This Friday, we're diving into some horror novels that center on witches. I'm hoping to put a few on your radar that you may not have heard of!

Crone by Keith Rosson

Thirteen years ago Eli Lamp's daughter went missing. Now, after a drug lord's son turns up dead, he must use his ex-detective skills to hunt down the killer. One who may be supernatural...

The Year of the Witching by Alexis Henderson

In the land of Bethel, the Prophet's word is law. They say that witches lurk in the Darkwood. When Immanuelle stumbles into the Darkwood one day, she learns secrets that may dismantle everything she's ever known.

Slewfoot by Brom

Could this even be a witchy list without Slewfoot? A new widow fights to keep her late husband's farm and her independence in a puritanical New England town. A mysterious creature from the dark wood takes an interest in Abitha.

Muneca by Cynthia Gomez

A woman has been left paralyzed by a mysterious illness, but Nati knows a thing or two about witchcraft, and she is sure the illness is a result of dark magic. Nati plans to break the spell and earn a handsome reward as well.

The Last Witch by C.J Cooke

An outspoken woman is accused of witchcraft and put on trial with several other women in town. Helena must find the courage to risk her life and other to stand up to a man destined to make her a monster.

Glass Girls by Danie Shokoohi

In a family of witches, the girls are given gifts and boys are destined to die. Alice thought she escaped this life and her abusive mother, but when her estranged sister shows up on her doorstep, her new life comes screeching to a halt.

Conjuring The Witch by Jessica Leonard

There are witches in the woods---or so the reverend of Steve and Nicole's church says. But Nicole takes a walk in the woods, she comes back changed.

The Good House by Tananarive Due

A woman's voodoo-practicing grandmother may have unlocked an ancient evil that is targeting her family.

The Wax Child by Olga Ravn

Narrated by a wax doll, The Wax Child follows a woman who---along with several other women---are accused of witchcraft.

The Bewitching by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

A tale of witches and monsters told over the story of three generations.

Chapter 13

Icarus ran a hand over his face. There was time to go back, sneak out the way they came, but if they did that he knew he would regret it for the rest of his life. This was all, however, his mission to figure out what was happening with this father. This was not Maren’s problem, this was his. 

“Mare,” he whispered, “you should go back. I’ll figure a way in. This is about my family, not yours. You shouldn’t risk everything for this with me.”

Maren studied his face, eyes bright, “You are my family, Icarus. If it were an answer to questions of my own, would you leave?”

He opened his mouth, then closed it again. No, he would not. He nodded and ended the debate, “This is a lot of people and only two of us. Probably more people coming down from above. What do you want to do?”

She shrugged, “I could shoot one of them. Cause a panic.”

“With only one way in and out, I have a suspicion they’ll know where it came from,” he tried to think and consider their options. None of them were good because they didn’t really have any, “We could just charge in? Doubt they’re expecting two priests to rush their magic door.”

Maren sighed and adjusted the shotgun strap so she could reach her satchel, “I love a good suicide plan, but I’ve put a lot of work into staying alive for thirty years, thanks.”

Icarus searched the ground as if something useful might appear there—a bomb, maybe, or a wild animal he could release. He ran a hand through his hair and paused, bending to pick up a healthy-sized rock. He tossed it into the air to examine its heft and caught it again, grinning at Maren. 

She frowned, “There is no damnable way that’s going to help.”

For all his flaws, he was a fairly good aim when he put his mind to it. Lots of practice in pubs winning free drinks off men who thought him too drunk to function during a darts challenge. He shrugged, “You have a better plan?”

“No,” she muttered, “I do not have a better plan.”

“If it alerts them and they rush, we dodge and hope for the best. Worst case, we wind up in one of the cells for a bit and we feign ignorance.”

“Yes, I’ve no doubt they’ll believe two priests who are widely disliked by their peers and don’t actually live on the grounds anymore just happened to wander into the wrong room several leagues underground,” she hissed and folded her arms. 

