not throw that, Polly,” Arsinoe orders, but that seems to make it worse. Polly’s little lips draw together so tightly that they disappear. She jumps from behind the crates and throws the rock hard. Arsinoe blocks it with her palm, but the stone manages to skip off and strike the side of her head.
“Ow!”
Arsinoe presses her hand to the spot where the stone struck. Jules clenches her fists and sends Camden snarling after the children, determined to plant Polly Nichols onto the cobblestones.
“I’m fine, call her back,” Arsinoe says. She wipes the line of blood away as it runs down to her jaw. “Little scamps.”
“Scamps? They are brats!” Jules hisses. “They should be whipped! Let Cam tear up Polly’s ridiculous hat, at least!”
But Jules calls Camden, and the cat stops at the street corner and hisses.
“Juillenne Milone!”
Jules and Arsinoe turn. It is Luke, owner and operator of Gillespie’s Bookshop, looking smart in a brown jacket, his yellow hair combed back from his handsome face.
“Small of stature but large of lion,” he says, and laughs. “Come inside for tea.”
As they enter the shop, Jules stretches up on her toes to quiet the brass bell above the door. She follows Luke and Arsinoe past the tall, blue-green bookshelves and up the stairs to the landing, where a table is set with sandwiches and a tray of buttery yellow cake slices.
“Sit,” Luke says, and goes to the kitchen for a teapot.
“How did you know we were coming?” Arsinoe asks.
“I have a good view of the hill. Mind the feathers. Hank’s molting.”
Hank is Luke’s familiar, a handsome black-and-green rooster. Arsinoe blows a feather off the table and reaches for a plate of small muffins. She picks one up and peers at it.
“Are those shiny black bits legs?” Jules asks her.
“And shells,” Arsinoe says. Beetle muffins, to help Hank grow new feathers. “Birds,” she remarks, and sets the muffin down.
“You used to want a crow, like Eva,” Jules reminds her.
Eva is Jules’s grandma Cait’s familiar. A large, beautiful black crow. Jules’s mother, Madrigal, has a crow as well. Her name is Aria. She is a more delicately boned bird than Eva, and more ill-tempered, much like Madrigal herself. For a long time, Jules thought she would have a crow too. She used to watch the nests, waiting for a fuzzy black chick to fall into her cupped hands. Secretly, though, she had wished for a dog, like her granddad Ellis’s white spaniel, Jake. Or her aunt Caragh’s pretty chocolate hound. Now, of course, she would not trade Camden for anything.
“I think I would like a fast jackrabbit,” Arsinoe says. “Or a clever, black-masked raccoon to help me steal fried clams from Madge.”
“You will have something far more grand than a rabbit or a raccoon,” Luke says. “You’re a queen.”
He and Arsinoe glance at Camden, so tall that her head and shoulders are visible over the tabletop. Queen’s familiar or not, nothing could be more grand than a mountain cat.
“Perhaps a wolf, like Queen Bernadine,” Luke says. He pours tea for Jules and adds cream and four lumps of sugar. Tea for a child, the way she likes it best but is not allowed to drink at home.
“Another wolf in Wolf Spring,” Arsinoe muses around a mouthful of cake. “At this rate, I’d be happy to have . . . one of the beetles in Hank’s muffins.”
“Don’t be pessimistic. My own father did not get his until he was twenty.”
“Luke,” Arsinoe says, and laughs. “Giftless queens don’t live until they’re twenty.”
She reaches across the table for a sandwich.
“Maybe that is why my familiar hasn’t bothered,” she says. “It knows I will be dead, anyway, in a year. Oh!”
She has dripped blood onto her plate. Polly’s thrown rock left a cut, hidden in her hair. Another drop falls onto Luke’s fancy tablecloth. Hank hops up and pecks at it.
“I had better go clean this up,” Arsinoe says. “I’m sorry, Luke. I’ll replace it.”
“Do not think of it,” Luke reassures her as she goes to the bathroom. He puts his chin in his hands sadly. “She’ll be the one crowned at next spring’s Beltane, Jules. You just wait and see.”
Jules stares into her tea, so full of cream that it is almost white.
“We have to get through this spring’s Beltane first,” she says.
Luke only smiles. He is so sure. But in the last three generations, stronger naturalist queens than Arsinoe have still been killed. The Arrons are too powerful. Their poison always gets through. And even if it