Hattie’s bustling presence in the bakery prevented Jane from having any meaningful type of conversation with Dee. Luckily, a crème-fleurette crisis had given Jane just enough time to secure an invitation to that evening’s meeting of Dee’s coven before she had hastily retreated to fill out her “shopping” cover story. By the time it was late enough to head to Brooklyn for the gathering, Jane had collected an impressive assortment of bags, an activity that had the added advantage of preventing her from thinking too hard about what she was about to do. Two months ago, she hadn’t known witches existed, and now she was joining a coven, for God’s sake.

When she exited the subway in Park Slope, she felt as though she’d arrived in an entirely different city. Quaint little shops lined the streets and no building was taller than four floors. One grocery store even had a street-level parking lot, unheard-of in Manhattan—or Paris, for that matter.

Though it was only seven, the sidewalks and streets were nearly empty. A dark town car turned the corner, and an old woman pushed a grocery cart down a side street. Despite the relative calm, Jane couldn’t quite shake the feeling that someone was watching her. Stop being paranoid, she told herself sharply, but she hugged her heavy purse close to her chest. She would never again leave the house without her passport, French debit card, and a copy of Malcolm’s AmEx—just in case. With another surreptitious glance around, she hurried down Berkeley Place, past a school playground, until she reached Dee’s stoop.

A cheerful Dee ushered her inside her one-bedroom. The tiny living room had an accent wall in brilliant red, and a threadbare Oriental carpet reached from corner to corner. There was no couch; instead, a pile of cushions in silk and velvet dotted the carpet. A wrought-iron chandelier boasted four fat, lit candles, and seven more candles sat on a rough-hewn wood bench pushed against the red wall. It looked like something out of a CW show about trendy twentysomething witches—albeit a low-budget one—but Jane reminded herself to keep an open mind. This might be her only avenue to learning more about her abilities.

Five other women were crammed into the room. Dee wove among them, trying not to trip over her own furniture, a plate of warm chocolate-chip cookies in hand. Jane, eager for an excuse not to try to make small talk, snatched one up. It tasted, in a word, magical. “Oh my God, you made these? Would you switch my wedding cake for a giant one of these? I’ll take all the blame.”

Dee giggled, her amber eyes glittering. “Glad you like it, but the wedding cookie’s a no-go. Your about-to-be mother-in-law locked the order, so you’re stuck with vanilla-and-orange-blossom sponge cake with cognac buttercream and all the fondant doves we can roll in one kitchen. And, of course, ‘absolutely nothing that looks in any way like a cake-topper,’ ” she added, doing such a flawless impression of Lynne that Jane flinched.

A girl with spiky brown hair and a long batik tunic laughed. “Man, I hope the guy’s worth it.”

“I don’t think they make guys worth that,” a tall blonde with a lip-ring teased, slipping an arm around the spiky-haired girl’s shoulders. “But to each her own.” She grinned at Jane. “I’m Kara, and this is Brooke, and feel free to ignore me if it’s true love and all that.”

Jane smiled faintly, but didn’t quite know what to say. “The wedding is just a charade so we can flee the country” was hardly an ice-breaker, but it was difficult to summon a genuine-seeming rush of enthusiasm for her upcoming nuptials.

Fortunately, at that moment Dee called them all over to the circle of cushions, and Jane hovered uncertainly at its edge. “Come on, Jane,” Dee urged. “It’s just a meditation, nothing scary.”

“I don’t want to intrude,” Jane mumbled, perching tentatively on a red silk pillow with faintly Indian-looking embroidery. Or blow the fuses, or die of boredom, or anything else obnoxiously conspicuous. But the faces of the other women were uniformly welcoming and pleasant. She smiled back at them shyly.

“We’ve been looking everywhere for a seventh person,” Kara whispered from a cushion beside Jane’s. “It’s a magic number.” She winked, her lip-ring glinting in the candlelight.

“Everyone, please close your eyes,” Dee intoned, and Kara clamped her lips together and shut her eyes in exaggerated compliance.

Jane obeyed as well, and inhaled deeply. The smoky flower-and-ashes scent of the incense scratched her throat and made her feel light-headed.

“The Circle is gathered; the Circle is cleansed.” Dee’s voice was so husky Jane didn’t recognize it at first. “We call on the guardians of the Watchtower of the North, and we bring an offering of Earth to the Circle to remind ourselves of the life that flourishes beneath our feet. We call on the guardians of the Watchtower of the West, and we bring an offering of Water to the Circle to remind ourselves that blessings come to us from every source. We call on the guardians of the Watchtower of the South, and we bring an offering of Fire to the Circle to remind ourselves of the passion that brings warmth and destruction in equal measure. We call on the guardians of the Watchtower of the East, and we bring an offering of Air to the Circle to remind ourselves that we are connected even when we do not touch.”

