That Ain't Witchcraft

Official cover

**That Ain't Witchraft** is the eighth novel in the InCryptid series by Seanan McGuire. It features Antimony Price.

## Synopsis

**Crossroads, noun:**

1. A place where two roads cross.

2. A place where bargains can be made.

3. See also “places to avoid.”

Antimony Price has never done well without a support system. As the youngest of her generation, she has always been able to depend on her parents, siblings, and cousins to help her out when she’s in a pinch—until now. After fleeing from the Covenant of St. George, she’s found herself in debt to the crossroads and running for her life. No family. No mice. No way out.

Lucky for her, she’s always been resourceful, and she’s been gathering allies as she travels: Sam, fūri trapeze artist turned boyfriend; Cylia, jink roller derby captain and designated driver; Fern, sylph friend, confidant, and maker of breakfasts; even Mary, ghost babysitter to the Price family. Annie’s actually starting to feel like they might be able to figure things out—which is probably why things start going wrong again.

New Gravesend, Maine is a nice place to raise a family…or make a binding contract with the crossroads. For James Smith, whose best friend disappeared when she tried to do precisely that, it’s also an excellent place to plot revenge. Now the crossroads want him dead and they want Annie to do the dirty deed. She owes them, after all.

And that’s before Leonard Cunningham, aka, “the next leader of the Covenant,” shows up…

It’s going to take everything Annie has and a little bit more to get out of this one. If she succeeds, she gets to go home. If she fails, she becomes one more cautionary tale about the dangers of bargaining with the crossroads.

But no pressure.

## Plot

**Prologue:** Three years ago, Fern and Annie hunt a unicorn and talk about their love lives. Namely, Fern thinks Annie should have one.

**Chapter One:** Six days ago, Annie, Cylia, Fern and Sam make a pit stop on their up-the-coast road trip to catch a Corn Blight that has been killing couples.

**Chapter Two:** Annie recaps her latest adventures, and Cylia’s jink luck brings them to a temporary rental house in New Gravesend, Maine.

**Chapter Three:** Annie is the last to wake up the next morning, and goes into the woods to search for an exploring Sam. She stumbles across James, a local and cousin to the guy that rented them the apartment.

**Chapter Four:** The four travelers settle in to their new home, then Annie and Sam get frisky. In the middle of the night, Annie senses an intruder and catches James breaking in.

**Chapter Five:** They question James and learn he is an sorcerer with ice abilities, and that he wants to destroy the Crossroads.

**Chapter Six:** Mary appears to talk privately with Annie, upset about talk of the Crossroads. She shares some of Thomas’s history with the crossroads, but is interrupted by Bethany, another crossroads ghost who “replaces” Mary per the Crossroads’ orders. Bethany says the Crossroads are calling in their debt: Annie needs to kill James. Annie returns to the others and covertly asks James for help warding against ghosts. He knows how.

**Chapter Seven:** Together they ward the house. Then Annie brings James up to speed on her family history with crossroads ghosts and the Lowryland situation. The cryptids reveal their natures to him as well. In exchange, he shares how the crossroads took his friend Sally away when she tried to make a deal on his behalf.

**Chapter Eight:** Later, Annie and Cylia go into town to stock up and make themselves visible to the locals. They find James working in the coffee shop. When Cylia wanders out to explore the town, Leonard Cunningham approaches Annie.

**Chapter Nine:** Leo genteely threatens Annie, assuring her that he will bring her back into the fold. Shaken, she takes Cylia and James at the warded house and warns them away from Leo, then makes sure he hasn’t somehow bugged the house.

**Chapter Ten:** Sam reassures Annie. Then they learn from Fern that James’s dad had been trying to get into the house earlier, though he left when it was locked up.

**Chapter Eleven**: After brainstorming how to deal with James’s nosy cop dad, the group sets to researching the crossroads. Annie and James start to bond when they are the last researchers remaining.

**Chapter Twelve:** Bethany pesters Annie to kill James faster, but Annie argues that she needs more time. Afterward, she reassures Sam that she’s not going ot ditch him again in another self-sacrificing attempt to keep him safe from the Covenant. They are interrupted by Leonard, who shoots at them as Annie throws herself and Sam into the lake for safety.

