Chapter 6
MAGIC SURGE. CONFIDENCE CRASH
Three days after she set the couch on fire, Cassie and Liam had perfected the art of aggressive politeness.
“Good morning.”
“Morning.”
“Coffee’s fresh.”
“Thanks.”
“I’ll be in the garden.”
“Right.”
And that was the extent of their conversation. Every day. Like clockwork. Like two people sharing an apartment on Craigslist who’d made a terrible mistake and were now contractually obligated to pretend everything was fine.
The walls had settled into a neutral beige. Not sad gray, not hopeful rose. Just… beige. Switzerland beige. We’re not taking sides beige.
Luna called it “emotional purgatory” and refused to elaborate.
The only upside to the disaster that was her personal life was that her magical training had actually been working.
Margaret came by every afternoon, and without the distraction of Liam’s presence (he conveniently disappeared to fix things in the garage during lessons), Cassie found she could actually focus.
“Better,” Margaret said on day three, watching Cassie successfully light a candle without setting anything else on fire. “You’re learning to channel instead of leak.”
“Is that the technical term? Leak?”
“The technical term is ‘uncontrolled ambient magical discharge,’ but ‘leak’ is faster to say.” Margaret handed her a cup of tea. “The binding has loosened considerably. He’s no longer tethered to the property—just to you. Within about a mile radius, I’d estimate.”
“So he can leave.”
“He’s been able to leave for days, dear. He’s choosing to stay.” Margaret’s eyes were too knowing. “Though I notice you two aren’t speaking.”
“We speak.”
“You exchange pleasantries like hostages reading scripted messages. That’s not speaking.”
Cassie didn’t have a response to that, so she drank her tea and pretended the walls weren’t flickering a guilty shade of mauve.
The morning of her Big Work Day, Cassie woke up feeling something she hadn’t felt in years: confident.
Not magically confident. Not “I just cast a successful spell” confident. Actually, genuinely, I might not be a complete disaster confident.
She had a presentation. A real one. The campaign she’d been developing for months—the one Dana had been trying to poach pieces of—was finally going before the executive team.
If it went well, there was talk of a promotion.
Senior Marketing Manager. An office with a door.
A raise that might actually let her fix the roof without having a panic attack.
She stood in front of her bathroom mirror and gave herself a pep talk.
“You’ve got this. You’re prepared. You know this campaign inside and out.” She pointed at her reflection. “You are not too much. You are exactly enough. You are a goddamn professional.”
The mirror fogged slightly. Sparkles danced at the edges of her reflection.
“Okay, dial it back,” she told herself. “Confidence, not chaos.”
She closed her eyes and did the grounding exercise Margaret had taught her. Roots into the earth. Energy flowing down, not out. Controlled. Centered.
When she opened her eyes, the sparkles were gone. Just her reflection. Just Cassie. Ready to kick ass.
She chose her best blazer—the one that made her feel like she could conquer small nations—and headed downstairs.
Liam was in the kitchen, nursing tea and reading something on his phone. He looked up when she entered, and something flickered across his face. Something that looked almost like concern.
“You look…” He paused. “Professional.”
“That’s the goal.” She poured coffee into her travel mug, keeping her movements brisk. Businesslike. “Big presentation today.”
“The campaign you’ve been working on?”
She was surprised he remembered. They’d discussed it once, weeks ago, before everything got complicated. “Yeah. Wish me luck.”
“You don’t need luck. You need those executives to have functioning brain cells.” He returned to his phone, but she caught the ghost of a smile. “Which, admittedly, might require luck.”
It was the most they’d said to each other in days. It felt like a ceasefire. Maybe even the beginning of a truce.
The walls shifted to a cautiously hopeful pale pink.
“I should go,” she said.
“Cassie.”
She paused at the door.
“You’ll be brilliant.” He still wasn’t looking at her. “You always are, when you stop telling yourself you’re not.”
She left before she could say something that would ruin the moment.
The presentation was flawless.
Cassie stood in front of the executive team—seven people in expensive suits who held her career in their professionally manicured hands—and delivered the best pitch of her life.
Her voice didn’t shake. Her slides were perfect.
She answered every question with the kind of calm authority that she usually only dreamed about.
Dana sat in the corner, visibly seething, which was the cherry on top of an already delicious sundae.
Afterward, her boss pulled her aside.
