Book Title: THE BANE WITCH
Character Name: Piers Corbin
How would you describe your family or your childhood?
I grew up without a family really, just the disjointed relationship I had with my mother and eventually her husband, Gerald. I’d call him my stepfather, but he wasn’t a parent or a role model. He was just there, soaking up my mother’s attention along with his beer. He did move us to the forest house though, where I found my way back to the deadly pokeweed berries, I would come to love so much. I never knew grandparents or siblings or cousins. Just an aunt who came calling one time and one time only. My mother didn’t appreciate the visit or what she had to say, but her towering height and intense gaze haunted me for years. Finding Myrtle again saved my life. She was more family to me than anyone else I know.
What was your greatest talent?
My clients would say it’s my eye for design, but they’d be wrong. Those who aren’t of my magical line might say it’s my ability to ingest poison without consequence. That’s closer to the truth, but still not it. My greatest talent is my capacity for pain, to hold it in, to wait silently for someone to notice, to endure. It’s how I survived Henry, the man I was never meant to marry but did. It’s also how I’ve made my mark as a bane witch. This life doesn’t come without sacrifice, without pain. Once I suffered at Henry’s hand, believing there was no way out. Now, I endure so that others won’t have to know the pain I have. I’ve sacrificed a lot to spare as many as I can. And I will continue to do so, like all the Corbin women before me. But I will never allow a man to put his hands on me in anger again.
Significant other?
Regis is as close to a husband as I’m likely to ever know. Henry and I were legally married, of course. But Henry was no husband. He was a monster. Whatever love I thought I felt for him evaporated shortly after our vows, after he started abusing me. Marrying Henry turned my world upside down, escaping him nearly ended it. But meeting Regis has taught me what love really looks like, what patience and trust and understanding can build between two people. Even two people who are forbidden to be together. I can’t marry Regis or anyone for that matter. Not knowing what I truly am. Bane witches aren’t allowed to love, to couple. Sex is acceptable, even required to carry on the line. But love is a complication we can’t afford. I’ve made an exception for Regis, and so has the venery. He is my true love and partner in every way. But it’s a fine line we walk, and I am duty-bound to end the relationship, to end him even, should we ever falter.
Biggest challenge in relationships?
As a bane witch, the greatest challenge we face is protecting our male loved ones from the toxicity of our magic, which seeps its way into our sweat, our saliva, even our tears. When we’re feeding, we’re deadly. Even a man who wants to cooperate, to avoid us at all costs during the cycle, runs a terrible risk. And then of course there’s the killing. Not many men can stomach one body, much less the dozens we may leave behind in a lifetime.
Where do you live?
My home is in a little town in the Adirondack Mountains, aptly named Crow Lake. It’s what my aunt Myrtle told me as a girl, “Crows feed on what others can’t. Including other birds.” She described us a family of crows. And for the most part, she was right. Now I run the motor lodge and café she left behind, where I serve two hot meals a day to lonely locals and travelers looking for an easy stop. Living in the mountains, under the cover of such dense forest, not only shields me and the other bane witches who need it from prying eyes, but it also provides a bevy of poisonous plants for us to feed on.
Do you have any enemies?
Henry was my greatest enemy once but having faced him and lived to tell the tale, I no longer worry that he’ll find me in the dark one fearsome night. But that says nothing for the others who stalk me now, the men who kill and strangle, who choke the air from those smaller or weaker than them. As a bane witch, every man who has ever hurt a woman or child is my enemy. And I’ll hunt them all, one by one, until my last breath.
Do you have children, pets, both, or neither?
I can’t rightly afford either, living as I do now, though I do have Bart, poor old Ed’s goofy black lab who now calls my cabin his home. If I thought he had somewhere better to be, I’d give him up for his own safety. Pets are at risk around me, children even more so. Well, boys, I should specify. I would love a little girl, but then she would be born to this life of poison and death just like I’ve been. And I’m not sure I could do that to another. Were I to get pregnant, there’s no guarantee of a girl. If I conceived a boy, and if he lived to term, I would have no choice but to place him with an adoptive family. It’s a heartache for many bane witches, and one I’m not yet ready to face.
What do you do for a living?
For the most part, the Balsam Motor Inn provides for all my needs, which are few. But there is always the venery should I require more. My family of bane witches has secured funds over many generations, leaving several of us quite wealthy. It’s an important part of how we hunt and maintain our safety. But I have to keep this place in the mountains going, so that when one of us needs an escape, it’s here for them.
Greatest disappointment?
Henry will always be my greatest disappointment. All that potential, the future I saw for us, so quickly dashed against his fists. In the end, I did the only thing I could to save us both.
Greatest source of joy?
Every time I take down a mark, watch the light fade from his eyes and know that the women or children I’ve seen flashing through the back of my mind—the victims he hadn’t reached yet, but would without my intervention—I feel a high impossible to describe. It turns out, as a bane witch, that my greatest joy is fulfilling the magical destiny that is my due… Killing.
What is your greatest personal failing, in your view?
What happened to my aunt Myrtle… I can never make it right, though I’ve made some kind of peace with it. But if only I could turn back the clock… I would marry Henry all over again if somehow it could save Myrtle.
What keeps you awake at night?
The marks I hunt, operating in the darkness, preying on those more vulnerable than them. And the victims they’ve taken or will take, unless I stop them.
What is the most pressing problem you have at the moment?
My current mark. He likes to hang his victims with shoelaces. I’ll have to put an end to that.
Is there something that you need or want that you don’t have? For yourself or for someone important to you?
I have the venery. I have the cabin and the forest that surrounds it. I have love. I may not have a family in the traditional sense, a job in the traditional sense, but I have a vocation, a calling. I have everything I need to be the bane witch I was born to be. It’s enough. It will have to be.
Practical Magic meets Gone Girl in Ava Morgyn's next dark, spellbinding novel about a woman who is more than a witch—she's a hunter.
Piers Corbin has always had an affinity for poisonous things—plants and men. From the pokeweed berries she consumed at age five that led to the accidental death of a stranger, to the husband whose dark proclivities have become… concerning, poison has been at the heart of her story.
But when she fakes her own death in an attempt to escape her volatile marriage and goes to stay with her estranged great aunt in the mountains, she realizes her predilection is more than a hunger—it’s a birthright. Piers comes from a long line of poison eaters—Bane Witches—women who ingest deadly plants and use their magic to rid the world of evil men.
Piers sets out to earn her place in her family’s gritty but distinguished legacy, all while working at her Aunt Myrtle’s cafe and perpetuating a flirtation with the local, well-meaning sheriff to allay his suspicions on the body count she’s been leaving in her wake. But soon she catches the attention of someone else, a serial killer operating in the area. And that only means one thing—it’s time to feed.
In Ava Morgyn’s dark, thrilling novel, The Bane Witch, a very little poison can do a world of good.
Romance Fantasy | Romance Paranormal [St. Martin's Griffin, On Sale: March 18, 2025, Trade Paperback / e-Book , ISBN: 9781250835451 / eISBN: 9781250835468]
Ava Morgyn is a native Texan who grew up falling in love with all the wrong characters in all the wrong stories. She is a lover of crystals, tarot, and powerful women with bad reputations. She studied English Writing & Rhetoric at St. Edward’s University in Austin and currently resides with her family in Houston, where she lives surrounded by antiques and dog hair and writes a blog on child loss. When she isn’t at her laptop spinning darkly hypnotic tales, she can be found reading, hunting for delicious vegan recipes, or wandering a forest.
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