I never meant to be a witch. If you’d have asked me a couple of years
ago if I’d be flying on the family broom or riding a house with chicken
legs or running from monsters in an enchanted forest or… wondering why
a hot vampire mayor was ghosting me, I’d— Well, I’d have asked you
when your book was coming out. I’d have offered you a display by the
front door or a book signing too, because my customers go crazy for
local authors.
Went crazy.
My bookstore, like the rest of my life, went up in smoke last summer,
right around the time I caught my fiancé cheating with my best friend.
It was also when my psychotic great-aunt tried to steal my locket, the
one thing I had left of Gran’s.
Cue the worst few days of my life. But also, strangely, the best. Or at
least the most mind-blowing, because in less time than it would take me
to make a Summer Beach Reads display, I learned that: A) Witches and
magic are real. B) The Inquisition is still pretty mad about that. And
C) I had my own freaking prophesy. That’s right. You’re hearing from the
chosen one herself. Only, the reality has been a lot messier than you’d
think.
Because magic, turns out, isn’t like a gun that you can pick up and pull
the trigger and bang! It’s not a hammer or any sort of tool. And it’s
not the sort of superhero power you can use to blast people from the
sky. No. Magic is like music. Like picking up a violin the size of the
cosmos and playing Shostakovich. And if you’ve ever listened to anyone
trying to learn the violin, you can imagine how that’s going…
At least we have good teachers. The crones have come out of the wood and
are helping the people of Charm Haven use their new magic responsibly.
It’s taken a while, but it seems to be working. I haven’t heard of a
magical misfire since the one last week, when Reina’s shadow came to
life, detached itself, and ran off. They eventually found it in
someone’s living room, sitting on the sofa, watching daytime TV. No harm
done, I guess.
And people seem to be taking it seriously too. We haven’t heard much
from the Inquisition, but everybody knows they tried to burn my sister
Hazel at the stake. They know that one of the town’s luminaries (now
awaiting trial on the mainland) had helped them do it. There’s a sort of
unspoken understanding that the people of Charm Haven might need every
bit of magic they can get to defend themselves if the Inquisition
returns.
They’d be even more worried if they knew about Hallowfern Forest, how it
burned, and the strange man who had jumped out of the mirror in Gran’s
library. The crones, and especially Deidre, thought we should keep that
to ourselves until we figured out what the hell was going on. Those were
her exact words.
But as the days grew shorter and summer faded to fall, it became easier
to forget that particular unknown. It was easy to wrap yourself in one
of Gran’s crocheted blankets and curl up by the fire with a cup of
cocoa. To bundle up and go on long walks down Charm Haven’s leaf-strewn
cobbles. To wander into Mazzy’s bookstore and stalk the aisles, looking
for a new way to while away the hours.
“Only one more to go.” Hazel’s voice pulled me out of my head. It took
me a moment to realize she was talking to me, even though I was the only
other person in the big commercial kitchen. It was cool inside (the
ovens were off) and the place had a lingering, pleasant aroma of bread
so fresh it drove the sour coffee taste from my mouth.
I was carrying a large twenty-five-pound sack of flour and felt the
strain in the muscles of my arms, back, and legs. Normally it wouldn’t
have been a big deal to carry that much weight, but this was what? My
tenth bag? Twentieth?
We’d walked down from the house an hour ago to meet the delivery guy,
only to discover that the bakery’s previous owner, Lin, had forgotten to
give us the key to the service door in the back. We couldn’t convince
the guy to wait, so he’d left a pallet stacked chest-high with
twenty-pounders in the alley. We were worried about rain (it was fall in
the Pacific Northwest) so we cut away the industrial shrink-wrap binding
the large sacks together and started carrying them one by one,
depositing them on an industrial shelving unit at the far
end of the kitchen.
I approached the hefty steel shelving, then hoisted and shoulder-pressed
the bag into place. I felt suddenly light, and my legs felt like jelly,
as if they had depended on the extra weight to lock them in place.
I walked over to one of the big stainless steel prep tables and hopped
up onto it and sat, then thought better and swung my legs around and lay
down. The relief was instant, though I couldn’t help but think I looked
like a cadaver on an autopsy table.
“That’s unhygienic,” Hazel said as she brought the last sack of flour
through the door.
“We’re not open yet, and we were going to clean and sanitize everything
later, so why can’t I have a break?”
Her only reply was a grunt and the impact of the flour bag and the sound
of it sliding into place. She dusted her hands off on her olive-green
jumpsuit, walked to the next table next to mine, and hopped up. When she
lay down, she let out a sigh of relief.
