Chapter One
I guided my trusty decade-old Subaru Forester to the side of the road and slammed it into park, breathing heavily as a wave of anxiety rolled through me. I hadn’t been back home in nine years, not since Grandpa Oscar died.
I’d always realized my return would become inevitable one day. Even so, I wasn’t ready for it. Not yet. I’d wanted to come back stronger than ever, not fresh out of divorce court.
But with magic in my blood, there was nowhere else better to go. In truth, there was nowhere else at all to go, and I should have come back years earlier.
Sensing the curiosity of my children like the pricks of needles across my skin, I stared straight ahead.
“What are you doing?” Clyde asked from the back seat, where he’d pouted for a full half hour before he realized neither I nor his sister cared about the show he was putting on. He claimed it was his turn to ride shotgun; I was going to throw both of them out a window if they didn’t stop fighting over stupid stuff.
Of course, that wasn’t really true. My children were the reason I was coming back home now instead of when I was ready. I loved them with a fiery intensity I’d never imagined I’d feel for another human. That didn’t mean I always liked them. There were some decidedly annoying traits that my seventeen- and fifteen-year-olds embraced like the newest fad. Chief among them: bickering until I felt like running away and never looking back.
But then … I was already running.
“Mom?” Macy said. “Are you just gonna ignore us?”
If you’ll let me get away with it…
Clyde slid forward, jutting his head between the front seats. “Yeah, Mom, what’s going on? You yanked us out of school mid-term with some half-assed, bizarro excuse, barely gave us time to say bye to our friends, drove like a nutter all the way here, and now you’re going to just … stop?”
Macy looked out the window. “Where are we, anyway?”
“I told you,” I mumbled distractedly. “This is where I grew up. In Gales Haven.”
“This is where you grew up?” Clyde snickered. “Out in the middle of nowhere on the side of a crappy road? That explains a lot.”
I rolled my eyes. I did that often. At the tender age of forty-four, I found less and less reason to hold back. If I thought it, it was likely to slip past my lips. I used unholy amounts of willpower not to unleash a barrage of colorful euphemisms in front of my kids, or to tell them exactly how I felt about some of their more bothersome behaviors.
“Obviously I didn’t grow up in the middle of a freaking road, Clyde,” I grumbled while congratulating myself on the last-second substitution. “Gales Haven is just beyond the bend.”
Clyde leaned further forward to peer through the windshield, and Macy all but pressed her face against it, straining to get a glimpse of our new hometown.
My breath hitched in my chest while I waited.
If they didn’t see the shimmer, we were screwed. I’d have to figure out how to train Macy to use her magic all on my own, and being the weakest of the witches in my family, that didn’t bode well for any of us. And when Clyde started erupting with flashes of power as his sister already was … well, I had no idea how to handle a teenage boy most of the time. Add magic to the equation and we were doubly screwed. I needed my aunts and Nan to help us out. They were the real magic experts. I had just enough magic to live in Gales Haven.
With each second that passed, my heart sank a little further. I didn’t have a plan B. This was it. If Macy and Clyde didn’t both see the shimmer in the air that concealed the boundaries of the town, we couldn’t enter.
The town of Gales Haven was composed entirely of magic users, many with a wild streak and a flair for the dramatic. Not many rules governed the town; there were too many rule-breakers to make it practical. But there were a few fundamental, unbreakable ones. Among them:
Only people with magic could see the town.
And only people with magic could enter it.
I definitely had magic. Always had. I’d learned about my powers along with my ABC’s.
Macy had magic. Waves of it had begun flashing off of her at the most inopportune times, like in the middle of a sit-down dinner at our favorite Thai restaurant and during Mrs. Cranston’s fifth period calculus. When Mrs. Cranston had called me in for a meeting to discuss my daughter’s inappropriate behavior during class, my excuse that Macy was testing out an experimental rave gizmo that flashed colorful lights wasn’t exactly easily believable. She’d peered down at me over her reading glasses like I was on crack.
Thankfully, Macy had handled the revelation of her newfound powers surprisingly well. She and Clyde had been too excited by the sudden Harry Potter possibilities to blame me for shielding them from the truth. Until I was sure they had magic of their own, I hadn’t wanted to risk their disappointment. It was all too familiar.
Macy was just coming into her abilities, which meant that, along with all novice witches, her powers were largely beyond her control. As long as she didn’t have a handle on her magic, it was dangerous—to her and to anyone around her.
Clyde, however, hadn’t shown any signs of his birthright. That fact alone wasn’t concerning. Much like human puberty, one witch or wizard might mature faster than another. The awakening, as it was called, typically took place anywhere between ages fourteen and twenty-two. Since it was based on maturity, I wasn’t in the least surprised that Clyde hadn’t shown signs of his powers to come. He still tormented his sister by farting on her.
The problem was, magic was as unpredictable as it was amazing. Sometimes the magic gene skipped a person or two with no explanation.
Clyde pointed forward, brushing the unruly hair he inherited from me from his forehead. “What’s that?”
My heart sped up. “What’s what?”
“Those wavy things in the air.”
I exhaled loudly, tension I hadn’t even realized I was carrying relaxing from my shoulders. “Damn.”
“Damn?” he and Macy parroted at the same time.
“Yeah, damn. You had me freaking out there. Those waves distorting the air are magic. If Clyde can see them, we’re in the clear.”
“How come I can’t see them?” Macy asked.
“You must not be looking right,” I said, though I didn’t know how exactly she could be looking wrong. The barrier was ahead of us, in plain sight. Anyone with magic should be able to see it. Even those with weak magic could find the town limits well enough to enter.
“I must not be looking right,” Macy repeated, her voice dripping with sarcasm.
My favorite.
“Right there.” I pointed ahead just as Clyde had. “It’s like heat waves coming off the pavement.”
“Only they go all the way up to the sky,” Clyde added, and a bit more tension oozed from me.
Macy shook her head. “I don’t see anything. Seriously.”
“That’s … not possible,” I said.
She crossed her arms and turned the full brunt of her sass toward me: “I’m telling you, there’s nothing there. You think I’m lying or something?”
“Of course not. There’s no reason to lie. Actually, there’s never reason to lie to your mother.” I arched my brow at them in my I’m-dead-serious look.