**Chapter Thirteen:** Annie has been shot by a crossbow bolt that seems to hold some kind of toxin, and she struggles to swim until Sam rescues her. He brings her back to the house where their friends give her first aid. Rose appears on the porch demanding to know Annie’s all right.

**Chapter Fourteen:** The group continues researching the crossroads and realizes that the crossroads likely cannot lie and also *cannot* return Sally, not just *will not*. Annie realizes that James’s sorcerer mother likely has hidden journals somewhere with more information, and she pretends to be James’s girlfriend in order to visit his father’s house. They poke around and Annie finds a secret passage in the attic, where Bethany finds her.

**Chapter Fifteen:** Bethany is replaced by the Crossroads itself, which pulls Annie into its dimension and accuses her of not doing the job she’s been given. When Annie argues, it tortures her with her own fire to make a point. When it returns her to the living world, she follows the passage to a hidden room belonging to James’s mother.

**Chapter Sixteen:** They find the journals, which are coded with invisible ink that only appears to sorcerer magic. They pack up the books to take back to the rental house, but James’s dad arrives home before they can leave. Chief Smith is rude and overprotective.

They go outside but don’t manage to leave the property before they are confronted by Leo. James realizes that Leo is dogging Annie because she is his failure to the Covenant and they don’t have as much power over her as Leo wants her to think.

**Chapter Seventeen:** They return to the rental house and their friends. Annie and James take turns spelling the journals to reveal their secrets while everyone frantically transcribes.

**Chapter Eighteen:** They make a plan: Annie will “attempt” to kill James, whereupon he will be able to petition the Crossroads for an audit by claiming that he hasn’t gotten the rewards from Sally’s deal.

**Chapter Nineteen:** Annie brokers a truce with Leo so they can avoid fighting two fronts at once. He agrees to a year of not tracking her down.

**Chapter Twenty:** Leonard distracts the crossroads while Annie’s allies prepare to summon Mary from banishment. Meanwhile, Chief Smith stops by and reveals he knows his wife and son are sorcerers. He tries to warn Annie away from James, explaining that James’s maternal ancestors made a deal with the crossroads that trapped them in New Gravesend.

**Chapter Twenty-One**: They do the ritual to summon Mary and catch her up to speed. After she agrees to help, Annie pulls James aside and shares the revelations about his family line. Leonard returns and is given a seat at the dinner table.

**Chapter Twenty-Two:** The whole group heads to the crossroads, where they stage Annie trying to kill James and James calling upon the crossroads to petition for a deal unfulfilled. The crossroads pull them all into another plane of reality. Annie confirms their orders to kill James, then releases Mary to argue a breach of contract.

**Chapter Twenty-Three:** Mary James keeps the crossroads occupied. The others quietly retreat, then do a ritual to send Annie in time to when the crossroads went bad.

**Chapter Twenty-Four:** Annie meets the Anima Mundi, the original neutral crossroads ghost, at first disguised as Mary to make Annie more comfortable. Annie recites the catechism of her family history to draw out the false crossroads creature and destroy it.

**Chapter Twenty-Five:** Annie briefly returns to the mortal plane, burning up from the fire returned to her from the crossroads. Then the anima mundi pulls her into the other plane for conversation, explaining the ramifications of removing the paraside that had been posing as the crossroads. The anima mundi offers Annie a place as a crossroads ghost, but Annie turns her down.

**Epilogue**: Annie dismisses Leonard now that the emergency is over; he postures and threatens but follows his word to leave. The remaining crew prepare to get on the road and head home.

## Characters

### Major

* Antimony Price: Now hiding from both the Covenant and the Lowryland cabal, her magic bartered away to the crossroads, Annie works closely with her friends to figure out the mysteries of New Gravesend, Maine.
* Fern Conway: Annie's friend and teammate, Fern is a noncombatant who nonetheless sticks by Annie's side when things get dangerous.
* Cylia Mackie: Annie's friend and fellow derby girl. Cylia uses her jink luck to keep their group as safe as possible.
* Sam Taylor: Annie's boyfriend, who is determined to stay by Annie's side as long as she will let him.
* Mary Dunlavy: Crossroads ghost and family babysitter. The crossroads yank her away when Annie gets too close to discovering the crossroads' weaknesses.
* Leonard Cunningham: Current leader of the Covenant of St. George, with a personally vested interest in seeing Annie join the fold.
* James Smith: A sorcerer who has been trapped in New Gravesend his whole life, and has gained the negative attentions of the crossroads.

