Cold Crypts & Candlewax (College & Calamities, #2) / College & Calamities (ePub)

Meet Kenna Moore. Problems? Her father's betrayal and her mother's monsters. College? Expelled. Life? Unpredictable. How's this witch going to make her mark?

One minute, I was freaking out over being a colossal disappointment. The next, I was embracing my magical abilities. I'd barely had time to adjust when I ended up encountering my first werewolf in NOLA.

I'd watched my mother dispatch one. I'd seen her take on other threats with the help of her friends. And maybe I was a little too confident because that was as close as I ever wanted to come to death until I was at least eighty. Tabitha, who wasn't comfortable with any of the traditional familial terms of endearment: not Grams, not Mawmaw, not Memaw, not Granny...just Tabitha) didn't look relieved when I finally opened my eyes.

"Why did you go after the werewolf?" she asked seriously. "Your mother would kill me if something happened to you. And I don't think any of her weird bunch would stop her. Hell, Attie would probably lead the charge. She never did like the way Gunner and I got along."

I sighed. And listening to her blather on was a special kind of torture. "I had to."

"Nope. Yes, Diana is going to kill me for sure," Tabitha moaned.

We were hanging out at Tarot & Taboos. Camille had given us free run of the back room away from prying eyes so Tabitha could teach me. That's when Camille piped up out of nowhere. "Her shoulder. Check her shoulder blade."

Somehow, my shirt had ripped during the fight. I could feel the cold against my skin. "I needed an excuse for a new wardrobe. I was thinking...leather bustier, some leather pants…"

"The mark." Tabitha groaned. "I'm thinking turtleneck."

I raced to the nearest mirror to figure out what was going on. There it was. The hunter mark. "Is this a thing? Witch and hunter? I'm barely a passable witch! My mother is going to kill me!"

"Wrong." My mother entered the room. "Your mother is going to teach you how to live."

She laid out a few rules, rules I never imagined I'd break, especially not all of three days later. I was never to face off against a monster alone. I was to divide my spare time to allow for training in both witchcraft and combat.

"What's the third rule?" I asked.

"I mean...avoiding haunted places is more of a common sense practice." She shrugged.

Going to the cemetery wasn't my idea. I was knocked unconscious and deposited there, someone's idea of an invitation to join The Order of the Veil, a society so secret that I couldn't even find it on Wikipedia. I'm sure they thought the full moon was a nice touch. And aesthetically, it was, for normal people, those unburdened by magical gifts they never knew ran in their blood; and something else...the hunter's burning desire to rid the world of danger. I knew what I had to do even if it meant a faceoff with death, disobeying my mother, and defending myself with little more than some dead flowers and a few hundred years of candle wax at my disposal.

I could beg for forgiveness later. As long as I lived.