Chapter 1
The snake lay across Ursula Blackthorn’s workshop doorstep, fat and lazy as spilled sin.
She paused, and she was not a woman easily deterred.
Nearly sixty years on this earth had taught her to take what she wanted. The attention of a man she fancied, the run-down family mansion she’d bought for a song, a fair price for the medicines she brewed out of her workshop . . . if she desired it, she claimed it.
Only snakes made her flinch.
Which was unfortunate, because her hometown of Faith Falls, Minnesota, was infamous for an event the locals had come to call “the snakening.” No one could predict when it would strike, but it always started the same way, with an early spring that blew into town hot and jittery. The US Geological Survey would begin to measure unusual Richter readings in the area. Shortly after, tens of thousands of red-lined garters would unravel from a massive ball and writhe up to meet the sun.
The sight and sound were bad, but the smell was worse.
Scientists called the phenomenon “a sporadic emergence from underground hibernacula attributed to anomalous thermoregulatory behavior.” Locals viewed it as an inconvenience that didn’t outweigh the bucolic charm of their river town. The superstitious called it bad luck.
Ursula didn’t believe in luck, but she had a good reason to be wary of the creatures. Her first snakening, when she was just a child, had been the worst day of her life. Something terrible had happened to her father, Charlie Tanager, after sunset. The snake currently lying on her doorstep brought fragments of that night back: a beer glass embossed with a twelve-point buck, the terrible quiet after violence, the way Charlie had looked at her and her mom, his breath rattling in his chest as he roared:
Every time the snakes rise, I’ll be there to steal your power. Your children will pay, and their children, forever down the line. Not one of you Blackthorn witches will find a better man than me. Not one of you can stop me.
Take it back, Charlie Tanager! her mother had screamed. Take that curse back!
Fear carved itself into Ursula’s bones that night, a terror that lingered as she waited for her father to return to seek his vengeance. But years passed, and Charlie Tanager never showed. Then came the next snakening many years later. Her daughters were teenagers. She’d jumped at shadows those awful days, certain she’d spotted her father in a crowd, in passing cars, in the face of every man who looked at Katrine and Jasmine too long.
But then the snakes slithered back into the earth, and not a single Blackthorn had been hurt. Ursula began to think maybe Charlie wasn’t returning, ever. She’d been foolish to waste so much time worrying. That’s when she really started to claim her life. Stopped asking for permission, started taking up space.
That didn’t mean the red-lined garter currently lying on her studio doorstep hadn’t jolted her with a sharp shock of fear, though. She’d been heading out to do some late-night work when she’d spotted it. Her heart was still dancing from the fright.
She glanced over her shoulder at the gorgeous Queen Anne mansion, now totally renovated, then back at the snake all lit up by the blue moon. The garter was the length of her forearm, its glossy black body striped with vivid red and gold. Just a snake, not an omen. You’re being silly, Ursula. This is August. Far too late in the season for the snakes to rise. Charlie’s not coming back.
Still, she was careful to step around it, and she muttered a protection spell as soon as she was inside her workshop. It should have soothed her, but unease continued to cling to her ribs like damp wool. She lit every lamp in the workshop, flooding the place with honey-colored light, then pulled over a chair to reach the high cupboard where she kept tools she rarely had a use for.
She went straight for the obsidian bowl. She filled it with rainwater from the jar by the window, water she’d caught three nights ago, during the tail end of a summer storm. She scattered in crushed rowan berries and a pinch of powdered bone—stag, not human—then dipped in her fingers to ripple the water. Closing her eyes, she began the incantation. The basin vibrated faintly against the workbench as the surface darkened, and the smell of worms and soil rose into the room.
She glanced down at the water, which had become a moving image. There was the town of Faith Falls, framed in twilight, the river glinting like molten pewter. From its banks, a black tide began to swell. Snakes, more than she’d ever seen, their bodies a knotting, writhing mass. The image shifted, closing in on a figure standing among them. Charlie Tanager’s face bloomed out of the murk, grinning with a mouthful of yellow teeth.
His eyes fixed on hers as if the vision was a window.
The whisper came next, sliding from the bowl and into her ear: Every time the snakes rise, I’ll be there.
She staggered back, heart hammering, then hissed a banishment spell. Charlie’s face blurred, but his grin lingered a moment too long, and in that moment she knew that nothing would stop him this time.
The only question was, Which one of the Blackthorn women would he destroy?
About Jess Lourey: Jess Lourey is the Amazon Charts bestselling author of The Quarry Girls, Unspeakable Things, Litani, and Bloodline, as well as the Steinbeck and Reed thrillers, the Salem’s Cipher novels, and the Murder by Month rom-com mysteries. Lourey writes about secrets, fosters kittens, and travels. She’s surpassed a million readers; been short-listed for the Goodreads Choice Awards and the Edgar Award twice each; and won the International Thriller, Anthony, and Minnesota Book Awards. She also has an active reader group on Facebook called Lourey’s Literati. For more information, including a link to her TEDx Talk, in which she discusses the surprising inspiration behind her writing career, visit www.jesslourey.com.
