When Jane woke up, she had no idea where she was. The ceiling above her was supported by wood rafters that sloped at a steep angle. Light filtered in through two dusty windows, and the walls were bare save for a small, gold-framed photo near the door.

She tried to sit up and get a better look around. The satin of her dress rustled, but her limbs wouldn’t move. I was getting married, she thought foggily. I’m almost sure of it. But that wasn’t right, not exactly. I did get married. And now I’m in a bed . . . in an attic? She tried harder to move, and this time the source of the resistance was clearer. I’m tied to a bed in an attic. Had the honeymoon started already? You’d think I’d remember that . . .

But that wasn’t right, either. Hot tears began to spill from her eyes as her mind recalled the image of her husband leaning over her dying grandmother. No wonder the dog barked at him, she thought, but that reminded her that the dog hadn’t been the only one to recognize him. The old man in the flower shop—what had he said? “Normal people come one time. They do not again.” His dark tangle of anger at the funeral suddenly made a lot more sense: he knew that Malcolm had been in Saint-Croix once already. He must have seen something that had made him suspicious, especially once Celine had turned up dead. Why the hell didn’t he say something? she fumed impotently, but it was hard to really blame the stranger. Either he had been afraid to get involved or he had thought that Jane was a party to the murder; either one was more forgivable than Jane’s marrying the man who had killed her grandmother.

And the more Jane thought about it the more she realized the full magnitude of her mistake. She had been so foolish. All the clues pointing the way to the truth had been laid out in front of her, like dainty little breadcrumbs, but she’d been so blinded by love, by her need for Malcolm, that she had put the picture together all wrong. She’d questioned the timing of Malcolm’s arrival in her life, sure, but she’d overlooked the most obvious problem with the “coincidence.” Malcolm was a son of a witch with bad intentions: he could never have gotten anywhere near her so long as the ever-paranoid Celine Boyle was alive. And apparently the Dorans weren’t willing to sit around waiting.

Bile rose in her throat. Malcolm was a liar and a murderer, and she had put all of her trust in him. She had married him, for God’s sake. There was no light at the end of the tunnel anymore. She had no one to love, no one to trust. But she did have someone to blame.

“Lynne Doran!” she shouted at the top of her lungs. “Lynne, you lunatic psycho-bitch, get your bony ass in here!”

There was a brief silence, and then the aging wood door swung open. “Really, dear. Do you have to be so crude?” Lynne sniffed. The twin cousins filed into the room behind her like bodyguards. “At least you won’t be around to pass on your appalling lack of manners to my granddaughter. I shudder to think how she’d turn out under your tutelage.”

Rage boiled through Jane, followed by the familiar prick of magic, but it was weak and faint, impossible to grasp, as if all her weeks of practice had been undone—or had never occurred at all.

Lynne laughed unpleasantly. “That’s a useful little spell we hit you with, Jane. I’d offer to teach you sometime, but I doubt it’d be worth my trouble.”

“Don’t worry, it’ll wear off . . . eventually,” Cora tittered.

“I’ll kill all three of you,” Jane sputtered, although behind the hollow threat her mind was racing. So the cousins had done something to dampen her magic. But they hadn’t taken it away. She just had to figure out how to access it.

Belinda smirked. “It’s three against one, Jane, and let’s be honest: you’re not really much of a witch even when you haven’t just been knocked out.”

Jane swallowed hard. Maybe she wasn’t much of a witch, but that was because these women had killed her grandmother before she’d had time to teach her anything.

“Killing your thug wasn’t all that hard,” she spat at Lynne, whose eyes narrowed in response.

“Yes,” Lynne mused. “I suppose I’ll have to punish you for that. Will taking your baby and slitting your throat do it?”

Jane rolled her eyes. “Your golden boy never did manage to knock me up, so you might as well get to the throat-slitting and spare me having to listen to your obnoxious voice for another moment.” Anger rattled through her, igniting tiny sparks of her magic. She focused hard on them. If she could summon just enough, perhaps she could get the photo frame beside the door to fly off the wall and lodge in Lynne’s brain.

“As tempting as that is, dear, your throat will remain intact for another nine months. I do need you to have that baby for me one way or another. Although, unfortunately, Malcolm is unavailable at the moment.” A shadow flickered across her face and was gone before Jane could interpret it. “How very lucky that I have two sons.”

Charles. Jane swallowed a gasp. This woman was truly sick.

“From what I heard, ‘luck’ had nothing to do with little Charlie’s birth,” Jane retorted, trying to mask her terror. Lynne flinched. “Malcolm sold you out,” Jane went on softly, forcing Lynne to step a little closer to the bed to hear her. She gave the framed photo a hopeful try; it rattled so faintly that it could have passed for a loud exhale. Come closer. Get distracted. Give me something to work with, here. “He made up some nonsense about ‘experimental drugs,’ made it sound like a mistake of a desperately hopeful woman. But you and I know better, don’t we? You weren’t hopeful. You didn’t wait to see how the pregnancy would go, and you sure as hell didn’t bother with anything the FDA will ever see. The moment you knew you were pregnant, you locked it down. You just kept forcing and forcing more of your witchcraft on his fragile little brain until you broke it.” Jane chuckled grimly. “Shame you couldn’t figure out how to move chromosomes around. It would’ve all been worth it to have a broken daughter, right?”

Lynne’s eyes blazed with rage and she took a menacing step forward.

“Lynne,” Cora cautioned.

After a violently still moment, Lynne straightened up and smoothed the peach gown she’d worn to the wedding. It matched her lipstick perfectly. “Well,” she snapped very precisely. “I guess you’ll find out soon enough.” Then she strode out of the room, her cousins on her heel.

No, Jane thought desperately. I need more time. She thrashed against her ropes, but there wasn’t the slightest bit of give in the complicated knots. And then she saw the hulking figure lurking in the hallway. Charles. Her stomach turned and for a moment she thought she might pass out again.

“This is seriously your sickest idea yet,” she called to Lynne, hearing a note of desperation creep into her voice.

“Be a good boy, Charles.” Lynne appeared in the doorway. She kissed her younger son on the cheek and smiled aloofly at Jane. A moment later, she slammed the door shut behind her. Charles padded toward Jane, a horrifying gleam in his eye. A key turned in the lock, and then they were alone.