Chapter 2
TWO
They parted at the mouth of the subway station with promises to call each other later that night and recap their respective families’ level of sheer alarm, CZ heading toward the human side to take a train to his pack’s headquarters in Queens and Joan heading uptown via the HERMES transport network to the Greenwood Mansion, her heart lodged in her throat, strangling her half to death.
As she fumbled in her duffel bag, fishing for the black plastic card she hadn’t used in nearly a year—dredging the horrible depths of her disorganized packing job and dislodging ChapSticks, receipts, a small lotion, pens, more pens, an endless stream of pens—she was left to parse why exactly Molly’s phone call had unsettled her so.
On the surface, it was obvious why this news would send the Greenwoods straight into a panic.
If humans started becoming witches left and right, they’d need to be properly taught and acclimated to witch society somehow, which would be a burden on the magic world’s infrastructure.
If it was a spell that made this happen, then the Greenwoods wouldn’t want that power in any random person’s hands—they’d want to control how the witch population grew, and when, and who these newly turned humans were loyal to.
There would be those in the witch world who viewed this as a threat to their power.
Joan, however, cared little for the power of witches.
That was the byproduct of not being able to cast herself, an affliction entirely unheard of before her birth—sometimes children were born without the ability to channel magic and were thus deemed human, but no one had been born with the ability to channel, indeed an unusually strong ability to channel, yet completely unable to control the magic with spells.
Without the power to form magic into spells that could influence the world, Joan’s ability to channel was utterly useless.
Like drawing breath but never actually processing the air in her bloodstream—inhaling without breathing.
She had been forced to find other ways to define herself, and an architecture degree, grad school, they had all guided her forward.
She located the dingy card and jogged down the steps, swiping the card through a nondescript seam in the wall tile and stepping through an invisible barrier with the surface tension of a bubble. The moment she was through, the noise of a thousand commuters faded.
Inside the HERMES 51st Street Station, a large, polished lobby greeted her. Anywhere there were major transit systems, witches had hacked them, creating mirror realms over human stations and using portals instead of trains to move faster. Witches were entwined deep in human history and innovation.
Joan navigated quickly to one of the four lines, picking the one she thought would move fastest and, as always, somehow managing to select the slowest. She tapped a foot impatiently, pulled out her phone, and put it back.
There was no reception here. Too much raw magic charged the air, and though it was present everywhere, latent in the world, anywhere witches concentrated, it could sicken humans and mess with electronic signals.
Magic was only manageable when schooled into spells.
Around her, all types of witches murmured to one another scandalously. Apparently, Molly hadn’t had as much of a head start as she thought, because as Joan shuffled forward behind an East Asian man and a South Asian woman, she could hear their excited whispers.
“It can’t honestly be true.”
The woman scoffed. “If it were, someone would have figured out how to do it by now. Why today? Why now?”
“Something old that the historians unearthed? Or a hobbyist? I don’t know,” the man guessed. “Or a new spell.”
“They keep track of spellmakers. If it’s new, then the person behind it would be a fool to send it out to the public without letting the Greenwoods know.”
“Unless the Greenwoods do know,” the man said with a waggle of his eyebrows. “Who’s to say they’re not the ones behind this?”
“Valeria seems too competent to leak it.”
Dad would, Joan thought. Anything to try and destabilize Aunt Val so he can get named Head Witch of New York. The fast way would have been to challenge her to a Scales Law duel that granted the winner their opponent’s social title and property, but doing so would weaken the family.
“Merlin might.” The man’s voice hushed here, and he glanced around fearfully without actually noticing Joan, which was fine; she was kind of a recluse, so people likely didn’t know her face that well.
Plus, it had been seven years, and in that time, Joan had cut all her ringlets to her collarbone, gotten a septum ring, nose ring, cartilage piercings, a couple of tattoos—
“Next,” the attendant called, and the man and woman stepped forward to show their black cards and identify a destination. The HERMES system was nationwide and extended from the local subway portals to secret airport-like buildings that could pop you across state or country lines.
