Free A Witch's Feast by C.N. Crawford Page A

a conjuring might invite. Any nearby demon or wight would come to greet him.  
    Tobias slipped deeper through the trees along the riverbank, the night breeze cool against his bare arms. He’d learned how to conjure with the Ragmen. In fact, it was how he and Oswald had practiced pike-fighting against demons. Only knowledge of a demon’s true name could summon them. Unless, of course, you had a different sort of power over them—if you’d dispatched them to the afterlife. But it was a dangerous sort of magic, and he certainly wasn’t going to involve his Boston friends in a spell like this.
    Just a few feet from the river, in an overgrown copse of trees, he paused in a small clearing. Moonlight glinted off the water, and thick undergrowth curled from the marshy ground under his feet. Using the athame, he traced a circle close to the ground.   Then, in the center, he drew a triangle. As he completed the final swoop of the athame, flames blazed around him, and an electrifying power flowed through him.  
    He closed his eyes and envisioned the demon he’d killed—Ms. Bouchard, Mather’s former art teacher. As a succubus, she was beautiful when sated, but a withered hag when her aura grew weak. The mark on his chest began to warm.
    “I call upon the succubus Amauberge Bouchard!” His heart raced as he chanted the conjuring spell, stabbing the athame into the earth. The flames rose higher, warming his skin.
      Behind him, a gurgling sound rose from the river’s edge. Tobias turned, adrenaline coursing through his veins. Through the trees, he could see a form emerge from boiling water—hunched shoulders, curling silver hair and glistening skin. The creature crawled out of the muck, her breath loud and raspy. She rose to her full height, prowling forward on withered and shaking limbs. When she stepped into the moonlight, Tobias saw her long teeth bared in fury.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Fiona

    The clock ticked over the slow whistling of Mariana’s breath. Fiona pulled sheets up around her shoulders as a wet, perfumed scent floated into her room from the garden. It was a cozy setup in the alcove by the window, but her heart raced whenever she closed her eyes.  
    Each time her muscles relaxed into sleep, her mind greeted her with images of her burning schoolmates, or the gallows monster snapping Eden’s neck. And when the hair rose on her arms, she couldn’t shake the feeling that something dangerous was brewing by the river.
    She rolled over, trying her other side and stretching out her legs. What is Tobias doing now? Is he asleep like everyone else?
    A tapping noise interrupted her thoughts.She turned to see a bat fluttering outside the warped windowpanes.
    She smiled, sitting up and throwing off her sheets. Byron. It was just as Tobias had said: her animal familiar had found her. She pushed the window open and the bat flew in, flapping near the ceiling. She swung her legs over the edge of her bed, watching as he swooped around the room.
    “Mariana! My familiar is here.”
    “Cool,” Mariana mumbled, rolling over and pulling the covers over her head.
    As Fiona’s fingers curled around her sheets, a small voice startled her. Are you going to talk about me as though I’m not here?  
    She jumped. Her familiar hadn’t spoken out loud, but his voice arose in her head like a thought. He drew in closer, circling her. “Hello?” he asked in her head.  
    It felt awkward talking to an animal. “Hello,” she muttered, staring at her hands.
    “Ah. Not very strong socially, are we?”
    “You’re talking in my head,” she said defensively. “And you’re an animal. It’s a little weird.”
    “I can hide behind a doll to appear human, if that would make it any better.”
    Fiona shuddered. “A doll talking in my head would be far worse.”  
    “Are you going to name me?”
      “Yes. Byron, after my favorite poet.” She threw off her covers, forcing herself to look at him flapping by the ceiling. “Did you see