He nodded, “Precisely. Now, stand back, I have a miracle to perform.”

He crossed himself and took a moment to kiss the beads of his rosary, Maren’s eyes bored into him with the frustration of the Pale God Himself. He took in the chamber—the altar, the nuns, the candles, the guards. Winding up and angling himself, he tested the throw, pulled his arm back, and let the stone fly. His breath stopped. Maren stared. Both of them touched their small silver knives out of reflex. 

A clatter and thud. 

Two of the four guards pricked up immediately and jogged towards the farthest corner of the altar which gave them a much better chance. Maren made an unimpressed sound and Icarus glanced back at her, “What? They’re known for their battle prowess, not their brains.”

Shouting snatched their attention. Icarus’s throw had struck true—too true. A candle had toppled backward and struck the very old fringe of an ancient tapestry covering the wall behind the altar. It lit up like hay in a bonfire. Guards called out, the other two rushed towards the flames, all four of them fanning and scrambling to pull it down or put it out. The Sisters never stopped their prayer, didn’t even seem to notice they were in the path of immolation. 

Maren tensed, Icarus hissed a quiet victory cry, and they took off for the sigil-coated door. More shouting, more cries for water, and footsteps sounded from somewhere far behind them. Icarus’s legs bounded across the stone and he heard the sound of alarm from one of the guards, torn between stopping the flames and protecting the door. 

“Intruders!”

“Stop them, put this out!”

“To the door!”

“Shit,” Icarus growled and grabbed a massive iron ring. “Pull! Hurry!”

Maren was beside him and added her weight, dragging the door when it refused to budge. The clatter of halberds on stone, more yelling, more footsteps, more guards. Icarus added his own roar to the fray. The door groaned on protesting hinges and gave—not much, but enough.

“Go!” He shouted at Maren and shoved her through the gap. He caught sight of robes—another flock of priests rushing them from the far end of the hall. Two of the Warrior Priests had abandoned the fire and were trying to clear the rows of Sisters. 

He tossed them a less than holy gesture and slipped inside, grabbing the inner handle and pulling as hard as he could. Closing it, however, was much easier than opening it. He held it in place, fists pounding and weapons rattling impotently against the heavy wood.

“How can we hold it?!” Icarus called, but Maren was already handling it. 

Her palm dripped with blood and blue light trailed the air behind her fingers. He ducked in time for her to throw the binding sigil at the door and sear itself in with the pleasant sizzle of a campfire. It wouldn’t hold forever, just until they got their own sigilist down here or found another way to break down the door, but for now it would be enough. 

Icarus released the handle and took a tentative step back, then another, until he was standing beside her. She sighed, “You didn’t intend to set the fire, did you?”

“The Pale God works in mysterious ways, my friend,” he moved to clap a hand on her shoulder and immediately thought better of it. 

The scrape of metalon stone made both of them turn and remember they just crossed the threshold of a very well protected door into a very secret chamber deep in the bowels of the Church. Icarus lifted his hand to the hilt of his sword, Maren readied her shotgun. 

The chamber was not as big as he expected, but it was still large enough to cause an echo. Braziers lined the walls and cast enough shadow to make him second guess what he believed he was seeing. There was no furniture, no tapestries, no sigils or wards painted onto the inner walls. A generous ring of faintly glowing salt had been laid in the center of the room, anchors set into stone blocks in the floor—old and iron and thick as his arms. Heavy, dark iron chains led from each anchor and met at the clasp of a shackle-like cuff that would have swallowed Icarus’s forearm. 

Held by chains and salt and force was the prone body of a man. 

Forced to his knees by the tools of his imprisonment set low and taut in the ground underneath him. He wore tattered brown pants stained rust with old blood, chest bare in a lattice of scars and fresh wounds that broke and bled when he raised his head. Half his face was covered by an iron mask, seven-point antlers stretching from either side casting the shadow of a nightmare behind him. 

