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This dude is about to come through and get his head cracked. That’s all I know.

I stepped onto the mattress, then down onto the floor on the other side, and made sure the chalk remained unbroken.

Like. . .sir. . .I don’t know you and what you think is about to happen.

At the north point of the circle, I drew Papa Legba's cross. He was the gatekeeper. The loa who stood at every crossroads between the living and everything else. Nothing came through a door without his say-so.

If this man in my head wanted into the circle, he'd have to knock first, and Legba was going to make him wait because Legba was an absolute asshole.

Auntie didn’t sound worried at all, and she knows what’s going on so. . .that at least tells me that I’m not in extreme danger.

It didn’t mean that she didn't think I would be attacked, just that she knew I could handle myself.

Had she thought this was a true threat, she would have done more. I was expected to take over her throne one day, and she didn’t want me harmed and messing up her retirement plans.

I crawled over to the south point and drew Baron Samedi's mark—top hat, cross, and coffin. The Baron decided who died and who didn't. He also owed Aunt Delphine tons of favors.

By blood, that meant he owed me too.

That made me think of what she’d said earlier.

“Our blood will make a blind man see.”

I tapped my finger against the chalk.

Does he want more blood? He better hope he’s not some form of a Japanese vampire because I knock them out easy-peasy, any day.

I switched to the circle’s east point and drew Marinette-Bwa-Chèch's vévé. The werewolf mother. The loa who ate men who hurt women. If the thing coming for me had teeth, she had bigger ones.

Sweat beaded at my forehead.

Instead of having a peaceful night in my bed, I was preparing to fight some odd creature.

Just awesome.

At the circle’s west point, I drew Erzulie Dantor's heart, pierced through with a blade. The scarred Black Madonna. Mother of the motherless. Protector of women who had no one else. She'd been a slave once, and she carried the fury and the fierce love of a woman who had broken her own chains.

The salt of the circle pressed into the palms of my hands. It was a coarse boundary between the ordinary world and the storm I was about to call down.

“Okay. All done.” I put the chalk up, pulled out a knife, and sliced my thumb.

Drops of blood spilled out, and I made sure to mark that circle as much as I could.

Tonight, my blood was darker than usual.

Oh no. What’s happening to me?

I pushed through that new fear and watched each drop hit the chalk lines and bloom outward in small, jagged halos before going still.

Next, I completed the first circle and drew a second one inside it. Between both rings, I wrote the names of my maternal ancestors, moving clockwise until the white letters surrounded me.

With all of that. . .the room’s energy shifted. My magic sparkled to life. Air pressure thickened in my ears until I had to swallow to make it pop.

The lamp on the nightstand flickered a few times and then held a brighter shade.

The curtains lifted, although the window remained closed.

The points of the circle pulsed.