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  Table of Contents

  Books by Kirsten Weiss

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  Witch’s Ladder Spell

  Knot Spell for Releasing

  Ground – Chapter 1

  About the Author

  Books by Kirsten Weiss

  Copyright

  Bound

  Book One in the Witches of Doyle Trilogy

  Kirsten Weiss

  Sign up for a free e-copy of the urban fantasy novel, The Alchemical Detective, exclusive content, and author updates at kirstenweiss.com

  Books by Kirsten Weiss

  Follow the links below for more information on each title and purchase links for all vendors.

  The Witches of Doyle Series

  Bound (Book 1) | Ground (Book 2) | Down (Book 3) | Spirit on Fire | Tales of the Rose Rabbit

  Perfectly Proper Paranormal Museum Series

  The Perfectly Proper Paranormal Museum | Pressed to Death

  The Riga Hayworth Paranormal Mystery Novels

  The Metaphysical Detective | The Alchemical Detective | The Shamanic Detective | The Infernal Detective | The Elemental Detective | The Hoodoo Detective | The Hermetic Detective

  The Mannequin Offensive

  Sensibility Grey Steampunk Suspense

  Steam and Sensibility | Of Mice and Mechanicals | A Midsummer Night’s Mechanical

  “But now I shall bind him with these love-charms. If he still torments me, I swear by the Fates it’s Hades door he’ll beat upon.”

  — Idyll 2, Theocritus

  CHAPTER ONE

  Once upon a time, in the foothills of granite mountains, when the sun hadn’t yet risen in the east, there were three sisters. And one, me, had been stuck at the hospital all night.

  The shadow of our small town’s modern hospital loomed over the parking lot. Behind it swelled Sierra peaks, a jagged frame vanishing into dark clouds. The muggy air promised rain to come, but I shivered in my thin blouse and safari jacket.

  Maybe if I hadn’t been so tired, I would have paid more attention to the images written in the clouds, to the words whispering in the sough of the wind, sluggishly shifting the redwood branches.

  But I wasn’t looking for portents. I wanted relief. So I ignored the throb of wild expectation in the air that raised gooseflesh on my arms. I ignored the hooting of an owl after sunrise – a sure sign of death coming to the house. I ignored the coil of iridescent purple oil in a nearby puddle that shaped itself into a grinning skull.

  I yawned and shuffled car keys between my fingers. Eyes hot with exhaustion, I leaned against my Ford Fusion, grimaced and pulled away. The car was covered in droplets of moisture. Now, so was I.

  A crow flapped overhead and cawed. It settled on the branch of a redwood tree and regarded me with one beady black eye.

  My keys slipped, jingling, to the damp pavement. I bent and dropped them again, a shriek of frustration welling inside me and escaping as a sleep-deprived laugh. So I was tired. Soon, my aunt and surrogate mother would be home in her favorite chair and deep in her history books. And if the humidity and mountains seemed oppressive today, that was a price I gladly paid to live in the fairytale Sierra foothills.

  Unlocking my car, I tumbled inside and leaned my head against the rest. The dash clock read five o’clock. Fumbling, I jammed my keys into the ignition and turned them.

  Nothing.

  I turned the keys again.

  Silence.

  I banged my head on the steering wheel. If I believed in messages from the universe (and I did), the cosmos would be hinting I was in no condition to drive.

  Something thunked and scrabbled on the hood of my car.

  I jerked my head upward and was nose to beak with the crow, on the other side of the glass. It squawked, giving me a view of its dark throat, streaked with pink.

  “Fine,” I grumbled. “I’ll call Jayce.”

  I excavated my cell phone from my purse and called my sister. A coffee shop owner, she’d be awake, prepping for the morning crowd.

  “Mmph. Karin?” Jayce’s voice was muzzy, no doubt a byproduct of staying out all night at the local bar.

  I tamped down my rising irritation. It wasn’t Jayce’s fault my car wasn’t working, and I had no social life. “Yeah,” I said. “Are you okay?”

