“Yeah, I don’t think so.” My right hand dropped to dauda-dagr’s hilt. Funny how the gesture had become instinctual in such a short time. “Not this time. I don’t mean to pull rank, but I’m Hel’s liaison, Cas. We’re talking about a supernatural threat in Pemkowet. That makes it my business.”

We had a polite staredown. For a moment I thought Casimir was going to call my bluff—and it was a bluff, since I didn’t really have any options if he refused to admit me—but he relented.

“You have a point,” he said. “Do I have your oath that you’ll treat everything you see or hear as confidential?”

“As long as it doesn’t interfere with my duty to Hel, yes,” I said. “Fair enough?”

“It will have to do.” He gestured. “Come in.”

The living room looked more like I imagined the Fabulous Casimir’s place would be than the sparsely appointed altar room at his shop. It was filled with cluttered elegance. Paintings with gilded frames hung in rows three-deep on the walls, knickknacks on every surface, old-fashioned stuffed furniture with scrolling wood trim, an Oriental carpet on the floor. And seated around the perimeter of the room, the other six members of Pemkowet’s coven.

The only two people I’d more or less expected to see here were Mark and Sheila Reston, who owned the tattoo parlor across from the Sisters of Selene, because . . . well. If you’ve got matching tattoos of the Wiccan rede—which, by the way, is “An it harm none, do what ye will”—around your neck, that’s pretty much a dead giveaway.

The others . . . not so much.

There was Kim McKinney, who graduated a year ahead of me and worked at the deli counter at Tafts Grocery. I didn’t know her well, but I definitely didn’t see that coming.

There was nice Mrs. Meyers from the historical society, her expression placid, her lap full of yarn, and her knitting needles clicking away industriously.

There was taciturn Warren Rogers, who owned a nursery and a landscaping business and had done some work out at my mom’s place a couple of years ago in exchange for her making his plus-size daughter, Naomi, a kickass prom dress that flattered her curves to hell and gone.

And there—holy crap—was my mom’s friend Sandra Sweddon, recently referred to by my former teacher Mr. Leary as “that infernal do-gooding busybody.”

Okay, maybe I should have known that one. After all, I did know she collected crystals. But frankly, I hadn’t even suspected it.

Casimir bustled around, pouring tea and making introductions. “Wonderful,” he said once acquaintances were made or in my case, renewed in a very different context. “If everyone’s ready, I’ll give a quick invocation and then we’ll begin.”

A murmur of assent ran around the room.