She stumbled back toward the car, gaping. Kester isn’t human. It’s real. Witches, magic—the fire goddess, my condemned soul. Her world tilted.

The beast prowled toward her, sniffing the air before emitting a growl than rumbled through her bones.

She tried to steady the shaking in her hands, balling her fingers into fists. I’m losing my mind.

Then the hound turned, bounded up the berm, and disappeared into the darkness.

* * *

Alone by the Lotus, Ursula felt a cold wind bite through her clothes. Kester’s transformation from man to hound had shattered her very understanding of reality, and her blood roared in her ears. For a moment, she wondered if she’d hallucinated the whole scene.

Maybe she’d stolen this car, dreamt up a beautiful dog-man, and convinced herself that her life had a purpose—that she wasn’t just a screwed-up, unemployed loser, but was part of a new magical reality.

Or maybe Madeleine was right. Witches were real, and Kester was one of them—just like the monsters who had terrorized Boston.

She watched the snow drifting to the ground, trying to root herself in reality. A sudden ability to conjure fire with her thoughts wasn’t exactly normal. Still, she’d assumed there was a scientific explanation she just didn’t know about. It wasn’t like she’d spent a lot of time in biology classrooms, so maybe she’d missed something.

But magic and werewolves were the stuff of fairy stories. And she didn’t want to believe in them, because if magic was real then maybe the gaping-eyed monsters of her nightmares were real, too. A gut-churning image flickered in her memory—a beautiful man with midnight eyes, and a smile cold as death… She shook her head, pushing the image beneath the surface.

Her breath came thick and ragged. Focus, Ursula. Did I really just see a man transform into a hound? Or have I lost my mind? The most likely explanation was that she was a mental case—a newly unemployed mental case—with imaginary magical powers. Perhaps she had only just now come to her senses, alone in a field with a stolen car. But mental cases didn’t really come to their senses so suddenly, did they?

So what the hell do I do now? Do I run, or will that beast hunt me down and tear the flesh from my bones?

A distant shriek pierced the frozen night, and a moment later the hound bounded down the slope. Blood dripped from its jaws. Her stomach flipped, and panic threatened to overwhelm her. She stepped back again, her calves thudding against the Lotus’s fender.

Panting, the beast retracted its claws, and its snout shortened. As Kester’s spine straightened, clothing spread over his body and the fur disappeared, revealing the smooth skin of a movie star.