  “Ugh. Hangover. Headache.” My sister groaned. “What’s wrong? Is Ellen all right?”

  “We’re at the hospital. They’re keeping her for observation.”

  “Again?” Jayce sighed. “What did they say? It’s not serious, is it?”

  “Another infection, they think. Can you come get me? I didn’t get any sleep, and I don’t think I’m safe to drive. Plus, my battery’s dead.”

  “Are you being literal or figurative?”

  I yawned, jaw cracking, ears popping. “Both.”

  “Aye, aye Captain. I’ll be there in twenty.”

  I rolled my eyes. My sisters had called me “Captain” since we were six. By birth order, Jayce should have been the bossy, responsible sister. But she, Lenore and I were triplets, three Scorpios born exactly three minutes apart. Traditional birth-order traits did not apply.

  Jayce, the oldest and the wild child, had never been able to resist a good sin. Lenore, the youngest, was a bookish introvert. I was the middle child, a worrier by age five who imagined disaster whenever Jayce played in the forest alone, who spent sleepless nights in fear of losing my aunt as we’d lost our parents. And so I’d ordered our childhood lives for stability, making sure homework was done, excursions were planned down to the minute, and clothing was laid out the night before.

  The nickname had been the first seeds of my sisters’ rebellion, a full-fledged sibling revolution by the time we were ten. I couldn’t blame Lenore and Jayce. I’d been a tyrant, and tyrants must be overthrown. But our old patterns hadn’t completely died, and Jayce’s good-time girl persona just made me crankier.

  “Thanks,” I said. “I’m parked at the edge of the lot, on the west side. I’ll be napping in my car.”

  She laughed. “Tight squeeze. Good luck with that.”

  We hung up, and I locked myself in the car and closed my eyes, drifting.

  Someone banged on the window.

  I bolted upright, banged my knee on the wheel, and yelped in pain.

  Jayce grinned through the glass, her long, brunette hair swinging past her shoulders. She wore a painted-on ruby-colored top and jeans. With eyes the color of spring ivy and a heart-shaped face, she looked completely unlike me and Lenore. But though our features varied, strangers who saw us together pegged us for triplets. Our mannerisms, I guess.

  I didn’t want to guess what I looked like. But I suspected my night at the hospital had drained the color from my already pale skin, turned my long, auburn hair l
ank. It wasn’t fair. Jayce had been out all night having fun and was as fresh as if she’d come from a lazy Saturday sleep-in. It would piss me off if she wasn’t my sister.

  Rubbing my knee, I checked the dash. The dashboard clock read five thirty. Jayce hadn’t wasted any time.

  I dragged myself into my sister’s F-150. She started the truck, its engine a wolf-like growl, and we drove onto the mountain highway to Doyle.

  The rain that had threatened broke loose. First a few fat drops splattering the windshield, then a torrent, washing the truck and the highway clean. The sky darkened, and she flipped on the headlights. We raced, too fast, down the winding road, the pickup’s tires screeching as we rounded a tight bend.

  Pines big enough to wrap a pickup around flashed past, and I clenched the door handle. “I’m pretty sure the speed limit is thirty-five.”

  “That’s a recommendation, not a rule.” Jayce tossed her hair. “I’m thinking of installing tablets in Ground — not at every table, just the high ones. What do you think?”

  I double-checked my seat belt and yawned. “I think I’m so tired, my brain itches.”

  “So, no to tableside tablets?”

  The windshield wipers beat a hypnotic, squeak-thunk rhythm, and I fought to keep my eyes open. “Let me guess,” I said dryly. “You met an engineer in the bar last night?”

  “Two venture capitalists from Silicon Valley. Ace and his friend Jack.”

  “Were you drinking with a deck of cards?”

  Her green eyes sparkled. “Only the jokers.”

  “I take it it wasn’t love.”