Maren inhaled, hand flying to her face. Icarus’s mouth went dry, eyes wide, and he forgot why he had come here in the first place. It was barbarism whatever this was, though he had no idea what exactly he was seeing. The man’s breathing was ragged and rasping, his mouth visible where the mask ended. Icarus spied half-rotted teeth glinting in the light when the man’s thin lips spread in a ghastly smile. 

“You should not be here, Father,” he said and bobbed his head in interest. His voice slithered and writhed and wormed its way into Icarus’s mind, flexing the air around his ears, splitting and refracting as if talking over itself, “A stranger… and yet I know you. Interesting.”

Icarus swallowed the sensation of broken glass spilling down his throat, “Who are you?”

It laughed, half choked and coughing. Icarus had to think of the man as an it because if he let it be a man, it meant something unspeakable was taking place in the bowels of the Church. He made a request to the Pale God to never let it laugh again.

“He does not know who we are and yet he stands at our threshold. This is a curious thing to us, yes it is,” the thing tried to move against its bonds, limited as it was. “You have questions, Father, do you not?”

Icarus took a step towards it and Maren touched his arm in a warning, but he shrugged her off, “I ask again - who are you?”

The creature in the man’s body grinned and slammed its fists into the stone, Icarus jumped. It stooped in a low crouch that demanded all of the slack in its chains. Somehow, even half-squatting, the creature seemed to take up the room, “I am what your priests call The Inquisitor. I am here to face your inquisition and answer your questions. So please, inquire.”

He was asking the wrong question, that was the subtext of its avoiding his question. Icarus stared at the thing and tried to make sense of it, “What are you?”

Maren had already strode a protective half-arc around the salt circle holding it at bay. He might be transfixed by the horror in front of him, but she was not. Her hand was in one of her pouches, blue light still danced along her fingertips, restless and chafing to be freed. 

The Inquisitor rolled its shoulders and stretched its neck from side to side. It turned its antlered head to him and Icarus tried not to buckle under the crushing gravity of its eyeless stare. 

“I am…” it struggled to find its words, “a tool, of a sort. Now, what are you, stranger priest?”

Icarus hesitated. He tried to focus, settle on anything that made sense to him. He opened his mouth and Maren cut him off, “Don’t. Do not give a demon your name before you know theirs.”

The creature clacked its blackened teeth, “Your companion is sharp. But what’s in a name, priest? What’s a name between friends? I am, after all, a friend to your Church. Which means I am a friend to you, thus you are giving your name to a friend and not a stranger. So I ask you again, what are you?”

“You first,” Icarus hissed. Maren was right, he knew better than to entreat with a demon unguarded. 

It laughed again, low and resigned, “Your brothers and sisters call me Inquisitor. This man I inhabit was called Athelde. Now, together, we are Mariusz.”

Brother Athelde. Mariusz. 

The words of the priest and the nun played out in his mind and he fired a look at Maren. She frowned, shaking her head in a vain effort to stop him from pressing on. He squared his shoulders and met what he felt were the demon’s eyes. She clenched her jaw and cursed him with the force of her stare when he would not meet it. 

“Does the name Ulrich mean anything to you?” Icarus gauged and stepped closer to the salt. 

Mariusz tipped its head left to right as if considering, then stilled. Its attention turned rapt and the muscles in its scarred and mangled body rippled like a heat shimmer off hot sand. It rolled the word along its tongue as if trying not to utter a curse, “Ulrich.”

Icarus held his breath and waited.

“Daedalus,” Mariusz paused to spit and the phlegm hissed against the consecrated stone. “The Deceiver. We know of him. You may inquire.”

It raised a hand and curled a too-long nail at Icarus. He suddenly regretted coming here, hunting for this, asking these things. He wished for one brief and childish moment that he could forget he ever had a father. Alas, Icarus was cursed with the thirst for knowledge and truth. 

“What do you know of Daedalus?”

“What will you offer to find out?”

Silence hung between them, Icarus glanced at Maren who was becoming increasingly adversarial about this exchange. 