No one around her seemed overly concerned with the news; it was still just a rumor.
To them, maybe it wouldn’t make a difference at all if humans could become witches.
Maybe it was the dawn of an amazing new age, a way to shift the demographics to favor their kind and force a closer merger with the human world, though witches tended to enjoy the exclusive club that was the magic world.
Why did Joan feel so concerned, then?
If Joan were a good little soldier, she’d already be thinking about telling her family the news had hit and people were gossiping that the Greenwoods themselves were behind it.
Joan liked to think she was not a good little soldier, even though she was currently on her way to the Upper East Side because her older sister had said Jump! and Joan had replied How high?
“Hello?” said the attendant, an androgynous white person with perfectly coiffed blonde hair. Likely for at least the second time.
“Right, sorry.” Joan fumbled her card out again, nearly throwing it at them. They were clearly not paid enough to put up with her nonsense, and they swiped it nimbly out of her hand and held it to the magicked tablet that registered her identity.
Their eyebrows shot up. “Joan Gre—”
“Madison, East 63rd,” Joan interrupted, with what she hoped was an apologetic smile but maybe was more of a feral grimace. Please do not out me in this subway station, dear gods.
“Of course,” the attendant sputtered, turning to the massive mirror behind them, raising their hands to cast in a few quick movements that helped shape the spell they were forming.
Joan stepped through the mirror, in one side and out the other, entering the next station with the feeling of walking through mist.
Shaking off the odd, small feeling of vertigo that resulted from changing locations so abruptly, she hustled up the stairs, really starting to feel grimy from the hours-long train ride, then the sweating around New York City.
The Greenwood family mansion (one of several, but the main one) was around the corner, and when she arrived at the front gate, she needed only to put a hand on it for the powerful wards to recognize her and open up.
It was her aunt’s house, technically, and the central working hub of New York witches, though the whole Greenwood family lived there.
All the (many) windows were lit up as she approached through the small front courtyard, though the only person outside was George, Merlin’s ghost chauffeur, sitting on a bench and going fuzzy around the edges the moment a breeze shifted through him.
“Miss Joan!” he said excitedly, standing up.
“George! Is that a new bow tie?” she teased.
“Did you just get in? Who picked you up?” he asked, wearing the same dark blue bow tie he’d probably been wearing for thirty years at least, his suit crisp, his gray hair slicked, and his mustache well oiled.
Merlin didn’t like to be reminded that George was dead, so he was in a mostly corporeal form, with colors solid enough that he couldn’t be seen through.
“No one,” Joan said cheerily. “Well, CZ. I was completely forgotten about until Molly called.”
“Ah,” George said sympathetically. “Welcome home, then.” Ghosts didn’t classify as a specific magical species, as everyone died eventually and almost no one really wanted to, so they tended to hang around for ages until the universe recycled them.
Magical creatures, though they lived much longer than humans, moved on the quickest, since their magic usually got folded back into the worldwide magical currents long before humans did.
Joan hopped up the first step to the door. “How bad is it in there?”
“Judging by the number of people who have come and gone… quite,” George said pleasantly. “But, of course, the spells are meant to keep me from overhearing.”
“If only magic worked on ghosts,” Joan said dryly. But it passed right through them. No body, no way for magic to manipulate it.
George gave a little bow. “If only, Miss Joan.”
Joan shook her head with a laugh and hopped up the remaining stairs to the door before placing a hand on the knob.
But her hand wouldn’t turn.
The moment she crossed the threshold, their problems would become hers.
She was here to serve the family and whatever the family was wrestling with.
She’d been eighteen when she left for college, and she’d never had any real responsibilities, being so young, but what contact she’d gotten from her parents over the years had been clear: We paid for your degrees, so now you return home to do as we say.
“Miss Joan?” George asked politely.
“Sorry, George,” she replied softly. “Cold feet.” Another breeze made goose bumps rise on her arm.
“I think often, Miss Joan, about how few things there are in this world that cannot be undone.”