  “Not even lust. Well, maybe a little bit of lust. We might have made out.”

  “We? You and both of them?”

  Jayce angled her head, frowning. “Why are we all still single?”

  “Seriously. Both?” I hadn’t been on a date since last year. Doyle was a small town, and options were limited. But that never stopped Jayce from having a good time. Sometimes too good a time.

  “Seriously,” she said. “Why?”

  “Because you want to date everyone, Lenore wants to date no one, and the man I want to date doesn’t exist.” Was it too much to ask for a take-charge, masculine sort of guy who wasn’t a jerk face? They had to exist somewhere.

  “Your problem is you and Lenore spend too much time in your heads. And I don’t want to date everyone. I only want to sample before settling. Is that so wrong?”

  “There’s a difference between sampling and an all-you-can-eat buffet.”

  “Meow.”

  I grinned. “Guilty. I am jealous.” My stomach rumbled. “And now I’m hungry.” Through half-lidded eyes, I watched the old-timey wood and brick buildings drift slowly past. Water cascaded down the passenger window, blurring the street. I imagined the paved road turning to dirt, the cars turned to carriages, gold miners driving mules down Main Street.

  But it was never hard to step back in time in Doyle. The past was always present, and over the last century, the town council had made sure things stayed the same. Mostly. The town was Norman Rockwell meets wi-fi.

  “I’m running late,” Jayce said. “Mind if I take you to my apartment? You can sleep in the spare room, and later, me or one of the staff can drive you to your car. And there’s food in the fridge.”

  I yawned, my jaw cracking. “That would be great. Thanks. How can you be so awake after partying all night?”

  “Beats me. I’ve got this weird, fizzing feeling. Like something’s about to happen.” My sister pulled into the alley behind Ground and parked. “And my feelings are never wrong.”

  I followed her to the rear entrance. The wall’s vanilla-colored paint flaked away, revealing rough, red brick. A wooden, exterior staircase climbed the two-story building to Jayce’s apartment. The stairs switch-backed up to a metal door, a winding path to Rapunzel’s tower.

  She dug in her macramé purse for the keys.

  The rain, like me, was warm and dripping. The summer storm should have brought relief from the heat, but it only made the morning more oppressive. Dying to be horizontal, I braced one hand against the damp brickwork and sheltered beneath the awning. The pink scar on my palm — a long-ago spider bite — burned. I rubbed it and winced.

  Beneath the stairs, a garbage can lid rattled. A long-haired man in a ragbag of stained and torn clothing set the lid down, his hands shaking.

  I touched my sister’s arm.

  Jayce glanced toward the homeless man. “Hi,” she said, cheerful.

  He looked at us and froze. Against his hollow, dirt-stained face, his blue eyes blazed, startling.

  “Come on in.” Jayce turned the key in the latch. The door scraped across the linoleum floor of the darkened kitchen and stuck. “I’ve got plenty of food and coffee. My treat.”

  The man stared at Jayce, but most men did. It was a part of her magic, of earth and sex and sky. And it didn’t hurt that her clothing never left much to the imagination.

  I sighed. My magic was of a more practical bent, bound into knots and knits. It lacked the glamour of Jayce’s love spells and the drama of Lenore’s mediumship, but my practical magic came in handy. Magic was the only possible explanation for the romance novels I wrote on the side selling as well as they did.

  The homeless man ducked and skittered down the alley, his footsteps echoing. His filthy gray coat flapped behind him like wings, as if he were about to launch himself into the sky. He disappeared behind the corner.

  “He’ll be back when he’s ready.” Jayce rammed her bare shoulder against the unyielding door. It wrenched open with a metallic squeal. “Did the hospital say when we can visit Ellen?”

  Yawning, I raked my fingers through my hair and followed her inside the narrow kitchen. “They said they’d have the test results by eleven, but we can visit her any time.” I shivered in the air conditioning and hitched my over-sized purse up my shoulder. The cool air coiled around me, sticking my jeans and now nearly sheer white top unpleasantly to my skin.

