“Got this gem of an assignment,” I said, and she nodded. “Sorry about that.”

“It’s what I like,” she said, shrugging. “Usually.”

The last was said rather dryly, and I wondered if it was for our listener’s benefit.

“Just be careful,” I said, not entirely in jest. “That’s what Pierce was before they cemented him into the ground.”

Trent was still eying my syrup, even as he scraped his spoon to get the last dregs of the soup, and I pushed the little container to him.

Vivian’s face showed her disgust. Pierce had beaten her up last spring, and that was not easy for the self-assured woman. “Pierce,” she said, mouthing his name like it tasted bad. “He was dead. You brought him back.”

I could almost hear her think black witch, and my jaw clenched. Why was everyone so fixated on labels? Across the table, Trent dunked his clean fork in the syrup, pushing the little container back after he’d tasted it. If he didn’t like it, then Jenks wouldn’t, either, and I left it as I put my napkin over my last pancake. I was done.

“I didn’t bring Pierce back to life,” I said, not seeing what difference it made, but wanting to clear it up. “He was in purgatory, and I accidentally woke him while using a white spell to talk to my deceased father for some parental advice. Did it on a dare. I got Pierce instead. Al was the one who made him alive again so he could use him as a familiar. Dead witches can’t tap lines, and they make lousy familiars.”

I sipped my coffee, trying not to think about it. Pierce was living out the rest of his life in another’s—a dead man’s—body. It gave me the willies, and I only hoped I’d never find myself facing such a decision. It was hard to blame the guy. I just wished he had given me a chance to find a better way before he’d given himself to Al until death do them part.

“But you woke him first?” Vivian said intently, her eyes red rimmed from lack of sleep.

“It’s a white spell,” I said, glancing at Trent. He had known for a while that I could do this. “And it doesn’t work on the dead, only on those in purgatory.”

Vivian moved her straw around to remix her milk shake. “I know it’s white,” she said. “I’ve tried it. You got it to work when you were how old?”

Oh. That. Uncomfortable, I looked out the window at my mom’s car. “I don’t remember,” I lied. I’d been eighteen and stupid, but clearly there was someone under the grass Vivian wanted to talk to. “Pierce started haunting me last year. He was buried in my churchyard.” I started to warm, getting angry. “It was your precious coven that killed him.”

“I know,” Vivian said, as eager as if she was talking about someone from a history book, not a real person I once had breakfast with, hid in a little hole with, owed my life to. “I read up on him after he…after we met,” she said slowly. “He was a coven member gone bad. They had no choice but to kill him.”