So, admittedly, I did a bare minimum of research.  Feel free to correct me on any point.  But WTF is a Norwegian wolf, anyway?  I found a subspecies of gray wolf that’s common in Scandinavia, but nothing uniquely Norwegian.  And not all wolves are monogamous; lone wolves will swing by and mate with the younger/lower females of a pack plenty often.  Only the alpha pair in a pack are monogamous, and let’s face it, the rest of the pack tends to be their kids, so of course they’re not going to mate there.  Although I guess technically it fits; wolves are monogamous through social circumstance instead of genetic imperative, and so is Matthew.  But in that case, it’s not really anything ‘shocking’ to say “oh, society would rather we stick together instead of have a divorce.”  Um…duh?

So anyway, Diana’s captor is a new lady.

No black robes or brooms, but she was—unmistakably—a witch.

Uh, thanks for telling us she’s not got a broom, but how is she flying?  Magic motorbike?  Superman style?  Carpet?  It’s nice to know she’s got blue eyes and blond hair, but one would think the flying thing would require the more pressing description.

Also, bug off with the stereotypes.  We’ve gotten this far without expecting witches to carry broomsticks – hell, we picked up the book without expecting that – so pointing it out just feels like a dig at fantasy readers.  You know, the intended audience.  “Haha, those idiots who read books about witches, they clearly must be reading about Bewitched style witches.  I shall subvert that!”  Yeah, get over yourself, book.

The witch flies her out to an old ruined castle where she runs across Dom and another vampire. 

A wave of incense and brimstone identified him: this was Gerbert of Aurillac, the vampire-pope.

…bweh?  (They talked about him before, he’s on that Congregation thing, was a pope hundreds of years ago.)  Still…um, how the hell did Diana identify him by smell?  She’s never run across him before, and it’s not like Matthew said “by the way, this is what he smells like.”

Lazy, lazy book.

With this vampire’s dark eyes pinned on me, the threat posed by Peter Knox paled in comparison.

Well that seems fair, since Peter’s done about shit-all as a villain so far, too.

The witch’s name is Satu, and apparently she’s there to bring Diana ‘under control,’ except Gerbert goes on and on about how he wants to drink Diana’s blood so that she’ll be ‘enthralled’ by him and help him get the magic book.  And…Satu just tells him to go away.  Why was he there to begin with?  Really, he was just around to threaten to force her into opening that magic book…in front of Satu…when witches aren’t supposed to want vampires to get the book…WHY IS HE HERE?

Oh well, he leaves right after.

“We tried to make you see how dangerous Clairmont was. […] “You wouldn’t join us for Mabon, you ignored Peter Knox.

The Mabon invitation consisted of one spoken invite by a pushy college who Diana already didn’t like, and Peter was an ass from day one.  Man, you witches suck at your job.  Really, that’s about the opposite of how you try and get someone to trust you.  (And, I might note, had nothing to do with Matthew’s supposed danger.)

Satu asks if she’s been enthralled by Matthew, then lists a number of signs he might have given her blood.  One of them fits. 

Oh, great, so now not only did he trick her ‘marrying’ him by saying the words back, but he basically tricked her into that first ‘I love you’ too?  Is there no end to this guy’s creepiness?

Nope, there’s not, because Satu informs us that, oh yeah, he also killed Gillian and made it look like a suicide.  Hm…Satu knows an awful lot about Matthew and his whereabouts.  She even knew that he snuck into Diana’s rooms back at the start of the book.  If she was so keen to keep those two apart, why didn’t she just find Diana early on and say “hey, btw, that guy totally broke into your apartment to watch you sleep”?

This is feeling more and more like a plot-hole patch, like the author realized that she was running out of romance to right and she needed to toss something in quick, so she brings in Satu to stir up some tension and forgot all the implications that this would bring with it.  There’s no sense of cohesion or unity in this book.  She just writes a string of actions until she gets bored and then spontaneously moves on to something else. 

Secrets were one thing, but murder—even under the guise of revenge and retaliation— was something else.

…implying that revenge somehow makes his murder…better?  Like, you have to actually see past the whole ‘revenge’ thing in order to see that killing people is bad?

Wow, more than I wanted to know about your ethics, Diana/book/author.

Satu keeps trying to guilt her with her parents, saying that they wouldn’t have wanted her to cavort with a vampire and such.  Diana counters that witches killed her parents, so Satu basically jumps straight into torture.  Really.  Drags her around by magic (which Diana seems rather blasé about) and little cuts and everything.  It’s so hard to take seriously all her claims of “woe, we tried to make you see reason” when all the witches in this book are such cartoons.  No one, not one single character of any species, has made an even semi-reasonable attempt to talk to Diana and get her help.  It’s really pretty astounding. 

And then…yeah, hours of torture.  It’s summarized, so we’re spared most of the details, but it does specify that it’s hours and it’s painful.  I think a…ghost of her mother, or a vision, or something keeps comforting her.  Because heaven forbid Diana find that courage on her own, no, she’s got to have ghosts do it for her.

What is the point of all this?  Does Satu really thing jumping directly to torture – vicious torture at that, not even the drawn-out kind – is the best move?  She knows that Diana is untrained, but instead of trying to build any sort of bond with the woman, she just keeps hammering in some more pain and screaming ‘why won’t you use magic?!?!?’  I don’t even know what I’m supposed to take from this.  Is Satu unhinged, or does the author think she’s created a smart villain?

Finally Satu leaves her at the bottom of a magic hole in the ground and flies off to go get more with this grand plan of torturing her into learning her magic.  (Really, I want to know.  Satu: serious or not?)

Oh, and also there’s a lot of ghosts around now.  For no reason.

And then a…ghost?  memory? of her mother comes and tells her a story she told Diana as a little girl.  Seems Diana’s mother bound up Diana’s magic when she was little so that no one would get jealous of her awesome Sue powers.  Um…then why all that clatptrap about how Diana was intentionally avoiding her powers, if they were actually magically bound?  Guh, make up your mind, book.  Did you forget about what happened at the start of the book when you took a time-out to write vampire not-sex?

Anyway, ghost!Momma’s story includes all the way up to Diana getting stuck in the magic pit, and then Diana goes to sleep. 

Don’t look at me, I don’t know either.  I’m just telling you what the book says.