Portrait of a Witch Undone: Sneak Peek

by K.S. Shay

Genres: Contemporary Fantasy; Historical Fantasy; Witches

Synopsis

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For fans of Starling House and A Discovery of Witches with a Thomas Crown Affair twist: a contemporary New England coven hides the mysteries that lurk in the marshes north of Boston—and how they are connected to the largest unsolved art heist in modern history.

Once, Maeve Ryan was the strongest witch of her generation. But Maeve messed up a spell to contact the Lady of the Fens, an eerie Revenant who lures the unwary to their deaths in the brackish marshlands of the North Shore. Maeve destroyed her reputation, hurt her best friend Ash, and tainted herself with unbound, wild magic that transforms witches into insane Revenants.

With unbound power eating away at Maeve’s mind, all she wants is to get rid of her magic. Forever. But Ash’s research into how the spell went awry leads in an unexpected direction: the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, and a link between the Lady and a decades-old art theft worth $500 million. When Ash disappears through a stolen painting’s empty frame, Maeve has to follow.

Inside is the Other Marsh, a haunting, deadly realm where only the Lady’s rules apply. Within this half-world lie secrets about North Shore’s history, Maeve’s failure, and the fate of the masterpieces that disappeared over three decades ago. But as Maeve fights toward the truth, she risks her friendship, her coven, and her life against enemies hiding in plain sight.

Release date: August 4, 2026

Publisher: Erewhon Books

Print pages: 59

Sample

BIRDS CALL FROM DYING LIMBS, A HARVEST MOON RISES, AND I take the commuter rail home to rob my grandmother. Well, two technicalities. First, I am not heading home voluntarily; I am responding to a Ritual Summons I have no choice but to obey. Second, the Marsh House, my coven house, is not home in the childhood-bedroom kind of way, but in the old-water-and-older-magic kind of way. When I die, no place will be gladder to absorb my magic back into the unbound than the marshes of northeastern Massachusetts.

Regardless, I return to the Marsh House for the Equinox Ritual with thievery on my mind.

I press my nose against the train window and watch trees pass in the dusk, trying to psych myself up for what’s coming. Not the theft; that’ll be easy. The thing that makes my stomach twist is the thought of the ritual.

The kid behind me kicks my seat, and my head smacks into the window with a very un-witch-like thwack. I jerk backwards, and the small slip of paper I’d been rolling between my fingers falls to the floor. I curse—not magically, I don’t do that kind of thing anymore—and dive into the footwell for it.

When I climb back into my seat, the skitter of tree branches against the window sounds like laughter. I glare at the night and unroll the paper, upon which I have written the title of a book: Malevolent Maladies: Hexionary of Spells Thrice Forbidden

I refuse to think of it as stealing. I refuse to feel bad about it. After all, in another life, another dimension somewhere, the matriarch’s forbidden books would have belonged to me. But I do not live in that universe. I live in this one, where the only thing standing between me and the solution to my problem is a stolen book of curses and one final spell.

The train stops. When I file onto the Rowley station, the night air kisses my face with a sharp, bright chill. It’s one of those fall nights in New England that tastes like winter, like deep frost and long stretches of darkness. A breeze shrieks by me, and I can almost hear it snicker that I should enjoy the remnants of warmth while it lasts, darling. You haven’t seen how big these teeth can get.

No one is waiting for me at the station. My parents are doubtlessly hoping that I’ll Port to the ritual and appear before them in a puff of silver-white smoke, just like I used to. Back when nothing thrilled me more than casting, back when no distance was too small to cross by creating a tunnel through the unbound magic that governs all wild things, including the space between spaces. Back when I was an idiot.

I take a taxi out into the marsh. Mill buildings give way to the woods—I can hear the windswept laughter clearer, now—and then to the marsh. To the whispering grasses and brackish water below.

We drive until I see the silhouette of a heron taking wing and know that I am close enough. I tell the driver to let me out. He raises an eyebrow at me, clearly debating if it’s worth asking why a scraggly twenty-something is getting dropped off in the middle of nowhere, with no visible houses nearby. He doesn’t.

When the taillights have faded from view, I push into the grasses. They part for me, leading me down a twisted, narrow pathway. A grackle calls across the marsh, and it is only when the sound dissipates that I realize how quiet the night is, how small I feel.

The Marsh House rises out of the fens. It’s one of those New England colonials that shows its age in the tiny, wavy-glassed windowpanes, in the old stone chimneys, in the circumference of the trees that lean over the front porch.

It’s not my house, but it might as well have been; I spent my entire childhood training to be matriarch inside those walls. Spell jars and candles line the windowsills. A single candle flickers in the turret room where I used to crash after nights of training and study. The room that I would have Ported into if things were different. If I were different.

My covenmates are already assembling. Cars litter the driveway, broomsticks lean against the porch railings. Tendrils of smoke arc through the air, clearly the result of a Port cast by some amateur with no finesse.

I approach the porch. For a split second, I wonder if the house will reject me, if the marsh underneath my feet will open up and swallow me whole.

Before I can find out, a car growls past, engulfing me in a cloud of dust as it pulls into its parking spot. A cobalt-blue Oldsmobile that I would know anywhere. Doors snap open; laughter spills out. I lock eyes with Imani Davis. She’s a Black girl, my age, with deep brown skin and a gaze that dares me to try her. After one uncomfortable second, she turns back to her posse, tossing an array of box braids over her shoulder as she cuts the engine. I make for the house, trying to ignore the whispers that tumble out of the car.

“Did she walk here?” A giggle. “I heard she has a day job at some bookstore—”

I step onto the porch; it does not give way. As I cross the threshold, a woosh of air signals the arrival of the one witch that I am actually happy to see.

Ash slides off of her gnarled broomstick and . . .