  “You could have called me,” Jayce said. “I’d have gone with you to the hospital.” She flipped on the lights. The kitchen was modern, with gleaming metal counter tops and a state-of-the-art dishwasher.

  I forced a smile through my exhaustion. “Then we both would have been useless today.” We took turns spending nights with our aunt for exactly this reason. Every other week it seemed we were at the hospital. I wasn’t sure how long we could go on like this. Ellen had to get better soon. I didn’t know if her illness had affected her magic, or if it was simply beyond it. In either case, her magic wasn’t holding it at bay. Neither were Jayce’s potions or Lenore’s shamanic journeys, and I’d never had any healing talent.

  Fortunately, my practice as a business and estate attorney was light, so light I could moonlight as a romance writer. It was easy to schedule appointments for the afternoons, when I was more awake after a night spent with our aunt. And my writing happened in my spare time. Since I hadn’t had a date in forever, I had a lot of spare time.

  “Have you called Lenore?” Jayce asked.

  “No. It’s too early, and there’s nothing we can do. I’ll call Lenore when I wake up, unless you want to do the honors.” The bookstore where our other sister worked didn’t open until noon, and Lenore was a late riser.

  “No. You talked to the doctors. She’ll want to hear it from you.”

  Another jaw-snapping yawn, and I mounted the stairs. “Guest bed?”

  “You know the way.”

  Halfway up the stairs, I paused. The atmosphere felt odd, off. The coldness of the A/C had the chill of a morgue, and in my mind’s eye I saw a metal table in a tiled room, and the shape of a woman’s form beneath a white sheet.

  I shook my head, ridding myself of the vision I’d conjured. My writerly imagination worked best when I hovered between sleep and wakefulness, as I was now. But I didn’t want to imagine or write, I wanted to sleep, and I continued up the stairs. The toe of my Mary Jane caught on the last step, and I nearly
tumbled, face first, onto the kilim rug covering the distressed wood floor.

  Go back.

  Startled, I looked toward the white-painted, brick alcove, where ivy framed the space above a couch. Nobody was there.

  We’ve all got voices in our heads (I think). Call them angels or intuition, madness or ego. In the past I’d had feelings — whispers of a truth. But this time, this voice, sounded as if it had been shouted in my left ear.

  I rubbed my neck and glanced into Jayce’s open bedroom. The bed was unmade, patterned throw pillows jumbled across it, an open magazine on the floor. I walked toward the peeling, white door to the tiny guest room.

  Head cocked, listening, I didn’t notice the discarded, stiletto heel. I stepped on it and cursed. In Jayce’s place, stray stilettos were par for the course, and I should have been more watchful.

  But a knot, tight and untidy, formed in my chest.

  Something was wrong.

  My heart thumped too fast, and I turned, suddenly wide awake.

  My sister screamed.

  “Jayce!” I thundered down the wooden stairs and pinballed off a wall, my ankle twisting on the final step into the kitchen.

  “Here,” she choked out. “Oh, God.”

  I brushed past the brown and gray, ikat-patterned curtain into the café.

  Jayce stood on the customer side of the dark-wood counter and stared at a low table.

  I took another step inside the room. Its natural brick walls, lined with paintings and rugs, seemed to have pulled in a damp chill from the air conditioning and amplified it. A spider plant hanging above the counter was swinging. Jayce gripped a watering can to her chest.

  “What is it?” I asked. “What’s wrong? Not another mouse?” Jayce hated mice, but she refused to kill them, instituting a catch-and-release program. And anybody but Jayce was in charge of the catch.

  She tore her gaze from the table. “She’s dead.”

  I lurched sideways, the life force draining from my body. Not Ellen. Not yet. Not now. Our aunt had cared for us since our mom had died in childbirth, and our dad had died… Not Ellen. Icicles pierced my heart. “Ellen?” I whispered.