“We barely made it,” she said. “The rain just started. Fog seems to be
rolling in too. I hope Dana makes it. I heard that in the fall and
winter, the fog can get so thick around the island they cancel the
ferry.”
“Did you talk to her? Dana, I mean.” There was a noise from the front of
the shop. Probably Lucas bringing that big order of eggs we made. Well,
he could bring them back himself. I was done with mule duty.
“Not a word since yesterday. Why? Do you mind her staying with us?”
“What kind of sister would I be if I minded? I’m glad that at least one
of us isn’t doomed to die alone and unloved. I was just wondering if she
told you anything more about the big mysterious secret of hers.”
“You might be making it sound more impressive than it is.”
“She wouldn’t tell you over the phone. She wouldn’t send it over email.
What could it be except a big mysterious secret?”
“Maybe she’s going to dump me.”
“Then why would she have asked if I would be there?”
I heard something to my left and turned my head just in time to see Luna
walking through the big double doors that lead to the public-facing part
of the bakery. She was wearing tight, soft-looking pants and an oversize
teal sweater. Her pink hair had been cropped into a cute bob. Huh, so
she’d finally done it.
“Oh my god, your hair!” Hazel beat me to the punch. I swear if the two
of us were ever shipwrecked on a desert island, she’d make friends with
half the local seagulls before I managed to wring the saltwater from my
clothes.
“Is it bad?” Luna smiled awkwardly and touched the sides of her head.
“It’s gorgeous!” Hazel sat up but stayed at the table. I didn’t want to
look rude, so I did the same.
“Oh, thank God, because I know I’d been talking about getting it bobbed
for, like, ever but I’m still getting used to it and I woke up this
morning and looked in the mirror and thought to myself: Luna, you look
like Sir Lancelot, or Robin Hood— No, not him, one of the Merry Men or
maybe the priest. Who was the priest?”
“Friar Tuck?” I asked, trying to remember what the guy looked like, but
the only image that came to me was from the old cartoon version of
Robin Hood, where Friar Tuck was a mole. “You’re not bald though.”
“And I’m pretty sure pink wasn’t his color,” Hazel said, laughing. “You
just have the new-haircut scaries. Everybody gets them.”
“I know, I know,” Luna said. “You know what would make me feel better?”
“What?”
“A croissant? A cookie? A nice piece of sourdough warm from the oven and
slathered in butter. When’s the grand opening?”
“Ask Holly,” Hazel said. “She’s the manager.”
“Excuse me?” I asked. “If I’m the manager, then what does that make
you?”
“The talent.” Hazel smirked. She was just trying to get under my skin,
but she wasn’t wrong. This was her dream. It came from her talent and
her passion. I was just tagging along to make sure every box got
checked, every deadline met.
“We’re not doing a grand opening,” I said. “Too much pressure. Soft
launch is in two weeks.”
“I don’t think I can wait that long,” Luna said.
“We’ll be making some test batches today, you know, to make sure all the
equipment still works. You can help us taste test if you want.”
“Holly, you have no idea what your friendship means to me.”
“Right.” I laughed.
“I thought for a minute I’d have to resort to eating my mom’s ooey gooey
butter cake.”
Just hearing the name made my stomach do the twist. Last summer we’d
caught Luna’s mom basically robbing Lucas’s grocery to get the
ingredients for her famous cake. But it had looked like a big brown pile
of you-know-what and hadn’t tasted much better.
“We’re just waiting on a delivery of eggs and a few other things from
Lucas,” Hazel said.
“Really,” Luna said. “Because it looked to me like he and his family
were about to go on a big hiking trip or something. Even his dad. I
didn’t know his dad was still alive because I haven’t seen him in years,
but you know how that family has its own traditions, so I never wanted
to ask. But yeah, all the Trembol guys are outside the store right now
with big backpacks and things. I saw Lucas flip the sign to
Closed myself.”
“Closed?” I squinted, confused. “But I talked to him last night. He’s
supposed to make the delivery this morning. In fact, when I heard the
door open, I thought you were him until I saw you.”
“Should we go find out what they’re up to?” Luna asked.
“Yeah,” I said. “And I guess I shouldn’t be too mad if he forgot my
order. He helped me out when I was facing that giant half-bear,
half-crow monster in the wood.”
“Hey, Holly,” Hazel said with a suspicious glint in her eye. “How did
the shifter open the witch’s heart?”
“Do I want to know?”
“Yes.”
“Fine. How?”
“With a crow-bear.”
“You should stick to baking. You’ll never make it in comedy.”
