her?
    It was incomprehensible.
    Still, Cassie had no power to turn back time so this they must bear. But what of their home, the one they would be giving up to move hundreds of miles away to become strangers in a strange town? For what?
    Her great-aunt knew Cassie was a Winter Witch. Even if they hadn’t been family, Cassie’s white hair and pale eyes would have attested to it. Her powers weakened away from the mountains, putting her and the children at risk. Inwardly, Cassie shook her head, anger overriding her grief. What was so great about this Gandsai and the house waiting there that her great-aunt insisted they leave now to occupy it?
    Lost, she looked at the woman she had served faithfully for so many years, the woman who sat so near, her presence no longer the comfort it had once been. Lucine LaFortuna’s once golden hair was now gray and her black eyes dimmer than when she was young, but she was still the Witch Prime, the strongest of them all and their voice within the Supernatural Council.
    “Am I being punished?” Throat tight, Cassie hid her anger and blinked away tears.
    “Cassandra, no. Why would you think such a thing?” Lucine placed a blue-veined hand on Cassie’s knee.
    Cassie inwardly cringed at the touch, but her face never changed, one distress masking the other. “You’re sending me away when I’m needed most. That’s why.” Cassie gazed out the window, seeing the girls practicing in the courtyard below—her students, her responsibility, her burden and her cause. If she was not near, how could she do as she had been asked and find a diamond in the rough, one with enough pure blood to manipulate the darkmirror’s song?
    Lucine’s keen gaze followed the young fighters. “This is temporary. I would not have you from my side for long. You’re the only one here, the only one anywhere truly of my blood. Your dear grandmother, my dear sister, goddess rest her soul, would have it no other way.”
    Cassie kept her eyes averted, knowing her