“Impressive work, Cassie. Really impressive.” He was smiling, which he almost never did. “We’ve been talking, and we’d like to offer you the Senior Manager position. You’ve earned it.”
She floated back to her desk on a cloud of pure vindication.
Senior Manager. SENIOR. MANAGER.
She wanted to call someone. Wanted to share this with—
Her phone buzzed. A text from Diane with a photo attachment.
OMG DID YOU DO THIS
The photo showed Derek’s Porsche. His precious, midlife-crisis, “I deserve nice things” Porsche that he’d bought six months before leaving her for Brittany.
It was pink.
Not just pink. Barbie pink. Cotton-candy-fever-dream pink. The kind of pink that could be seen from space and would definitely void any self-respecting car’s warranty.
Cassie stared at her phone.
She hadn’t… she couldn’t have…
But she remembered this morning. The confidence. The pep talk. Thinking about how Derek had always told her she wasn’t ready for leadership, wasn’t promotion material, wasn’t enough.
And apparently, while she was busy proving him wrong, some part of her magic had decided to prove a point of its own.
Another text from Diane:
He’s LOSING HIS MIND. Brittany is crying. This is the best day of my life.
Please tell me you did this
Please
I need to know magic is real and karma is pink
Cassie pressed her hand over her mouth to muffle the sound that came out—something between a laugh and a sob and a scream of pure chaotic joy.
She typed back:
I have no idea what you’re talking about.
But hypothetically
If someone’s subconscious had manifested their feelings about their ex-husband’s compensation vehicle
That would be hilarious.
I’M FRAMING THIS TEXT
Also CALL ME IMMEDIATELY
Cassie laughed until tears streamed down her face. Dana walked by and gave her a concerned look, which only made her laugh harder.
For the first time in years, she felt powerful. Not out of control. Not too much. Just… exactly right.
She should have known it couldn’t last.
The trouble started in the 2 p.m. budget meeting.
Cassie was riding high from her morning victory, still giddy about the promotion, still secretly delighted about Derek’s car. She felt invincible in a way that probably should have been a warning sign.
The conference room was packed. Quarterly reviews. Department heads droning about numbers. The kind of meeting that made her want to gnaw her own arm off just for something to do.
Then the hot flash hit.
It started the way they always did—a warmth in her chest that spread outward like someone had lit a match inside her ribcage. But this one was different. Stronger. Fed by the magic she’d been building all day without realizing it.
She’d forgotten to ground. All morning, she’d been so focused on the presentation, then the promotion, then laughing about Derek’s pink nightmare, that she’d completely forgotten Margaret’s most basic instruction: discharge the excess before it builds up.
The warmth became heat. The heat became fire.
She grabbed the edge of the conference table, trying to breathe through it. Roots into the earth. Energy down, not out. Controlled. Centered.
It wasn’t working.
The lights flickered.
“Is there a power issue?” someone asked.
The lights flickered again. The projector screen glitched, scrambling the quarterly pie charts into abstract art.
“IT should look at that,” her boss muttered.
Cassie’s skin was tingling. No—glowing. She could see it, a faint golden shimmer on her hands that was absolutely, definitely, catastrophically visible to anyone who bothered to look.
No no no no no—
A pen lifted off the table. Just an inch. Just for a second. But the man next to her saw it, and his eyes went wide.
“What the—”
Another pen joined it. Then a pencil. Then Dana’s phone, which rose gracefully from the table and began a slow rotation like a very small, very expensive satellite.
“My phone!” Dana shrieked.
The conference room erupted.
Cassie tried to push the magic down, tried to ground it, but it was like trying to stuff a geyser back into the earth. Everything she’d built up—the confidence, the triumph, the vindictive joy about the Porsche—it was all fuel, and now it was burning out of control.
The lights exploded. Not flickered. Exploded. Glass rained down as every bulb in the room burst simultaneously.
People screamed. Chairs scraped. Someone yelled about calling security.
And Cassie sat at the center of it all, glowing like a human nightlight, surrounded by floating office supplies, completely unable to make it stop.
“WHAT IS HAPPENING?” Dana was pressed against the wall, her rotating phone now joined by a stapler and someone’s reading glasses.
Cassie’s boss stared at her with an expression of dawning horror. “Cassie? Are you… is this…?”
She couldn’t speak. Could barely breathe. The magic was a living thing now, wild and scared and feeding on her panic.
The door burst open.