Chapter 1: He Kindly Stopped for Me

"Annis, what is that peculiar letter?" I asked my best friend from childhood and head maid, who ran Invermoore with an iron thumb.

Annis looked feeble, as if she had just seen Judas hang from a tree. Her pallid, pinched face and red hair like blood underlaid a stutter and body given over to regular bouts of fever.

"T-tis a letter, my lady. I – I did not see the de – deliverer. Oh Abigail, I fret over – over your late nights at the tavern. Though you saved Sedgewood, I fear you are be- becoming a lush!"

She coughed phlegm into her sleeves. I offered her a silk handkerchief I had embroidered an orange deathshead moth on.

"Thank you, Lady MacKay."

"Oh Annis, please drop the formalities. We are becoming even dowdier spinsters at this rate, sticking to addressing each other like old maids. My back aches as if I was forty-five from all our monster hunting. To think, both of us twenty-five and unwed, my only suitor a grave. Well-suited indeed for a dhamphir, eh, my Annie?"

She genuflected and curtsied. "That – that is the ma – matter. The – the letter has the stamp of a high Laird. And indecipherable etchings on it," Annis withered, her red hair like blood, the curls spasming as she coughed again into my handkerchief. "Oh, I am sorry I sullied so precious a thing! And – and hand-embroidered, at that. Please, I – I sha- shall clean it right away-

"Keep it, Annis. You took care of me, and defended Invermoore, all these long years, and your dearly departed mother was my nurse. Oh Annis," I smiled, knowing my face – my sharp teeth, lank white hair, pitch black eyes and pallid, gaunt skin – made me look fey, heinous – of the same blood of the MacKay filth who betrayed us.

I was winning Sedgewood over day by day – I was called the Firewatchman's Daughter for the house of MacKay Lairds I had ignited in Loch Lomond – and the English government was happy to be free of such corrupt nobility, leaving Sedgewood, like the Isle of Mann, alone as an independent governance – but I still looked like a ghost. "Annis, who carried the letter? Did you catch even a shadow?"

"I – I would not know even if it was the Ankou, my dear friend," she said, sitting next to me. She set to braiding my long, white hair. I tut-tutted.

"I'd rather play with your delicious copper curls. We must find you a husband, oh Annie love. I have my heart set on spinsterhood – I need no man! To think, half the estate of Invermoore would be his... and men's pheromones, in too close conditions, do set off my... my blood-hunger." I brightened: "But you! You love to make tarts for Peter. I see you slip them into the stable for him when no one looks," I said, referring to the boisterous sorrel-haired stable hand, who had paid no mind to the rumors surrounding Invermoore after I had rightfully claimed the Ladyship two years ago - Peter Stonecroft, of Tunis, had taken to taming the wild palominos that roamed our lands... and hunting monsters with Annis and me at night. But that was a matter for another time. It was morning, no time for ghosts - or Annie's mad grandmother and namesake, Black Annis herself!

"Peter has done such a good job with the wild horses, think you not, sweet Annis?" I asked. "And he always has a tart in his pocket. Says he will propose to the sweetheart who slips him the treats when we are out drinking like lushes at Frogtongue Tavern."

Annis blushed, burying her face in the puff of my black dress sleeve as I set to fishtail braiding her long crimson tresses. "Oh – oh, Abigail, I am no hope! I am fool- foolish around men. I know not what to say." Her pinched face and freckles blossomed plum. "Oh, but dear Peter is so handsome, do you not think?"

I smiled, squeezing her hands as I oiled rosewater into her updo, placing a piece of lavender in to make it smell potent – and attract Peter, to boot. My best friend was fair of form and plump as a partridge. Several years skipping across the pond of time while I was in hiding, plotting revenge on my ingrate uncle and aunt, had done nothing to stymie the depth of Annis and I's love. "Your tarts will do the talking for you," I assured her.

I had told no one where I had vanished to eight years ago – what the MacKays had done. Their ghosts haunted me, Uncle Puther and Aunt Redelia wailing like banshees by the river with the redcaps and brownies, showing me frightful omens. But I just threw salt over my shoulder and rode my palominos on. I had no time for ghosts. I was a dhamphir, after all. A Blood Maiden who could walk in daylight – not like my frightful uncle and aunt. Half of the race of nocturnes through father, half human through my wild Irish mother, who he met in the Navy - he could only go out on cloudy days, which had fared well in the Irish climes. She had been a sheila from County Cork... but I had inherited my father's looks. Annis had her red hair, strange for one of Black Annis' descendants. Mama, papa and I had cast my aunts and uncles and frightful cousins from the Highlands into exile abroad for a time, but vampires are always hungry.

Just look at what they had done: sacrificed me to Death as a bride price for immortality. Little things cannot kill a vampire, but silver and stakes were still potent, though the MacKays could walk in the sun on cloudy days. Uncle Puther and Aunt Redelia hoped to get rid of the heir to Invermoore in return for protection against vampire's most grievous material enemies.

Samael – a man of bone. The old Grim Reaper. He had no flesh with which to sire an heir, no need for a bride. What idiocy my relatives had engaged in.

But Samael was kind. He had laughed and lifted me to the sun, then handed me pebble stones turned into coins – he was of the Tribe of Jacob, after all, and collected them to tithe passage to Sheol – to pay my way to St. Andrews. I had not seen hide nor hair of the Witchfather since, after he had given me the Kiss of Life. It was a secret spell only I, and perhaps Enoch, knew.

"Ab- Abigail, the letter," Annis said quietly, her voice a tremor.

I knifed back to the present. Outside, the Irish mastiffs bayed.

"Ah yes, this strange foreign letter, whatsoever could it be?" I teased. I used my gold letter opener shaped like a crow's foot to undo the wax seal – the Seal of Caligrosto, a serpent with an arrowed breast, eating an apple. I had only ever seen it in one of father's musty textbooks: "Odd choice of design. Perhaps it is one of those dreadful London societies of magicians, attempting to woo me to war against France, just like they used papa in the Navy."

"Paw, I dread those stilted Englishmen," Annis said with might. Us Scottish were proud. We would bow to no English macaroni. She did not even stutter as Annis declared her odious hatred.

My heart sank when I opened the letter. It was old, ancient parchment – like an elderly woman's veiny hands. It smelled of roses, moths, and rot, and read:

Meet me for tea tomorrow in the afternoon. I will come to you, my dear. We have a deal to discuss. – S

The crinkled parchment lit aflame and turned to cobalt, freezing fire. Then, pallid ash. A snake bit its tail in the smoke that rose from it, then vanished into thin air.

Samael was coming. Death would be at my door.

"The Grim Reaper wants tea?" I balked. "Of all the requests he could make after these eight long years - a bit of Earl Grey and scones? I did not think him a connoisseur of such Kingdom traditions."

Annis crossed herself. "Oh, sweet Lord, have mercy. The Witchfather comes again to Invermoore. Oh, I will smudge and salt the place, as my Traveler father ta – taught me."

I steeled my face.

"What deal?" I asked myself quietly. I drank myself to oblivion at Frogtongue that night – Peter was nowhere in sight to monitor my drinking, and Annis was mostly a teetotaler.

Perhaps I could sleep in and miss Death. I owed Samael nothing, after all.

... Right?