Jane’s conscious mind registered skepticism at the words, but the rhythm of Dee’s invocation relaxed her muscles and slowed her breathing. At the very least, a relaxing evening’s meditation would do her some good.

“We meet in the presence of the Horned God and the Moon Goddess,” Dee went on. “She who exists as the Maiden, the Mother, and the Crone. We take her into ourselves as we pass through these stages, and become complete in ourselves. We begin as daughters but carry on as sisters, and we are each the greatest blessing to the others as we move along the paths of our lives. Please join hands as we begin our meditation.”

Jane reached out blindly, but had no trouble finding the outstretched hands on either side of her. A faint current seemed to run through them when they touched, as if a circuit had been closed. The lightheaded feeling intensified, almost as though she was floating above her pillow.

“We begin in a meadow, just as the sun is setting,” Dee crooned, and Jane found that she could see the meadow clearly behind her closed eyes. Waist-high grass rippled in a light breeze, and Queen Anne’s lace and yellow dandelions competed with the green stalks for sunlight. “The stars become clearer and clearer as darkness rolls across the sky. The sliver of the new moon rises above the horizon: tonight is a time of new beginnings, of refreshed spirits, of renewed power. Tonight is the Storm Moon, the sign that light is returning to balance with the darkness, and that the world is reawakening around us. Tonight we begin again, journeying far . . .”

Dee led Jane past a lake covered with waxy lily pads, along a field of wild violets, then through a thick redwood forest where the ground was spongy with moss. The other women were there with her, too, examining mushrooms and oohing at breathtaking waterfalls. The experience was much more affecting than Jane had expected. A more ordinary sort of magic.

“Now I’ll start us off on our evening chant,” Dee announced, “and then we will continue silently together to seal our ritual.”

Jane exhaled softly as Dee slowly chanted a Latin-sounding phrase, then tapered off into silence. The syllables echoed in Jane’s mind, taking root as if the words had been there all along.

After two more cycles of the chant, she realized she was no longer hearing the memory of Dee’s voice. Instead, she was hearing a collection of voices, all chanting more or less together, creating an almost melodic harmony. Like the wind through the attic at the Dorans’, Jane thought.

Just then, one of the voices faltered, and Jane’s eyes snapped open. The girl with spiky brown hair—Brooke—was staring at her from across the circle, her eyes wild. Brooke released the hands on either side of her and fumbled to her feet. Jane instinctively did the same. Curious eyes opened as the disturbance spread around the circle. The chanting noise stopped entirely, and then six pairs of terrified eyes were fixed on Jane.

“Did I do something wrong?” she stammered, trying to figure out why they were all staring at her, but no one moved. Not staring at me, exactly, she realized with a start: it was as if they were looking through her. She turned, and then she was staring, too, because all of the candles on the wood bench behind her were floating. She jerked at the sight, and the candles tumbled to the ground as if they had suddenly been released. One rolled toward a cushion near Dee, who bent slowly, as if she were under water, to extinguish it.

“Um . . .” A girl whose arms were covered entirely with colorful tattoos grabbed her purse. “I forgot I had this . . . um thing? So I’m just gonna . . .” She jumped up and all but ran to the door, followed closely by two of the other women. As if a spell had quite literally been broken, everyone rose to their feet and pushed toward the exit.

“Sorry,” Kara said, quirking an apologetic smile at Dee. “Too weird for my blood.” She circled an arm around Brooke’s shoulder and guided the shell-shocked girl gently toward the door.

Within seconds, Jane and Dee were alone in the apartment, and Jane couldn’t bring herself to look anywhere but the floor. “I’m so sorry,” she mumbled. “This was a mistake. Please just forget—”

“Are you kidding me?”

Jane glanced up, startled. Dee’s eyes were wide, her smile even wider. Her skin shone and sheaves of tangled dark hair fell around her face. “You’re one of them, aren’t you? I was babbling away in the store that day, and this whole time you were one of them?”

Jane’s mouth opened, but no sound came out. She felt trapped. She had unwittingly jumped in with both feet and given herself away in front of six strangers. Now, she realized abruptly, there was nothing to do but ask for the help she had come for. “You’re right,” she forced her voice to say. “It is genetic.”

Dee grinned and shoved a cushion at her. “Nifty. Now would you sit the hell back down already?” Her amber eyes sparkled wickedly. “Let’s find out how it works.”