“The thing is, I’ve already let Gareth shape my life more than I’d like,” I said, trying to articulate what was really bothering me here. “And as much as the idea of bringing him down sounds fantastic, I came back here because it was important to my family that I uphold Gauntlet tradition. I didn’t come back for that asshole, not in any shape or form.”

Talia’s eyes thawed at that, reminding me of the oddly gentle and earnest way she’d listened to me last night, the heat of her hand over mine.

“And I respect that, Harlow,” she said. “I do. Consider, though, that this isn’t just about him. It’s also about the Blackmoores stacking the deck in their own favor for centuries.”

“What do you mean?”

“Four families founded this town, not one. But they’ve been making Thistle Grove all about them, edging the rest of us out since they built that trashy monstrosity and called it a ‘historical’ attraction. And put yourself in a tourist’s shoes—if you come here to get your Halloween fix, what do you spend your money on? A séance at the Emporium, or a whole fucking medieval castle with all the bells and whistles?”

“She’s right, Em,” Linden said somberly. “We’ve been feeling the pressure, too. The Blackmoores have their own pumpkin patch and sunflower farm out at Camelot now, too, even a whole jack-o’-lantern display every season.”

I remembered Gareth bragging to his bros about the expansion of Camelot last night at the Cauldron, even raising a toast to the new additions. So this was what he’d been so proud of, stealing business from Talia and Lin. For all I knew, they were planning on opening a themed bookstore, too, and just hadn’t gotten around to it yet; I wouldn’t have put it past them.

“We’ve really had to tighten our belts this year,” Linden went on. “That’s why the liquor deal with them was so important in the first place.”

Talia nodded, her face hardening until her delicate features looked chiseled from some unyielding stone. “Things continue the way they are, the Emporium only has another season or two before it goes under for good.”

A sudden anger spun up in me, like an unforecasted hurricane, at the thought of the Blackmoores turning this enchanted jewel of a town into a cheesy spectacle engineered purely for their profit. There was so much more to Thistle Grove than the Blackmoores, just like Talia had said. Four witches founded Thistle Grove, and its power was meant to be shared equitably between their families—not hoarded by one family year after year, until they eclipsed the others into irrelevancy.

Maybe the founders would never have established the Gauntlet in the first place, had they known that this was what would come of it.

The wrongness of it whipped through me, along with a bitter tinge of regret that I’d let my connection to this place snuff out so thoroughly that I hadn’t even known about any of this. I might have forged a new life away from Thistle Grove, but this was still the town that grew and made me. I owed it to my own family, as well as the Thorns and Avramovs, to help right its foundering balance.