“What do you ask?” Icarus, who knew better than to deal with demons, couldn’t help himself. They had come this far, risked this much. He had fought and dismembered an abhartach, for the Pale God’s sake.

Mariusz took him in, then tapped one talon against the stone, “Blood. Three drops. One to read you, one to know you, one to see you. Give me this and I will answer your questions.”

“No,” Maren warned him again, “do not give it anything. Whatever we’re looking for can be found elsewhere.”

“It cannot!” Mariusz snapped his head to look at her, mouth curved in a frown. “You wish to know of the Deceiver and there are none left walking this world that can give you the answers but me. So make your choice, Fathers,” it turned its head back to Icarus. “Three drops of the Azure Prince’s blood or the eternal dark of nothing.”

Maren stiffened and blinked at the honorific, Icarus recoiled. He knew the purpose was to tempt him into giving up something important, but what did he care about three drops of blood in the face of finally understanding the enigmatic mystery that was his father? He’d already given his soul for his netherism, there was nothing left for a demon to claim.

Before Maren could object, Icarus touched the tip of his silver knife to his finger and let three perfectly beaded drops of ruby red blood flow down the blade. He stepped to the very edge of the salt circle and allowed the knife to reach beyond its borders, letting each drop patter to the stone before pulling back. Chains rattled and sang when the Inquisitor strained to reach the offering, huffing and inspecting like a starving man inhaling the scent of a roast after a famine. A few heavy breaths passed, then it lunged towards the small dark stain and opened its jaws. A long, pointed tongue slipped free and licked clean the indent of rock cradling Icarus’s offering. 

The Inquisitor let out a long sigh, dropping flat to its stomach and arching its back. It writhed and strained as if it were a dog finding a particularly nasty scent in the grass. Then, it skittered back to the center of the ring and sat on its knees, head hanging, shoulders rising and falling as it breathed. 

It said nothing for a long, long time. So long, Maren caught Icarus’s eye and he shrugged, shaking his head. He had no better understanding of the workings of demons than she did. She opened her mouth to speak, but the Inquisitor interrupted her with a low, bellowing groan. 

It raised its hand and pointed an accusatory finger at Icarus, “You are the son of the Deceiver, he who seeks to tear the Veil. The Azure Prince. He who knows the Fire. You are Icarus, the Burning Horseman.”

Icarus’s heart stopped beating. He couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think, couldn’t do, couldn’t move. Mariusz’s devious smile had warped and changed, turning into a fanged snarl chased by a low, menacing growl. 

“You are the son of the priest who wants to break the world.”

One of the coolest parts of this whole "we're launching a publishing imprint" experience is seeing how a book cover comes together. We just kicked off this process with the team, including the author M.I. Minaeva and Bindery's Creative Director, Charlotte Strick, who is responsible for some truly iconic covers (👀 Annihillation by Jeff VanderMeer 👀).

Our first call was a real meeting of the minds. Charlotte gathered M.I.'s notes on inspiration, we threw out our ideas, and she came prepared with her own interpretation of the book's visual language. But first, a quick reminder of what your future-favorite-book is about, 'k?

“Combining the liminal architecture of Backrooms, the shapeshifting narrative of We Used to Live Here, the hospitality horror of The Shining, and the gothic dread of Shirley Jackson, Saint’s Hotel is a nightmare you cannot wake from. And the reason you cannot sleep.”

Here is what's floating around inside our brains.

We found lots of overlap between the book covers we have loved and M.I.'s selection. What's black and white and red all over? Saint's Hotel apparently. Strong central images, religious iconography, and archetypal palettes.

The story takes place in the phantasmagoric town of Sainte Verlise. Haunted reliquary vibes and gothic atmosphere.

And of course, the nowhere zone: liminal spaces. Liminal spaces everywhere!!

Our next step in the process is to narrow down our vision so we can start reaching out to artists and designers. We'd love to hear from all of you: what do you think of this mood? Does this look like a narrative world you're excited to enter?

—LPOTL (and the myrmidones at Last Press HQ)