**Minor**

* Norbert
* Bethany
* Chief Smith

**Mentioned**

* Billy Maxton - childhood classmate of Sally and James
* James's mother, unnamed
* Nathaniel Smith, author
* Karen, derby girl
* Smashed Potatoes, derby girl
* Verity Price
* Alex Price
* Angela Baker
* Martin Baker
* Sarah Zellaby
* Tav Mackie
* Emery Spenser
* Arthur Harrington
* Thomas Price
* Alice Price
* Laura Campbell
* Kevin Price
* Angela Baker
* Enid Healy
* Alexander Healy
* Chloe Cunningham
* Margaret Healy
* Rose Marshall
* Mike Gucciard
* Lea Gucciard
* Dominic DeLuca

## Cryptids

* Crossroads
* Fūri
* Jink
* Sylph
* Unicorn

**Mentioned**

* Bogeyman
* Chupacabra
* Cuckoo
* Dragon
* Ghoul
* Routewitch
* Tailypo
* Witch
* Yuki-onna

## Locations

* A corn field in Ohio
* New Gravesend, Maine
	+ Rental house
	+ Smith family house
	+ Burial Grounds coffee shop
	+ The hanging tree

**Mentioned**

* Columbus, Ohio
* Lowryland, Florida
* Gentling, Maine

## Organizations

* Covenant of St. George

**Mentioned**

* Lowryland Cabal
* Spenser and Smith Family Carnival
* Crossroads

## Continuity

* Reference to how Jonathan and Frances met
* Reference to how Alice and Thomas met
* Reference to how Annie and Cylia met

## Trivia

* The family record of weapons hidden on a single person is 53, held by Evelyn who is good at hiding darts in her hair. Rumor is that Thomas’ record is triple digits. (Ch. 18)

## Quotes

* **Cylia:** “I told you not to fight a field. A field is bigger than you. No question, no contest, no way you were going to win.” (Ch. 2)
* **Annie:** “Is Stephen King really writing fiction? Or is he just a small town historian who got filed in the wrong part of the bookstore?” (Ch. 11)
* **James, regarding the Price family:** “Is disarming the traps a mating ritual for you people?” (Ch. 18)
* **Leo:** “Are you making Harry Potter references because I’m British and you assume that’s the way to reach me?”
**Annie:** “No, I’m making Harry Potter references because I’m an enormous nerd and it amuses me to remind you of that.” (Ch. 19)
* **Annie:** “In England, you think a hundred miles is a long way. In America, we think a hundred years is a long time.” (Ch. 19)

* **Annie, to James:** “Just so you know, I had already decided I was adopting you and taking you home to meet the rest of the family. I really, *really* hope you wanted siblings, because now you have two sisters, a brother, a sister-in-law, a brother-in-law, and assorted cousins, aunts, uncles, and other such familial detritus.” (Ch. 21)
* **Sam:** It shouldn't have to be you all the time.
**Antimony:** It isn't. It's just that this sort of thing happens a lot more often than anyone realizes. There's not a chosen one. There never was. There's just people, all over the world, trying their best to make sure the sun comes up tomorrow. We do the job because we know the job exists, and once you know the job exists, it's hard to pretend it doesn't matter.

### Epigraphs

**Main Article: Epigraphs**

Includes quotes from Evelyn Baker, Frances Brown, Enid Healy, Jane Harrington-Price, Alice Healy, and Mary Dunlavy.

## Pop Culture

* My Little Pony, Godzilla, Ellen, the Pulp Era, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Stephen King, Blair Witch, Norman Rockwell, Jason Voorhees, Jersey Devil, Spider Man, Dungeons and Dragons, X-Men, Jane Austen, Star Trek, Overton, Beauty and the Beast, Creature from the Black Lagoon, Buffy, Cinderella, Iceman, American Ninja Warrior, Indiana Jones, McDonald’s coffee-heat lawsuit, Harry Potter, Grim Reaper, A Christmas Carol, Shrek, Doctor Who
* Americans are big fans of unregistered handguns (Ch. 19)

## Playlist

Spotify

YouTube