Includes Thea Hutcheson's "The Cat in the Laurel Tree": At a hundred years old, Bess Rowling is ready to retire as the secret guardian of the well of magic hidden beneath the mountain town of Orchard Home. Then someone takes a saw to the old laurel tree that anchors the town’s protective ward. The culprit is Dillon Shuster, the bright, helpful boy she used to babysit. He’s home after his father’s death, and he isn’t quite himself. Something came home with Dillon, something hungry. With the ward broken, Bess and Croydon, her millennia-old spirit dog, have one night to find out what it wants before it finds the well.
“A hundred-year-old witch, a wisecracking spirit dog, and one very hungry shadow.”